'I thought of that,' Barner said. ' I t could be they brought the shovel along for something else. Some bad purpose besides agriculture.'
'Could be.'
Barner looked through some papers stacked on the back of the kitchen table that was against one wall of the living room, and I watched. 'No FFF stuff,' I said. 'No drafts of ransom notes.'
'No.'
'It doesn't look like anybody's been held captive here, either.'
'Uh-uh.'
'This all looks unpromising, Lyle.'
'They could still be involved. They could have Plankton out on the Island somewhere. Anyway, Strachey, have you got any better ideas?'
'No, I don't. But so what? You had me a little worried there for a while, Lyle, but there is absolutely nothing in this apartment to suggest that Day or Diefendorfer or the other guy are involved in the kidnapping, or the neo-FFF- anything-else of a criminal nature. And that stuff Leo Moyle said about his captors calling him a sinner and an unrighteous man-maybe it's some Jerry Falwell type we should be looking for. Anyway, my guess at this point is that there's an innocent explanation for Thad meeting up with his old FFF boyfriend and not telling me about it. But it's late, and I'm not about to hang around here and find out tonight. Thad has the number of where I 'l l be staying, at a friend's place on West Seventy-seventh Street, and I'll leave a note here asking him to call me in the morning. Then we'll know.'
Barner gave me a look that I guessed was meant to be incredulous, but it looked forced. He was letting his biases fill the void of no evidence, and I guessed he knew it.
'I'm hoping I'll know what the story is well before morning,' Barner said. 'I'm going to wait around here until they come back. If they do.'
'Good luck.'
'You can take the train back to Manhattan. You can get the L at the Lorimer Street station.'
'Fine.'
The female cop came into the apartment and said, 'The pickup's still there. They didn't take it.'
Barner screwed up his face, as if this news might indicate something treacherous.
'Keep the truck under surveillance,' he said. 'I'm going to look around here some more.'
Melendez the super was in the doorway and stood aside as the young cop went out.
He said to Barner, 'You gonna stay in the apartment?'
'Yeah. I'll take responsibility.'
Melendez looked doubtful. 'The radio guy isn't up here.'
'Not at the moment,' Barner said, making clear with his look that that was the end of that discussion.
The super stood for a moment longer, then turned and went out.
I said, 'Isn't what you're doing illegal, Lyle? There's no life-or-death question now.'
'You don't know that. You don't know that at all. Plankton is being held by some very rough people who have vowed to hurt him. So, is there a life-or-death issue? I'd say there is.'
'In Sam Day's apartment? Where's the evidence?'
Barner closed his eyes, then opened them. 'Strachey, do I have to explain this to you, of all people? You know, when you've been doing this as long as I have, you get a feel for these things.'
'You're full of it, Lyle,' I said, 'and you know it, too.' I gave him the number of where I'd be staying, wrote out a note asking Thad to call me no matter what time it was, and left Barner fiddling around with a bookshelf, as if it might slide away revealing a secret passageway.
I went out into the wet night air. It was after midnight, and yet the Brooklyn streets were teeming: couples of all ages, mostly straight; young Spanish guys in threes; club kids just heading out; entire large Latino extended families ambling home after some get-together in a restaurant or a relative's apartment. It occurred to me that this echt-urban scene was at least superficially the antithesis of Lancaster County Amish life, and I wondered what Thad and Sam Day, or Dazenfeffer, made of it.
On the platform of the Lorimer L-train station, I waited with a mostly young crowd that was sparse at first, then seemed to grow exponentially. When the Manhattan-bound train finally pulled in four or five minutes later, a Tokyo-sized mob stuffed itself into the six or eight cars. I boarded the final car, where it felt like a party was already under way. The guys were cool in their tight pants and shirts, and the young women were simultaneously glammed up and glammed down in their makeup and party dresses and gray sneakers. It was Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth headed for Giro's and the Mocambo in sensible shoes. It was no life I had ever known-I had gone almost directly from New Brunswick to Saigon-and it all felt vaguely alien. Yet the unostentatious ease with which these happy kids cast off for a night of partying in the center of the known universe- i.e., the slice of Manhattan bordered by Fourteenth Street on the north and Canal Street on the south-made them seem neither unduly privileged nor in any way depraved. They seemed both wholesome and lucky to be living in America at the pinnacle of its most recent age of innocence.
I was relaxing for a moment and enjoying watching the kids on the party car when my attention was suddenly riveted on the platform across the way. A Canarsie-bound train had just pulled out ahead of ours, and as our train to Manhattan lurched and picked up speed, I was amazed to see a familiar figure hurrying toward the stairs of the Lorimer Street exit. What was Charm Stankewitz doing in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, in old-FFFer Sam Day's neighborhood?
Reminding myself that Brooklyn was a big place and a lot of people went there for many reasons, I nonetheless exited the train at Bedford Avenue, crossed to the opposite platform, and boarded the next train back to Lorimer. Making my way quickly back to Sam Day's apartment, I watched for Charm on the busy streets, but I didn't spot her. In the subway station, she had been wearing an orange tank top and a red skirt.
Slight as she was, I was sure she would stand out in a crowd in that getup. But ten or twelve minutes had gone by, and Charm was nowhere to be seen on Lorimer Street.
The chubby young male cop was standing in the doorway to Sam Day's building. 'Is Detective Barner still up there?' I asked.
'Yeah, go on up.'
'I don't need to. Did a young woman go in who was wearing a red skirt and skimpy orange top?'
'No, nobody went in.'
'Did you notice a young woman fitting that description stop here at all, or just go by?'
The cop thought about this. 'Not that I noticed.'
'Thanks.'
I walked to the end of the block, peered around, then backtracked to the subway. I waited for a time at the top of the station stairs on Lorimer, hoping I might spot Charm, or Thad and his companions. Or-though I could make no sense of this one-all of them together. But I saw no familiar faces at all, and after several minutes I descended into the overheated tunnel and rejoined the Manhattan-bound stream of party-goers.
During the ride, I struggled to recall Kurt Zinsser's boyfriend Darren's description of Charm's Brooklyn friends that Darren said she visited once a week. There had been no last names given, just one first name, a second first name-Sharon?-and, more memorably, somebody referred to as Strawberry Swirl. I figured I could find a phone book, but it seemed unlikely that I would come upon a listing for 'Swirl, S.' and a Brooklyn street address.
My ears popped as the train hurtled westward under the East River, and I thought of Leo Moyle's underground transits, one going and one coming back, during his twenty-four hours of captivity. His ears had popped too, he had told Barner, indicating transit via tunnel to Brooklyn, Queens, or New Jersey. Who among all the people I knew with FFF connections were bridge-and-tunnel people? Just Sam Day, plus Charm's Brooklyn friends. Simple coincidence? Could be. Lots of Manhattan-loving nonrich young people actually lived in the once hopelessly unfashionable outer boroughs now. And no connections between any of the assorted known FFF cast of characters made any sense I could begin to imagine. I was missing something, or just way off the beam. Beam me up, Thaddie, I thought-if, unlikely as it seemed, Thad really did know more than he was telling me-Thaddie, beam me up.
I got off the train at the Fourteenth Street-Seventh Avenue station and made my way along the pedestrian tunnel to the platform for the 1 and 9 trains heading up the West Side. This Manhattan station was even hotter than the Brooklyn stations, and it stank of something, too- something pungent that was both off-putting and at the same time had vaguely pleasant associations.
