Loomis turned off the set.
“When theydo call,” Hennesy said, “here’s what’ll happen. The Tap and Tape I’ve hooked up is a more sophisticated version of the REMOB every telephone lineman…”
“What’s a REMOB?” Loomis asked.
Carella didn’t know what it was, either.
“Stands for ‘remote observation,’ ” Hennesy said. “Telephone repairmen use it to check the ‘condition of the line,’ or so they say. I personally think they get their jollies eavesdropping on phone phucks. Anyway, I found some unused pairs in the cable here, and set up my relay. Whenever the switchboard puts anyone through to your phone, the relay gets activated, connecting your line to the caller’s. Carella here will have the option of just listening or automatically recording. At the same time, the Trap and Trace will be locating the caller’s number. So you’re in business. That’ll be twelve dollars and thirty-seven cents,” Hennesy said and grinned like a kid on Halloween night.
5
DETECTIVE AL SHEEHANcalled Kling at a quarter to eight that night. He reported that they’d gone out to the One-Oh-Four and thoroughly examined the recovered Ford Explorer. The car had been wiped clean.
“We’re dealing with professionals here,” he said. “Or else, guys who’ve seen a lot of movies.”
Kling thanked him and went back to watching a quartet of talking heads on one of the cable channels.
One of them was saying she felt the “Bandersnatch” tape would only inspire further violent crimes like rape and female abuse.
“Bullshit,” Sharyn Cooke announced.
She was in the small kitchen of the apartment she shared with Bert Kling when she wasn’t in his apartment over the bridge. Why they didn’t just move in together and save one of the rents was something they talked about every so often. As it was, their separate work schedules often dictated which apartment they used on any given night.
Sharyn Everard Cooke was the police department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon, the first black woman ever to be appointed to the job—though “black” was a misnomer in that her skin was the color of burnt almond. She wore her black hair in a modified Afro, which—together with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and eyes the color of loam—gave her the look of a proud Masai woman. Five-feet-nine-inches tall, she considered herself a trifle overweight at a hundred and thirty pounds. Bert Kling thought she looked just right. Bert Kling thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Bert Kling loved her to death.
The only problem was where to sleep.
Sharyn’s apartment was at the very end of the Calm’s Point subway line, some forty minutes from Kling’s studio apartment across the river in Isola. From his apartment, it took him twenty minutes to get to work in the morning. From her apartment, it took him an hour and fifteen minutes. Sharyn still had her own private practice, but as a uniformed one-star chief, she was obliged to work fifteen to eighteen hours a week at the Chief Surgeon’s Office, which was located in Rankin Plaza in Majesta. Majesta was forty-five minutes by subway from Kling’s apartment. So it all got down to where they should sleep on any given night.
Because of the kidnapping, and because Kling had to report in at seven-forty-five tomorrow morning, they had planned to spend that Sunday night in his apartment. But at sevenA.M. tomorrow, before she went to the office in Rankin Plaza, Sharyn had to be at St. Mary Magdalene’s in Calm’s Point, where three cops were in the Burn Unit after a blazing building collapsed on them.
So here they were.
“Strawberry or chocolate swirl?” she asked Kling.
“Is that a trick question?” he asked.
She was looking into the freezer compartment of her refrigerator.
“The chocolate swirl is low-fat,” she said.
“I’ll have the strawberry,” he said.
“Racist decision,” she said, and at that moment, one of the talking heads on television said, “The lyrics are racist right from the last word in the second line.”
Sharyn took her head out of the refrigerator.
Kling looked up from the Sunday newspaper in his lap.
“Which word are you referring to?” the hostess of the show asked. She was a white woman, one of innumerable blondes with long straight hair who proliferated on American cable television like amoebae in a petri dish. She called herself Candace Odell. Her guests called her Candy. The guest she was talking to was Jennifer O’Malley, also white, a redheaded columnist for one of the Chicago newspapers.
“The word I’m referring to is ‘wabe,’ ” Jennifer said.
“How do you find that word racist?” Candace asked.
Her two other guests were black, one male, one female. The man’s name was Halliday Coombs. He was a radio commentator in Albany, New York. The woman’s name was Lucy Holden. She was a writer for a magazine based in Los Angeles. So many names to remember, so many people to keep track of. But America was a big country. And Candace was good with names. Besides, the screen was divided into four equal segments, so that a viewer could see either all four participants at the same time, or just the one the director decided to zoom in on. The camera was on all four of them just now. Made it easier to remember their names and faces.
Sharyn carried a little bowl of strawberry ice cream into the living room, and then sat down next to Kling with her own bowl of low-fat chocolate swirl.
“Think about it,” Jennifer said slyly. “ ‘Wabe.’ ”
Three of the heads seemed to be thinking furiously. Jennifer’s head appeared to be smirking.
“Let’s watch ‘Sex and the City,’ ” Sharyn said.
“Shhh, this is about ‘Bandersnatch,’ ” Kling said.
“Bander-who?”
“The kidnapping, shhhh.”
“How do black people pronounce the word ‘wave’?” Jennifer asked.
“I pronounce it ‘wave,’ ” Lucy said.
“So do I,” Halliday said.
“So do I,” Sharyn said.
“But I must admit…”
“You never heard the joke with the punch line, ‘Oberlookin’ d’ribber’? For ‘Overlooking the river’?”
“That’s a racist joke,” Candace said.
“Tell me about it, Blondie,” Sharyn said.
“How come you never callme Blondie?” Kling asked.
“You want me to call you Blondie?”
“I know that joke,” Halliday said, nodding. “And itis racist, yes. But I must admit I can also see a covert connection between ‘wabe’ and ‘wave.’ ”
“I can’t,” Lucy insisted.
“Neither can I,” Sharyn said. “How about you, Blondie?”
“Let me taste that chocolate swirl,” Kling said.
“Uh-uh.”
“Why not?”
“Cause once you taste black, ain no goin back,” Sharyn said.
Lucy Holden had her arms folded across her breasts now, clear and unmistakable body language.
“I’ll bet Blondie thinks that’s a stroke of pure genius,” Sharyn said. “Inviting a redheaded Irish girl to find all the racist references while the beautiful sistuh with attitude takes the high road.”
“The same sort of black English has its echoes in the word ‘raths,’ ” Jennifer said. “Go to any ghetto in America, you’ll hear African-Americans calling rats ‘raths.’ The same way they’ll use the word ‘mens’ for ‘men.’ Or ‘underwears’ for ‘underwear.’ ”
“I have never in my life called a rat arath, ” Lucy said.
“Have you ever in your life evenseen a rat?” Jennifer shot back.
“Who do you find more attractive?” Sharyn asked. “The redhead or the sistuh with attitude?”