The Frumious Bandersnatch Read Free Page A

didn’t mean Calvin Robert Wilkins wasn’t smart; it merely meant he’d been caught. He wasn’t as smart as Avery, but then again he didn’t have to be. He’d got along just fine until the bad break that night of the bank heist when he got a flat tire during the getaway. He’d tried to ride out the flat, but the tire fell all to pieces and shreds, and suddenly he was riding on the rim with sparks flying and the fuzz gaining, and before you knew it his luck ran out completely and there he was upstate, wearing a number. He’d been paroled from Miramar shortly before Thanksgiving. Until just before Christmas, he’d been working as a dishwasher in a deli on Carpenter Avenue. Then he’d found the job at Lorelei Records, which was where he’d met Avery.
    The boat they were on was a Rinker 27-footer powered with a 320-hp Bravo Two that could juice up to almost forty-three miles per at top speed. There was an aft cabin with an oversized mattress, and the dinette seating in the lounge could convert to a double berth, but they didn’t expect to be sleeping on the boat.
    If everything went as planned tonight, by this time Tuesday, they’d all be sleeping in their own little beddie-byes.
    If everything went as planned.
    Â 
    TOM WHITTAKER was program director for radio station WHAM. He was telling Harry Di Fidelio—Bison’s Vice President of Radio Marketing—that the question his station recently had to ask themselves was whether they should skew their targets younger or still go for the mother/daughter double play.
    â€œIt wasn’t an easy decision to make,” Whittaker said. “With all these new uptempo releases, we all at once had a responsive audience for teen-based pop and hip-hop acts.”
    â€œSo which way are you going?” Di Fidelio asked.
    â€œWell, we’ll continue to beam primarily to our twenty-five to thirty-four base. But what we’ve done over the past few months is expand our focus to the eighteen to twenty-four demographic. We’re trying to get away from that image of a thirty-something station. We want our listeners to think of us as dynamic and youthful instead.”
    â€œThat makes sense,” Di Fidelio said, and then got down to what Bison was paying him for. “We think Tamar will have a broad base among the thirty-somethings as well as the younger group. Her appeal is what you might call universal.”
    â€œOh, hey, she’s terrific,” Whittaker said, gobbling down his second helping of chocolate pâté with vanilla bean sauce and raspberries. “What I’m trying to say, though, Barry…may I call you Barry?”
    â€œHarry. Actually, it’s Harry.”
    â€œHarry, right, what I’m trying to say, Harry, is that it was merely a matter of re-examining our goals. A lot of Top 40 stations try too hard to pitch their product to both the kiddies and their parents, and the result is mass confusion. At Radio 180, we augmented our focus rather than radically change it, and we actually improved our ratings with demos who wanted to feel younger or who just wanted to listen with their kids.”
    â€œ ‘Bandersnatch’ should appeal to both,” Di Fidelio said.
    â€œOh, hey, she’s terrific. I feel sure she’ll get hundreds of plays on our station.”
    If much of what Whittaker was saying sounded like total horseshit, that’s because much of it was total horseshit. Whittaker knew, and Di Fidelio knew, and—with the exception of the crew and the caterers and the black dancer who’d be playing the role of the Bandersnatch when Tamar performed the song later tonight—everyone on this showboat vessel knew that most Top 40 and rock radio stations today got paid by the record manufacturers, and in some instances by the performing artists themselves, to play their songs on the air.
    Moreover, this practice of Pay-for-Play, as it was called, was entirely