Tongue tied ds-8 Page 4

  Plankton said, "But you're not wearing that black-and-blue getup that the Amish wear."

  "No, not anymore," Diefendorfer said.

  "Did you drive your horse and buggy up six flights?" Plankton asked. "I hope to hell you didn't ride up on the elevator. Wouldn't that be a heinous sin? Apparently, getting corn-holed is no longer a big deal among the Amish- which is news to me. It's not the Amish of-what was that Harrison Ford movie? Eyewitness News or something? But can you ride elevators, too? I seem to be behind the times."

  "My horse and rig are out in the lobby," Diefendorfer told the J-Bird. "I walked up the stairs, but my horse, who's a Methodist, road up ahead of me."

  "An Amish wiseass," Plankton sneered. "Now I've seen it all."

  "And, homosexuality is still frowned upon among the traditional Amish," Diefendorfer went on. "But personal conscience has always been respected among the brethren, and my conscience has led me farther afield than has been the case with some others.

  It's what led me to the Forces of Free Faggotry when I was eighteen, and it's why I came over here before I headed back to the farm. 1 came to tell you that the FFF was as righteous a community of men and women as I've ever known, and no true FFP'er would ever attack anybody with tear gas. Not even anybody as confused and obnoxious as you are, Mr. Plankton."

  Over the shades came a discernible movement of Plankton's left eyebrow. "You can call me J-Bird. There's no need to stand on ceremony."

  "Okay. No true FFFer would ever attack anybody with tear gas. Not even anybody as confused and obnoxious as you are, J-Bird."

  I had known Plankton for less than an hour, but I was not surprised to hear him ask, "Ever done any radio, Thad?"

  "No, and don't plan to."

  "You've got a smart mouth."

  "I've been told that. I'm not proud of it."

  "That's too bad."

  I said, "The J-Bird wants you on his show, Thad, before the competition-WOR or WABC-discovers you."

  "Strachey gets the picture," Plankton said. "ABC-Disney would know just how to market you too. The Sarcastic Anabaptist or some crap like that."

  Barner, who unlike the rest of us was at this moment working for a living, said, "Thad, I'd like to hear more about your membership in the FFF. When did you say that was?"

  "It was from May 1973 to February 1975. I can tell you about it if you like. Although, since you're law enforcement, you could easily look it up in my FBI file. I wouldn't mind having a look myself, if you get hold of it. When I filed a Freedom of Information Act request several years ago and the FBI finally mailed me a copy of my file, most of it had been blacked out."

  Plankton whistled and said, "Christ, this is great stuff!"

  I told Barner, "Lyle, you're saved. Why didn't we think of this before? You won't have to be caught entering a bookstore. All you need to know is available electronically."

  Barner ignored this and said, "I'll see what the bureau has on the FFF."

  "Was J. Edgar Hoover a secret member of the FFF?" Plankton asked. "That's probably the part they blacked out in your files, Thad. The stuff about Hoover and his boyfriend there-what was his name? Clyde Barrow?"

  "Clyde Tolson," Diefendorfer said. "Right. J. Edgar and Clyde were both FFF moles in the FBI. His antigay hysteria was cover. Ingenious, wasn't it?"

  Plankton laughed and shook his head. "Thad, you're breaking my heart, you know.

  You going head-to-head with Leo would be sensational, just sensational." "Who is Leo?" Diefendorfer asked. "He's on my show."

  I said, "Leo Moyle is the J-Bird's resident racist-slash-fag-baiter. Next to him, the J-Bird is the show's Arthur Rimbaud."

  "I liked those flicks with Sly Stallone gunning down commies," Plankton said. "So I'll take that as a compliment." I said, "Thad, could you hang around in the city long enough for lunch? I'd like to hear your FFF story without a lot of kibbitzing from the J-Bird, whose motives in this investigation are mixed, at best."

  "You bet they are," Plankton said. "Though let me remind you, Strachey, that foremost among my motives is preventing any physical harm coming to myself and my staff. If you're going to take my money, it would behoove you to keep that in mind."

  "I stand behooved on that point."

  "Your employment is conditional anyway. We brought you in because of your so-called contacts with the old FFF, and now along comes this old FFFer who says none of his people are involved in this thing at all."

