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 hostage.''
'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
