Charm was unimpressed by my theatrics, however, and said so. "You talk such a load of shit, Strachey. If you're trying to get us to confess to assaulting anybody or kidnapping Leo Moyle, you're wasting your time and ours. As much as I savor the picture of that misogyno-fascist Moyle strung up by his tiny balls in some cellar full of rats, I can promise you we wouldn't do it ourselves, and we didn't do it ourselves, or with anyone else. What do you take us for? Do we look like the Tupac Amaru, or what?"
This denial was couched with such exquisitely evasive calculation-Charm Stankewitz was going to make a great White House chief of staff someday-that what should have been obvious for some time now hit me like a ton of Woolly Llama Cheese.
I said, "So the three of you carried out the harassment of Jay Plankton, but not the kidnapping of Leo Moyle? Is that what you're telling me?"
"We're not telling you anything? Charm said emphatically, "but if you want to draw the harmless conclusion of your choice and then be on your way, that would be so-o-o-o cool. Am I making myself sufficiently clear?"
Pheromone and Edward watched me with a look of hope. I said to them, "Your friend Charm is a brilliantly precocious advocate for your various good causes. I just hope she doesn't lead you into… well, I'm sure you've given it a lot of thought. Some remote cell block in the Peruvian penal system, or-more likely-the newly redecorated federal execution suite in Terre Haute."
"Shit!" This was Edward.
"Oh God!" That was Pheromone.
"Charm's right, we didn't kidnap that guy," Edward said plaintively.
"Fuck, no," Pheromone added, underlining the declaration.
"But you sent menacing and repellent notes and substances to Jay Plankton through the mail?"
Charm sat examining her dark cigarette and looking blase, while Pheromone and Edward gave their final freeze-frame look of fear.
"And you filled Plankton's SUV full of toilet paper during a party at his manager's house in Mamaroneck?"
Before Pheromone and Edward had the chance to faint, or shriek and bolt out the door, Charm said, "Sure we did, and so what!"
"I'm no fan of Plankton's either, but you may have broken a few laws."
Charm sneered. "Plankton and his stupid little boys are floaters in the malfunctioning toilet of American broadcasting. What we did was good for the J-Bird and Leo Moyle, and I think it is totally terrific that somebody obviously took our cue and went after these rotten turds in the manner they deserve. Down in the cheese room, we had to listen to these assholes day after day after day, while Kurt ha-haed and hee-heed. I mean, what were we supposed to do, call OSHA? Yes, we did it, and we're proud we did it!"
This last statement may have been too sweeping for Pheromone and Edward, who still stared at me apprehensively. I said, "And you lobbed the tear-gas canister into Plankton's studio yesterday?"
"No way!" Pheromone exclaimed. "We, like, mailed in that shit and stuff, but we didn't throw tear gas, and we never kidnapped that guy, no way!"
Edward also became more vocal. "We just wanted to fuck with Kurt's mind. He's a Republican now, but he talks about his FFF days like he's some Greatest Generation hero, wiping up the floor with Nazis. I mean, like, the movie about the FFF will have Tom Hanks in it playing Kurt. This guy is totally fucked up, and we were just giving him a hard time about it, that's all."
"Then you might or might not be happy to know," I told them, "that until Leo Moyle was kidnapped, Jay Plankton thought of you all as brothers and sisters under the skin, and admirably insolent and hugely entertaining. He talked about putting you all on his show-pending the outcome, of course, of a pre-interview and probably an exhaustive strip search."
"Well, that sucks!" Pheromone said.
"What a bunch of perverts," Edward added.
But Charm had grown thoughtful. "And now he's changed his mind?" she asked.
"Because of the Leo Moyle thing?"
"That would be my guess."
"Oh."
"You can ask him yourself, if you're interested. I'm sure he'll be wanting to be in touch with you. His attorneys will, anyway, along with the police and the FBI. If you didn't do the kidnapping, or even the tear-gas job, it'll probably be easy enough for you to prove it. And if eventually you do go on the air with the J-Bird, I know I'll be sure to tune in."
Pheromone said, "Going on the radio is for shit, so don't try to drag me in on this one, Charm. But I suppose we'll have to tell them we didn't do it. The tear gas or the kidnapping, I mean. We can give them some of our DNA- though I'll bet it's hard to prove a negative unless the J-Bird was, like, raped."
Charm was looking even more worried. "Do you think we'll need a lawyer?"
"That might be wise," I said.
"Shit. I'll have to call Dad in Nimes. He's going to be spitting afterbirth."
On that vivid note, I advised Charm, Pheromone, and Edward to stay put in the Berkshires. I told them that flight from official investigators would be inadvisable. I suggested they tell Kurt Zinsser what they had done and to say that he should expect the police to show up shortly. The three of them took all of this in sullenly, but they all seemed to get my drift and they didn't argue.
Back outside, Thad was just returning to the car. He told me he had given the main house, the barn and the other Stankewitz outbuildings an apparently undetected quick scouring, inside and out, and he could find no trace of Leo Moyle or any other person. He said all the Stankewitz locks were old and simple and "a piece of cake."
Inside the car, though, Timmy was itching to give us his own amazing report. He had been monitoring WCBS all-news radio from New York, and moments earlier he had heard that Leo Moyle had just been released by the FFF largely unharmed. But now Jay Plankton himself had been abducted.
Chapter 15
"It was a beautiful operation," Lyle Barner was telling me. "It could have been carried out by the finest SWAT team in the country, or maybe by the Mossad. Here, this guy's got some of the best security in the city, outside of the Secret Service when Clinton's in town, and these people move in and snatch Plankton up like he's a calzone at Sbarro, and just like that-kapooey!-the J-Bird is up in smoke."
This was said in a Chinese restaurant on Sixty-fifth Street, not far from Jay Plankton's apartment building, at the entrance to which he had been abducted seven hours earlier. Thad and I had dropped Timmy off back in Albany and driven to the city in Thad's truck. Thad and I agreed that for the time being he should steer clear of Barner, so he said he would go spend the night with an old Lancaster County friend in Brooklyn. I had asked him if there was an Amish ethnic enclave in one of the outer boroughs, like the Polish in Greenpoint or the Indians in Jackson Heights, but he said no.
"It was like they'd rehearsed it a hundred times," Barner went on. "At least fourteen people saw the whole thing, and they all said it happened so fast that nobody really knew what had gone down, until Moyle started yelling that he was Leo Moyle of the Jay Plankton Show, and he'd been kidnapped and let go and somebody should summon an officer."
The switch-Moyle for Plankton-had indeed been deft, Barner told me. As the security-service Bronco carrying Plankton pulled up at the entrance to the apartment building and Plankton stepped out with his two armed guards, a second SUV, a green Lincoln Navigator, came up from behind. Two men in black jeans, black turtlenecks and gas masks emerged and fired pepper spray at Plankton and his protectors and at the Bronco's driver. It sounded to me like the feds swooping in and snatching little Elian Gonzalez in Miami, overpowering Donato-the-fisherman-slash-cleaning-service-operator, and gassing the praying grandmothers in front of the house. I wondered, Did I detect the fine hand of Janet Reno here? Much as the Clinton administration must have loathed the J-Bird, an abduction by Justice Department paramilitaries didn't sound like the answer.