  "I don't guarantee that," Diefendorfer put in, "but I doubt it. Unless one of us has changed an awful lot over the years. There were sixteen people in the organization at one point."

  Barner said, "This case has A-one top priority in the department. Although, of course, we want to be able to exploit all possible resources. So your retaining Don would be a real asset to the investigation, Jay."

  "Glad to hear it. Maybe NYPD would like to pay him, too."

  "Unfortunately, we can't do that."

  Plankton found another can of Sprite in Jeris's office refrigerator and popped the tab. He said to me, "We'll bring you on for a week and see what you come up with.

  I'm not crazy about having a known homosexual on our payroll, and Leo is gonna be reaming my ass unmercifully over this."

  "Ouch," I said.

  "Unlike NYPD, which has to put up with a lot of political correctness, affirmative-action crap-six walleyed lesbians in every precinct house or whatever-I can hire and fire as I please, based on merit."

  "I'll try to be meritorious," I said.

  The J-Bird had his shades on, so he didn't see Barner blush when he looked at Plankton and said, "Some of the department's best officers are gay. If they're promoted, it's because they're effective, not because they're gay."

  "God almighty, how naive can a man be? Where are you from, Detective Barner?

  Podunk? Mars? Albany? Whoops. I forgot. You are from Albany. Or at least spent one too many years up there in the little state capital that time forgot. What'd Ed Koch say that got him in hot water in the gubernatorial race with Cuomo? He wasn't sure he could stand being governor of New York, because there were no good Chinese restaurants in Albany."

  Albany native Barner was spared having to reply truthfully, for at this point Diefendorfer cut in and said, "What's your hometown, Jay?"

  "Experience," Plankton shot back. "My hometown is Experience in the World. I guess that's not a set of origins anybody'll ever be able to accuse you of, is it, Thad?"

  "A big mistake people often make about the Amish," Diefendorfer said, "is assuming we're any less complicated than other people, or that our communities are any less familiar with the gamut of basic human experience. Anyway, since I've been 'living with the English'-that's what the Amish call it when someone leaves the community- well, since I've been out in the larger world for the past twenty-seven years, I'd venture to estimate that my experience has been at least as broad and varied as yours, Jay-Bird. And, based on my admittedly brief initial impression of you, twice as instructive."

  Plankton laughed, and then he launched into another plea for Diefendorfer to come on his show and tangle with the J-Bird's sour, mean, white, straight, male chauvinist, Leo Moyle.

  Even without Diefendorfer's unwillingness to join Plankton's drive-by shooting of a morning talk show, the chances that the New Jersey vegetable farmer would converse with Moyle any time soon plummeted when the door was flung open and Jeris burst into the room. Pale and bug-eyed, Jeris croaked out, "It's Leo! Leo's been kidnapped!"

  Chapter 6

  Half an hour later, I was on the phone with Timothy Calla-han informing him that I would not be back in Albany until late evening. I gave him a rundown on the series of alphabetized pranks played by the FFF on Jay Plankton, and said, "It turns out that the H joke is no joke at all-not that the earlier ones were all that funny. But this one is far more serious even than the tear-gas attack. Leo Moyle has been grabbed and taken away by somebody, who phoned the radio station and said to tell the J-Bird that ' H is for hos
tage.'"

  "Isn't that a Sue Grafton title?" Timmy said. "Or is the H one 'homicide'?"

  "I'm not sure," I said. "It's certainly not an E. Lynn Harris title."

  "I understand that. It's not an Alfred Lord Tennyson title, either. I thought maybe some of the FFFers were Grafton fans, and you could use that detail as an identifying characteristic."

  I said, "Incidentally, who wrote 'The Oblong Box'? It's a writer whose name has only three letters in it."

  "Is this another one of the FFF's clues?"

  "No, it's another one of Will Shortz's. It's in today's Times crossword puzzle."

  "Poe," Timmy said without having to think about it. "The oblong box was a coffin containing the corpse of a man's young wife. When the ship carrying it went down in a storm, the husband chose to forgo a seat in a lifeboat and stayed with his beloved's remains as they sank beneath the briny. It's a short story I read in high school."

