Tongue tied ds-8

by Richard Stevenson

  We noted the location of the nail parlor, the second business from the far end of the building, next to the tattoo den.

  Thad said, "What if Miss Annette's apartment is above her nail parlor, but not directly above it? What if we waltz into somebody else's home by mistake?"

  "We'll apologize," I said, "and ask where Miss Annette lives."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  The entrance to the rear stairway was in the center of the building, opposite the one in the front, and Thad had no trouble making his way through the lock in well under thirty seconds.

  "You'd make a successful criminal," I told him.

  "Thank you. I once was one. Not much of what the FFF did way back when was legal."

  At the top of the wooden stairway was a long corridor going off to the left and to the right. Directly ahead was a wider stairway leading down to the front entrance. We turned left, toward the apartment over the nail parlor. There were three doors, however, one apparently to an apartment in the front of the building, one to an apartment in the rear, and one on the far end.

  Thad said, "Uh oh."

  "It's probably the front one or the rear one," I said.

  "Yes, one or the other."

  We checked the name cards on the doors. The one on the front apartment said

  "Gomspold," and the card on the rear apartment said "D. Carletti."

  "Gould it be Annette Gomspold?" Thad whispered.

  "Maybe. And I wonder if the other one is Damien Carletti, the tattooist?"

  But when we checked the door at the end of the hallway, the name card read

  "Annette C. Koontz."

  "I smell coffee brewing," Thad said. "But it seems to be coming from Gomspold's place."

  These apartments, so close to one another, suddenly struck me as unlikely venues for holding kidnap victims. Even if the captives were bound and gagged and unable to cry for help, as Moyle said had been the case with him, getting them in and out of this building without attracting attention seemed like a stretch. My conviction that Steve Glodt was behind the kidnappings and that the J-Bird was being held, and possibly tortured and mutilated, in Annette Koontz's apartment-assuming that this woman actually had any connection whatever with Glodt-was starting to waver.

  Thad said, "I'll just knock on the door lightly to see if anyone is up and about. If there's no response, I'll go in." He had the corkscrew from Dave Welch's Swiss army knife poised.

  I thought, What am I doing here? How did I get mixed up in this thing? Why am I not home in bed in Albany with Timothy Callahan, instead of prowling through a building in Oyster Bay, Long Island, probably about to scare the crap out of some innocent workingwoman who is luxuriating in the only rest and solitude she can enjoy all week long? Could I have my PI license revoked for this? Or be convicted of a felony? Would it be house-breaking? Stalking? Invasion and assault?

  Thad rapped lightly on Annette Koontz's door.

  We waited.

  No sound came from the Koontz apartment or from any of the others.

  Thad looked at me, but before I could suggest that maybe we should reconsider what now felt like a reckless, even idiotic, misadventure, he had inserted the business end of his implement in the door's single lock, quickly maneuvered it this way and that, and when he turned the loiob, the door swung open.

  We stood for a moment looking into a living room furnished with some fat leather chairs and a beige leather couch-Had a woman purchased these objects?-and a large-screen TV. It had been set inside one of those home-entertainment-center type structures ("A man's home is his megaplex"), which had a small bar attached to it. The illumination was dim, coming from a double window whose shades were lowered.

  Thad looked at me again, then stepped carefully inside the apartment. I followed him.

  A familiar voice said levelly, "Shut the door, you pond-scum, puke-ass-faggot, maggot-head creeps."

  Jay Plankton was holding an automatic weapon the size of a grenade launcher, and it was aimed at Thad and me. He was standing in the semidarkness of a doorway leading to a room in the back of the building. His good diction indicated that he still had his tongue.

  Thad said, "Hey, J-Bird, we come as friends."

  "Rescuers," I added. "If that's what's needed, here we are."

  "Shut the door," he said again, and I did as I was told.

  Thad said, "So you're in on it? Way cool."

  "You fooled me, Jay," I added. "What a prank! You're… you're too much, you crazy fucker, you."

