Tongue tied - Stevenson Richard. Страница 7

You must have been stuck up in Albany a little too long."

"Lyle, it's not my ideals I'm afraid of losing, it's my breakfast. And my temper."

"Uh-huh."

"It's been awhile since I've had to restrain myself from decking a client."

Barner laughed. "Jesus, Strachey, I know caterers who put up with more obnoxious clients than Plankton and Jerry Jeris. Why don't you hang in for a few days anyway?

Take the J-Bird's money, and find out what you can about the old FFF. It'll be interesting, and it'll make my life easier. Do it as a favor to me. I don't want to come right out and say that you owe me one. But if you keep this up, I might have to." He looked at me and waited.

I felt my pleasant postlunch train ride back to Albany begin to slip away. Barner had once saved my neck, if not my ear, in a case involving the two elderly lesbians who were now Timmy's and my neighbors on Crow Street. A developer trying to drive them out of their semirural home near Albany had set in motion a plot that led to a violent confrontation with two murderous goons and a vicious dog, and it was Barner who had arrived on the scene accompanied by Timmy with milliseconds to spare.

Was I indebted to Barner? There were those who would say so, yes.

I said, "Lyle, I really don't know how helpful I can be. It's hard to imagine that these neo-FFFers have any connection with the old FFF. The bunch that operated back in the sixties and seventies were ideological, but they were also hardheaded realists with attainable goals. Mostly rescuing the wrongly imprisoned from private mental institutions. This new gang is flaky as hell. Using intimidation to rid the airwaves of homophobia? It's a sweet impulse, but apparently these people are not familiar with the statutes on assault, or on extortion-or with the United States Constitution. Or with the realities of the American marketplace, either."

"They appear to be different people, that's true," Barner said. "But it can't be coincidence that they're calling themselves the Forces of Free Faggotry."

"They could have read about the old FFF. It's written about in some of the histories of the movement. Have you tried tracking down any of the old FFFers on your own? All you have to do is go into a bookstore or public library, find a good history of the modern gay movement, check the index for the FFF, get some names of people, and then locate them through your usual Orwellian technological means."

Barner's face tightened. "Yeah, I could have done that," he said. "I could even have figured out on my own that I could have done that. But I didn't do that."

"I see."

"Why didn't I do it that way? Why have I used the more roundabout method of bringing you into the case to track down the FFF?"

"Right. Why?"

"Because," Barner said, "I thought it would be nice to reconnect with you. That's one reason."

"Uh-huh."

"The other reason is," Barner said, his color rising again, "I don't go into gay bookstores. I don't go anywhere near the gay section in Barnes and Noble. I don't go anywhere near the gay sections in libraries. Get the picture?"

"Lyle, this is worse than I thought."

"I'm fucked up. I know."

"Are you out with Dave? Have you confessed to your boyfriend that you're a homosexual?"

Barner laughed ruefully. "Anyway, he can tell."

"Why didn't you ask Dave to help you find a book with the FFF in it? He sounds like the kind of man who might stride into a bookshop and brazenly make a purchase. Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare for America come true."

"I could have asked Dave for help," Barner said. "But to tell you the truth, I just didn't feel like getting something started."

"Right. So you arranged for me to drag my ass a hundred and fifty miles down the Hudson Valley, at the J-Bird's expense, just because you preferred not to have an argument with your boyfriend?"

"No, it's not just that."

"What else is it?"

"You'll be able to talk to the FFF people. They'll trust you. Even if they aren't the same people as back in the seventies and they don't know you from David Dinkins, you'll know how to get them to talk to you. They won't trust me, and they won't talk to me, because I'm a cop."

"This is possible."

"And like I said, the other reason I wanted to bring you into this was, I wanted to see you again. For one thing, I wanted to find out if you were the same smug pain in the ass you were sixteen years ago."

"And was I?"

"You're worse," Barner said. "I'm almost sorry I even mentioned your name to the J-Bird and his people."

"Almost sorry, but not quite?"

"You got it."

"Jeez, Lyle. What else is new? The more things change with you and me, the more they stay the same."

He watched me, poker-faced. He apparently was taking as much satisfaction from the love-hate-or to put it more precisely, like-dislike-games we were playing as he had when we observed the same awkward rituals sixteen years earlier. He said, "Anyway, Strachey, you're gonna love these FFFers once you smoke them out. They're obviously a bunch of punk anarchists, and deep in your heart, that's you. It wouldn't surprise me if you brought them in and then you joined up with them."

"Lyle, you've nailed me again. I'm both a control freak and an anarchist."

"Think about it," he said.

"And when the J-Bird puts the FFF on his show, I'll be right there on the radio with them, promoting all my inconsistent causes and tendencies. Strachey the radical Presbyterian with J-Bird the broadcast postmodernist."

Barner said, "Don't believe that crap about the J-Bird putting the FFF on the air.

He'll never do it. He wants to get them in here, and then he'll hire some goons to beat the shit out of them. That's how postmodern Plankton is. Anyway, after the tear-gas attack there's no way these people can avoid being charged."

"They can't be charged if they choose to deny doing the tear-gas attack and there's no good forensic or other evidence tying them to it. Is there any?"

"Not yet."

"As for the J-Bird's putting them on the air, listen to his show sometime. What Jeris is telling me is plausible. Plankton respects aggressive, and he respects nasty. He gets these people into his studio, and nobody will change anybody's mind. But they'll all hit it off famously in their twisted way. I think these guys might mean what they say about putting the FFFers on the show. At least in that regard, I think the J-Bird can probably be trusted."

Looking skeptical, Barner was about to reply when the door to Jeris's office opened and the J-Bird stuck his head in. "Hey, you two gumshoes want to meet a real, live FFFer?"

"That's the plan," I said.

"Then get your wide-load butts out here. One just walked in the door."

Chapter 5

A lanky man in his mid-forties with wavy straw-colored hair, china blue eyes and big ears was standing just behind the J-Bird in the corridor. In scuffed work boots, a pale green loose-fitting T-shirt and jeans faded not by fashion technicians but from wear, the man was sunburned across his forehead and nose. My guess for the source of the sunburn was a rare weekend out of the city, maybe waterskiing at Lake Hopatcong.

But as I shook the sizable rough hand of Thad Diefendorfer-Plankton casually mangled the name, and Diefendorfer just as casually corrected him-there was a pleasantly rural aroma about Diefendorfer that suggested not outdoor sport but an outdoor occupation.