The Frumious Bandersnatch

“It’s him,” Loomis told Endicott. He was already walking toward his isolation booth.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Endicott said, putting on the ear phones. “Keep him talking.”

Sitting in the booth, Loomis picked up the extension phone.

“Loomis,” he said.

“Have you got the money?”

“I’ll have it by six tonight. I’ve had to sell…”

“Seven-fifty in new hundreds?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Put Carella on.”

“He’s not here.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t realize you’d need him again.”

“I don’t.”

“First tower’s on him,” Jones said.

“Is there another detective there?”

Corcoran nodded.

“Yes,” Loomis said.

“Is he listening to this?”

Corcoran shook his head.

“No,” Loomis said.

“You’re lying. Put him on.”

“Second tower’s got him. He’s in a moving vehicle,” Feingold said.

Corcoran picked up his extension.

“Hello?” he said.

“Who’s this?”

“Detective-Lieutenant Charles Corcoran.”

“May I call you Charles?”

“Is the girl still alive?”

“I’ll ask the fucking questions, Charles!”

Corcoran’s mouth tightened. Endicott was scowling.

“Go down to the limo at sevenP.M. sharp,” the caller said. “You, Mr. Loomis, and the money. Get on the River Dix Drive and head east. Rush hour should be over by then. I’ll call again at seven-fifteen. Any tricks and the girl dies.This phone is stolen, too,” he said, and laughed.

There was a click on the line.

“Son of a goddamn rotten son of a bitch bastard mother-fuckingcock sucker!” Jones yelled. “He always gets off a second before we triangulate.”

“You want this printout?” Feingold asked.

“You heard him, it’s stolen,” Endicott said.

“Will you have the money by then?” Corcoran asked Loomis.

“It should be here by six,” Loomis said.

“This time we play it our way,” Corcoran said.

THEY’D BEEN WAITINGoutside the building since a quarter past one, but the landlady didn’t show up until almost three-thirty. She was dressed for Marrakech.

No burkah covered her from head to toe, but instead she wore a modest black abayah that billowed out like the sail on a Sumerian galley, covering everything but her face and her slender hands. She had extraordinary brown eyes, almost as black as the abayah. With all that protective clothing, neither of the detectives could tell her exact age, but they guessed she was somewhere in her mid-forties. They also guessed the eyes were a bit flirtatious.

The apartment building was in a Calm’s Point neighborhood with a large Arab population, mostly Egyptians, Moroccans, and other immigrants from North Africa. The streets here were lined with Turkish coffee houses, shops selling hummus and baklava, katayif and kibbi, mjddara and tabbouleh. And although there were only twelve mosques in the entire city, one of them was located two blocks from the furnished room Calvin Robert Wilkins supposedly rented at the end of last year.

“We’re looking for the man who was renting a furnished room here from just before Thanksgiving to shortly after Christmas,” Carella told the landlady.

The landlady nodded.

“Know who we mean?” Hawes asked.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

They followed her up to the third floor.

“Rent was coming due on January one,” she told them. “Guess he was in a big hurry to leave, eh?”

Kirby Strauss the parole officer was right: The room Wilkins had been renting before he’d absconded was “perfectly decent.” Small, neat, tidy, inexpensively appointed with thrift-shop furniture.

“When he rented it, did he say he’d be leaving in January?” Carella asked.

“No. Said he wanted it on a month-to-month basis,” the woman said. “Which was okey-dokey with me.”

Showing off her American slang. Brown eyes flashing. Left hand on her hip. Big silver ring on the thumb of that hand. Some kind of bright green stone set in it. Not jade, something else. Not emerald either, not in a silver setting.

“When did he first tell you he’d be leaving?”

“Just after Christmas.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Sure. Jamaica.”

“No kidding? Jamaica, huh?”

“Sure. You know Jamaica? I asked was he going with his friends, he said no, just himself.”

“What friends?” Hawes asked at once.

“The two who came here all the time. Man and a woman.”

“When you say all the time…?”

The woman shrugged under her voluminous garment. Ripples flowed down to her toes. He noticed she was barefoot. Ring on the big toe of her right foot, too. Red stone on this one.

“Three, four times. He had the room only a month, you know. Little more than a month.”

“Would you know their names? These friends of his?”

“I don’t ask visitors’ names. There’s no trouble, I don’t ask visitors’ names.”

“What’d they look like?” Carella asked.

“The man was something like your height. Brown eyes like yours, curly black hair, very nice build,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “The girl was a redhead. Not like your red,” she said, turning to Hawes, “more brown in color, yes? With green eyes and…what do you call them? When there are spots on the face?”

“Freckles?” Hawes suggested.

“English,” she said, shaking her head. “Freckles, yes. I don’t think they were married, those two, but I think they were close, eh?” she said, and winked.

“You mean, like engaged,” Hawes said, nodding.

“No, I mean like sleeping together,” she said, and winked again.

“So he was leaving for Jamaica, but he wasn’t taking his friends with him, is that it?” Carella said.

“Well, not right that moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t going to Jamaica that very moment when he left the room here.”

“Then whenwas he going to Jamaica?”

“He said in the spring.”