"If they need to go to the hospital, they can walk," Plankton said. "Tell me, Steve, are those two on the garage floor a couple of the goons who snatched me from in front of my apartment yesterday?"

Screwing up his face, Glodt affected a look of concerned contrition. "They didn't hurt you, did they, Jay? They're just a couple of zit-heads who work for a guy in Garden City I borrowed money from one time when I had a personal-debt type of situation, and I was well aware when I took these dorks on that it would not have been to your advantage or mine if you had been injured in any way. I made myself one thousand percent clear on that particular score. I just want to be sure you understand that. Anyway, it was just like if those FFF assholes had been the ones who did it. Except those cocksuckers might really have roughed you up, and we were nice to you, and in fact we were actually going to let you go this afternoon.

"Jesus, if you'd just been a little more patient, Jay, you'd have been back in Babette's pussy by tonight, and the whole deal would have paid off big time for me and you and Leo and Jerry and all of us. Except, no, you had to go all macho on me and grab Annette's gun I gave her to protect her against the beaners moving into Oyster Bay, and then you come charging over here like some Jersey wise guy, kapowee, kapowee, kapowee. But it's not too late, you know, Jay? Knowing what you know, perhaps it would be appropriate, like, if you got a bigger slice of the GSN deal. Would that smooth things over between us? I'll bet my left devil dog it'd go a long way toward making things right, am I right?"

Plankton stood staring at Glodt, his red eyes full of fury. Somewhere along the way he had lost his shades, and his wrecked mug was not a pretty sight without them.

"Explain this to me, Steve," Plankton said, ignoring Glodt's entreaties. "On WINS they were saying my tongue was ripped out and sent to the Post. Fortunately, that was a fat, stupid lie. Whose tongue was it you sent over there, anyway?"

Glodt tried to chuckle, but the sound he made contained more desperation than amusement. He said, " I t was a sheep's tongue. Ken found it in a Middle Eastern butcher shop in Jersey City. The cops would have figured it out, but by then you'd've been freed and back on the air, anyway. Your loyal fan base would've known you still had a tongue to flap-and of course Babette would have known it, too, heh heh heh."

Plankton was pondering something. "Jerry wasn't in on this, was he?"

"What do you think?"

"Just answer my question before I shoot your black heart across your backyard and across the sound to Norwalk!"

"No, no, Jerry didn't know! He was sick about the whole thing. He even got me to raise the reward money to six-five. I just used Jerry, picking up information on the police investigation, and on some PI from Albany that was involved, and some Amish queen from the FFF that we tried to make it look like he was involved in the snatch.

I'm sure Jerry would've gone along with it if he knew, but the way I did it was even better. Don't you get it, J-Bird? It would only really work perfectly if you all were sincerely distraught and ripshit."

Plankton considered carefully what he had heard. Then he said to Thad and me,

"Tie him down. I want him stretched over the table, butt end up, and tied tight.

Find some rope, or some neckties in his bedroom."

"Hey, wait a minute…!"

Blam! Blam! Blam! The gun went off again, smashing a shelf full of what looked like Venetian fruit bowls. The far side of the kitchen was a rainbow of flying Murano.

I said, "I'll go look in the garage for something to tie him up with."

"No, you won't," Plankton said. "I don't trust you for shit, Strachey. I didn't trust you from the second I laid eyes on you, you being some limp-wristed Albany fairy. Use those electrical cords," Plankton said, waving his gun at some extension cords, one leading to a lamp on a phone table, another to a television set mounted on a metal wall shelf. "Those'll work. Tie him down with those cords."

Glodt, on whom the automatic was trained, looked frantic. "Jay, what are you going to do?"

"You'll see."

"You're not going to rape me, are you, Jay?"

"Not exactly."

"Jay, I think you're losing it. You're not the J-Bird I thought I knew."

"Do it!" Plankton snapped at Thad and me.

It took four extension cords, including two Thad retrieved from the pantry, for us to tightly secure Glodt's feet to the legs of one side of the table and his wrists to the other. Glodt had begun to whimper. He had no idea what he was in for, though by now I was beginning to think I did.

"Get the case," Plankton said calmly.

I picked up the aluminum case Thad had brought in from the car and placed it on a nearby chair.

"Open it," Plankton said.

I unsnapped the latches and lifted the lid.

"Pull his pants down," Plankton said, and Glodt let out a scream.

Thad said, "What is that thing, an electric nose-hair trimmer, or what? Are you going to shave his butt-hole or something, J-Bird? Look, I have to tell you, this is getting to be a bit more than I can stomach. Honestly."

"What you're looking at," Plankton said, motioning toward the contents of the case,

"is a tattoo gun along with its inks and accessories. I was blindfolded at the time, so I can't say for sure. But my guess is, this is the tattoo gun that that fruitcake in Oyster Bay used to desecrate the holy temple of my crumbling, pathetic, middle-aged body.

And now, Steve, your holy temple is about to be desecrated, too."

Glodt screamed again and began to struggle violently. Plankton stepped closer to Glodt and shoved the barrel of the automatic against Glodt's right temple. Glodt froze in place but almost immediately began to shake all over.

"Strachey, you can do the honors. If you refuse, I'll blow Steve's brains out. If you think I'm bluffing, go ahead and test me."

"I've never used one of these things," I said.

"You can experiment. On Steve."

"I took your basic Introduction to Art History in college, but I have no artistic talent myself."

"You won't need any. This doesn't have to be perfect. Anyway, it's pretty much all text."

"I thought it might be."

"Plug it in."

"I might need another extension cord."

"Thad, find another cord." Thad glanced at me again, and I nodded. I was beginning to understand that everyone in the room would almost certainly survive the day unin-jured and largely intact.

Plankton confirmed this by saying, "Tattoo what I tell you to write on Steve's butt.

Then I'll put the gun down and you can call the cops. But if you don't do it, I'll kill Steve.

Deal?"

"Deal," I said.

Glodt mewed softly as I loosened his belt and tugged his jeans and undershorts down in the back.

Thad returned with another extension cord and plugged one end into a wall socket near the coffeemaker. The other end I attached to the tattoo gun. The device resembled a large hypodermic syringe with a needle in the end. When I flicked a switch, the needle vibrated.

I said, "These little jars appear to contain ink. What color would you like, J-Bird?

Or should I ask Steve?"

"Blue would be good," Plankton said. "It was good enough for me, and it will be good enough for Steve."

I removed the lid from a jar of dark blue ink. With the tattoo gun poised above Glodt's buttocks-which were remarkably firm and well-preserved for a man who was probably in his early fifties-I said to Plankton, "What is it, J-Bird, that you would like me to write?"