The blindfold ended just above her cheekbone. She pressed the side of her face against the hinge, and tried to hook the edge of the blindfold over the knob. She was about to give up, when—on the eighth or ninth attempt—she finally snagged it. Yanking downward with a sharp jerk of her head, she pulled the blindfold loose, and opened her eyes.
A thin ribbon of light limned the lower edge of the closet door.
She waited for her eyes to adjust.
Duct tape.
It was duct tape.
The same thing that bound her ankles, and undoubtedly her hands, which she could not see.
She searched the closet floor and the shelf at eye level for any sharp object that might help her free her hands or her feet.
There was nothing.
She tried to hook the gag over the same hinge that had served her with the blindfold. But because it was a rag twisted an inch or so inside her mouth, and tied tightly at the back of her head, there was no slack to it at all, and she could not free it.
She did not know what to do next.
CARELLA wanted to know what they were supposed to do next.
He had waited till a respectable seven A.M. before phoning Lieutenant Byrnes, and now the two men were discussing whether or not they should drag the FBI into this.
“For all I know, Loomis has already called them,” Carella said.
“Who’s Loomis?” Byrnes asked.
In the background, Carella could hear a television set going. He imagined his boss at breakfast, sitting at his kitchen table over bacon and eggs, watching television as he ate. Byrnes was a compact man in his fifties, white-haired and blunt-featured. He had no particular fondness for the FBI.
“Barney Loomis,” Carella said. “He’s the CEO of Bison Records. He thinks the perps are going to ask him for the ransom.”
“Oh? How come?”
“Her parents are divorced, one in Mexico, the other in Europe. Also, neither of them has any money.”
“State line been crossed here?” Byrnes asked.
“We don’t know where the boat went after the snatch. Could’ve gone across the river, sure, docked someplace there. In which case, yes, a state line’s been crossed.”
“You say this girl’s a celebrity?”
“Personally, I never heard of her, Pete. According to Loomis, she’s the hottest thing around. But he owns the label, so what do you expect him to say?”
“You think he may have already called the Feds?”
“I have no idea. He wants that girl back.”
“What’d you say her name was?”
“Tamar Valparaiso.”
“Cause here she is now,” Byrnes said, and got up to raise the volume on the television set. “Can you hear this?” he asked Carella.
“I can hear it,” Carella said, and nodded grimly.
“…from a luxury yacht in the River Harb last night,” a television newscaster was saying. “According to U.S. Coast Guard reports…”
“How’d they’d get in this?” Byrnes said into the phone.
“Harbor Patrol called them.”
“…two armed and masked men boarded the
“What channel is that?” Carella asked.
“Five,” Byrnes said.
“Four’s gonna sue the city.”
“…Barney Loomis, who says Bison has not yet received a ransom demand. In Riverhead this morning…”
“That’s it,” Byrnes said, and lowered the volume. “Sue the city? Why?”
“Cause I confiscated a tape of the kidnapping.”
“Ooops.”
“It was evidence. So what do we do here, Pete? Pursue this or phone the FBI?”
“Let me talk to the Commish. I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know. What I
“Not yet.”
“Let me see what the Commish advises. I know he won’t want heat later on, anybody saying we dropped the ball prematurely. You’re about out of there, anyway, aren’t you?”
Carella looked up at the clock.
“Half an hour,” he said.
“Get some sleep, you may have to come back in. I don’t know how this is gonna fall, Steve, we’ll have to play it as it lays. Call me later, okay?”
“You coming in today?”
“No, it’s supposed to be my day off. Call me at home.”
“There’s the other line,” Carella said.
“I’ll wait. Maybe it’s the Feds.”
Carella put Byrnes on HOLD, stabbed at a button on the base of his phone.
“Carella,” he said.
“Carella, this is Sandy McIntosh, HPU. You got a minute?”
“Yeah, hang on.” He switched over to Byrnes again. “It’s the Harbor Patrol. Am I on the job, or what?”
“Stay with it for now,” Byrnes said. “Call me later.”
Carella switched to the other line again.
“Okay, Sandy, I’m back,” he said.
“This may be nothing at all,” McIntosh said, “or maybe you can use it. Around nine-fifteen, nine-thirty last night…”
IT WAS NOT often that this precinct caught something as big as a celebrity kidnapping—if, in fact, Tamar Valparaiso
