"I've got something to tell you, and you're not going to like it," Barner said.

"Not like what?"

"I got hold of the FBI file on the FFF."

"That might help. What's not to like?"

"You're in it."

Welch said, "Hey, a man with an FBI file. You must be doing something right, Don.

Unless you're in the KKK, NAMBLA or the Eagle Forum."

"What am I doing in the FFF's file? I know I've got an antiwar file, but FFF? Have you got a copy of it?"

"Back at the precinct," Lyle said. "It's not that you were FFF. It's about Kurt Zinsser and the Blount case. Zinsser and the FFF rescued Billy Blount from the funny farm his parents put him in when he was a kid, and later you rescued Blount from his parents when they tried to use the phony murder charge to have him committed a second time.

Did you know that afterwards the senior Blounts tried to have you charged with obstruction of justice?"

"No."

"They did. Stuart Blount and his lawyer, Jay Tarbell."

"Tarbell. That slug. I ran into him on Washington Avenue last week. He came out of the Fort Orange Club, patted his new Mercedes 230 SL on the hood ornament, and winked at me."

Barner said, "In January 1980, the US attorney turned the case over to the FBI. The bureau looked at the thing, and the investigating agents concluded you had probably broken an undetermined number of laws in the course of clearing Billy Blount of the Steve Kleckner murder. But they weren't sure which laws they might have been.

The assistant prosecutor in charge doubted his office could make obstruction of justice stick, so the top man decided to pass, in spite of pressure from Tarbell and Albany city hall."

"Bill Keck," I said. "A Jimmy Carter appointee who always struck me as a reasonable man. I never knew just how reasonable."

Welch was looking at me intently. He said, "Lyle described you as some kind of anarchist. A hippie without the incense and the love beads. But it sounds as if you knew exactly what you were doing, and you were nimble as hell."

Anarchist? Hippie? Were? "I've managed to right a few wrongs over the years in a borderline sort of way and still stay out of Leavenworth. I've also wronged a few rights, but we don't need to get into those."

Barner snorted and said, "I'll say."

"What else is in the FBI report on the FFF?" I asked. "I'd like to see it."

"Stop by the precinct and I'll make you a copy," Barner said. "But overall it's the same names Diefendorfer gave us, and not even as up-to-date. The file is fun to read, though.

I wish I had the cojones to pull off some of the stunts the old FFF guys got away with."

We both looked at Welch, who I guessed we all knew had a similar wish for Barner.

But Welch just said, "I'd like to read the report, too, but later. I've gotta be somewhere at eight-thirty."

Barner tensed, and I guessed I knew what that meant. While we had burgers, Barner told stories of some of the old FFF's more daring exploits as described in the FBI files, and then Welch departed. As I left with Barner for his office and then my train back to Albany, I asked Barner if Welch had a date with someone else.

"There are two of them," Barner said. "Dave asked me to come along, but I'm not into that. He's asked me several times, even though he knows that's not what I want in a relationship. They're constantly doing poppers and shit like that. The three of them also use other substances, Dave admitted to me one time, that no police officer should get anywhere near, personally speaking. This isn't for me, Stra-chey. I want Dave, I go for Dave, but this is not who I am."

I wondered if Barner had figured out that, since Welch repeatedly offered things that were repugnant to Barner, the offer was either a cruel taunt or perhaps not sincerely meant. Now I was feeling sorry for Barner and guilty all over again.

Chapter 11

Timmy said, "If you'd join the twenty-first century and carry a cellphone, I could have reached you."

"You could have located me through Lyle, through NYPD. I was with Lyle at a bar in the Village, and you could have had him paged. What you've come up with is terrifi-cally important. Of course, it is better that Lyle not know about Zinsser just yet. I want to check this llama-farm thing out on my own first, along with Thad Diefendorfer."

"Right," Timmy said. "You and Thad, the Mennonite middle-aged caper artist. The Lavender Hill mob rises again."

We were seated on the glider out on our back deck under the summer stars, which were just barely visible through the blaze of Friday-night light from nearby Lark Street, Albany's Via Veneto. Timmy had made some of his superb guacamole, a skill he had mastered, inexplicably, during his Peace Corps tour in India. He had also brought out a Molson for me, and for himself a chardonnay selected for its fluty tone and delightfully twee outlook, as well as for its reasonable cost at the Delaware Avenue Price Chopper.

I said, "When they decided to rob the Bank of England, the Lavender Hill mob were mostly over-the-hill has-beens, whereas I am an accomplished professional investigator at the peak of my powers. So the has-been description certainly doesn't apply to me."

"Of course not."

"And when you meet him, you'll see that while Thad's guerrilla-activity skills might be rusty from disuse, he's as keen and fit as ever."

"Fit and keen. Sounds good."

"Of course, I didn't know him way back when."

"Explain to me again," Timmy said, "why you're pairing up with Diefendorfer to work ahead of Barner and the police instead of with them. I still don't quite get that."

"Oh?"

"What it sounds like is, you've resumed your twenty-year-old head games with Lyle, where you two play out your sexual attraction to each other-which for practical and personality reasons is futile-with complex little rituals of mutual psychological abuse. I used to be the not-directly-involved third party in the ritual, but now it's Thad Diefendorfer. Having Diefendorfer involved instead of me adds an extra charge, because however uninterested you are in him on a conscious level, he sounds like he's just enough of a turn-on to get you radiating little testosteronal vibrations that Lyle picks up and which drive him up the wall.

"Which is what nature apparently intended for you and Lyle to do to each other now and unto eternity. Plus, of course, Diefendorfer does sound like an interesting guy to be around, so I'll envy you that. If, that is, you decide to proceed with this plan to free Leo Moyle on your own, ostensibly to save the neo-FFFers from their own wretched excesses. But I have to say that the whole thing sounds pretty wacky to me."

Almost from the moment we met, Timmy had a way of explaining me to me with such thoroughness and stark plausibility that it threatened to use up all the analytical oxygen in the room. It was one of the reasons I was in awe of him, and when he did it, it filled me with love and terror. My conflicting impulses were always to adore him unabashedly, or to get my revolver out of the bedroom closet and pump him full of hot lead.

I said, "There may be a certain amount of truth in what you say."

"Uh-huh."

"But one part you're leaving out is, Lyle is far more dis-combobulated by me than I am by him."

"I'll take your word for that."

"So my working closely alongside Lyle, as opposed to in approximate tandem with him, would actually hurt the investigation. Lyle going around unhinged would not be good for Leo Moyle, for Jay Plankton, or for Lyle himself."