  "Had it been your body in that box," I said, "I'd have made for shore and returned on a sunny day with a nice wreath."

  "Likewise in your case," Timmy said. "And I'd have brought along a six-pack of Molson tied to a brick."

  "What about a three-letter word meaning 'spawn'? It's not 'kid,' is it?"

  "It's probably 'roe,'" he said. "Does that fit?" "I don't have the paper in front of me, but I hope to be back to it on the 8:10 train, which gets in at 10:30. I'll head straight home, though I'll probably be back down here tomorrow and stay for a few days." I explained to Timmy that while I found Jay Plankton and company repellent in all ways, I had agreed to sign on with them for five days at an inflated fee, partly out of morbid curiosity, even more out of economic self-interest, but mainly as a favor to Lyle Barner, who had once saved my life.

  "Does Lyle still have the hots for you?" Timmy asked. "And did he remember me fondly?"

  "He referred to you as 'that Irish kid,' so he obviously remembers you as adorable."

  "What a strong, clear memory Lyle has."

  "Or he may be confusing you with the young Mickey Rooney."

  "If not the old Andy Rooney."

  "Lyle's involved with a young cop, Dave-something. Dave is out in the department and Lyle's not, so there are problems. We're meeting Dave later, and also a former FFFer who turned up to deny involvement in the crimes and to vouch for the old FFF gang. This guy, Thad Diefendorfer, says they never did protests, just rescues, and always nonviolently. And Diefendorfer should know something about nonviolence-he's Amish."

  Instead of blurting out, "He's Amish and gay?" as I would have, Timothy Callahan, being Timothy Callahan, said, "I've heard about homosexuality among the Amish. It's especially hard. I take it this guy has left his community."

  "Years ago. He grows eggplants in New Jersey."

  "Of course," Timmy said, "anybody who was in the old FFF gang would probably have the skills to pull off a kidnapping. That's essentially what the FFFers did: kidnap young people from secure mental institutions and hide them from their parents and the authorities. Are you sure you can trust this Diefendorfer?"

  I thought about this, for the first time, really. "I think so. He comes across as genuine. I like him," I said, as it sank in that I needed to get to know Diefendorfer better.

  "How was Moyle kidnapped? Right out of the radio station?"

  "No, he'd left to meet a date for coffee at a Starbucks, and then never showed up.

  The date called the station to try to track Moyle down, and five minutes later a call came in from someone saying he was with the FFF, and they had Leo, and H was for hostage, and further instructions would follow. I'm at the radio station, and no more word has come in, but Moyle is definitely nowhere to be found."

  "Maybe it is the old FFF," Timmy said, "and they're going to put Leo in a mental institution-and try to turn the homophobe gay. Maybe do a poetic-justice job on him like the one in the Paul Haig case you worked on, where renegades from Vernon Crockwell's homosexual-cure psychotherapy group turned on the evil doctor and gave him a kind of dose of his own medicine."

  I briefly thought that one over, too, and said, "Timothy, where are you dredging this wild stuff up from?"

  "Experience, Donald. Yours, not mine, I should add."

  "None of that is totally implausible. It's just that… a simpler set of circumstances is far likelier. You haven't seen the notes these neo-FFFers sent Plankton. They are not the work of sophisticated minds. These people are both crude and borderline loony. So far, I'd say a thoroughly non-byzantine scenario is unfolding. My guess is, word will come from the kidnappers making some weird demand in exchange for Moyle's release. Maybe a demand that Plankton apologize to the homosexuals of America on his show- and then serialize a radio dramatization of The Lord Won't Mind. Anyway, it probably won't be long before we know."

  "I hope you're right, but the whole thing sounds to me fraught with more complex possibilities. Maybe it's all being staged by Plankton and his people. How about that? A publicity scam. Have Plankton's ratings been going down? Has he been losing advertisers?"

  "Not that I know of. Anyway, that'd be illegal. Staging a kidnapping, especially, would not go down well with the Manhattan DA's office. These people blather about 'edge' and 'pushing the envelope' and radio that's 'dangerous.' But just below the surface they're some of the most clunkily reactionary people in the country. They're Babbitts whose most profound interest is in their own comfort. They would never do anything that risked a big fine-possibly necessitating selling off a chunk of their General Electric stock- or, God help them, the quirky uncertainties of prison life.

