Текст книги "Tongue tied"

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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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.

We noted the location of the nail parlor, the second business from the far end of the building, next to the tattoo den.

Thad said, "What if Miss Annette's apartment is above her nail parlor, but not directly above it? What if we waltz into somebody else's home by mistake?"

"We'll apologize," I said, "and ask where Miss Annette lives."

"Sounds like a plan."

The entrance to the rear stairway was in the center of the building, opposite the one in the front, and Thad had no trouble making his way through the lock in well under thirty seconds.

"You'd make a successful criminal," I told him.

"Thank you. I once was one. Not much of what the FFF did way back when was legal."

At the top of the wooden stairway was a long corridor going off to the left and to the right. Directly ahead was a wider stairway leading down to the front entrance. We turned left, toward the apartment over the nail parlor. There were three doors, however, one apparently to an apartment in the front of the building, one to an apartment in the rear, and one on the far end.

Thad said, "Uh oh."

"It's probably the front one or the rear one," I said.

"Yes, one or the other."

We checked the name cards on the doors. The one on the front apartment said

"Gomspold," and the card on the rear apartment said "D. Carletti."

"Gould it be Annette Gomspold?" Thad whispered.

"Maybe. And I wonder if the other one is Damien Carletti, the tattooist?"

But when we checked the door at the end of the hallway, the name card read

"Annette C. Koontz."

"I smell coffee brewing," Thad said. "But it seems to be coming from Gomspold's place."

These apartments, so close to one another, suddenly struck me as unlikely venues for holding kidnap victims. Even if the captives were bound and gagged and unable to cry for help, as Moyle said had been the case with him, getting them in and out of this building without attracting attention seemed like a stretch. My conviction that Steve Glodt was behind the kidnappings and that the J-Bird was being held, and possibly tortured and mutilated, in Annette Koontz's apartment-assuming that this woman actually had any connection whatever with Glodt-was starting to waver.

Thad said, "I'll just knock on the door lightly to see if anyone is up and about. If there's no response, I'll go in." He had the corkscrew from Dave Welch's Swiss army knife poised.

I thought, What am I doing here? How did I get mixed up in this thing? Why am I not home in bed in Albany with Timothy Callahan, instead of prowling through a building in Oyster Bay, Long Island, probably about to scare the crap out of some innocent workingwoman who is luxuriating in the only rest and solitude she can enjoy all week long? Could I have my PI license revoked for this? Or be convicted of a felony? Would it be house-breaking? Stalking? Invasion and assault?

Thad rapped lightly on Annette Koontz's door.

We waited.

No sound came from the Koontz apartment or from any of the others.

Thad looked at me, but before I could suggest that maybe we should reconsider what now felt like a reckless, even idiotic, misadventure, he had inserted the business end of his implement in the door's single lock, quickly maneuvered it this way and that, and when he turned the loiob, the door swung open.

We stood for a moment looking into a living room furnished with some fat leather chairs and a beige leather couch-Had a woman purchased these objects?-and a large-screen TV. It had been set inside one of those home-entertainment-center type structures ("A man's home is his megaplex"), which had a small bar attached to it. The illumination was dim, coming from a double window whose shades were lowered.

Thad looked at me again, then stepped carefully inside the apartment. I followed him.

A familiar voice said levelly, "Shut the door, you pond-scum, puke-ass-faggot, maggot-head creeps."

Jay Plankton was holding an automatic weapon the size of a grenade launcher, and it was aimed at Thad and me. He was standing in the semidarkness of a doorway leading to a room in the back of the building. His good diction indicated that he still had his tongue.

Thad said, "Hey, J-Bird, we come as friends."

"Rescuers," I added. "If that's what's needed, here we are."

"Shut the door," he said again, and I did as I was told.

Thad said, "So you're in on it? Way cool."

"You fooled me, Jay," I added. "What a prank! You're… you're too much, you crazy fucker, you."

