family than his real family was. He told me that once. It was hard for him, but he told me. So why did he stiff me?'
'You two hadn't been having any problems?'
'No, I don't think so. No, no, a long time ago. But lately-we loved each other and we thought we'd always be together. So why?
Why did he do it?'
I was as stumped as Sandifer, and mad at Rutka all over again. 'Well, he left you some money, right?'
'Yes. Several thousand dollars. I'm grateful. I'll be able to use it. I'll have to find a place to live.'
We looked at each other, but we'd both run out of words. Again I wanted Rutka to come back from the dead so that I could grab him and force him to answer a list of questions that kept getting longer and longer. end user
16
I spent three hours back at the house, poring over Rutka's files. I made notes, then compared them and rearranged them, and memorized the data as well as I could. When Timmy got home, I told him I'd have to postpone dinner again and would see him later at the hospital.
At six I drove out to Wolf Road in Colonic
'I'd like to speak to Mr. Parmalee, please. Could you tell me where his office is?'
The desk clerk at the Parmalee Plaza gave me a chilly once-over and said, 'There isn't any Mr. Parmalee. This hotel is owned by the Zantek Corporation and they just call it the Parmalee Plaza.'
'How come?'
'I really couldn't tell you that.'
'In that case, I'll speak to Mr. Nathan Zenck. I understand he's the night manager.'
'Is Mr. Zenck expecting you, sir?'
'No, but he shouldn't be surprised to see me show up.'
'Your name, please?'
'Donald Strachey.'
'And what is it that you would like to speak to Mr. Zenck about?'
'I'm trying to find out-and maybe he could help me-just who the hell is Parmalee?'
He glared, the telephone receiver he was clutching poised in midair. 'I don't know whether I can bother Mr. Zenck with a question like that.'
'All right, forget Parmalee. Tell Mr. Zenck I'm an associate of John Rutka and I've got some questions concerning John Rutka's death.'
This loosened him up. He blinked several times. 'Are you with the police?'
'Were any police officers associates of John Rutka?'
'What?'
'I said I was an associate of John Rutka, and you asked me if I was with the police. You were the one who made the connection.
How come?'
'No, I- That's not what I meant. I'll call Mr. Zenck.' He picked up the receiver and dialed and waited. 'Nathan, a Donald Strachey is here to talk to you about John Rutka, he says.' He listened for a quarter of a minute, then hung up. 'I'm sorry, but Mr.
Zenck doesn't know anyone by that name and he's in conference just now. He says perhaps you can write him a letter. Do you have our mailing address?'
I sighed. 'Get him back on the line,' I said, 'and ask him how would he like it if I called up the Zantek Corporation and got Zantek himself on the line and told him that the night manager of his overpriced, overdecorated new hotel in Colonie, New York, out by the Albany airport, was a scumbag, greedy-ass Peeping Tom, and I had the financial records of a murdered man to prove it? Bother him in conference with that and see what happens.'
He looked as if he might put in for an immediate transfer to some remote, undesirable dead end of an outpost such as, say, Albany, New York, except, ha ha, he was already there.
He dialed again.
'I think you'd better talk to Mr. Donald Strachey.' He hung up. 'Mr. Zenck will be right out.'
'Thank you.'
Like the desk clerk, Zenck was svelte and silky and meticulously mustachioed, and a little blurry, as if he'd been severely airbrushed. Twenty years earlier this effect could only be achieved on photographs but now it was being done on actual human beings, though I didn't know how.
'Mr. Strachey?'
'I am he.'
'Nice to see you.' He beamed. 'Why don't we step into my office?'
'Let's step.'
I followed him down the corridor and past an unmarked door, which he closed behind us. Zenck's spacious- enough digs included a desk with a marble top and a computer terminal off to one side, two leather couches, a small bar, and a couple of rust-colored rectangles in silver frames placed on the otherwise bare walls as if they were family portraits. Also among the furnishings was a series of small-screen video monitors mounted on racks next to Zenck's desk. One showed the spot at the front desk where I had recently been standing. Another showed a panning shot of the restaurant, which at six-fifteen was nearly filled. A third shot swept the hotel lobby and a fourth the murky bar.
A fifth screen was blank, and I said to Zenck, 'What do you look at on that one, guests in the privacy of their rooms?'
'Won't you sit down?' he said.
I plopped onto one couch and he stood by the other.
'Would you care for a drink?'
'Unh-unh.'
He sat down, adjusted his jacket, and said, 'Did you say you were a friend of John Rutka's? That's the man who was murdered, isn't it?' He gave me a concerned look.
I said, 'John Rutka's financial records show that he made sizeable monthly cash payments to you in return for reports on who among your paying guests was fucking whom. I'm investigating Rutka's death and want to ask you some things about your sideline racket. First off-'
'Whoa, whoa, whoa,' he said, shaking his head and grinning. 'I think you have me mixed up with someone else-Don, is it?'
'Donald Strachey. I'm a private investigator in Albany. I worked for John Rutka and have had access to his records. You're in there. All over the place-Nate, is it?'
'Nathan. But you really must have me-'
'Well, Nathan, it's all down in black and white. Amounts, dates the cash was delivered, and information on your guests' activities that's noted as coming from you and could only have come from one source.'
He looked at me beadily. 'That's a lie. Those are lies. Is there anything in those records in my handwriting?'
'No, but the stuff obviously came from you. Anybody going through it can see that. Any jury would be convinced.'
He tried to cover up the shudder that went through him, but couldn't. 'Oh, God.'
I said, 'Your front-desk man struck me as a man who would not hold up well under cross-examination in a courtroom. And of course if the cops came out here with a flying squad and interrogated every desk clerk and chambermaid and busboy and bartender who was slipped ten bucks for tipping you off on a local personage apparently involved in some same-sex conjoining on the hotel premises, a certain number of them would be sure to own up. It's mere statistical probability. But- lucky for you-the cops haven't seen those records yet, and they may never. That depends.'
