I said, "I think your instincts are sound. Fd offer a hundred K at least."

Jeris rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Glodt would love that."

"Who's Glodt?" I said.

Now they both rolled their eyes. Jeris said, "Steve Glodt owns the station and the syndicate that sells the show. Steve still has the first dollar he ever made."

"He keeps it rolled up inside the gold-plated anal suppository he walks around with stuck up his ass," Plankton said.

"That's so it's out of reach of that blond nail-parlor operator Steve keeps on the side in Oyster Bay."

"But just barely out of reach," the J-Bird said, cracking up.

I said, "But doesn't Steve Glodt make millions from the show? A hundred thousand sounds manageable for an entrepreneur as rich as Glodt must be."

"Glodt is richer than God, and he'll be even richer if he can pull off the deal he's negotiating to get the show simulcast on one of the cable sports networks," Plankton said. "A hundred K is basically pocket change for that miserable prick."

"And he could probably write the reward off," Jeris said. "I could check on that and mention it."

"What about Leo's agent?" Plankton asked. "Would Irene have to be brought in?"

"What? You mean to agree on a figure?"

"Sure, and would she take her fifteen percent off the cop?" Plankton said, laughing, and Jeris laughed, too.

"Glodt'd better get it right, or be prepared to take heat from Irene," Jeris said.

I asked, "Does Leo actually have a talent agent? The man has no talent."

Neither Plankton nor Jeris leapt to Moyle's defense. They just stared at me as if I were the dumbest thing they'd seen open its mouth in months.

"Strachey, do you have any idea what my show netted last year?" Plankton said.

"No."

"Try three-point-seven."

"Okay. Three-point-seven."

"The show's seven million listeners tune in for my refreshing iconoclastic wisdom predominantly, but they also tune in for Leo's fag and nigger jokes. Leo doesn't need talent. He's part of the rich chemistry of the show."

I said, "Maybe his agent shouldn't be called a talent agent. Maybe she should be called an asshole agent."

This got them haw-hawing again. There was no way you could insult these people.

They knew how vile they were, and they adored themselves for it.

Plankton said, "There are TV news crews downstairs waiting to jump me when I leave the building. What if some bimbette from Channel 7 asks me how come we're nickel-and-diming Leo's emotional well-being, maybe even his cherry? I'll look hard-hearted and cheap."

"Refer them to Steve," Jeris said.

Plankton blew more smoke. "I don't suppose," he said, "that we could get one of Leo's ex-wives to go on camera and make a tearful plea to the kidnappers. They all hate him, don't they?"

"Yeah, but what about economic considerations?"

"I don't know what kind of deal he got from either Edie or Pam," Plankton said. "What about this gal he was hoping for a nooner with?"

"Jan something."

"How would she be on camera? The cops talked to her earlier."

"They didn't mention putting her out there," Jeris said.

Plankton grew reflective again. He said, "What about the mayor? Will he make a statement?"

"I doubt it'd help. Giuliani and these FFFers? No way."

"It'd be good for him politically to put in a nice word for Leo's virginity."

"Good and bad," Jeris said.

"Now that he's not running, he could give a fuck anyway."

Jeris brightened, and said, "What about Hillary?"

"What about her?"

"She's in bed with the gays. They think she's Shirley Bassey. Get her to plead for humane treatment of Leo and his release as soon as humanly possible."

Plankton looked doubtful. "Christ, after the vicious crap I've said about her and her husband? She'd go on Gabe Pressman and say too bad it wasn't me on the receiving end of the FFF's hot poker."

Jeris drew on his cigar. "And Lazio won't be any help."

"That dork, of course not."

"What about Archbishop Egan? The FFF knows he's just another antigay putz, but if he's out there pleading with the entire archdiocese to pray for Leo's safe return to his loved ones, it might rattle somebody's conscience who knows something."

The J-Bird shook his head. "O'Connor could have pulled it off, but Egan's too new.

He's boxed in. Egan starts hotdogging and crashes, and it's back to the minors for him."

"Do they do that?"

"Not for tongue-kissing altar boys, but for political boo-boos, sure."

"Hey, wait a minute," Jeris said. "Doesn't Leo have a mother?"

"Yeah, but she won't be any help."

"Why?" Jeris said. "Is she black?"

The hilarity set off by that one went on for a good minute. After the laughter subsided, Plankton said, "Leo's ma's in a nursing home up near Boston, and she's down to her last marble. She's out of the equation."

The smoky silence in the room went on for a long moment. Then Plankton said,

"I'd put up cash myself for more reward money, but, God, I'm paying off the boat, and-you know the rest of it."

Jeris snorted sympathetically. "I'm in a similar bind."

More rumination. Finally, Plankton said, "Either we call Steve in Center Island and put in a request for more reward money from the company, and by doing so incur Steve's wrath. Or, we count on the NYPD and our overpaid and so-far underutilized shamus here to save Leo's ass employing the meager resources at their disposal."

"I'm really sorry for you guys," I said. "What can you do? It's like Sophie's Choicer At that, they har-de-hared, but a little tentatively, and then watched as I headed down the corridor to place my telephone calls.

Chapter 10

Julius, on West Tenth Street, had been a West Village tavern since the 1840s, when the Village was a village, and gay since the 1950s, a pre-Stonewall Mount Rushmore of Manhattan gay life. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were three-deep at the bar when I arrived just before six to meet Lyle Barner and his boyfriend Dave Welch.

Barner had told me earlier on the phone that he had chosen Julius to meet in because it was friendly and it had good burgers. It would also be helpful for Dave to be reminded that not every homosexual in New York had been born last week, and that gay life could be about living comfortably in an unfair world and not pressing to change it twenty-four hours a day. It was also a bar, I knew, where hip neighborhood straights sometimes hung out. So Barner, anxious in all-gay venues, could retain the shred of closet-edness he seemed to require.

I half expected Welch to show up pierced and purple-haired, with the words QUEER

BEER tattooed across his exposed buttocks, but when they came in together he resembled a younger version of Lyle Barner. Out of his patrolman's uniform, in Nikes, jeans and a blue-and-white striped polo shirt, Welch was thick and muscular, with a big head of bristly black hair that was only a little longer than his dark shadow of a beard.

He smelled of precinct-house locker-room-shower soap, suggesting that he had just recently been naked, an additionally pleasing image.

Welch smiled at me slyly and said, "Lyle tells me you're assisting the department's detective division on the Moyle kidnapping. You're a fine citizen, Don."