  "You can cut the showbiz crap," Plankton snapped. "I've reached my limit, and I'm not taking it anymore. No more. No more." He sounded exhausted, desperate.

  "Jay, you're cracking me up," I said. "If you put that gun down, I'd collapse on the floor laughing. That is the idea, isn't it?"

  But the look in Plankton's eye was not one of devilish merriment, or even of guilt. He looked enraged and crazed.

  "You're going to get in there with your friends," he said, moving into the room with us, and waving toward the back room with his revolver. "And then I'm going to decide what to do with you. A good possibility is justifiable homicide."

  "What would the justification be?" Thad asked.

  "I'm in a bad mood," Plankton shot back. "1 low's that?"

  "Interesting," Thad said, being careful, I guessed, not to worsen Plankton's mood.

  I said, "We're here to rescue you, Jay-to look after your well-being, assuming that's what you want. ' I 'his is a l l in keeping with the terms of my agreement with you and Jerry Jeris. But you seem to have an entirely different idea of my role in all of this that's erroneous. Speaking of roles, it's unclear to me exactly what your role is. Gould you clear that up?"

  "Shut your trap and get the hell in there!" Plankton snarled, moving away from the doorway to the back room, and waggling his large firearm at me.

  "I guess we're going in there," I told Thad, and he followed me past Plankton, who kept the gun raised and his finger poised on the trigger.

  The only illumination in the room was from the doorway we walked through. I could see that the windows had been covered with cardboard on which slogans had been spray-painted. One was FFF Lives! and another was Queer Revenge! It was a movie-of-the-week idea of gay protest, but someone must have thought it could be taken seriously by somebody.

  The smell of nail polish was strong in the room, and it was apparent that here was the room where Leo Moyle had suffered his captivity. But as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, who, I wondered, were the two figures bound and gagged on the couch in the darkest corner of the room? I was about to guess out loud when Thad beat me to it.

  "Are you Miss Annette?" Thad said to the female, a bosomy, large-haired blond woman whose dark eyes were huge with fright. The other figure was that of a slender man in jeans and a white T-shirt, with thinning hair and black circles around his eyes, which also showed fear. Many tattoos adorned the man's arms, but I was unable to make out what they represented.

  The scared woman was not able to answer Thad's question regarding her identity owing to the duct tape pasted across her lower face, and her eyes darted from the J-Bird to Thad to me and back to Plankton and his revolver.

  "I'm starting to get the drift of what happened here," I said. "You're not actually party to a gigantic scam, Jay- unless you're a better actor than anybody I know is likely to give you credit for." Plankton's eyes narrowed as he tried to sort through that.

  "Instead," I said, "it looks like your kidnapping was not a stunt that you knew anything about. You really were dragged out here against your will from New York and held here by these people and at least two others who aren't here right now. You managed to get loose from your bonds during the night, overpower these two, tie them up, and take possession of the revolver they had held on you and earlier on Leo Moyle.

  "You were waiting for the other two members of the gang to return, at which point you would either notify the police, or-once you determined who was behind the operation, the FFF or s
omeone else entirely-you would torment your tormentors for a time before deciding on their ultimate disposition. Am I right?"

  "You're digging your own grave, Strachey," Plankton said. "But keep going."

  "The part you're getting wrong, however, is this, Jay. Because you were blindfolded, you never saw your captors. When Thad and I walked through the front door just now instead of crashing through it, you assumed that we were the other two kidnap-gang members and that we had been part of an elaborate hoax from the beginning. Well, I 'm here to tell you, Jay, that there has been a wicked hoax, yes. But Thad and I were never part of it. We're only here to expose the monstrous hoax and rescue you."

  Plankton was shaking his head with a look of disgust. "What a pathetic wuss you are, Strachey. Christ, you don't even have the courage of your convictions." He indicated the graffiti on the cardboard window coverings, as if Queer Revenge figured importantly in my moral underpinnings. In fact, it ranked far down on my life's wish list, maybe number seven or eight.

