Tongue tied - Stevenson Richard - Страница 16

"I'm just helping out in a small way," I said. "I once had a brief encounter with the Forces of Free Faggotry. Under the circumstances, that makes me one of North America's foremost experts on the FFF."

"Yeah, you and the Dutchman," Barner put in.

"I hope," Welch said, "that somebody can get to this Moyle asshole quick, because he's such a shit-for-brains homophobe that he might be too stupid to keep his mouth shut, and the FFFers could lose it and mess him up. My sympathies are with the FFF people, and I'd hate to see them all end up in Attica for the rest of their young lives."

"What makes you think they're young?" I asked.

"Their jokes, their language, their anger. I've done work with a gay youth group in Hempstead, out where I live on the Island, and some of these kids are very angry and very out of control. Lyle showed me copies of the notes the FFF sent to Jay Plankton, and I recognized the style-basically, 'Mess with me and I'll hurt you or I'll hurt myself.'"

"I share your low opinion of Leo Moyle," I said, "and he's certainly a man who can incite rage. But the FFF people, young or old, strike me as more flaky than violent. So far, anyway, they've been more gonzo than vicious. More Hunter Thompson than Charles Manson."

"Kidnapping is itself violent," Welch said. "Anybody capable of inflicting that kind of terror is capable of inflicting any kind."

Barner had now snagged the bartender's eye, and we each ordered a draft.

I said, "The old FFF members were not only nonviolent, one of them was actually Amish, as Lyle is likely to have pointed out. So it does seem improbable that any of them are mixed up in this current anti-J-Bird mayhem. Though people sometimes do change over the years."

"The Amish guy sounds like a solid citizen," Welch said. "Though even there you can't put too much faith in a label."

Barner said, "There are even Amish heroin addicts now. There was a bust in Ohio a couple of years ago."

"Lyle, I examined Thad Diefendorfer's arm. I saw no needle tracks."

"Anyway," Barner said, watching me, "Diefendorfer is clean. I ran him, and I talked to the chief in Burns Ford, where he lives. The chief asked around, and he went over and checked out Diefendorfer's farm. There aren't any llamas, and no sign that Moyle might be being held there."

I gazed at Barner. "Was that necessary?"

"What?"

"Hassling these gay Amish. This decent man who showed up on his own to offer information."

"What information?" Barner said, trying to look irked. "A twenty-year-old list that we're supposed to go chasing after? Sure, something on the list could pan out. Or the list could be to throw us off. I don't know about you, Strachey, but in my experience every lead has to be followed. Even leads where I feel like getting in the suspect's pants but I'm too professional to do such a thing."

My guilt fell away like an old scab. Working ahead of and around Barner now felt not only like the fairest method for dealing with the FFF, but like the most effective way to proceed with the kidnapping investigation. Barner had obviously been addled into temporary incompetence by his jealousy. Scamming him also seemed to be exactly the duplicitous treatment that he had coming.

I said to Welch, "Lyle thinks I've got something going with Thad Diefendorfer, a man I met for the first time this morning. But he has misread the situation. I'm interested in Diefendorfer's political and organizational history, not his-"

I paused, and Welch cut in with, "Pale eyes, clear skin and sturdy outdoorsman's physique?"

"How did you know that?"

"Lyle told me," Welch said, and grinned. "Me, I don't have Lyle's training and experience. But any of these old FFFers sound like they need to be vetted, and Diefendorfer comes across as an excellent resource. Even if none of the old FFFers turn out to be good suspects, younger people who they know might be. I know a little bit about the movement-I've done some organizing with gay officers in the department-and I had never even heard of the FFF until they started yanking the J-Bird's chain."

"Dave, that's why I brought Strachey into it," Barner said. Our beers had been set on the bar, and Welch reached through the knot of men in after-work jackets and ties and handed the glasses out one by one.

Welch raised his glass to Lyle and said, "Credit where credit is due. I'm talking as if I knew a lot more about criminal investigations than the stuff I've learned from Lyle, but I don't. I've taken a few courses at Hofstra, but if I ever make detective, most of what will get me there I'll have gotten from Lyle, a good teacher and a good cop, and a good baby-that's-not-all." Welch winked at me, and Barner colored and looked pleased.

"Can you make detective if you're out in the department?" I asked. "Lyle says you've had kind of a rough time."

"Yeah, kind of," Welch said. "I've had human shit packed into my shoes. My locker's been painted pink. My service revolver was tossed in a laundry basket and a Jeff Stryker dildo stuffed in my holster in its place. Other hilarious pranks like that. I've filed formal complaints seventeen times, and every time I complain, the complaint is filed and I'm written up for causing morale problems in the precinct. So, can I make detective under these circumstances? Not under this mayor and commissioner, no. But things are improving a little bit at a time. I know there are a lot of gay cops in the department, and the more of them who come out and say they're not gonna put up with this shit, that helps."

Both of us were careful not to look at Barner, who was busy watching us being careful not to look at him.

It was Barner who said, "In a way, it really sucks that we're the ones trying to bail out the J-Bird's homophobic ass. The meanest clowns in the precinct are big J-Bird fans, and they've always got him and Moyle and those other morons on the squad-room radio in the morning."

"It's a fucking rotten way to start the workday," Welch said, and raised his beer glass.

"Here's to Leo Moyle's reeducation at the hands of the FFF before his safe return to the New York airwaves." We drank to that.

Barner asked me how I'd made out tracking down old FFFers, and I told him truthfully that I hadn't come up with much yet. "I talked to one guy in Cleveland and two others in Los Angeles who had fond memories of their FFF days. They talked the way Timothy Callahan and his Peace Corps buddies carry on when they get together-the VFP, Veterans of Foreign Peace. Lots of stories from the sixties- oft told, I'd guess, with a sardonic warm glow and a certain amount of editing and refining.

"These old FFF guys had not heard of the kidnapping, they said, and I believed them.

They were unhappy- disgusted even-with the FFF name having been taken up by kidnappers. All three said they couldn't imagine any of the old gang doing such a thing, and none could think of any radical Gen Xers they knew who might adopt the name and carry out FFF kidnappings or tear-gas attacks."

I told Barner that I had not yet been able to reach most of the people on my FFF list which one of the LA contacts had added two names to-but that I would keep slogging away, and even visit two former FFFers who were living in the Northeast, one in central New York state and one in Connecticut. Barner asked me about Kurt Zinsser, the FFFer I met in Denver in seventy-nine while working on the Blount case, and I said Zinsser apparently was no longer in Denver, and no one I had spoken to knew what had become of the old new-lefty.