He looked at me and made no move to take back the wad of cash wrapped with a rubber band. 'I suppose you want me to suck your dick,' he said. 'Is that what this is all about? You want me to come over there and get down on my knees and suck your cock and lick your balls.'
'Why did you work so hard to kill the hate-crimes bill?' I said.
He fell back now and snorted once. 'I don't believe this. You call me up and threaten me with Rutka's goddamn files and then when I try to play your game the way you want it played, you back off. What's with you anyway, Strachey? What do you want?'
I said, 'It's true, I did introduce the subject of the files in hopes of getting your cooperation, Bruno. But I don't want your money, and God knows I don't want you slobbering on any part of me. I just want you to answer two questions and then we can talk about the files. The first question is-I repeat-why did you work so hard to kill the hate-crimes bill?'
He shifted his gown and crossed his legs huffily. 'It's a waste of time.'
'The bill?'
'People who beat up queers are people who are going to beat up queers. They don't give a good goddamn what the law says.'
'Convict a few of them and put their pictures on the front of the Post being led off in chains,' I said, 'and word will get around. Some of them who'd otherwise do it will think twice.
It'd make a difference, just like the federal civil-rights laws helped end lynching in the South.'
'Honey, you live in a dream world,' he said, sniffing. 'Anyway, if a couple of stupid queens go swishing around down by the docks at three in the morning, maybe they're asking for trouble.'
'What if they're swishing around at Seventh and Bleecker at eleven-thirty? Or Third and St. Mark's Place at ten to ten? Are you suggesting that there should be times and places when queer-bashing is restricted and times and places when it's not? How about alternate-side-of-the-street queer-bashing, and violators will have their bricks and lead pipes towed away? You're a dealmaker, Bruno. How's that for a compromise?'
He sighed deeply. 'You know goddamn well why I worked against the legislation, Strachey. The man I work for hates fags. The senator believes homosexuality is an abomination and homosexuals are abominable and they deserve whatever they get.'
'Whatever'they'get?'
'All right. We.'
'Do you share the senator's views, Bruno?'
He reddened and for a long moment said nothing. Then: 'I do what everybody does who can get away with it. I get on top and I stay there through any means at my disposal. If you're not doing that, my self-righteous friend, it is because you are weak.'
I thought, Oh, hell, he's one of those. Arguing with one was like climbing a greased pole, except less intellectually rewarding.
I said, 'Does the senator actually believe that you're not gay, that Rutka's column was a smear campaign by the Democratic minority in the senate?'
He chuckled. 'Yes.'
'Well, if you don't answer my next question, Bruno, I'm going to march into the senator's office the first time you're not there to guard the door, and I'm going to dump John Rutka's entire dossier on you onto the senator's desk-notes, memos, diaries, audiotapes, videotapes-a veritable Library of Congress of your sexual misadventuring. A lurid mixed-media cavalcade featuring Bruno Slinger and a variety of chaps in their birthday suits, wienies agog. What would you think of that?'
'I would consider it the act of a desperate scumbag. Are you saying there are actual tapes? I find that hard to believe.'
'Remember Kevin?' I made this up.
'Oh, God.'
'You didn't know you were being taped?' I made this up too. There were no audio or videotapes of anyone in any of Rutka's files.
'I can't remember who would have- Oh, God.'
I said, 'Tell me who you were with last night.'
'That's the other question?'
'That's it. Answer it and then we can talk about the disposition of your file.'
He looked more confident now. 'The Handbag police chief came into my office today-just walked right in unannounced. If he had stayed a second longer, I would have had to ask the Capitol Police to remove him. The man apparently suspects me of John Rutka's murder. Can you imagine?'
'Of course I can imagine. Practically everybody who knows you can. When Rutka outed you in Cityscape, you told people you were going to rip his balls off. You probably wouldn't even think of it as murder, just real-politik. That's what people think. Did you do it?'
Without batting an eyelash, Slinger said, 'John Rutka deserved what he got. He was a danger to society who deserved to be removed from it one way or another. I laughed when I heard he was dead. I was dee-lighted. But of course I had nothing to do with it. I'm not stupid. Too many people would want to pin it on me and I'm far too intelligent to make myself vulnerable by actually committing the noble but unfortunately unlawful deed. No, I did not kill John Rutka, and I can prove it.'
'How? What's your alibi for last night?' 'I spent the evening with two of Albany's most distinguished citizens. Both of them will vouch for my presence at a small get-together in Colonie from approximately seven P.M. until just before midnight.'
'Do these two distinguished citizens have names?' 'Ronnie Linkletter and Scooter Raymond.' Only in the benighted age in which we live could a local TV weatherman and a pretty-boy dim-bulb anchor on the six o'clock news be described by anyone, even a man with a mind as warped as Bruno Slinger's, as 'distinguished.'
Scooter Raymond was a recent arrival in Albany, brought in by Channel Eight to replace the ancient, tightly wound Clem Snodgrass after Snodgrass suffered an on-air stroke that left him repeating the words 'Back to you, Flossie-Back to you, Flossie
— Back to you, Flossie' twelve or fifteen times before the picture switched to co-anchor Flossie Proctor, a woman normally seen with her head thrown back in inexplicable perpetual ecstasy but who appeared vaguely human for the first time in twenty years the night Clem Snodgrass's neurons began to pop on-camera.
In a line of endeavor where the men are permitted to bear a striking physical resemblance to Joseph Stalin in his tomb but the women are expected to show up every night looking like The Birth of Venus, Flossie Proctor was no kid. There were those who speculated that Flossie's days were numbered now that she shared the anchor desk with a man who had fewer chins than she. I knew nothing of Scooter Raymond other than what I'd learned from Channel Eight's promos welcoming him to the Hometown Folks news team: that Scooter was 'an experienced newsgatherer'-like Harrison Salisbury, it was suggested, except twinklier and that Scooter had already begun to think of Albany as his hometown, as if this were an acquired trait. The station had announced additionally that 'Scooter is his real name,' which few doubted.
I asked Slinger, 'Who else was in attendance at this get-together besides you and Ronnie and Scooter?'
'No one, actually,' he said casually. 'It was a combined work and let-down-your-hair session of the type I often initiate with new media people who come to town. I had the opportunity to brief Scooter on some of the ins and outs of the legislature and its personalities, and at the same time I was able to promote some of the senator's thoughts on directions the state should be taking.'
'And Ronnie was there to represent the meteorological point of view, or what?'
'He drove,' Slinger said, looking bemused. 'Scooter needed a ride, and Ronnie drove.'
'To where? Where did this informal information-sharing session take place? In public, I hope.'
'Public enough,' Slinger said, still looking on top of the game. 'We met in a suite that I keep reserved for the senator's use at the Parmalee Plaza Hotel. It's convenient to the airport. Executives and officials from the city can fly in and meet the senator and be back at LaGuardia in an hour.'
'So the people who can vouch for your whereabouts last night are Ronnie and Scooter and-who else?'
'Several hotel employees saw us arrive and depart the desk clerk and the night manager, who both know me, among others. There's no doubt I was out there, Strachey. It's easily verifiable.'
'Did you tell the Handbag police chief that's where you were?'
