“Of course he is,” Graham said.
“Reverend?”
“Are we talking about the African-American in the mask? If so, he is verydefinitely homosexual.”
“And how do you knowthat? ” Graham asked at once.
“Well, the very way hemoves, ” Brenner said.
“He moves like a dancer,” Graham said.
“Fred Astaire didn’t move that way. Neither did Gene Kelly.”
“Besides, we’re not talking about thedancer. The question does not refer to thedancer. ”
“It certainly doesn’t refer to thegirl, ” Brenner said.
“That’s exactly the metaphor,” Graham said.
The Reverend Brenner didn’t know what metaphor meant, either. He thought it meant simile. If so, was this little homosexual person here implying that the girl being assaulted was somehow a simile for a homosexual?
“I do not see any connection,” he said. “The problem with organizations like yours, Mr. Graham, is that you presuppose everyone in the world is eitheralready homosexual or else would like tobecome homosexual. That is the implicit threat to family values, and the entire reason for the existence of groups like CVC…”
“I do believe, yes,” Larry said, “that ‘Bandersnatch’ is about a young boy coming out of the closet, yes. If we study the video carefully, we…”
“Oh, please,” Brenner said, “that’s utter nonsense.”
“Why don’t we take another look at it?” Curly said, and to someone off camera, “Can we roll it again, boys?”
Ollie thought, Good, let’s watch the strip tease again.
This was not the tape Honey Blair and her crew had shot on the night of the kidnapping. This was the studio-shot video with its animated footage and a skimpily but fully clothed Tamar larking under a yellow sky with pastel colored clouds and whimsical budding flowers and fanciful floating insects while the sound of a synthesizer…
She looks like a shepherd boy, Ollie thought, and suddenly understood what Larry Graham had meant a moment ago.
She did not look like a boy for very long.
Within seconds after the black guy in his gray mask came whiffling out of the woods, he was clawing and biting at her and tearing her clothes to ribbons, exposing a ripe female form that Ollie was sure would promote perpetual Priapic emissions from teenage boys all over America, not to mention even more mature males in the population.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Graham’s voice said over the video. “The boy has to recognize himself as female before he can realize his full power.”
Bullshit, Ollie thought, and the telephone rang.
He hit the mute button and picked up the receiver.
“Weeks,” he said.
“Oll?”
Patricia.
He grinned.
“Hey,” he said, “how are you?”
“Fine, Oll,” she said. “Whatcha doing?”
“Watching television. You familiar with this kidnapping the 8-7 caught?”
“Yeah, this new singer.”
“Some fag is saying she’s a boy.”
“Get out,” Patricia said.
“Did you see the video?”
“Sure, it’s all over the place.”
“That’s some boy, huh?”
“I’d like to look like a boy like that,” Patricia said.
“You look fine just the way you are,” Ollie said.
“Thanks, Oll,” she said, and was silent for a moment. “I was calling to…uh…see if we’re still on for Tuesday night,” she said.
“Why shouldn’t we still be on?”
“I just wondered, that’s all. Also, there’s this old movie playing at the Atlantis—that’s like an art house, y’know—I thought I’d like to see again, if you’d like to see it. It’s with Al Pacino, it’s calledLooking for Richard. That’s Richard the Third, the Shakespearean character, y’know. Well, it’s also a real king, but Shakespeare wrote the play.” Patricia hesitated again. “Do you think you might like to see it?”
“Sure,” Ollie said. “Whatever you say, Patricia.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Good. You’ll like it, I promise. It’s not at all what you expect Shakespeare to be.”
“Hey, Ilove Shakespeare,” he said.
“Well, good. Then I made a good pick, huh?”
“You certainly did.”
He had never seen a Shakespeare play in his entire life.
“Also, how should I dress?” she asked. “I told you, I’ll be working Tuesday…”
“Me, too.”
“So I won’t have time to go home and change…”
“Me, neither. Just put on what’s in your locker. Whatever you wear to work that morning.”
“It won’t be anything fancy,” Patricia said. “Just slacks and a sweater, probably.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“Okay then. You working tomorrow?”
“Oh sure.”
“See you up the precinct then.”
“See you,” Ollie said.
There was a click on the line.
He sighed heavily and put the receiver back on its cradle.
The fag and the priest were still going at it.
He hit the mute button again.
“…sending this message to adolescent boys all over America,” the Reverend Brenner was saying. “If you want to slay wild dragons…”
“It isn’t a dragon,” Graham said.
“…then you have to declare yourself to be homosexual! What kind of a message…?”
“I’m sure that isn’t Tamar Valparaiso’s mess…”
“You justsaid the boy in that video…”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!”
“I’m sure her message is simply ‘Be what you wish to be. In choice, there is freedom.’ ”
“Oh, are we going to get into theabortion issue now?”
“Not on my time,” Ollie said out loud, and turned off the set, and wondered if any of that scrumptious apple pie his sister had baked was still in the refrigerator.
WHAT WAS CALLED CSIin some cities was called MCU here in the big bad city, and never the twain shall meet. The Mobile Crime Unit had struck out twice last night, once on the Rinker and again on the Ford Explorer, but that didn’t mean they weren’t as sharp or as perceptive as their television counterparts. On the contrary, the package they had messengered over to Carella at seven-thirty this evening, and which he now presented to The Squad downtown, included one piece of very important information.
As expected, there’d been no latent fingerprints on any of the railings or bulkheads the perps may have touched in boarding theRiver Princess and then descending into the ballroom where Tamar was performing. The intruders were wearing gloves. So much for that.
But they were also wearing running shoes with identifiable soles. And whereas they hadn’t left any recoverable footprints on the rubber ladder-treads that ascended to the second level of the yacht, they had left behind some discernable prints on the mahogany steps and the parquet dance floor inside.
Together, Carella and The Squad looked over the report prepared by an MCU Detective/First named Oswald Hooper.
The report stated, unsurprisingly, that the recovered footprints had been left behind on stairway and dance floor by two separate males wearing running shoes later identified from laboratory comparison soles as Reeboks. That the persons wearing the shoes were both male was established by the size and type of the shoe and also by the angle of the foot, definitively different for male and female.