There was no Doctor T. J. Eckleburg sign, as in Gatsby, but plenty of suburban retail and office sprawl, most of it identical to what we'd passed in Hempstead. One difference between the commercial suburbia I was familiar with in Albany and that of Oyster Bay was the Long Island preponderance of retail stores in long buildings, probably dating to the 1920s and 1930s and done in a brick "colonial" motif or an "Old English" style that featured leaded windows and exposed timbers. These were the North Shore versions of LA strip malls, except sometimes with second stories.

The strip we parked down the street from included- along with a pizza parlor, a tae kwon do emporium, and a copying center-the House of Annette: Nails of Glory. Of additional interest to Lyle, Dave Welch, Thad, and me-all of us in Lyle's NYPD

Ford-was Annette's next-door neighbor, Damien's Den of In-Ink-Kwity, a tattoo parlor.

At 6:25 Sunday morning, all of the businesses were closed. So was the chain video store we were parked in front of. Traffic was all but nonexistent, and a fine mist was in the air, which was so rainforestlike that I would not have been surprised to hear a macaw cackling or see a salamander skitter across the hood of the Ford.

We sat for several minutes going over our options. Both Barner and Welch were skeptical of my theory-which had become a conviction over the past hour-that Steve Glodt was the mastermind behind the Moyle and Plankton kidnappings. Both cops agreed that powerful people were capable of savage criminal acts-Lyle had seen it numberless times over his long career-but they both doubted that Glodt would be so spectacularly arrogant and reckless.

Having spent a couple of days, off and on, with Jeris, Plankton, and Moyle, I thought I understood them well enough to make this argument: Glodt had calculated he had plenty to gain from the cruel stunt-publicity and, even more importantly, added

"edge" that the Gonzo Sports Network would go for. And he figured he had little to lose if caught. Glodt could well have speculated that if Plankton and Moyle remained in character, they would consider the whole thing a hilarious practical joke-just guys joshing other guys on a colossal scale-and they would consider it unsporting, even unmanly, to press charges or ever to testify in court against the charmingly roguish prankster who also happened to own their network.

Having observed Plankton and Jeris at their most oafish, Thad found my scenario plausible. He was also eager to expose Glodt and, like me, to test the limits of the J-Bird's willingness to let sadistic straight male jerks of a well-known type be sadistic straight male jerks of a well-known type. Lyle was indulging Thad and me by driving us over to Oyster Bay, and Welch came along to watch. On the way to Oyster Bay, Lyle had checked again with the other detectives working the case back in the city, but none reported any breaks.

Lyle said, "Miss Annette living next door to a tattoo parlor does get my attention."

"Is this one of the tattooists that was checked?" Welch asked.

"I'll find out."

Lyle phoned his office, spoke to someone there, and hung up. "It was checked out yesterday by the Oyster Bay department."

I said, "What did the questioning consist of? Did they ask Damien the tattooist if he was involved in the Moyle kidnapping, and he said no, and they left, or what?"

"It could have been something like that."

We sat for another minute looking down the street through the mist at the nail and tattoo parlors. The long business block was set back from the highway about thirty feet, with face-in parking along the facade. The second-story windows bore no signs or lettering, and it looked as if there were apartments behind them. That would square with my information from the J-Bird gang that Glodt's girlfriend lived above her nail parlor. At the center of the block was what looked like a first-floor entryway leading to the second-floor apartments. Fire regulations, I guessed, would have required a second entrance and stairway, probably in the rear of the building.

Thad said, "What if we just went up to the apartment over the nail parlor and knocked on the door?"

"And say what?" Lyle said. "Even if I identified myself as a police officer, whoever's in there could tell me to screw off. I could wake up a judge and ask for a search warrant if I had something more to go on than Strachey's imagination running wild. But I don't, so getting in there with either a legal document or a battering ram is not in the cards."

"The chances are good," I said, "that at this early hour everybody inside the apartment is asleep. Maybe Thad and I could get inside the apartment, look around, and either confirm that the J-Bird is being held in there or that he isn't, and then leave. Thad, do you think you could get us inside?"

"Probably so. It's an old building without a lot of updating otherwise, so it may well have old locks I could go right through. Do any of you have a lobster pick with you?

I reckon not."

Lyle said, "I have a department tool you could use. But I'm just trying to figure out how I'm supposed to explain to a commander-or to a department inspector or to a judge- that the rescue of Jay Plankton was effected through a citizen's breaking and entering-and a B and E that I was myself an accessory to. Or even worse than that and this is the likeliest way for all this to play out-that Plankton isn't in there at all, but my lockpicker was employed in a B and E that led to a ten-million-dollar lawsuit against the department, against an Albany PI, and against a Mennonite turnip farmer from Jersey."

"Eggplant," Thad said.

"But Lyle has a point." Now this was Welch getting into it. "If you going in there the way you said goes wrong, we're all fucked. That's why I think, Thad, that instead of you using Lyle's department equipment, you should use some of the finer implements on my Swiss Army knife, which maybe you found on the roadside somewhere. And that while you go in, Lyle and I should cruise up and down the highway until we get a call from you to either pick you up, and we all go to IHOP for breakfast, or to come to your aid pronto and we do."

Lyle was shaking his head, but instead of objecting he just let out a long sigh and said, "Jee-sus."

Thad and I were in the backseat of the Ford, and when Welch reached over the seat to hand Thad the Swiss Army knife, I saw that Thad had goose bumps on his arm. His hand was not trembling, though, an indication that he was anticipating not sex but house-breaking. An unusual Mennonite was Thad, or so I assumed from my limited experience.

Lyle made Thad and me both memorize his cellphone number, and when we had, we climbed out into a fine spray of light rain.

"This feels nice," Thad said. "I feel like a pile of fresh lettuce at the old Rinella's market in Ephrata when I was a kid. They had a machine that sprayed the produce, and I liked to stick my face in the mist."

"Actually, those gadgets are back," I told Thad, as Lyle pulled onto the highway and headed away from the strip mall. "I saw one in a supermarket recently that not only misted the greens periodically, but when it did so a nearby speaker broadcast thunderstorm sounds."

"And let loose with a blast of Ferde Grofe?"

"I'm not kidding," I told him, and I wasn't.

"No lightning bolts though, I hope."

"Not yet."

We crossed the highway and walked toward the business strip with apartments above it, then cut along the side of the building and around back. There we found an acre of tarmac, with garbage dumpsters next to some of the rear entrances to the pizza parlor and the other businesses. Six cars were parked side by side at the far rear of the paved area, which apparently provided parking for the business employees and the building's second-floor tenants. No light-colored van was among the cars, just Chevy, Pontiac and Honda sedans and a beat-up old VW Rabbit.