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
