'There's wool in the cheese?'
'I wondered about that, too. It's a soft cheese, and apparently you suck it out of the wool. The oil in llama fur contains some kind of protein that's healthful in a variety of ways and is supposedly conducive to spiritual well- being. There are pre-Columbian Inca legends about woolly llama cheese, according to Zinsser's advertising, Chris says.'
'Hmm.'
'I know. A nice, ripe Camembert sounds more uplifting to me.'
'So, up and down the Berkshires-from Tanglewood to Mass MoCA to the Norman Rockwell Museum-there are robust, spiritually improved people going around picking llama wool out of their teeth?'
'That's the report I received.'
I said, 'Then I think Zinsser is our man for sure-the harasser, sending Jay Plankton llama droppings and all the rest of it, and the kidnapper of Leo Moyle.'
'Why are you so certain?' Timmy asked.
'Because he may once have been a mere radical gay lib-erationist, but now Zinsser sounds capable of just about anything. Woolly llama cheese? God.'
'So, are you going to call the FBI? I probably don't have to remind you that transporting a kidnap victim across a state line is a federal crime.'
'No,' I said, finishing my Molson. 'I still think it would be best for everyone concerned if I handled this myself. I'm going to call Thad. And since tomorrow is Saturday, maybe you could join us for a drive over to the scenic Berkshires.'
Timmy looked doubtful. 'Should I bring along a firearm?' he said.
'No, I'll handle that. You bring the toothpicks.'
Chapter 12
Diefendorfer drove up from New Jersey in the morning, and by noon he and Timmy and I were on the road headed east. During the hour's drive over to Massachusetts, Thad told us stories of FFF rescues he had been involved in or had heard about from his cohorts. Most rescues, he said, were not especially difficult or dangerous; they involved winning over or just bribing lower-level mental hospital employees, many of whom were gay and often eager to be helpful. Doors were left unlocked, alarms disengaged or shorted out, escapees stashed in car trunks. Cash for bribes was always available in the FFF's later years as grateful young rescuees from wealthy families turned twenty-one and were not only immune to involuntary commitments but also gained access to their trust funds.
Rescues that could not be effectuated through these means were harder but also more exciting, Thad said. At one point a gay former cat burglar-rehabilitated after a stay in an Indiana penitentiary and retired from crime, he claimed-was brought in to teach a course in breaking and entering. Thad told us he had taken the course and was one of the foremost lock pickers in central New Jersey. Or had been; some locks worked electronically now, or were even computerized, and Diefendorfer had not kept up with the technology.
Timmy, educated by Jesuits, and Thad, the Mennonite second-story artist, had a good talk about Augustinian ideas of combating great evils by employing lesser evils if and when they became necessary. My own easygoing tendencies in these areas were well known to Timmy, who once described my companionship with moral relativism as 'hair-raisingly blithe.' He considered my late-adolescent departure from the Presbyterian Church 'intellectually vacuous' mainly because it had turned Beethoven's and Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' into an
'Ode to Good Taste.' So it was interesting to listen to these two chew over moral questions I had sometimes been forced to grapple with in my line of work, and to hear them come down, if not as close to Satan as Timmy sometimes thought I belonged, then closer than either one of them might have admitted if described in those terms.
Uncertain that we would want to make a meal of Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese-Thad said, 'I didn't come prepared to comb my lunch'-we stopped in Great Bar-rington at the Union Bar and Grill for salad and Cuban pork sandwiches. This inviting local landmark, with its metal sculptures and SoHo-in-the-hills brushed-aluminum interior, was packed with weekenders from the city. Some were in the Berkshires to have their souls filled up with art, theater, music and dance. Others, less transported by the offerings of the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the dancers at Jacob's Pillow, at least were getting their cultural tickets punched.
After lunch, en route east over the hills on winding, woodsy Route 23, Timmy, Thad and I worked out a plan. The chances were good that even after an event-filled twenty years, Kurt Zinsser would recognize me. So rather than spook him, we decided Timmy and Thad would engage Zinsser and keep him occupied while I looked around the farm. Then I would move in for a confrontation based on what I did or didn't discover.
The Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese Web site had provided us with directions and informed us that visitors to the farm were welcome. That made it less likely, we figured, that Leo Moyle was being held captive in the main farmhouse or cheese factory, but was probably somewhere nearby.
In the center of the village of Monterey, we turned down a country road just past the general store, where about half the cars parked out front had Massachusetts plates and the rest were Volvos and Saabs from New York and Connecticut. The narrow road followed a meandering brook through stands of maple, hickory and birch, and meadows where cows and sheep once had grazed.
Few of the farms were working now, however, and instead of John Deere and International Harvester machines outside the barns, there were sleek sedans from Germany and Sweden, and Detroit SUVs the size of Soviet troop carriers for hauling the peasant bread and radicchio out from Great Barrington. The white clapboard farmhouses were beautifully kept, and many of the barns, also bright white, were now garages or guest houses with skylights and discreetly placed satellite dishes.
We passed the farm that produces renowned Monterey chevre -in a pasture several goats frolicked for our amusement-and then we drove on for another mile or two until we spotted a herd of llamas in a field. Then came the farmhouse and a large, faded, red barn nearby, with a sign on a post that read: Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese, the Spirit of the Ancient Incas in a New England Country Setting.
Diefendorfer said, 'It's like Grandma Moses at Machu Picchu. It's a little confusing.'
Timmy asked, 'Didn't you get a lot of this kind of cultural fusion-or at least weird commercial exploitation-in Lancaster County? Chain-hotel cocktail lounges with Pennsylvania Dutch happy hours, and so on?'
'We did. One of my favorites was a hex-sign extermination service. I once heard about a brothel over in Bucks County where for eighty-five dollars a dominatrix in an Amish farmwife's garb would raise welts on customers' bare backs with a buggy whip.
But I don't know if that story was true. Pennsylvania has never had much tolerance for commercialized sin. Historically, it's one reason New Jersey exists.'
'Demand and supply,' Timmy mused.
'Yes,' Diefendorfer said, 'the Bible should have included a book called Market Forces, with special verses commenting on New Jersey.'
We pulled into the Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese parking area and stopped under a big spreading oak. Bees buzzed and flies zigzagged through the thick air, and the place smelled of warm green growth. A sign directed visitors to the barn, so Timmy and Diefendorfer headed over there in search of Kurt Zinsser while I ambled over to the wire fence to look at the llamas. A mud-spattered Chevy Blazer with Massachusetts plates was parked next to the barn, and closer to the house was a newer, cleaner Chevy 4x4 pickup. There were just the two buildings, close to the road and not far from each other, and it now seemed to me unlikely that Leo Moyle would be held captive in so public a place. Traffic on this rural lane was light, but the location didn't feel isolated enough for the safety and security serious kidnappers would need.
I watched Timmy and Diefendorfer disappear into the visitors' entrance to the barn, then turned back toward the dozen or so llamas. The two nearest peered my way while the others continued to graze. With their big soft eyes and alert pointed ears, the llamas looked like friendly storybook animals, maybe from A. A. Milne. I half expected them to be holding toy buckets and shovels, or even to speak: 'Pleasant day, amigo.'
Unsure of what to do next-approaching the farmhouse made no sense-I was about to join Timmy and