  For all their bravado, the J-Bird and his gang are not really risk takers."

  Timmy said, "Oh, I don't know. They've hired you. For them, that's taking a chance.

  Of course, they may not know what they're in for."

  "No, I've been up front with the J-Bird and his producer. They know I don't like them-even that I could turn on them."

  "That's to their credit, then," Timmy said. "Unless, of course-and we're back to this-they brought you into this because they have something in mind that you're not aware of. Something… duplicitous."

  "Timothy, you're making me a little nervous."

  "Oh, Don, if I could only believe that," he said in his well-practiced way, "I'd be the happiest man in Albany."

  I didn't laugh, just said, "Even beyond keeping me amused, you can be helpful in this."

  "How?"

  "Check my files on the Blount case and dig out the most recent address for Kurt Zinsser, the old FFF gay who harbored Billy Blount when he was on the run from his parents and the Albany cops. See if Blount himself is in the Albany area, and if you can't find him you might check those two women with the travel agency who were his buddies- Margarita something and Christine something. Christine was a fellow FFF rescuee. They may well have maintained contact with the old FFFers who, after all, saved their sanity and maybe their lives. They may know Thad Diefendorfer too-and he may know about them. I'll ask him. But anything you can do on that end to get the ball rolling, I'll be grateful for."

  A little silence. He said, "You know, I'm at work."

  "Sure, I know. But it's July. The entire legislature of the state of New York is in repose, on greens and fairways from Montauk to Jamestown. Who are you trying to kid, Callahan? And all of you legislative staffers in Albany are cranking up the air-conditioning, kicking back in your bosses' leather club chairs, and reading Madame Bovary aloud to one another. It's summer at the capitol. I've been around Albany as long as you have, and you can't fool me."

  "You are largely mistaken, Donald," he said.

  "Uh-huh."

  "But when I get home from work at 5:18 P.M., I'll check your files, make some calls, and see what I can do."

  "Thank you, Timothy."

  "See you around eleven, then?"

  "Unless I join the neo-FFF myself and blow up the J-Bird's radio transmitter, sure."

  "You won't do that. You're no Babbitt, but you aren't quite as adventurous
as you once were, either."

  I chose to take a wait-and-see attitude as to whether I would regard Timmy's remark as a mere accurate analysis or as a challenge.

  Chapter 7

  Barner was at the radio station questioning Leo Moyle's would-be date, a telemarketing supervisor named Jan Hammond, and Diefendorfer and I were seated in a booth at an inadequately air-conditioned garment-district coffee shop, where Barner planned on meeting us for lunch-if he had time for lunch, which, he said, he rarely did. Diefendorfer was telling me how he had heard about the FFF in 1973 and joined up with the group after his seventeen-year-old boyfriend, Ronnie Busby, in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, had been locked away in a Philadelphia mental hospital by his parents.

  "When word got around about Ronnie and me, I was treated shabbily enough,"

  Diefendorfer said, "but at least I had my freedom. I had already planned on leaving the community, so the shunning was tolerable. My mother and father didn't shun me, hurt and baffled as they were, and only one of my three brothers turned his back whenever I entered a room. But Ronnie just disappeared one day, and it wasn't until a week later that his eleven-year-old sister Beth told me what his family had done with Ronnie."

  "Were you both still in high school?" I asked.

  "Ronnie was a senior. I was homeschooled. My family were all house Amish, the most conservative branch. Ronnie was going to go to Millersville State College the following fall, and I was going to live with him, work, get my GED, and then go to Millersville, too-even though I wasn't sure why, besides being with Ronnie, I wanted to go to college. I did have some vague idea that I wanted to be an agronomist maybe, or a jazz saxophonist. When I was eight or nine, I heard a John Coltrane piece coming from the radio in a parked car at the Ephrata Agway-it wasn't until years later that I understood who and what I had heard-and I thought, someday I want to be able to make that sound. That urge stayed with me right up until the sad day I discovered that I have no musical talent whatsoever."