The Frumious Bandersnatch полностью

“Look, call my lieutenant, okay? He’s got all our reports, he’ll give you everything you…”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“The Explorer was reported stolen at eight-thirty this morning. We checked with the owner, last time she saw the car was six last night, when she moved it per parking regulations. The boat the three hired—which may or may not have been the one used on the gig, before you repeat it back to me—was dusted by Mobile Crime top to bottom. It was wiped clean as a whistle. Also, we’ve set up a Tap and Tape plus a Trap and Trace in Barney Loomis’ office. We expect…”

“So he told us.”

“We expect the perps to call with a ransom demand sometime tomorrow. The office was closed today, and they have no way of knowing his home number. Plus, the girl’s parents are divorced and living, one in Mexico, the other in Europe someplace. So Loomis is the one the perps’ll most likely contact.”

“So he told us,” Endicott said again.

“That’s what we’ve done so far, and that’s what we’ve got.”

“Which is essentially nothing,” Endicott said.

“Well, as I mentioned earlier,” Carella said, “maybe you ought to talk to my lieutenant. He can give you any further…”

“No, no, you’ve done splendidly,” Endicott said. “Not your fault these guys are smart. How about the crime scene itself? Has the lab come back to you with anything yet?”

“They said I’d have their report by six tonight. I waited in the office till seven.”

“Think it might be there now?”

“Possibly. I can call the squadroom…”

“If it’s there, maybe you can bring it along with the rest of the stuff.”

“What stuff do you mean, Agent Endicott?”

“It’s Special Agent Endicott, by the way, but you can call me Stan. What do people call you, Detective? Stephen? Steve? It says here Stephen Louis Car…”

“Steve. People call me Steve.”

“Steve, I’d like to go over whatever evidence you gathered at the scene…”

“There wasn’t much.”

“Whatever there was. It’d be in your DD report, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Your various conversations with eye witnesses…”

“Yes.”

“Your own evaluation of the crime scene…”

“Yes, that would all be in our report.”

“Photographs…”

“Those would be coming from the lab.”

“Plus whatever else you may have got from Mobile this evening.”

“If there is anything else, yes, Stan. It was a big crime scene, they were very busy there, inside and outside the boat. The perps came up a ladder, you know, on the side of the boat…”

“So you’re saying there might be footprint casts…”

“I’m saying I don’t know what they got or didn’t get. Footprints or whatever. That’s why I’m waiting for the report. The perps were wearing gloves, so the likelihood of latents is nil. But they came down these highly polished steps into the ballroom, and they moved across a dance floor with another sensitive surface…”

“That’s the kind of stuff I mean,” Endicott said. “Your first hand impressions of the scene. To supplement whatever you’ve got in writing. When do you think you can get down here?”

“Down where?” Carella asked.

“Why, Federal Square, Steve.”

“How about first thing tomorrow morning?” Carella said.

“How about right now?” Endicott said. “The Squad’s all here…”

The Squad? Carella thought.

“…and we’d love to get a jump on this before those sons of bitches call tomorrow. Think you can stop by your office first, see if that MCU report is in, and then head right on down here? It’s One Federal Square, nineteenth floor. We’ll be waiting,” he said, and hung up.

Carella looked at the phone receiver.

The Squad, he thought. Is that what the Joint Task Force calls itself, The Squad?

He put the receiver back on the cradle.

The Squad.

“I have to go in again,” he told Teddy.

It was not the first time she’d ever heard those words, but she pulled a face anyway.

THERE WAS ONLY one building in Federal Square, and it was appropriately addressed One Federal Square. A forty-story limestone structure lit from below with daggers of light, it would have looked imposing, and a bit intimidating, even if it were not the sole edifice on a plot of ground some fifty yards square.

The Joint Task Force, a team of six crack FBI agents and an equal number of elite police detectives, occupied floors nineteen and twenty of the building. You could not enter those floors without a key. Carella did not have a key, which was why someone was meeting him downstairs in the lobby.

The someone was Detective-Lieutenant Charles “Corky” Corcoran.