"You can cut the showbiz crap," Plankton snapped. "I've reached my limit, and I'm not taking it anymore. No more. No more." He sounded exhausted, desperate.

"Jay, you're cracking me up," I said. "If you put that gun down, I'd collapse on the floor laughing. That is the idea, isn't it?"

But the look in Plankton's eye was not one of devilish merriment, or even of guilt. He looked enraged and crazed.

"You're going to get in there with your friends," he said, moving into the room with us, and waving toward the back room with his revolver. "And then I'm going to decide what to do with you. A good possibility is justifiable homicide."

"What would the justification be?" Thad asked.

"I'm in a bad mood," Plankton shot back. "1 low's that?"

"Interesting," Thad said, being careful, I guessed, not to worsen Plankton's mood.

I said, "We're here to rescue you, Jay-to look after your well-being, assuming that's what you want. ' I 'his is a l l in keeping with the terms of my agreement with you and Jerry Jeris. But you seem to have an entirely different idea of my role in all of this that's erroneous. Speaking of roles, it's unclear to me exactly what your role is. Gould you clear that up?"

"Shut your trap and get the hell in there!" Plankton snarled, moving away from the doorway to the back room, and waggling his large firearm at me.

"I guess we're going in there," I told Thad, and he followed me past Plankton, who kept the gun raised and his finger poised on the trigger.

The only illumination in the room was from the doorway we walked through. I could see that the windows had been covered with cardboard on which slogans had been spray-painted. One was FFF Lives! and another was Queer Revenge! It was a movie-of-the-week idea of gay protest, but someone must have thought it could be taken seriously by somebody.

The smell of nail polish was strong in the room, and it was apparent that here was the room where Leo Moyle had suffered his captivity. But as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, who, I wondered, were the two figures bound and gagged on the couch in the darkest corner of the room? I was about to guess out loud when Thad beat me to it.

"Are you Miss Annette?" Thad said to the female, a bosomy, large-haired blond woman whose dark eyes were huge with fright. The other figure was that of a slender man in jeans and a white T-shirt, with thinning hair and black circles around his eyes, which also showed fear. Many tattoos adorned the man's arms, but I was unable to make out what they represented.

The scared woman was not able to answer Thad's question regarding her identity owing to the duct tape pasted across her lower face, and her eyes darted from the J-Bird to Thad to me and back to Plankton and his revolver.

"I'm starting to get the drift of what happened here," I said. "You're not actually party to a gigantic scam, Jay– unless you're a better actor than anybody I know is likely to give you credit for." Plankton's eyes narrowed as he tried to sort through that.

"Instead," I said, "it looks like your kidnapping was not a stunt that you knew anything about. You really were dragged out here against your will from New York and held here by these people and at least two others who aren't here right now. You managed to get loose from your bonds during the night, overpower these two, tie them up, and take possession of the revolver they had held on you and earlier on Leo Moyle.

"You were waiting for the other two members of the gang to return, at which point you would either notify the police, or-once you determined who was behind the operation, the FFF or someone else entirely-you would torment your tormentors for a time before deciding on their ultimate disposition. Am I right?"

"You're digging your own grave, Strachey," Plankton said. "But keep going."

"The part you're getting wrong, however, is this, Jay. Because you were blindfolded, you never saw your captors. When Thad and I walked through the front door just now instead of crashing through it, you assumed that we were the other two kidnap-gang members and that we had been part of an elaborate hoax from the beginning. Well, I 'm here to tell you, Jay, that there has been a wicked hoax, yes. But Thad and I were never part of it. We're only here to expose the monstrous hoax and rescue you."

Plankton was shaking his head with a look of disgust. "What a pathetic wuss you are, Strachey. Christ, you don't even have the courage of your convictions." He indicated the graffiti on the cardboard window coverings, as if Queer Revenge figured importantly in my moral underpinnings. In fact, it ranked far down on my life's wish list, maybe number seven or eight.

