'I didn't know,' Sandifer said. 'Jeez, I'm really sorry.'
I handed Timmy the folder with his name on it and said, 'This is a pretty slender dossier for a pervert as outrageous as yourself.'
He read it. 'This is disgusting. It's from a hotel employee who says- Oh, crime-en-ee.'
I kept on flipping through the bottom drawer searching for Mega-Hypocrite.
'Have you seen this?' he said, moaning.
'I have.'
'That liar.'
'It's always risky placing your trust in economists.'
'He told me he'd never done it before with a North American.'
'And did the earth move?'
'I guess you two have a pretty open relationship,' Sandifer said. 'John and I did for a while, but everything started to come apart, so we went back to monogamy.'
'Our rules are variable,' I said. 'Well, no, that's not quite it.'
Timmy snapped, 'He means it's not the rules that are variable, it's the observance of them. Recently, only by me. I made a mistake once in fourteen years. And look at this putrid bilge! I would not feel any more violated and demeaned if I discovered this garbage in the files of the F.B.I. In fact, this is worse. I can't believe that gay people are doing this to other gay people. This is not a blow against the old-fashioned fear and self-loathing that made gay people miserable through the supposedly recently ended dark ages-it's just a kind of bizarre extension of it.'
Sandifer was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands and saying nothing. Timmy looked over at him and said, 'I guess I've made my point. I'll shut up. You don't need to be listening to this now.'
'It's okay,' Sandifer said dolefully. 'It doesn't matter what anybody says anymore.'
I said, 'There's no Mega-Hypocrite file in here. Assuming that such a file actually existed, somebody seems to have taken pains to excise it.'
Timmy shoved the 'T. Callahan' file back my way as if it were soiling his hands and said, 'Why wouldn't it have existed?'
'Rutka could have planned a file by that name, then changed his mind and used the hypocrite's real name instead. A name on one of the other files might be the real Mega-Hypocrite.'
'So maybe one of the other files is missing. We haven't checked that.'
'Let's do it.'
It took two and a half minutes for Timmy to read off each of the 311 names in the index. A file was located for each name. The files were flawlessly arranged in alphabetical order. Still, the only file missing was the one called 'A for All-American Asshole Mega-Hypocrite.'
Sandifer suddenly looked alert. He said, 'Maybe the books would help.'
We looked at him. 'Books?'
'John kept financial records for the whole outing campaign in Cityscape and Queerscreed. Sometimes he paid people for information. That's not the ideal way to go about it, I know, but John always believed that ethically these things evened themselves out over the long run.'
'Where are these financial records?'
'In my bag. I brought them. I didn't think I should leave them alone in the house.'
'Where's the bag?'
'In the hall.' He went out and came back immediately carrying a big beat-up red shoulder bag stuffed with belongings. He unzipped it, reached in and groped around, and came up with a bookkeeper's bound entry book.
'How is this going to help?' Timmy said.
'Maybe it won't. But if Rutka had informants who dished up dirt that was so critical to the cause that Rutka was willing to lay out cash for it, maybe one of those people can figure out-or will know-who the Mega-Hypocrite is.'
I scanned the ledger. Rutka seemed to have had just one source of income, the family hardware store. 'HDW' brought in from three thousand to four thousand dollars each month. I asked Sandifer if Rutka had owned half the store.
'Forty-nine percent. Ann owns fifty-one. That's the way it was left to them by their father.'
'John didn't resent the difference?'
'He was interested in the income, not the control. Ann runs the store for a good salary and does a good job. And the two of them got along in their way. They were different but they never got in each other's way. John lived his life and Ann lived hers.'
The disbursements included household expenses- utilities, taxes, locksmith-along with occasional 'personal' disbursements, and larger ones for 'office and printing.' Most of the payments in the latter category were made to Kopy-King. There was no category called 'informants' or 'spies' or 'dish.'
There were, however, payments to three entries listed apparently by their initials: NZ, DR, and JG. I'd never seen NZ or DR before, but JG I had. I got out Ronnie Linkletter's file and there it was: the handwritten sheet Rutka had left that said 'From JG Linkletter at motel with A.' Then two long rows of dates. I checked the calendar and saw that they were all Wednesdays, starting the previous July and running into mid-June.
I asked Sandifer if he knew what these initials meant. He puzzled over them and finally said no. The 'A' might have meant Asshole Mega-Hypocrite, but the other initials, if that's what they were, remained indecipherable.
I read aloud the payments to NZ: $320 in December; $435 in January; $310 in February; similar amounts through July. JG received even higher amounts from October through July, totaling nearly $6,000. DR was the big money-maker. He-or she, or it
— was paid an even $ 1,400 per month from the previous September right up through July. According to a notation in the margin, all these payments had been made 'in cash.'
I asked Sandifer, 'Were you ever with John when he met his regular informants? It looks as if that's what these entries refer to.
He could have received information from them over the phone, but he must have met them once a month to hand over the cash payments for their diligent research. People in their right minds don't send cash amounts larger than a dime through the mail these days.'
'No, I never did. John would just say he had to go talk to somebody. Or he had a meeting with somebody. He wanted to keep me out of that part of it. To protect me, was what he said.'
'Protect you from what? You were out in the streets hustling Queerscreed. Wasn't that where the greatest physical risk was?'
'I guess so. I'm not sure what he meant by that- protecting me. I guess he thought some of the people he was after and some of the people they were mixed up with were dangerous. And he was right,' Sandifer added with eyes glistening. 'John knew somehow that some of them were very dangerous people.'
I could no longer argue with that. end user
13
The three of us were in the kitchen the next morning at seven.
'I'll make a few calls while Timmy goes through his Donna Reed routine,' I told Sandifer.
'Who's that?'
'She was one of the great chefs of the middle part of the century,' Timmy said. 'Would you like some eggs? That's what Donald eats.'
'Sure.'
'He used to drink them, blended with orange juice, but now they've all got salmonella and cleaning up the chicken industry would be communistic. Not that the Communists ever cleaned up theirs.'
'I'd like mine fried on both sides with nothing runny anywhere.'
'That's a good precaution to take.'
I dragged the phone into the cubbyhole under the front stairs, shut the door, and phoned Bub Bailey. He was
