The phone rang and I picked it up. It was Joel McClurg, editor of Cityscape, the paper Rutka wrote for until he started outing well-known non-ogres.
'Strachey, did you hear about John Rutka?'
'He died in a fire, I know. It's awful.'
'I heard you were working for him and you might have some ideas on what's behind this. I'd like to send my reporter over to talk to you.'
'Sure, but I won't be able to tell him much. The Handbag police know as much as I do.'
'Sure they do. What kind of work were you doing for Rutka?'
'Well, that's confidential, Joel. I'm sure you understand that.'
'Strachey, the bastard is dead. This would be on background. We wouldn't quote you.'
I said, 'Rutka had been threatened and shot in the foot, and yesterday his house was firebombed. He hired me to protect him.'
'Nice job.'
'Listen, you dealt with the guy. Did you believe half the things he said about himself?'
'No, maybe ten percent But he was careful with what he wrote; about other people. I did random checks of his Sources and they were good.'
'He was also a true believer and ruthless con artist for the cause. I got some background on him and the way he operated. I concluded the attacks on him in Handbag were staged and I dropped him, and then somebody killed him. I made my choice according to the evidence I had and it turned out I was wrong.'
'I'm sorry. That's all you know?'
'That's about it.'
'What about his files? I know he kept dossiers on all these people he was after for their hypocritical ways. Where are the files now?'
'I don't know. Nobody seems to be able to locate them. The Handbag cops were asking me, but I was no help. Eddie Sandifer doesn't even know. You know how neurotic Rutka could be.'
'Well, I'd hate to see all that garbage fall into the wrong hands.'
'You said it. Now that I've been forthcoming with you, maybe you can help me out, Joel. I told Bub Bailey, the Handbag police chief, that I'd pass on any information I came across that might help in the investigation. Here's a question you might be able to answer without breaking any rules of journalistic ethics.'
'Go ahead.'
'When Rutka was writing for you, did he ever mention anybody he considered a lot worse than the other people he was outing?
Somebody he might have considered the biggest hypocrite of all?'
Without hesitation, McClurg said, 'As a matter of fact, he did. I was going to mention it to you. As soon as I heard Rutka had been killed, I remembered this conversation we had last fall. We were sitting around in my office late one day after he brought his copy in. John told me there was somebody he wanted to get who was so evil- that's the word he used-so evil that he would do almost anything to expose this guy. But he was having trouble getting the goods on him, and he was feeling pretty frustrated.'
'He gave you no clue at all who it was?'
'Just that it was someone who had connections with other people he said he was trying to out. He said he might be able to get this guy by way of the others. Not long after that we had our philosophical differences and parted company and I never heard any more about it. It might have been one of the local celebrities he did a job on later in Queerscreed, but I can't imagine who. The weatherman? The insurance agent? None of these people struck me as coming close to the epitome of evil. That's why we disagreed and I had to drop his column.'
'But the evil one came back to you when you heard John had been killed.'
'Maybe I'm just being melodramatic, but it was the first thing that hit me. One thing Rutka said did it. He said that if he somehow managed to nail this one, he didn't know what might happen.'
'To him?'
'That's how I took it. He was always so cocky. But when he talked about this one, he seemed less sure of himself. He seemed scared. So maybe he was closing in on the guy and the evil one saw him coming and killed him.'
'Are you going to put that in the paper?'
'I'm hoping my reporter will be smart enough to interview me. If he isn't, as his editor I'll suggest that he do so.'
'When will your next edition be out?'
'Not for a week. Rutka's timing on this was poor for a weekly like ours. When the T-U calls to interview me, I won't bring this up if they don't ask. Or maybe even if they do. And the television bozos won't be interested.
They hate this. The whole thing cuts too close to the bone for them and could affect revenues. But pass it on to the Handbag cops if you want to. Or they can call me.'
'I'll pass it on.'
'You're not working on this on your own, are you, Strachey? That wouldn't be out of character.'
'I'm helping out where I can, but that's all.'
'I can imagine what that means. Well, when you're about to pounce on the killer, let me come along, will you? We've never had an exclusive on a homicide arrest before.'
'Sure thing, Joel. But don't count on me. I'm way out on the periphery of this one.'
He laughed and hung up. He doubted my word and I knew why. Temporarily I had become John Rutka, but after I solved the murder and destroyed the files I could become myself again. That was my plan. end user
14
The 8:25 A.M. 'Hometown Folks' news insert on Channel Eight led with the story on John Rutka's death. A reporter stood in front of the smoke rising from the charred ruins of a house near the pocketbook factory and announced that police had tentatively identified a body found in the rubble as that of 'controversial gay activist John Rutka.' A fireman showed up to make the obliga-tory statement that the house had been 'fully involved' when the firefighters arrived and to label the blaze 'suspicious.' Timmy had already left for work and wasn't there to ask, 'What was the fire suspicious of?'
Bub Bailey appeared briefly to say that Rutka had been reported kidnaped earlier in the evening and that additional evidence pointed to foul play. A full investigation was being launched, he said.
Other stories on the 'Hometown Folks' news-quickie concerned a full-landfill crisis in a Greene County town where residents had begun to heap their garbage in the town supervisor's elderly mother's front yard; a statement from recent U.S. Second Circuit Appeals Court nominee and former Albany State football star Emmett 'Pincher' Goerlach insisting that his remark in a 1989 speech to the Albany Rotary Club urging mandatory HIV testing for all unmarried Americans was 'taken out of context' by its ACLU critics; and an elementary school in Watervliet that was raising money to send a bird with a broken wing to the Mayo Clinic.
Ronnie Linkletter, shoved from the heights of six and eleven after being outed in Queerscreed, came on for a quick do-si-do in front of a weather map that had a big winking smile face over the Northeast. This meant it would be sunny. I studied Linkletter's boyish face for signs of stress or anxiety but could discern none. His seemed to be as carefree and unrevealing as the smile face on the map.
Sandifer watched the news with me. When the report on the fire and Rutka's death came on, he slid into despondency and then shifted around and grew suddenly angry when Ronnie Linkletter appeared.
'He could be the one,' Sandifer said. 'He was one of the people who told John he was going to get him for what he did, and he could be the one who did it.'
'He could.'
I dialed around to the other area stations but had missed their local reports. The Schenectady PBS outlet was on the air even at this early hour with its pledge-week team and a fund-raising festival of June Allyson- Jimmy Stewart movies and reruns of The Bell Telephone Hour. The station was advertising a repeat showing of a Kingston Trio concert for its hipper viewers.
