"Then," Jeris said, blowing a smoke ring, "I'd have to ask for our money back. What is your fee scale, anyway? Can we afford you? This isn't Albany, with all that lobbyist funny money sloshing around."
I told him what my normal fee was, mentally calculating an extra twenty-five percent and adding it in.
"That's outside our budget," Jeris said, and he suggested a figure twenty-five percent lower than what I'd told him. I shrugged, and he said, "We'll work something out."
"Jerry, you said on the phone yesterday that if I could locate the FFF people, you wouldn't necessarily want to prosecute them; you'd just want to talk to them. This makes me wonder. It reminds me of the Blount case twenty years ago, when the parents of Billy Blount hired me to bring their wanted-for-murder son back to Albany and turn him over, not to the police, but to them. As it happened, these people were as duplicitous as anybody I've ever done business with. They were the abysmal dregs."
"Nah, we'll play it straight with you," Jeris said, waving away doubt with his cigar.
"We don't want to chop these guys' balls off, we just want to work something out with them so they'll get off Jay's case. They want us to can Leo Moyle, and we're not gonna do that. But we can talk to them, I'm sure of it. Jay thinks it would be fun to put them on the air."
"Moyle is the resident gay-baiter?"
"Leo is kind of a loose cannon, yeah. But that's what's so great about him. He lends the show an element of danger. I don't go along with half of what he comes out with, and speaking candidly, neither does Jay. But you gotta have an un-PC presence on any show today, or your show is gonna be shit-canned faster than you can say Phil Donahue. Leo stays; that's a given. But can we talk to these FFFers, maybe give them their fifteen minutes, let them promote the glories of cocksucking or whatever? I think we can work it out. Anyway, let's track them down and see exactly what it is that we've got to work with here."
It all sounded unlikely to me-as unlikely as LBJ inviting the Chicago Seven in for bourbon and branch water and a tete-a-tete with Bob McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I said, "Doesn't Plankton put only people he likes on the show? People he basically agrees with, or at least gets along with? The show's not Crossfire or The McLaughlin Group. He's never been interested in a cross section of viewpoints before, as far as I'm aware."
"Not true," Jeris said, through an expanding toxic cloud. "Jay likes badass people if they're real, no matter where they're coming from politically or whatever. Especially if they're funny badass real. Funny and not phony are what Jay looks for and what our listeners tune in for. These FFFers are deeply sincere, apparently, and they're crude as shit, for chrissakes, so… no, there's no problem with them getting on the air.
We'd do a pre-interview, naturally, to make sure they can express themselves verbally as effectively as they send fecal matter through the US Postal Service."
"They sent actual shit? Not a joke-shop rendition?" "Some kind of animal turds,"
Jeris said, opening a folder next to his computer and handing me several sheets of paper. "NYPD has the stuff at a lab for analysis. Here's a list of what's come in to us so far, and photocopies of the notes that came with it."
The first page, a word-processor printout, contained a list of dates and notations for each date. For June 2, the notation was Asswipe for the homophobic asshole and, in paren-theses, Rover break-in. The other dates, beginning with June 9 and ending on July 7, were followed by these notations: brains for the brainless; charms for the charmless; douche for the douche bag; excrement for the execrable; fat for the fathead.
I said, "What does 'Rover break-in' mean?"
"They hit Jay's Range Rover," Jeris said. "This was the first incident. They broke into the Rover while it was parked outside Jay's agent's house in Westchester and filled it with unrolled toilet paper."
"Clean toilet paper?"
"Mercifully. They left a note that said, 'Asswipe for the homophobic asshole, from the Forces of Free Faggotry.' "
"Did the local cops investigate?"
"This was in Mamaroneck, and the local constables did what they could, apparently, but they came up empty. A major party was on in the house, and it might have been a little noisy in the neighborhood. So nobody saw or heard anything. We can't figure how they could have known Jay was going to be at a party that night at Mark Krentzman's house, so we think the FFFers must have followed Jay up from the city."