I said, "Jay, you've been understandably unhinged by what you've been through. But before you miscalculate badly and randomly redistribute many of the human organs present in the room-and I do understand your impulse to do so-I want to point out a provable fact that is sure to come as an eye-opener to you."

Miss Annette's eyes got even bigger. She knew what was coming.

"Do you know, Jay, who this woman is?"

"Hell, she's some damn, man-hating, ball-breaking lipstick lesbian! Who gives a wet fart who she is?"

"No, you're wrong. Do you know where you are?"

"Shit, no. Where am I, anyway?"

"You're in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in an apartment over Annette Koontz's nail parlor. Miss Annette here is Steve Glodt's girlfriend. Why don't you remove the tape from across what I'm sure is her pretty mouth and ask her who organized and funded the kidnapping operation?"

Plankton stood there and said nothing for a long tense moment. You could see what was left of his operational mental machinery spinning fast. Finally, he said, "Say that again, Strachey?"

"Ask Miss Annette who had what to gain by making you and Leo even madder and meaner than you already are.

Ask her who is in negotiations with GSN for a radio-TV simulcast deal, only GSN wants more 'edge' on the show, more white male anger."

Plankton stood for a moment longer staring at me hard. Then he slowly turned his gaze toward Miss Annette. Her eyes stayed on the automatic, which turned toward her also.

"Is there any truth to that?" Plankton asked her, looking a little dazed now.

She nodded vigorously and said something that sounded like "Eee! Eee!" but was probably meant to be "Steve! Steve!"

Plankton stood for a moment longer. Then he sighed, lowered his gun, and said to Thad and me, "Come here. I want you to look at something."

He found a wall switch, and an overhead light went on. Still holding the automatic, Plankton rolled up his right sleeve. Freshly tattooed on his upper arm was a big heart, and inside it were the words J-Bird Loves Al Gore.

Thad said, "That looks bad, J-Bird. But it could have been worse."

"It was," Plankton said. Then he dropped his trousers, tugged at his boxer shorts, turned and bent over. Tattooed on his ample left buttock were the words "And J-Bird Loves"-and on his right buttock-"George W. Bush Even More."

Plankton yanked his pants up, the gun still in his right hand, and buckled his belt, the gun barrel wobbling dangerously.

"Glodt probably thought you'd think it was funny," I said.

"I don't."

"Apparently not."

Plankton pointed the gun again. "Gome on. We're all going for a ride. The three of us, I mean."

"Why don't you let the police handle this, Jay? They're nearby. I can call them."

"Don't bother. I'll deal with Steve."

"We don't have a car," Thad said. "Somebody dropped us off."

Plankton looked at the tattooed man, who 1 assumed was Damien of Damien's Den of In-Ink-Kwity. '"You got a car outside, you fucking pervert?"

The man nodded and thrust his right hip at us. "(Jet his keys," Plankton said.

I groped inside the man's pocket and came up with a set of keys.

"Which car is it?" I said. "The Rabbit?" He shook h i s head. "The Pontiac?" An eager assent-he wanted us out of there.

"Should I shoot these two before we go?" Plankton said, pointing his automatic, and this led to an outbreak of violent twisting and flopping on the couch. Plankton did not shoot, however. He just snorted and said, "Let's go sec Steve. Steve wanted to deal with GSN, but first he's going to have to deal with me. Bring that box along,"

Plankton said, indicating an aluminum case the size of an airline carry-on bag that lay atop a nearby table. Then, wielding his gun again, Plankton motioned toward the door to the corridor. Thad and I did what the J-Bird seemed to want us to do, which was to lead the way out of Annette Koontz's apartment.

Chapter 24

I drove the old red Trans Am, Thad sat beside me in the passenger seat, and Plankton navigated from the backseat. He held the gun between and just behind our heads.

Thad said, "Do you know how to handle one of those shooters, J-Bird?"

"I do. You pull back on the trigger and the thing goes blam, blam!"

"Yep, I've heard that's how it works."

