"Probably so. It's an old building without a lot of updating otherwise, so it may well have old locks I could go right through. Do any of you have a lobster pick with you?
I reckon not."
Lyle said, "I have a department tool you could use. But I'm just trying to figure out how I'm supposed to explain to a commander-or to a department inspector or to a judge- that the rescue of Jay Plankton was effected through a citizen's breaking and entering-and a B and E that I was myself an accessory to. Or even worse than that and this is the likeliest way for all this to play out-that Plankton isn't in there at all, but my lockpicker was employed in a B and E that led to a ten-million-dollar lawsuit against the department, against an Albany PI, and against a Mennonite turnip farmer from Jersey."
"Eggplant," Thad said.
"But Lyle has a point." Now this was Welch getting into it. "If you going in there the way you said goes wrong, we're all fucked. That's why I think, Thad, that instead of you using Lyle's department equipment, you should use some of the finer implements on my Swiss Army knife, which maybe you found on the roadside somewhere. And that while you go in, Lyle and I should cruise up and down the highway until we get a call from you to either pick you up, and we all go to IHOP for breakfast, or to come to your aid pronto and we do."
Lyle was shaking his head, but instead of objecting he just let out a long sigh and said, "Jee-sus."
Thad and I were in the backseat of the Ford, and when Welch reached over the seat to hand Thad the Swiss Army knife, I saw that Thad had goose bumps on his arm. His hand was not trembling, though, an indication that he was anticipating not sex but house-breaking. An unusual Mennonite was Thad, or so I assumed from my limited experience.
Lyle made Thad and me both memorize his cellphone number, and when we had, we climbed out into a fine spray of light rain.
"This feels nice," Thad said. "I feel like a pile of fresh lettuce at the old Rinella's market in Ephrata when I was a kid. They had a machine that sprayed the produce, and I liked to stick my face in the mist."
"Actually, those gadgets are back," I told Thad, as Lyle pulled onto the highway and headed away from the strip mall. "I saw one in a supermarket recently that not only misted the greens periodically, but when it did so a nearby speaker broadcast thunderstorm sounds."
"And let loose with a blast of Ferde Grofe?"
"I'm not kidding," I told him, and I wasn't.
"No lightning bolts though, I hope."
"Not yet."
We crossed the highway and walked toward the business strip with apartments above it, then cut along the side of the building and around back. There we found an acre of tarmac, with garbage dumpsters next to some of the rear entrances to the pizza parlor and the other businesses. Six cars were parked side by side at the far rear of the paved area, which apparently provided parking for the business employees and the building's second-floor tenants. No light-colored van was among the cars, just Chevy, Pontiac and Honda sedans and a beat-up old VW Rabbit.
We noted the location of the nail parlor, the second business from the far end of the building, next to the tattoo den.
Thad said, "What if Miss Annette's apartment is above her nail parlor, but not directly above it? What if we waltz into somebody else's home by mistake?"
"We'll apologize," I said, "and ask where Miss Annette lives."
"Sounds like a plan."
The entrance to the rear stairway was in the center of the building, opposite the one in the front, and Thad had no trouble making his way through the lock in well under thirty seconds.
"You'd make a successful criminal," I told him.
"Thank you. I once was one. Not much of what the FFF did way back when was legal."
At the top of the wooden stairway was a long corridor going off to the left and to the right. Directly ahead was a wider stairway leading down to the front entrance. We turned left, toward the apartment over the nail parlor. There were three doors, however, one apparently to an apartment in the front of the building, one to an apartment in the rear, and one on the far end.
Thad said, "Uh oh."
"It's probably the front one or the rear one," I said.
"Yes, one or the other."
We checked the name cards on the doors. The one on the front apartment said
"Gomspold," and the card on the rear apartment said "D. Carletti."
"Gould it be Annette Gomspold?" Thad whispered.
"Maybe. And I wonder if the other one is Damien Carletti, the tattooist?"
But when we checked the door at the end of the hallway, the name card read
"Annette C. Koontz."
"I smell coffee brewing," Thad said. "But it seems to be coming from Gomspold's place."
These apartments, so close to one another, suddenly struck me as unlikely venues for holding kidnap victims. Even if the captives were bound and gagged and unable to cry for help, as Moyle said had been the case with him, getting them in and out of this building without attracting attention seemed like a stretch. My conviction that Steve Glodt was behind the kidnappings and that the J-Bird was being held, and possibly tortured and mutilated, in Annette Koontz's apartment-assuming that this woman actually had any connection whatever with Glodt-was starting to waver.
Thad said, "I'll just knock on the door lightly to see if anyone is up and about. If there's no response, I'll go in." He had the corkscrew from Dave Welch's Swiss army knife poised.
I thought, What am I doing here? How did I get mixed up in this thing? Why am I not home in bed in Albany with Timothy Callahan, instead of prowling through a building in Oyster Bay, Long Island, probably about to scare the crap out of some innocent workingwoman who is luxuriating in the only rest and solitude she can enjoy all week long? Could I have my PI license revoked for this? Or be convicted of a felony? Would it be house-breaking? Stalking? Invasion and assault?
Thad rapped lightly on Annette Koontz's door.
We waited.
No sound came from the Koontz apartment or from any of the others.
Thad looked at me, but before I could suggest that maybe we should reconsider what now felt like a reckless, even idiotic, misadventure, he had inserted the business end of his implement in the door's single lock, quickly maneuvered it this way and that, and when he turned the loiob, the door swung open.
We stood for a moment looking into a living room furnished with some fat leather chairs and a beige leather couch-Had a woman purchased these objects?-and a large-screen TV. It had been set inside one of those home-entertainment-center type structures ("A man's home is his megaplex"), which had a small bar attached to it. The illumination was dim, coming from a double window whose shades were lowered.
Thad looked at me again, then stepped carefully inside the apartment. I followed him.
A familiar voice said levelly, "Shut the door, you pond-scum, puke-ass-faggot, maggot-head creeps."
Jay Plankton was holding an automatic weapon the size of a grenade launcher, and it was aimed at Thad and me. He was standing in the semidarkness of a doorway leading to a room in the back of the building. His good diction indicated that he still had his tongue.
Thad said, "Hey, J-Bird, we come as friends."
"Rescuers," I added. "If that's what's needed, here we are."
"Shut the door," he said again, and I did as I was told.
Thad said, "So you're in on it? Way cool."
"You fooled me, Jay," I added. "What a prank! You're… you're too much, you crazy fucker, you."
"You can cut the showbiz crap," Plankton snapped. "I've reached my limit, and I'm not taking it anymore. No more. No more." He sounded exhausted, desperate.
"Jay, you're cracking me up," I said. "If you put that gun down, I'd collapse on the floor laughing. That is the idea, isn't it?"