  I said, "Jay, you've been understandably unhinged by what you've been through. But before you miscalculate badly and randomly redistribute many of the human organs present in the room-and I do understand your impulse to do so-I want to point out a provable fact that is sure to come as an eye-opener to you."

  Miss Annette's eyes got even bigger. She knew what was coming.

  "Do you know, Jay, who this woman is?"

  "Hell, she's some damn, man-hating, ball-breaking lipstick lesbian! Who gives a wet fart who she is?"

  "No, you're wrong. Do you know where you are?"

  "Shit, no. Where am I, anyway?"

  "You're in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in an apartment over Annette Koontz's nail parlor. Miss Annette here is Steve Glodt's girlfriend. Why don't you remove the tape from across what I'm sure is her pretty mouth and ask her who organized and funded the kidnapping operation?"

  Plankton stood there and said nothing for a long tense moment. You could see what was left of his operational mental machinery spinning fast. Finally, he said, "Say that again, Strachey?"

  "Ask Miss Annette who had what to gain by making you and Leo even madder and meaner than you already are.

  Ask her who is in negotiations with GSN for a radio-TV simulcast deal, only GSN wants more 'edge' on the show, more white male anger."

  Plankton stood for a moment longer staring at me hard. Then he slowly turned his gaze toward Miss Annette. Her eyes stayed on the automatic, which turned toward her also.

  "Is there any truth to that?" Plankton asked her, looking a little dazed now.

  She nodded vigorously and said something that sounded like "Eee! Eee!" but was probably meant to be "Steve! Steve!"

  Plankton stood for a moment longer. Then he sighed, lowered his gun, and said to Thad and me, "Come here. I want you to look at something."

  He found a wall switch, and an overhead light went on. Still holding the automatic, Plankton rolled up his right sleeve. Freshly tattooed on his upper arm was a big heart, and inside it were the words J-Bird Loves Al Gore.

  Thad said, "That looks bad, J-Bird. But it could have been worse."

  "It was," Plankton said. Then he dropped his trousers, tugged at his boxer shorts, turned and bent over. Tattooed on his ample left buttock were the words "And J-Bird Loves"-and on his right buttock-"George W. Bush Even More."

  Plankton yanked his pants up, the gun still in his right hand, and buckled his belt, the gun barrel wobbling dangerously.

  "Glodt probably thought you'd think it was funny," I said.

  "I don't."

  "Apparently not."

  Plankton pointed the gun again. "Gome on. We're all going for a ride. The three of us, I mean."

  "Why don't you let the police handle this, Jay? They're nearby. I can call them."

  "Don't bother. I'll deal with Steve."

  "We don't have a car," Thad said. "Somebody dropped us off."

  Plankton looked at the tattooed man, who 1 assumed was Damien of Damien's Den of In-Ink-Kwity. '"You got a car outside, you fucking pervert?"

  The man nodded and thrust his right hip at us. "(Jet his keys," Plankton said.

  I groped inside the man's pocket and came up with a set of keys.

  "Which car is it?" I said. "The Rabbit?" He shook h i s head. "The Pontiac?" An eager assent-he wanted us out of there.

  "Should I shoot these two before we go?" Plankton said, pointing his automatic, and this led to an outbreak of violent twisting and flopping on the couch. Plankton did not shoot, however. He just snorted and said, "Let's go sec Steve. Steve wanted to deal with GSN, but first he's going to have to deal with me. Bring that box along,"

  Plankton said, indicating an aluminum case the size of an airline carry-on bag that lay atop a nearby table. Then, wielding his gun again, Plankton motioned toward the door to the corridor. Thad and I did what the J-Bird seemed to want us to do, which was to lead the way out of Annette Koontz's apartment.

  Chapter 24

  I drove the old red Trans Am, Thad sat beside me in the passenger seat, and Plankton navigated from the backseat. He held the gun between and just behind our heads.

  Thad said, "Do you know how to handle one of those shooters, J-Bird?"

  "I do. You pull back on the trigger and the thing goes blam, blam!"

  "Yep, I've heard that's how it works."