"I suppose," I said, "that as soon as Plankton saw the intended victim of the prank was designated an 'asshole,' he understood right away that his being the target was no case of mistaken identity."
Showing no indication of being either insulted or amused, Jeris said, "A lot of people can't stand Jay. We all know that. You take on the PC crowd, trouble's gonna come boogalooing your way. It's a given. These are the most humorless people on earth."
"Except for the hilarious FFF, of course. You said Plankton thinks they're funny. But this stuff isn't funny. It's just dopey and crude."
Jeris blew smoke and shrugged.
What were Jeris and the J-Bird up to? None of this added up. Unless, of course, Plankton, Jeris, and their gang truly saw the adolescent-boy antics of the neo-FFF as representing their own level of thinking and style of expression-spreading noxious materials through the mails or over the airwaves, literally or metaphorically-and considered their harassers as a special variety of brothers under the skin. "Guys," of a sort, that they could talk to, do business with, lob crass, jolly insults back and forth with. But that sounded either too naive for the J-Bird's crew or maybe not naive enough. Jeris seemed less spontaneous than calculating on other matters, so why not on this one too?
I said, "Then after the toilet-paper episode, foul substances began showing up in the mail?"
"Cow brains, animal turds, a pound of rancid lard stuffed in a freezer bag. Also some unknown fluid in a jar that we didn't really want to find out what it was. In the middle of all this, on June sixteenth, we received the first real communication we'd had from these people besides the descriptive labels. And that's the letter telling us what the FFF is, and how they're gonna wipe out homophobia, et cetera, et cetera, and they'll leave us alone if we dump Leo. The letter was hard to decipher because it had some kind of gummy orange candy smeared all over it."
"Lucky Charms for the unlucky charmless?"
"That was it. You've got a copy of the note right there, minus the gumdrops."
The letter, also typed on a word processor and dated June 16, had no signature. It read:
J-Bird You are now operating under the watchful eye of the Forces of Free Faggotry. We intend to rid the US airwaves of homophobia. Your show is first. If you want us to leave you alone, eliminate Leo and all other traces of homophobia from your show. Reason has no effect on people like you. But other means will. We have only gotten started. It's a long alphabet. If you make it to Z and think you are home free, think again. We'll just start over.
So act now.
I flipped to the final page, a copy of a note that arrived the day before, July 13. It said only:
For your own good, wait no longer. Meet our demands or someone will be hurt.
Your regular listeners – The FFF
I said, "You're really going to put these people on the air? They sound demented.
However worthy the FFF's aims, they sound a little… way out there."
"S'okay by us," Jeris said mildly. "We're not Jerry Springer, but we're not Oprah either. Edge is a big part of what Jay is about. We'll do it by phone so we don't have to nail the chairs to the floor. It won't feed the starving in Africa, but it'll be great radio. It'll be real."
"What if these FFF guys won't cooperate?" I asked. "They sound to me like true believers who are fixated on one thing, which is purging J-Bird's show of juvenile fag-baiting, and that's the one thing that's least likely to happen."
"Hey, who knows?" Jeris said brightly. "Maybe the J-Bird is a closeted gay, and he'll take this opportunity to come out of the closet and shit-
can Leo on the air. I told you Jay likes to push the envelope."
As Jeris said this, the door to the corridor opened, and a big, potbellied man in shades and with a head of Brillo-pad hair stood there. In unmistakable tones, he said, "Are you the gay gumshoe from Albany? Christ, you're not even wearing a dress."
I got up, walked over to the J-Bird, lifted his shades off his ample red nose, and said,
"Isn't there something you'd like to talk to me about, Jay? You look as though you've been weeping."
Chapter 3
Soon Jeris and the J-Bird were both going at it, and I was obliged to get up and open a window. Jeris had no objection, but Plankton called me a wuss. I'd have mewed out something about the high risks among cigar smokers of mouth, throat, and larynx cancer, but these guys weren't about health, or even survival; they were about
"edge."
