The Frumious Bandersnatch полностью

“I didn’t think so. So let’s see,” he said, thinking out loud. “The call still has to go through the switchboard. Your operator doesn’t have to know anything, it’s business as usual. Okay, so she puts the call through to you here, right. Let me get to work here,” he said, and took off his jacket, and looked for someplace to hang it…

“I’ll take it,” Loomis said.

…and opened one of the aluminum suitcases.

“What I do most of the time,” he said, taking from the suitcase an assortment of tools which he was about to put on Loomis’s polished desk top before he saw the alarmed look that crossed his face, and spread them on the carpeted floor instead, “I usually install wires in places the wise guys hang out, you know? We get a court order same as for a search warrant because that’s what we’re doing, we’re seizing conversations, even if it’s from bad guys talking. You ever hear of Stephen Sondheim?” he asked.

“Yes?” Loomis said.

“Yes?” Carella said.

“How come he never read the book Wise Guys? How come he never heard the expression ‘wise guys’? How come he writes a musical about two brothers, one’s a welterweight boxer, the other’s an architect, and he calls it Wise Guys when they ain’t even gangsters? He’s supposed to be very intelligent, how come he don’t know these things? Anyway, this’ll be the same thing here, we’ll be seizing a conversation…that’s why you needed your court orders, Carella, well I guess you knew that, huh? If you expect this to stand up in court later on, anyway. The way this’ll work, I’ll set up a Tap and Tape so that your law enforcement people,us, ” he said, and winked at Carella, “can wear ear phones and listen to every call coming in, while meanwhile the recording equipment is voice-activated and starts whenever the guy even breathes into his phone. Meanwhile, the Trap and Trace’ll give us the number he’s calling from. Simple as A, B, C, right?” he said. “So get to work, Curt,” he told himself, “instead of passing the time of day here with these nice gentlemen.”

CARLIE EPWORTH, the technician who’d led the team that had scoured the Hurley Girl stem to stern, called the 87th Squad at six that night and asked to talk to Detective Kling. Kling had already gone home.

Epworth left a message saying they’d come up negative for latents on the boat, but that they had some fiber and hair samples for possible matching purposes later on if they made an arrest.

At a quarter past six, fifteen minutes before Honey Blair’s kidnapping tape went network on the “Nightly News,” a detective named Henry D’Amato called the 87th Squad and asked to talk to Detective Bert Kling, who had put out an APB on a black Ford Explorer with the license plate number KBG 741. He was informed that Kling had already gone home. D’Amato left a message saying they had recovered the suspect vehicle, and it was behind the station house at the One-Oh-Four in Majesta, awaiting further disposition. He said he’d be there till midnight if Kling wanted to get back to him.

Detective Hal Willis, who’d been briefed on the kidnapping out on the river, thought this was important enough to call Kling at the number he’d left. Kling agreed. He called the One-Oh-Four at once.

“Did you check with DMV?” he asked D’Amato.

“Yeah. It’s registered to a woman named Polly Olson, you want the address?”

“Please,” Kling said, and listened, jotting down the address. “Was it reported stolen?” he asked.

“Didn’t have a chance to check that,” D’Amato said.

“I’ll get someone on it,” Kling said, and thanked D’Amato, and then immediately called Willis back.

“Hal,” he said, “we’ve got a make on that Ford Explorer, it’s registered to a woman named Polly Olson at 317 Byrd Street, I think that’s over by the Ship Canal. You want to check our boosted vehicles sheet, see if the Ford’s on it? Either way, you ought to run on down there, see where she was last night while the Valparaiso girl was being abducted.”

“Why? You think she was part of it?”

“I only know this is the car that was spotted at the marina. And it’s hers. So let’s see what she has to say.”

“Well, the way I look at it,” Willis said, “there are only two possibilities here. Either the car was stolen, in which case the lady thanks me for finding it, or else it was used in a kidnapping, in which case I knock on her door and the lady shoots me in the face.”

“Maybe you ought to petition for a No-Knock,” Kling said, half-seriously.

“What judge in his right mind would grant me one?”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, right?”

“Tell you what,” Willis said. “Why don’t you run on down there to talk to her?”

“I’m off duty,” Kling said, and hung up, and immediately called the Mobile Crime Unit.

“Al Sheehan,” a man’s voice said.

“Hey, Al,” Kling said, “this is Bert Kling at the Eight-Seven. We’re working a kidnapping that went down last night…”

“Hey, yeah,” Sheehan said. “I was one of the techs who swept the River Princess. Something, huh?”