When the real estate agent told him the owner was asking three thou a month, Avery asked, “For what? A house nobody wants because of all the air traffic zooming and roaring overhead?” The agent argued that in these days of extended airport hassles and long delays the house’s proximity to the airport was a plus. It must have also occurred to her that closeness to the airport might be desirable to terrorists as well—I mean, what the hell, did Avery look like some kind of fucking terrorist? The questions she’d asked, the identification she’d pored over—the fake Andy Hardy stuff, ha ha, lady—you’d think Avery was about to build a bomb instead of just kidnap a girl!
The girl was now safely ensconced in the house, and tomorrow morning Avery would make the first of his phone calls. The phones themselves—but that was another story.
By tomorrow night at this time, he’d be in possession of two hundred and fifty thousand bucks!
Thank you, Barney Loomis, and God bless us every one!
THERE WERE MARCHERS outside the Rio Building when Carella got there on Monday morning at eight o’clock. The marchers were carrying hand-lettered signs on wooden sticks.
Some of the signs read: ROCK RACIAL PROFILING!
Others read: TAMAR IS A RACIST!
Yet others read: WHY A BLACK RAPIST?
The marchers were chanting, “Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch!”
Television cameras were rolling.
Carella was not surprised to see the Reverend Gabriel Foster at the head of the procession.
Six-feet-two-inches tall, with the wide shoulders and broad chest of the heavyweight fighter he once had been, his eyebrows still ridged with scar tissue, Foster at the age of forty-nine still looked as if he could knock your average contender on his ass in thirty seconds flat. According to police records, the reverend’s birth name was Gabriel Foster Jones. He’d changed it to Rhino Jones when he’d enjoyed his brief career as a boxer, and then settled on Gabriel Foster when he began preaching. Foster considered himself a civil rights activist. The police considered him a rabble rouser, an opportunistic self-promoter, and a race racketeer. His church, in fact, was listed in the files as a “sensitive location,” departmental code for anyplace where the uninvited presence of the police might cause a race riot.
Foster looked as if he might be promoting just such a commotion on this bright May morning.
“Good morning, Gabe,” Carella said.
“Ban Bander…” Foster said, and then cut himself off mid-sentence and opened his eyes wide when he saw Carella. He thrust out his hand, stepped away from the line of protestors, and grinned broadly. Carella actually believed the reverend was glad to see him. Shaking hands, Foster said, “Don’t tell me you’re on this kidnapping?”
“More or less,” Carella said, which was the truth.
“Did you see the video?” Foster asked him.
“I saw the taping they did last night,” Carella said. “Not the video itself, no.”
“It depicts the girl’s rapist as a black man.”
“Well, it depicts a black dancer portraying some kind of mythical beast…”
“Some kind of mythical
“The beast in the original poem isn’t black,” Carella said.
“That’s exactly my…”
“And the poem was written in England, back in the 1800’s.”
“So why…?”
“There isn’t even a
“That’s exactly my point, Steve! There
“Come on, Gabe. The song takes a powerful stand
“I can most certainly object to the rapist being black.”
“It’s the
“To portray a black rapist.”
“Gabe, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know the girl, but I’m willing to bet my last dollar she isn’t a racist.”
“I can smell one a hundred yards away,” Foster said.
“Maybe your nose is too sensitive,” Carella said. “I have to go upstairs, Gabe. You want my advice?”
“No.”
“Okay, see you later then.”
“Let me hear it.”
“Pack up and go home. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this one. It’ll come back to haunt you.”
“Ah, but I’m on the right side of it, Steve. The rapist on that video is vicious and monstrous and black. That’s racist. And that’s good enough for me.”
“I have to go,” Carella said.
“Good seeing you again,” Foster said, and nodded briefly, and stepped back into the line of marchers. “Ban Bandersnatch!” he shouted. “Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch!”
The black security guard who took Carella’s name and phoned it upstairs glanced through the tall glass windows fronting the street, and asked, “What’s
“Beats me,” Carella said, and signed his name, and waited for clearance. When it came, he took the elevator up to the twenty-third floor, and went through the still-empty reception area directly to Barney Loomis’ office at the end of the hall. The Squad was already there. Loomis was not.
