I said, "Are they still up there, these two young officers? Are they the ones checking out Charm and her gang, and Kurt Zinsser-who, by the way, no law-enforcement agency would ever have known about had it not been for me?"
"No, my officers tailed you and the Amish eggplant stud back to the city. I sent another detective up to work with the state police detectives out of Springfield to talk to the cheese-farm vandals. I should have a report from them later tonight."
I said, "You mentioned that it was your opinion, Lyle, that I had not come to know Thad Diefendorfer intimately enough. First, let's get it straight that I have not been physically intimate with Thad. Neither has Timmy, heaven for-fend. It's a nice scene to contemplate, but the stars of Timmy's and my zodiac are not so aligned at present. So why don't you just get all the sex stuff involving me, and Thad, and you out of your head? Let's all proceed not in the realm of fantasy but with our feet on the ground in the real world."
Barner sniffed. He was sure I was lying through my teeth. It was sad.
I went on. "But you seemed to be suggesting, Lyle, that intimate knowledge of Thad's behavior-as opposed to, say, intimate knowledge of his nice butt-would be important for me to obtain. What did you mean by that?"
Barner paused for dramatic effect-Fritz Lang must once have taught a course at the police academy-and said, "After Diefendorfer dropped you off at the J-Bird's place, my team followed him over to Brooklyn. He parked his pickup truck on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg and entered a nearby apartment building. The super was in the lobby when Diefendorfer went in, and my officers were able to determine that the subject-that would be your buddy Thaddie-was admitted to a second-floor apartment whose tenant's name meant something to me when I heard it.
"While you were up in Massachusetts, Strachey, I went over the FBI file on the old FFF.
One of Mr. Diefendorfer's cohorts in 1975-76 was a man by the name of Sam Day. The lessee of the Lorimer Street apartment is Sam Day. Sam Day, the super told my officers, is the leader of some type of organization, with people coming and going from that apartment at all hours of the day and night, especially night. I don't think Jay Plankton is being held there. The super says the apartment is small, only one bedroom.
But as a precaution I've got the place under twenty-four-hour surveillance. So what do you think of them apples, Detective Strachey?"
Damned if I knew. Barner was now sounding almost borderline-deranged. But it was funny that Thad had not mentioned to me that the "Lancaster County" friend he was visiting in Brooklyn was his onetime boyfriend in the FFF.
Chapter 16
Moyle lived in a sixties-era white-brick high-rise on Seventy-fourth near Third, and that's where Barner and I met him. He had been spirited out of Lenox Hill Hospital in an ambulance past a mob of reporters and television news vans, then transferred to an NYPD patrol car three blocks away. With the private security force guarding Jay Plankton having screwed up grandly, Moyle was now under the protection of the police.
Jerry Jeris had joined us in Moyle's living room for his second debriefing of the day, the feds having had a go at Moyle at Lenox Hill. Jurisdiction was unclear at this point-had either abductee actually been transported across a state line?-but while Moyle was a relatively minor player in the nation's cultural life, J-Bird Plankton was a man who had twice appeared on the cover of People. As such, any crime against his person was almost by definition a federal offense, if only honorary, and automatically triggered the involvement of the FBI, if not the Department of Defense.
"For fuck's sake," Moyle was saying as soon as he lit up a cigar, "this is my first smoke in thirty-six hours. These terrorists, not only did they deprive me of a single decent meal-the meatball sub they fed me last night was for shit-the bastards wouldn't even buy me a cheap smoke, and here I'm afraid for my very life and I'm going into frig-gin' nicotine withdrawal on top if it."
"What sadists," Jeris said, and lit up too.
The black-glass coffee table had three ashtrays lined up on it, each the size of a meteorite crater but not as clean. The beige leather couch and chairs to match faced a television set that could have been used for the return of Cinerama, though thankfully it was turned off. Moyle was sucking up his rehabilitative smoke, but apparently he was not going to insist that our questioning of him be conducted while ESPN played reassuringly in the background. On other cases, I had seen that happen.
"Anyway," Moyle said to Jeris, "a fat lot of help you and Glodt were while I'm locked in some toxic dump in Jersey or someplace with no smokes, and sawdust for meatballs, and these deranged fags mutilating me and threatening to eat my pancreas for lunch if I don't do what they tell me. I heard what the reward was from Steve-a niggerly six-five-and J. Pukingham Christ, I couldn't fucking believe my ears.
Except, of course, knowing Steve, I sure as shit could believe it, and did. Steve the big spender. Steve the bleeding heart. Steve the Brooke Astor of New York AM radio."
"At first it was five," Jeris said. "But Jay and I pleaded with Steve, we were practically kissing his skinny butt, and he said okay, then six-five. For Steve, that's not small.
He says he's gonna have to raise the national ad rates in October to get his money back if anybody claims the reward."
I said, "Leo, why did you think you might have been taken to New Jersey? You told the officers who picked you up outside Jay Plankton's apartment this afternoon that you had been blindfolded while you were in transit. But now you say you might have been held in New Jersey. Why is that?"
Moyle was only vaguely aware of who I was. He knew that I was a private investigator who had once had contacts with the FFF, that I had been hired by Jeris and Plankton, and that I was working with NYPD. He peered over at me with his small gray eyes and said, "We were either in Jersey or Queens because we went through a tunnel going, and we came through a tunnel coming back. It sounded like traffic in a tunnel, and my ears popped."
Jeris said, "Hey, Leo, they popped your ears, but at least they didn't pop your cherry."
Jeris chuckled, while Moyle considered this somberly and didn't chuckle back. He wasn't ready to get back into the old J-Bird routine just yet.
Barner said, "Yeah, Jersey or Queens, maybe. Lincoln, Holland, Queens Midtown.
What about Brooklyn Battery? Could it've been Brooklyn?"
"Could've been Brooklyn, yeah," Moyle said. "I couldn't tell. I'm so freakin' scared, I'm not exactly playing 'Name that Tunnel.' But going out, we go through the tunnel, then we drive for maybe an hour, maybe two, I don't know. It's on expressways, though, with some slowing down and speeding up, and no stop-and-go till we're almost where we're going. The same coming back, except in reverse.
"What kind of vehicle, I don't know, as I told the feds. At first it's some Bronco, or like that, that I was shoved into. But then after a couple of minutes they switched-this is before the tunnel, still in the city-and I don't know what I'm in. I'm on the floor of some van or delivery truck, blindfolded, tape over my mouth, and trussed up tighter than Steve Glodt's account at Brooklyn Dime."
"Which isn't probaby going to get any looser," Jeris said. "Not for the six-five reward anyhoo. I mean, who's going to claim it? The FFF assholes who snatched you and then let you go? That would take balls."
"Well, balls these pricks definitely have," Moyle said. "Light in the loafers they may be, but I can't say these frig-gin' sissy-boys don't have guts."
I said, "Were the kidnappers wearing loafers?"
"What?"
"Never mind. You were blindfolded."
"I was the entire time. I never saw their shoes. They untied my hands when we got to their place, but I never saw daylight for twenty-four hours. I felt like I was in a tomb and it could have been my own."