This was an impulse I understood. In the seventies and early eighties I had escaped HIV only through the dumbest luck, although gleeful coupling with another human being still seemed a far worthier way to risk one's life than voluntarily inhaling a substance that would lead the average well-trained firefighter to reach for oxygen. Comparing notes in these areas with Jeris and the J-Bird, however, felt as though it might not be productive, so I stuck to the topic of my possible employment.
"Jerry tells me you'd like to put the FFF on the air," I told Plankton, who was lounging on the office couch, his cowboy-booted feet on the coffee table. He had the cigar in one beefy hand, a can of Sprite in the other, and he still had the shades on. He wore baggy khakis and a beige sports shirt, garb Al Gore's most recent wardrobe adviser might have selected, generating catcalls among the J-Bird set.
"It remains to be seen," Plankton snarled, "whether they'll go on the show or whether I'll have them put away in effing Leavenworth. After today, they probably ought to have their sorry butts kicked from here to Bridgeport. Just put us in touch with them, and then we'll see what happens next. We don't have to look at their ugly faces. Christ, just the idea of sitting down across from these perverts makes me want to lose my breakfast."
"If you want me to work for you," I said, "don't call gay people perverts in my presence. Don't say it on the air either when I'm listening to the show. And since you won't know when I'm listening and when I'm not, you might want to err on the side of caution."
"Jesus!" Plankton spat out, shaking his head. "Is dealing with you and your oh-I'm-so-sensitive, limp-wristed, politically correct horseshit what I'm going to have to put up with in order to get these sickos off my back? They threatened me, you know. They physically threatened me. I'm doing them an effing favor bringing you into it instead of the goddamn FBI."
Jeris said, "How would you like us to refer to the FFF" people, Don? Do you want us to call them 'homosexual gentlemen'?"
Plankton said, "Or how about 'Froot Loops'?" Were they testing me, or provoking me, or what? I supposed there was nothing calculated, or even rational, about this routine at all. It was just the way they talked to other men. They didn't know any other way. Or, they were capable of nonhostile, noninflammatory, straightforward conversation, but-with me-only one-on-one. When they were together, they had to lay on a barrage of "guy" talk in order to keep their heterosexual credentials from being questioned, however subtly or obliquely, and this seemed to mean nearly as much to them as life itself.
I said, "If I take you on as a client, every time you say something that irritates me, there's going to be a surcharge on my normal fee of two percent. You work it out. Or, I can walk out the door now and you can take your chances that the New York cops will collar the FFF people before they send you another load of dogshit, or worse."
"Llama," Plankton interrupted.
"Llama?"
"I was just on the phone with that police dick, Lyle Barner. He said the turds they sent us-'excrement for the execrable'-were tested somewhere, and they're llama crap."
"These guys must be Aztecs," Jeris said, his geography off by several thousand miles.
"I loved 'excrement for the execrable,'" Plankton said, and laughed. "I wish I'd thought of that one myself."
"You will," Jeris said, and they both chuckled.
"You should be on the radio too," I told Jeris. "You're almost as funny as Jay is." They both haw-hawed at this; now I was getting into the J-Bird spirit. I asked Plankton,
"What else did you learn from Lyle Barner that's new?"
Plankton drew on his cigar and blew smoke, and I wondered if I was going to be able to keep my Amtrak cherry Danish down. "Nada," he said. "Barner's on his way over here to talk to us about the tear-gas attack, and he says he wants you to stick around so he can talk to you."
"Did the fake cop who lobbed the canister leave a note?" I asked.
"Just the usual wiseass label, in an envelope he dropped on Flonderee's desk. This one said, 'Gas for the gaseous.'"
"I could have written it myself. It's the phrase I thought of when I heard about the teargas incident. I'd just been listening to your show, and it was the first thought that came into my head."
"You're an effing genius," Plankton said. I couldn't see his bloodshot eyes through the shades, but a couple of gray-black brushpiles of eyebrow shot up. "Since you're so smart, why don't you tell us what the H incident is going to be? What do you think, Don? Will it be… what? Hay for the heinous?"
"How about 'Hogs for the hogs-breathed'?" Jeris said. "Or 'Hemorrhoids for the hemorrhoidal'?"
