"People can change," Barner said. "And sometimes people you think you can trust can't be trusted at all, it turns out." He looked at Diefendorfer, then at me, then back at Diefendorfer, who looked at Barner, then at me, then back at Barner.
I said, "Well, let's just find out who's got Leo Moyle and see to it that Moyle is turned loose, and then we can rewrite history if we have to."
"Sounds good to me," Diefendorfer said, getting up.
"Have a nice trip back to Jersey," Barner said. "If we need additional information about the FFF, we'll know where to reach you."
"Sure, anytime."
Outside the coffee shop, Barner drove off in the unmarked NYPD Ford he had left parked in a towaway zone, and Diefendorfer said to me, "I'm not crazy about bamboozling Detective Barner. He seems to be a little bit paranoid to begin with, and we're just feeding his paranoia." "I'm not wild about this either, but rest assured that Lyle's paranoia is a bottomless pit. The two of us will never fill it up. It is not going to overflow dangerously."
"Also, intriguing against people who are basically on our side makes me queasy, too. I can do it for the larger cause, if that's what it takes. But doing it this way does remind me of the guys who came into the FFF in seventy-five and turned the organization into an ego and power trip for themselves. Not that those are our motives. But still. You have no idea what a nightmare that was, and the basket case it turned me into for months afterward. I'd always thought living with the English meant using laundry detergent and doing the twist. My previous experience with human treachery had been pretty much limited to some of the grislier stories in the Old Testament. Then Mel, Lawrence and Alberto came along."
"Who were these people, anyway?" I asked. "They don't seem to fit the definition of righteousness that would preclude their showing up at this late date to harass the J-Bird and kidnap Leo Moyle."
Diefendorfer said, "I don't think we need to worry about any of those guys at this late date. They're long gone from the movement and its aims. Lawrence Piller is a vice president at the Fox News Network. I saw in the Times recently that another of them, Alberto Truces, is a Bush campaign official in Florida. And Mel Stempfle is an orthodox Freudian psychoanalyst who was prosecuted with two of his analysands several years ago in an insider stock-trading scandal."
"No," I said, "none of them seem to be likely suspects in a kidnapping-or people who might send somebody farm manure in the mail. Their MOs sound marginally subtler."
Diefendorfer said, "Farm manure?"
I explained the series of harassing mailings that had been sent to Jay Plankton, including the "excrement for the execrable" package of what had just recently been determined to be llama droppings.
"No," Diefendorfer said, "this is not at all the FFF I knew. I'm more convinced than ever that it's someone else doing all this weird stuff."
"And I guess your group never sold the FFF name and logo to somebody else, like Pan Am did."
"No, and I can't think of anybody in the old group who might have turned into a llama rancher. They were basically urban people. I was the only farmer in the FFF. Of course, now some people raise llamas as pets. They're friendly and docile, and there are quite a few of them around. They're not nearly as exotic as they were twenty years ago.
They're good pack animals for trekkers, and some people raise them for the wool.
Checking out all the llama owners in the Northeast for the source of the llama-manure mailing might take some time, if that's part of your job. Our job, I guess I mean."
"The NYPD is on top of the llama-crap situation, Lyle says, so we may be spared that task. Which is fine with me. I once saw a llama spit in a man's face, and it was not pretty. It's what llamas do on those rare occasions when they get mad or they're startled. It makes the regurgitation scene in The Exorcist look like Swee'Pea dribbling his porridge."
"Swee'Pea," Diefendorfer said thoughtfully. "Is that Popeye's baby?"
"Well, yeah."
"I'm subliterate when it comes to cartoon characters in the movies or on TV. I've caught up a bit, but there are gaps."
"Popeye was a comic strip originally. You didn't have newspapers when you were growing up in Pennsylvania?"
"Not for reading. We kept a stack of the HarrisburgSunday Patriot News in the outhouse for reasons other than information gathering. But it was too dark in there to read, anyway."
"Thad, yours is quite a story. It truly is."
"I know. As you heard, Jay Plankton wants me to tell my story on his radio show. But I can't stand the man and don't plan on having anything to do with him after we clear the FFF's good name. What I do plan to do is come up with better ways than kidnapping and mailing in llama shit to make the J-Bird's life as unpleasant as possible and interfere, if possible, with his professional success."
I said, "Sounds good to me."
Chapter 9
"Jesus freakin' Christ," the J-Bird bellowed, "they could be torturing Leo right this very minute! They could have him tied down, like Lawrence of Arabia, with some big Turk fucking him in the butt, giving him AIDS!"
"I wouldn't go that far," Jerry Jeris said reassuringly. "I mean, what self-respecting homosexual would want to fuck Leo?" Jeris glanced at me, apparently hoping I would note with approval his use of the word 'homosexual' instead of ‘fag’.
After Diefendorfer had left for his farm, I returned to the radio station where I planned on placing phone calls to old FFFers on Diefendorfer's list. I hoped, too, through these contacts to expand the list to include all of the thirty or so men and women Diefendorfer thought had been members of the group over the nine years of the FFF's existence. Also, Barner had put in a request for the FBI file on the old FFF and hoped to have it later in the day.
My phone calls, of course, risked tipping off the kidnappers that someone was on their trail. But surveillance of all thirty of the old gang was impractical, and eliciting old FFFers' suspicions of former comrades they had reason to believe might have gone around the bend would be helpful, as would information on younger, perhaps admiring acquaintances believed capable of radical political mischief in the FFF's name. Absent any of us coming up with some original-FFF connections, the investigation would have to depend entirely on forensic evidence, of which there was not much so far.
"Do you think we should up the reward?" Plankton asked Jeris. "Leo is going to be pissed as hell if there are people out there ripping out his fingernails in a rage because we're only putting up five K."
Jeris drew on his cigar-the two of them were producing flame and noxious soot like a Slovakian steel mill-and he appeared to mull over the cost-benefit ratios involved.
He said, "I don't think the station will raise the amount at this point in time. Anyway, it's not a ransom, it's a reward. Rewards traditionally are much lower, aren't they?"
"Yeah, aren't ransoms usually in the millions?"
"I think so. Like the Getty kid, or some CEO in South America."
Plankton said, "The Lindbergh baby was cheaper, but that was a long time ago."
"Right, you've gotta factor in inflation."
"What do you think, Strachey?" the J-Bird asked. "How about earning your keep here and advising us? NYPD said start with the five-grand reward and see what it shakes loose. But if Leo is out there somewhere hanging by his balls, he's probably not too interested in an incrementalist approach."
I said, "I think your instincts are sound. Fd offer a hundred K at least."
Jeris rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Glodt would love that."
"Who's Glodt?" I said.
Now they both rolled their eyes. Jeris said, "Steve Glodt owns the station and the syndicate that sells the show. Steve still has the first dollar he ever made."
"He keeps it rolled up inside the gold-plated anal suppository he walks around with stuck up his ass," Plankton said.