'I most certainly did not.'
'Why not?'
'Because he had no legal basis for his harassing me in my place of work. It was a goddamn outrage, is what it was.'
'You were outraged, but he has a right to question you and he will likely exercise that right.'
'If that mealy-mouthed constable wants to talk to me, he can show me a warrant and I'll notify my attorney and we'll see. He won't obtain a warrant, of course, because no judge will issue one without evidence. That I was once angry at John Rutka and said I was so mad I could kill him is not evidence. People say things like that all the time and it's meaningless in court.'
Slinger seemed not to know about the anonymous phone calls Bub Bailey had received pointing at Slinger and the one left on my machine telling me that if I wanted to know who killed John Rutka I should find out who Slinger had been with the night before.
If Slinger was telling the truth about spending the evening at the Parmalee Plaza, it seemed likely that someone who worked at the hotel was the mystery caller, though not Zenck or the desk clerk; I would have recognized their voices. The caller, of course, could also have been anyone visiting or staying at the place who had seen Slinger come and go. It could also have been someone else present in the suite whom Slinger had not mentioned.
I said, 'Chief Bailey can't make you talk because he hasn't got anything on you. But I do-the files. So, tell me this, Bruno. Who else was in the suite with you and Ronnie and Scooter?'
'No one.'
'Did you have sex?'
He grinned hideously.
'The three of you?'
'Scooter watched. He's not gay, he says, but he likes to watch. He loves seeing the weatherman being fucked, he says. At the last place he worked, in Sacramento, he liked to watch the weatherman being fucked.'
'I guess this is the result of Reagan-era broadcast deregulation.'
'I happen to like fucking slender, angelic-looking young men like Ronnie Linkletter, and Ronnie happens to enjoy being serviced by powerful older men of superior intellect.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Ronnie's a beauty, isn't he? I consider myself extremely fortunate. I'd been hearing for years that he was a fag but that he was faithful to someone who had won Ronnie's heart with the majesty of his position. Lucky for me, they apparently had some sort of falling-out this summer, and I was able to move in and fill the breach, as it were.'
I said, 'You don't know who this powerful person was?'
'Ronnie refuses to discuss him, which I appreciate. It means he'll tend to be discreet in what he tells others about me. My motto has always been, If you're going to be indiscreet, be discreet about it. That's why I plan my assignations these days at the Parmalee Plaza. It's gay-run, as you're probably aware, and in return for an occasional remuneration, the night manager will see that his people will keep their mouths shut about who's doing whom out there.'
'Right.'
'Ronnie used to go to that vomitorium Jay Gladu runs out on Central Avenue, and he tried to get me into it, but I wouldn't set foot in the place. I do safe sex only, for the most part, and it's unsafe just walking in the door of the Fountain of Eden. Have you ever been out there?'
'Not yet,' I said. 'Why do you use motels? Couldn't you bring your sex partners here?'
'Do you see those photographs?' Slinger said, growing somber and motioning at the lineup on the sideboard.
'They're quite a bunch.'
'One picture is missing. It was stolen by a man I brought here once, and it is irreplaceable. The photograph was given to me when I was very young, and it had on it a warm greeting to me from a very great man. Would you like to know who it was?'
'Yes, who?'
'Henry Pu Yi, the last emperor of China.'
'Oh.'
'Briefly, we were lovers.'
'Were you mentioned in the movie?'
'No.'
'Well, then-I guess that made the photo even more important. Your only memento.'
'That's why I never bring people I don't trust into my home.'
I said, 'Do you only have sex with people you don't trust?'
I'd have felt pretty demeaned if somebody had asked me that question, but Slinger just shrugged and said, 'It's the best way of knowing what to expect from people,' and then he dropped the subject.
'I'm not going to give you your file,' I said.
'I'm not surprised.'
'But after John Rutka's killer is caught, I'm going to destroy them all.'
'Oh? How will I be certain that you've done it? I have no reason to trust you, Strachey.'
'You'll never know for sure. I'm sorry about that.' 'No, you're not. You're not sorry at all.' 'Okay, you're right. In your case, Bruno, I'm not sorry at all.'
He sneered contentedly.
I left Slinger's house and went out into the clammy night air. The headache I'd had earlier in the day was gone, but now my stomach was churning. It was partly because I'd had only a Mars bar for dinner, but not entirely.
I made my call to New York on behalf of Mike Sciola from the phone in the cubbyhole under the stairs. In the age of AIDS, the murder of friends and lovers dying horribly is an act of mercy so common as to border on respectability-in a saner world United Way would be putting out brochures on the subject-and I had no trouble making the arrangements Mike had asked for. end user
19
I watched the 8:25 A.M. local-news insert in 'Have a Nice Day, USA' on the monitor in the Channel Eight foyer. Troy Pillsbury, the morning anchor, reported on a flaming six-car pileup on the Northway; on Albany judge and Federal Appeals Court nominee
'Pincher' Goerlach's approval in Washington by the Senate Judiciary Committee despite protests from liberal groups over his outbursts from the Albany bench directed at 'adherents of deviant lifestyles'; and on the previous evening's bon voyage ceremonies at the Albany airport, where Scooter Raymond was seeing off a schoolgirl and her parents, who were carrying the bird with the broken wing to Minnesota.
After the commercial, Ronnie Linkletter came on and he and Pillsbury acted hugely amused with each other for no reason discernible to viewers. Ronnie predicted continued balmy weather, to which Troy replied, 'That's the way we like it.' They both chuckled at this mot.
Linkletter had insisted to me on the phone an hour earlier-when I of course threatened him with blackmail if he refused to see me-that I not come to the station. I said I preferred to meet him there-I wanted to check his mud flaps and we could have breakfast somewhere else. When I arrived, I didn't know which of the eight cars in the Channel Eight lot was Linkletter's, but none had damaged, missing, or newly replaced mud flaps, so that was that.
At 8:35 Linkletter came out grinning, still delighted, I guessed, with the Shavian wit of his exchanges with Troy Pillsbury. His smile fell away, though, once we were away from the Channel Eight building and inside my car.
'You're a real asshole,' he said. 'It isn't bad enough that John Rutka practically ruined me. Now you're going