  We wended our way out of the Oyster Bay commercial district and into a more residential area along Long Island Sound. Plankton was uncertain about where Steve Glodt's house was located. He had been there just once, he said, and he knew it was on something called Center Island, and you had to cross a small bridge to get there. We were unable to ask directions from anyone, what with the J-Bird constantly waving a gun around, so we took several wrong turns and had to backtrack to what Plankton believed was a correct route.

  The roads were slick from the drizzle and patchy fog and I drove with the Pontiac's headlights on. Traffic was building up now, with drivers heading out to church or to pick up bagels and the Sunday papers. Leaving Oyster Bay, we passed a donut shop with a line of cars stretching around the building to the drive-up window.

  Thad said, "J-Bird, couldn't you go for some donut holes? You must be famished."

  "That can wait," was all Plankton said, and soon there were no more donut stores to tempt any of us.

  I had my cellphone on my belt and said at one point, "Mind if I make a call, Jay?

  There are people who are going to wonder what's become of Thad and me."

  "Let them wonder."

  Minutes later we found Center Island. There was indeed a narrow bridge leading onto what even from the entrance to the enclave looked like a place where the shah of Iran might have kept a twenty-room hideaway and a helipad. The roofs of Georgian and Italianate palaces were visible through the trees in the distance.

  A small guard outpost was at the end of the bridge we passed over, but there was no barrier, just a sign that said Turn Around Here.

  "It's just local cops," Plankton said, lowering his gun for the moment. "Keep going.

  Don't even look at the cop house."

  "So Center Island is not a gated community?" Thad said.

  "These people don't need gates," Plankton said. "They're protected by the very fact of their money."

  "It's not working in your case, J-Bird."

  "No, it isn't."

  We wound along a tree-lined road, where driveways, some with wrought-iron gates, led off toward mansions whose rear terraces must have had glorious views of the water. I wondered if Annette Koontz had ever been out this way for a breezy afternoon sail followed by cocktails, but I supposed not.

  I was hoping that Annette and Damien the tattooist had managed to free themselves and had gotten on the horn fast to warn Glodt what he might be in for. Not that 1 knew what Plankton had in mind or exactly what he was capable of, beyond the fetid gas-baggery so beloved by his radio fans. I did know that he had become enraged by what I had told him about Steve Glodt, and that
he was carrying an automatic weapon I was afraid might be loaded.

  "Slow down," Plankton said. "I think it's over there."

  "That driveway?"

  "Yeah, go left, in there."

  It was probably the ugliest house on the island, a grotesque, recently built McMansion done in a hodgepodge of styles exemplifying the culture of waste, and no doubt on the site of some turn-of-the-century graceful marvel that hadn't been grandiose enough for Glodt. I almost wanted to ask Plankton for the gun so I could go in and shoot the media tycoon myself.

  I parked at the top of the driveway in front of the three-car garage next to a forest-green Beemer convertible whose top was up against the drizzle.

  "That's Steve's car," Plankton said. "The rabid weasel is in there."

  I said, "Jay, we can't really be sure…"

  "Get out," he said, pointing the gun, and Thad and I exited the Trans Am at the same time Plankton did.

  "We'll go in through the garage," Plankton said, indicating a single closed door to the right of the three garage doors, which were shut tight, too.

  "Go ahead," Plankton said, but when Thad tried to turn the doorknob, it wouldn't budge.

  "It's locked," Thad said.

  "Then I'll shoot it the fuck open."

  "You don't have to," Thad said, getting out Dave Welch's Swiss Army knife.

  "What's that?"

  "I can probably do this lock with a corkscrew. But it might be alarmed. I'll bet every door and window on this island is alarmed."

  "That doesn't matter. Go ahead. Open it."

  Thad fooled around for half a minute, and then the door swung inward. I though I heard the beep-beep-beep of an alarm go off deep inside the hideous house.

  "Go on in," Plankton said, and we entered the darkened garage, Thad, then me, then the J-Bird.

  Plankton located a light switch to his right, flicked it on, and said, "Well, would you look at that fucker! That's the van they threw me into outside my apartment yesterday!"