The Frumious Bandersnatch by Ed McBain Read Free Book Online Page B

Mexican, you know, her mother’s Russian. Nice little background story there, by the way, how they met. He’s a vacuum cleaner salesman, her mother’s a beautician, this is a real American success story, immigrants coming here from different parts of the world, raising an all-American girl who’s poised on the edge of stardom—do I detect a skeptical look on your face?”
    Honey raised her shoulders and her eyebrows.
    â€œMy dear woman,” Binkie said, “Tamar Valparaiso is like nothing you have ever seen before, just you wait. She is new, she is original, dare I say she is seminal? She already had vibrato when she was eight, she has a five-octave range, and she can sight-read any piece of music you put in front of her, including opera. She’s not only going to be the biggest diva to explode on the CHR-pop scene in decades, she’s also going to be a big movie…”
    â€œWhat’s CHR-pop?” Honey asked.
    â€œContemporary Hit Radio,” Binkie said by rote.
    â€œYou don’t want me to use that word on the air, do you?” Honey asked.
    â€œWhat word is that?” Binkie asked. “Radio?”
    â€œDiva.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s derogatory. It’s customarily used to describe a temperamental opera singer.”
    â€œNot in rock music, it’s not.”
    â€œYou really want me to call your girl a diva? ”
    â€œThat’s what she’s gonna be after tonight,” Binkie said. “Once ‘Bandersnatch’ hits the charts…”
    â€œWhy’d she choose a Lewis Carroll poem?”
    â€œAsk her, why don’t you?”
    â€œI will. Is she smart?”
    â€œSmarter than most of them,” he said, which said it all.
    Honey looked at her watch.
    â€œWhere’s the Ladies’?” she asked. “I want to touch up my makeup.”
    It was twenty minutes to ten.
    Â 
    BECAUSE PATRICIA had been leaving directly from work earlier tonight, she’d changed in the precinct swing room and met Ollie at the restaurant. Now, at a quarter to ten that Saturday, she sat beside Ollie on the front seat of his Chevy Impala, driving uptown on the River Harb Highway, watching the lights of a yacht that had stopped dead out there on the water, and was now apparently riding her anchor. Music from a station that played what it called “Smoothjazz” flooded the automobile.
    â€œBy the way,” Ollie said, “have you thought of a song you want me to learn for you?”
    â€œI’ve been trying to think of one all week,” Patricia said.
    â€œHave you come up with anything?”
    â€œYes. ‘Spanish Eyes.’ ”
    â€œI don’t think I know that one.”
    â€œNot the one the Backstreet Boys did on Millennium, ” Patricia said. “The one I’m talking about is an older one. It was a hit when my mother was a teenager.”
    â€œThe Backstreet Boys, huh?” Ollie said.
    He had no idea who she meant.
    â€œEven they’re on the way out,” Patricia said. “In fact, who knows how long ’NSync’s gonna last. These boy bands come and go, you know.”
    â€œOh, I know,” Ollie said.
    â€œBut I’m talking about the old ‘Spanish Eyes,’ ” she said, and sang the first line for him. “ ‘Blue Spanish eyes…teardrops are falling from your Spanish eyes…’ That one.”
    â€œI’ll ask Helen.”
    â€œWho’s Helen?”
    â€œMy piano teacher. Helen Hobson. Any song I tell her I want to learn, she finds the sheet music for me. I’ll ask her to get ‘Spanish Eyes.’ ”
    â€œBut not the one the Backstreet Boys did.”
    â€œWho did the other one? The one you want me to learn?”
    â€œAl Martino. He recorded it in 1966, I wasn’t even born yet, my mother was still a teenager. She still plays it day and night, that’s how I happen to know