We wended our way out of the Oyster Bay commercial district and into a more residential area along Long Island Sound. Plankton was uncertain about where Steve Glodt's house was located. He had been there just once, he said, and he knew it was on something called Center Island, and you had to cross a small bridge to get there. We were unable to ask directions from anyone, what with the J-Bird constantly waving a gun around, so we took several wrong turns and had to backtrack to what Plankton believed was a correct route.

The roads were slick from the drizzle and patchy fog and I drove with the Pontiac's headlights on. Traffic was building up now, with drivers heading out to church or to pick up bagels and the Sunday papers. Leaving Oyster Bay, we passed a donut shop with a line of cars stretching around the building to the drive-up window.

Thad said, "J-Bird, couldn't you go for some donut holes? You must be famished."

"That can wait," was all Plankton said, and soon there were no more donut stores to tempt any of us.

I had my cellphone on my belt and said at one point, "Mind if I make a call, Jay?

There are people who are going to wonder what's become of Thad and me."

"Let them wonder."

Minutes later we found Center Island. There was indeed a narrow bridge leading onto what even from the entrance to the enclave looked like a place where the shah of Iran might have kept a twenty-room hideaway and a helipad. The roofs of Georgian and Italianate palaces were visible through the trees in the distance.

A small guard outpost was at the end of the bridge we passed over, but there was no barrier, just a sign that said Turn Around Here.

"It's just local cops," Plankton said, lowering his gun for the moment. "Keep going.

Don't even look at the cop house."

"So Center Island is not a gated community?" Thad said.

"These people don't need gates," Plankton said. "They're protected by the very fact of their money."

"It's not working in your case, J-Bird."

"No, it isn't."

We wound along a tree-lined road, where driveways, some with wrought-iron gates, led off toward mansions whose rear terraces must have had glorious views of the water. I wondered if Annette Koontz had ever been out this way for a breezy afternoon sail followed by cocktails, but I supposed not.

I was hoping that Annette and Damien the tattooist had managed to free themselves and had gotten on the horn fast to warn Glodt what he might be in for. Not that 1 knew what Plankton had in mind or exactly what he was capable of, beyond the fetid gas-baggery so beloved by his radio fans. I did know that he had become enraged by what I had told him about Steve Glodt, and that he was carrying an automatic weapon I was afraid might be loaded.

"Slow down," Plankton said. "I think it's over there."

"That driveway?"

"Yeah, go left, in there."

It was probably the ugliest house on the island, a grotesque, recently built McMansion done in a hodgepodge of styles exemplifying the culture of waste, and no doubt on the site of some turn-of-the-century graceful marvel that hadn't been grandiose enough for Glodt. I almost wanted to ask Plankton for the gun so I could go in and shoot the media tycoon myself.

I parked at the top of the driveway in front of the three-car garage next to a forest-green Beemer convertible whose top was up against the drizzle.

"That's Steve's car," Plankton said. "The rabid weasel is in there."

I said, "Jay, we can't really be sure…"

"Get out," he said, pointing the gun, and Thad and I exited the Trans Am at the same time Plankton did.

"We'll go in through the garage," Plankton said, indicating a single closed door to the right of the three garage doors, which were shut tight, too.

"Go ahead," Plankton said, but when Thad tried to turn the doorknob, it wouldn't budge.

"It's locked," Thad said.

"Then I'll shoot it the fuck open."

"You don't have to," Thad said, getting out Dave Welch's Swiss Army knife.

"What's that?"

"I can probably do this lock with a corkscrew. But it might be alarmed. I'll bet every door and window on this island is alarmed."

"That doesn't matter. Go ahead. Open it."

Thad fooled around for half a minute, and then the door swung inward. I though I heard the beep-beep-beep of an alarm go off deep inside the hideous house.

"Go on in," Plankton said, and we entered the darkened garage, Thad, then me, then the J-Bird.

Plankton located a light switch to his right, flicked it on, and said, "Well, would you look at that fucker! That's the van they threw me into outside my apartment yesterday!"

