The Frumious Bandersnatch

“Oh, we’ll get her back, all right,” Corcoran assured him.

“I don’t want her endangered in any way. I want to give them the money, get her back, and that’s that.”

“Or vice versa,” Endicott said.

Loomis looked at him.

“Sometimes it’s better to get the victim backfirst, ” Endicott explained.

“Or simultaneously,” Corcoran said.

“Or at least get proof of life,” Endicott said.

“Proof that she’s still alive,” Corcoran explained. “An ear, or a finger, or…”

Barney Loomis went suddenly pale.

Carella wondered what the hell he was doing here.

YEARS AGOin the police department, long before he’d joined the force, a commonly accepted axiom was that if you weren’t Irish, you’d never “cop the gold.” In this case, “cop” wasn’t an abbreviation of “copper,” which might have made for some nice metallurgical imagery. Instead, “cop” meant to achieve or to obtain, or more specifically to bepromoted from a uniformed officer to a detective carrying a gold shield. In this city, so rare was the occurrence of anyonenot Irish copping the gold, that whenever it did happen to an outsider, the surprised recipient (regardless of his religious beliefs) was automatically asked “Who’s your rabbi?”

Eventually, as more and more police officers of non-Irish descent began making detective, “Who’s your rabbi?” became a standard joke. Indeed, over the syears, the dogma gradually changed to read, “If you ain’t Irish, you’ll never makecaptain, ” but even that bromide fell into disuse when two black police commissioners were appointed in succession.

Now, in this room full of WASPs—or such was Carella’s perception even though Corcoran was Irish-Catholic and Feingold was Jewish and Jones was black—he suddenly felt like a little Wop mutt who had no right pissing with the big pedigreed dogs.

Detective Lieutenant Charles Farley Corcoran and Detective/ Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella had been graduated from the Academy on the very same day. Corcoran had been assigned to the Thirtieth, a silk-stocking precinct. Carella had begun walking a beat in the Eight-Seven, a precinct uptown in the asshole of creation.

His first day on the job, uniform all spanking new, shoes polished to a high luster, silver shield shining on his chest, thirty-eight S&W—the mandated weapon back then—hanging in a holster on his right hip, a woman came running out of a building wearing only panties and a bra and screaming at the top of her lungs, he figured somebody was about to rape her. Two minutes later, a guy in his undershorts and a tank top undershirt came running out after her, also yelling bloody murder, which now seemed to be what this was about to turn into. Because right behind him was asecond woman, fully dressed this time, and carrying in her hands what later turned out to be an ax she’d taken from the fire-alarm box on the third floor of the building. The second woman was yelling “Bums!” as she came running down the steps of the front stoop, “Bums! Bums!” It took Carella, bright rookie that he was, maybe thirty seconds to realize she was referring to the half-naked man and woman who’d preceded her out of the building, and another thirty seconds to calculate that the lady with the ax had caught them in bed together.

Stepping into her path, holding up his hand like a traffic cop, which frankly he wished he was in that moment, he said, “All right, lady, let’s hold it right there.”

The only thing the lady was holding right there was the ax.

Wild-eyed, she shoved past Carella…

Actuallyshoved past him, pushing him out of her way as if he were some sort of inanimate obstacle keeping her from exacting justice upon the two barefoot bums in their skivvies, who were now running around the corner, out of sight.

While Carella recovered his balance, he tried to remember the rules and regulations that governed when it was permissible for him to draw his gun and fire it. He was certain that assaulting a police officer qualified. He was also certain that carrying a dangerous weapon was another good reason to bring the piece into play. In fact, back then there weren’t too many restrictions on when a cop could unholster and/or discharge his weapon. But however justified he may have felt, he was pretty positive he wouldn’t get any medals for shooting a fat lady in the back—her back was to him now as she ran for the corner. So he yelled into the suddenly sweaty summertime air, “Police! Stop or I’ll shoot!,” drawing his gun, and hoping against hope that he wouldn’t have to shoot anybody his first day on the job.

The woman didn’t stop, but neither did he have to shoot her because in that moment she ran around the corner, and by the time he himself reached the corner, and turned it out of breath, all three of them were gone, the two adulterers—if that’s what they were—in their scanties, and the fat lady with the ax. A disappearing act! Carella still had his gun in his hand. He felt like a jackass.

“Where’d they go?” he asked a kid on a bicycle.

“Where’d who go?” the kid asked.

Totally vanished.

He went back to the building, where a sizable crowd had gathered, and began asking questions the way he guessed he was supposed to, but all he could learn from anybody was that the woman probably thought there was a fire, which is why she was using an ax to help those people in their underwear get out of the building.

He learned something that first day on the job.

In this precinct, nobody knew anything.

In this precinct, the cop on the beat was the enemy.

When he got home that night and told his mother what had happened his first day on the job, they both had a good laugh over it. The next day, things weren’t quite as funny.

The next day a patrolman hoping to cash his paycheck at a bank not too far from…

The telephone rang.

It was precisely three o’clock.

ENDICOTTsignaled for Loomis to pick up.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Loomis?”

“Yes?”

“Have you got the money?”

“Yes,” Loomis said.

“Hundred-dollar bills? Unmarked?”

“Yes.”

“They’d better be. What kind of car do you drive?”

“What?”

“What kind of…?”

“The company provides a car and driver. It’s a Lincoln Town…”

“Can you drive it yourself?”

“Yes?”

“Is there a phone in it?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know the number?”

“Not offhand. I can get it for you.”

“Get it. I’ll call back in five minutes.”

“Wait!” Loomis shouted.

But he was already gone.

“Cell phone again,” one of the agents manning the computers said. “Sprint. They’re checking the number now.”

“One tower got him, and out,” another agent said.

“Someplace in Calm’s Point.”