"Surely not, no."

"And, as for Thad Diefendorfer's playing out recover-your-youth adventure fantasies-or, should you choose to think of such a thing as being my own motivation here, laughable as that diagnosis is-if either of us actually happened to be so motivated, so what? It's for a good cause, halting dangerous criminal activity. And, if we succeed, we'll be well-armed with both influence and knowledge in case we decide to chasten or just dilute the influence of the ghastly Jay Plankton-or even, if we can, ruin him for life."

"Well then," Timmy said, "it looks like you're going to do it. Whatever 'it' is."

"You bet."

"In for a penny, in for a pound."

"There comes your Georgetown education again."

"I'll wager you were exposed to similar thinking at Rutgers."

The starlight reflected off Timmy's pale Gaelic half-profile, which I never tired of viewing from different angles, and off his wineglass, which he raised in a salute to the inevitable, more dubious surprises from me.

I said, "I'm amazed you tracked down Kurt Zinsser so fast."

"It was easy. Billy Blount, though, is long gone from Albany. He works for the Bank of America's office in Singapore, where he's got a Chinese boyfriend. The senior Blounts are still here in Albany, but Billy has as little contact with them as he can get away with. I learned all this from Christine Porterfield, who still runs Here 'n' There 'n'

Everywhere Travel with Margarita Mayes out at Stuyvesant Plaza. They visited Billy in Singapore last fall, where they celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of their rescue by Kurt Zinsser and the FFF."

I said, "The FFF has such a noble history, it really is a shame that the name has been tainted by-whoever."

"Billy, Chris and Margarita had not been in touch with Zinsser himself for many years,"

Timmy said. "But they knew where he was, because a friend of Chris's in the Berkshires got interested in llamas, visited Zinsser's farm last summer, and recognized the name. When the friend mentioned Chris and Billy to Zinsser, though, he cooled off, Chris said, and showed no interest in reestablishing contact. So the friend dropped the subject and stuck to discussing raising llamas."

"Where in the Berkshires is the farm?"

"Monterey, Mass. Zinsser has an operation of some local renown. He produces something called Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese."

"Woolly cheese?"

"It has quite a reputation, Chris says. You can pick it up at a number of health-food and New Age-type stores over here."

"There's wool in the cheese?"

"I wondered about that, too. It's a soft cheese, and apparently you suck it out of the wool. The oil in llama fur contains some kind of protein that's healthful in a variety of ways and is supposedly conducive to spiritual well-being. There are pre-Columbian Inca legends about woolly llama cheese, according to Zinsser's advertising, Chris says."

"Hmm."

"I know. A nice, ripe Camembert sounds more uplifting to me."

"So, up and down the Berkshires-from Tanglewood to Mass MoCA to the Norman Rockwell Museum-there are robust, spiritually improved people going around picking llama wool out of their teeth?"

"That's the report I received."

I said, "Then I think Zinsser is our man for sure-the harasser, sending Jay Plankton llama droppings and all the rest of it, and the kidnapper of Leo Moyle."

"Why are you so certain?" Timmy asked.

"Because he may once have been a mere radical gay lib-erationist, but now Zinsser sounds capable of just about anything. Woolly llama cheese? God."

"So, are you going to call the FBI? I probably don't have to remind you that transporting a kidnap victim across a state line is a federal crime."

"No," I said, finishing my Molson. "I still think it would be best for everyone concerned if I handled this myself. I'm going to call Thad. And since tomorrow is Saturday, maybe you could join us for a drive over to the scenic Berkshires."

Timmy looked doubtful. "Should I bring along a firearm?" he said.

"No, I'll handle that. You bring the toothpicks."

Chapter 12

Diefendorfer drove up from New Jersey in the morning, and by noon he and Timmy and I were on the road headed east. During the hour's drive over to Massachusetts, Thad told us stories of FFF rescues he had been involved in or had heard about from his cohorts. Most rescues, he said, were not especially difficult or dangerous; they involved winning over or just bribing lower-level mental hospital employees, many of whom were gay and often eager to be helpful. Doors were left unlocked, alarms disengaged or shorted out, escapees stashed in car trunks. Cash for bribes was always available in the FFF's later years as grateful young rescuees from wealthy families turned twenty-one and were not only immune to involuntary commitments but also gained access to their trust funds.

Rescues that could not be effectuated through these means were harder but also more exciting, Thad said. At one point a gay former cat burglar-rehabilitated after a stay in an Indiana penitentiary and retired from crime, he claimed-was brought in to teach a course in breaking and entering. Thad told us he had taken the course and was one of the foremost lock pickers in central New Jersey. Or had been; some locks worked electronically now, or were even computerized, and Diefendorfer had not kept up with the technology.

Timmy, educated by Jesuits, and Thad, the Mennonite second-story artist, had a good talk about Augustinian ideas of combating great evils by employing lesser evils if and when they became necessary. My own easygoing tendencies in these areas were well known to Timmy, who once described my companionship with moral relativism as "hair-raisingly blithe." He considered my late-adolescent departure from the Presbyterian Church "intellectually vacuous" mainly because it had turned Beethoven's and Schiller's "Ode to Joy" into an

"Ode to Good Taste." So it was interesting to listen to these two chew over moral questions I had sometimes been forced to grapple with in my line of work, and to hear them come down, if not as close to Satan as Timmy sometimes thought I belonged, then closer than either one of them might have admitted if described in those terms.

Uncertain that we would want to make a meal of Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese-Thad said, "I didn't come prepared to comb my lunch"-we stopped in Great Bar-rington at the Union Bar and Grill for salad and Cuban pork sandwiches. This inviting local landmark, with its metal sculptures and SoHo-in-the-hills brushed-aluminum interior, was packed with weekenders from the city. Some were in the Berkshires to have their souls filled up with art, theater, music and dance. Others, less transported by the offerings of the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the dancers at Jacob's Pillow, at least were getting their cultural tickets punched.

After lunch, en route east over the hills on winding, woodsy Route 23, Timmy, Thad and I worked out a plan. The chances were good that even after an event-filled twenty years, Kurt Zinsser would recognize me. So rather than spook him, we decided Timmy and Thad would engage Zinsser and keep him occupied while I looked around the farm. Then I would move in for a confrontation based on what I did or didn't discover.

The Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese Web site had provided us with directions and informed us that visitors to the farm were welcome. That made it less likely, we figured, that Leo Moyle was being held captive in the main farmhouse or cheese factory, but was probably somewhere nearby.