The bay we were standing in was empty, as was the one on the far side of the garage.

But in the middle bay, six feet away, was a light blue Dodge Ram.

A door leading into the house was suddenly flung open violently.

"Shit, it's him!" yelled a large young man in jeans and a tank top. He was followed by an even bigger, more muscular bruiser in an Oyster Bay Fitness Center T-shirt. As they lunged at the J-Bird, he fired a burst from his automatic, hitting one of the goons in the leg and then the other. They fell writhing and screaming onto the concrete floor.

I said, "Jay, unless you want to conduct your radio show from a cell at Attica from now on, we really need to call the police."

"Shut up." He motioned toward the door to the house. I went in, then Thad, and we found ourselves in a pantry anteroom off what looked like a large kitchen just ahead of us.

A lithe little man in designer jeans, a white silk shirt, and sockless loafers appeared in the kitchen door, and when he saw Thad and me and Plankton just behind us, the man went white and turned to run.

Blam! Blam! Blam! went the J-Bird's automatic. I le had fired into the ceiling this time, but he yelled out, "Steve, you barf bag of blue puke! Get back here, or I ' l l blast your prostate right through your shriveled liver and out the other side!"

Though anatomically unlikely, this threat stopped Glodt in his tracks, and he turned back toward us, hi s hands jabbing at the air above him. "Jay, don't shoot me!

Jay, really, it was all in your own best interests. It was all for your career, Jay. For the show. Let's talk. Let me explain. Now you've fucked it up, of course, to a certain extent. But let's salvage what we can. Come on in, let me fix some Bloody Marys…"

Blam! BHam! The gun went off again, this time blasting a gaping hole in a cupboard door. In addition to the cordite, the smells I could make out were vacuum-packed Alaskan smoked salmon and dill sauce.

"Pick up that phone!" Plankton ordered Glodt.

His arms still in the air, Glodt pointed daintily with one finger at a wall phone and said, "That phone? Who do you want me to call, Jay?"

"Call the Center Island cops and tell them not to respond to the alarm. They're probably on their way out here now, so apologize, give them the code, and tell them how embarrassed you are that your Salvadoran maid's stupid six-year-old brat set off the alarm."

"Can I remember all that? You've got me so fucking nervous."

"Do it! Now!"

Glodt did as he was instructed, while Plankton held the big gun three feet from Glodt's face.

When Glodt hung up the phone and reached for the sky again, Plankton said, "Who else is in the house? Is your wife here?"

"No, nobody's here, Jay, so let's talk. Sheila's in the city and it's the maid's day off. Jay, what'd you do to Ken and Wally? Do they need medical attention? I can understand why you're pissed, but… well, hey, that's the point! Get it? You're pissed, and you're gonna stay pissed, I'm sure, and…"

"Get inside!" Plankton barked, waving the gun again. "Go on!"

Glodt edged his way into the kitchen, and we followed. The rear of the large room had a wide window, and misty Long Island Sound spread away grayly in the distance.

"Is Annette okay?" Glodt said. "You didn't shoot Annette, did you, Jay? Please tell me you didn't whack Annette."

Plankton did not answer Glodt's question. Instead, he said to Thad, "Go out to the car and get the case. Come right back in, 'cause if you don't I'm gonna blow Strachey's nuts off. And check on those two bozos on the garage floor. See if I need to come back out there and plug 'em in the gut."

Thad shot me a quick glance, then went out. Plankton peered around the kitchen, a culinary Taj Mahal of polished granite and gleaming brass with a sink-and-counter island in the center. "We'll set up over there," the J-Bird said, indicating a marble-top aluminum-frame breakfast table with four aluminum chairs next to the big window.

"Sit down," Plankton told Glodt, who promptly complied.

Thad was back within seconds with the aluminum case we had carried out of Annette Koontz's apartment. Thad said, "The two men you shot in the leg, J-Bird, are alive, but they need an ambulance, in my opinion. One's semiconscious and they're both bleeding."

"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."