Laughing and coughing up a merry storm, Plankton sputtered out, "What about
'hoors for the hoor-ible'? That wouldn't be too hard to take," he said, and Jeris coughed and cackled too.
They quickly collected themselves when I said, "Maybe it'll be 'homicide for the homophobic'"
Plankton set down his soft drink, removed his shades, and gazed at me through the air pollution with deep-set red eyes that once must have been blue. "You don't think they're really that dangerous, do you? They're out of control, sure. That's why we brought the cops into it, and that's why we called you. But now you're starting to scare the bejesus out of me."
I shrugged. "These people are not without humor, but they're also a bit nuts. How nuts, we don't know. You and the people on your show are out of control too," I said to Plankton, "but you're not homicidal that anybody knows of. So, surly and obnoxious and frightening to some people is sometimes just that and nothing worse."
Jeris said to Plankton, "That's a compliment, J-Bird."
"Oh? I'm not so sure it is," Plankton said, and slid his shades back on.
I said, "So you're bringing on personal security for yourself? That's a useful precaution at this point."
"Two of them are in my office now. It's a service Lyle Barner knew about-ex-cops and, Christ, they look like a couple of World Wrestling Federation bone-crunchers.
What a pain in the effing butt this is," Plankton said, and flicked a cigar ash in his soda can.
"You afraid the Secret Service might crimp your style, J-Bird?" Jeris asked. "Hey, it didn't slow Bubba down."
"Are you single?" I asked Plankton.
"Divorced. Twice. Three kids, all adults-or about as adult as any kids are these days."
I only thought it, but Jeris said it out loud. "That's hard to believe, with a role model like you, Jay." They snickered together companionably.
I asked, "Is there anybody you live with or are close to that the FFF might go after?"
"I live by myself. I have an apartment on Sixty-fourth, off Lex." Plankton said to Jeris, "Jesus, I hope they don't try to do anything to Babette. Cripes."
I was ashamed of myself as soon as it came out. "Who's Babette, J-Bird? Your poodle?"
This was their style of wit, and they both heh-hehed.
"Babette's a bitch," Plankton said, "but…"
Jeris finished his sentence. "… but not nearly the bitches that Gail and Theresa were!"
More happy chortles, more fumes. As my gorge was rising, my heart was sinking. The gay-baiting was ba
d enough, but this casual misogyny was even worse. They sneered at gay people to their faces, but my guess was that they put their girlfriends down in this contemptible way only behind their backs. Or, worse, they carried on like this in front of their girlfriends, who suffered through it all as part of some awful bargain they believed they had had to make, and maybe they were right. I needed the work at the time-Albany in the past month had apparently experienced an uncharacteristic outbreak of decorum, so my services had been in limited demand. But it seemed likelier by the second that I would not be able to abide any association whatsoever, even for an inflated fee, with the J-Bird and company. I knew I would be seeing Lyle Barner within minutes, and I decided I would break the news first to him that I was soon to be gone.
Chapter 4
"Long time, no see," Barner said. "Looks like you're not twenty-six anymore, Strachey."
"Thank you."
"But you're as sexy as ever. How do you do it?"
"Ingest lots of grease, put off going to the gym, not too much bed rest."
"Funny, I try some of that. But for me it doesn't work so well."
"You can't do slovenliness halfheartedly, Lyle. You've got to give it your all."
He laughed, a little nervously, and glanced at the door to make sure, I guessed, that it was shut tight and no one had overheard this exchange. Jeris had let us use his office for a private confab following Detective Barner's official tour of the tear gas-attack area.
It had been nearly sixteen years since I'd last laid eyes on Barner, and he hadn't aged as badly as apparently he thought he had. Beefy, with powerful shoulders and arms, a broad mug, and big sad brown eyes, Barner had what was once called a "man's man" way about him that still had its potent appeal. I'd had a couple of sexual encounters with Barner in the early eighties, back when Timothy Callahan and I had already gotten serious with each other but the angel of monogamy had not yet appeared before us, at least not to me.
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