'Is that a promise?'
'I promise.'
'How can I believe you?' he said desperately, and flung himself back against his seat.
'I'll take you back to Channel Eight now, Ronnie, if that's where you want to go, and I won't bother you anymore. You'll see.'
He sat there for another minute catching his breath, while I spoke to him reassuringly. Finally he interrupted me and said, 'Oh, let's have some breakfast.' And he got instantly out of the car.
Inside, Linkletter grinned as people throughout the crowded restaurant recognized him and said Hello, and Have a nice day, and I just washed my car so I guess it's gonna rain, huh? Ronnie thought that last one was a knee-slapper.
After breakfast, as I drove back to Channel Eight, we chatted about baseball and of course the weather. Linkletter said the next twenty-four hours would be nice, and I was about to say, 'Hey, that's the way we like it,' and then thought better of it and just said thanks.
So much for Ronnie Linkletter as a route to the Mega-Hypocrite. end user
20
The Fountain of Eden Motel on Route 5 was an old clapboard house with a neon sign on the roof and a long 'L' of fifteen single-story shingled motel units appended to its backside. The office was in the back of the house, and you could pull around and ease up to it without being seen from the highway.
A wooden door with a patched screen led into a registration alcove. The tiny room, which stank of the nicotine stains that gummed the walls, contained a wooden counter, a condom machine, and no chairs. I pressed a button on the counter and could hear a buzzer sound in the inner reaches of the house.
'She's out back!' The male voice was muffled but the words decipherable.
'Whereabouts?' I yelled back.
'Doin' the laundry. Past number six.'
I found an open door to a small room squeezed in between units six and seven. A squat, middle-aged woman in shorts and a T-shirt was stuffing sheets into a washing machine, a filtered cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She was blond and sad-eyed and had a long-lost pretty face somewhere. The cigarette was lighted and her breathing sounded like somebody walking around in a swamp.
'You want a room?'
'How much until noon?'
'Eighteen.'
I gave her a twenty and got back two that came from the shorts pocket. The twenty went in there with her wad. She took a key out of her other pocket and said, 'I just made up eleven.'
'Should I register?'
'No need to.'
'What if I stole something-walked off with your television? The rooms have TV, don't they?'
'Sure. VCRs too. But if anybody steals anything, we can get it back. Are you planning on stealing something? You better not.'
'How come?'
'I know your license number.' She recited it. 'I looked at it while you were inside the office and I'll write it down when I get back to the desk. If we need to get ahold of you for anything, we can find you through the DMV. People who stay here usually'd rather not leave their names, but we can track you down if we want you. Jay handles it.'
'I don't plan on stealing anything,' I said, 'but I'd like to speak with Jay when he comes in. Would you give him this?'
'Sure.'
I handed her the sealed envelope containing the note I wrote to Gladu after I drove Ronnie Linkletter back to Channel Eight. I went out and pulled the car over to number 11. Only two other cars were in the lot, a new Acura and an old Ford Galaxie in front of units 3 and 4. I checked the mud flaps on both; all four were intact.
Room 11 was small and dim with thick curtains drawn shut. A water bed in a lacquered pine frame that matched the paneling on one wall took up much of the room. The print on the filthy bedspread showed pastoral vistas and Georgian mansions. The TV set on the dresser was hooked up to the discount store-brand VCR beside it. Two walls of the room were covered with mirrors, as was the ceiling above the bed. The towels beside the small sink outside the bathroom were worn but clean. Above the sink an ancient contraption of an air conditioner was jammed into what had been a window. When I switched it to 'on,' nothing happened.
I'd brought the Times along and sat by a low-watt lamp in the airless room plugging away at the crossword puzzle-one of those with puns so dumb you wanted to call up Sulzberger and ask for your fifty cents back- until just after ten, when a knock came at the door.
I opened it and a thirtyish groover in baggy black shirt and pants and jackboots grinned at me a little too brilliantly out of a pale smooth face. 'Are you the blackmailer?'
'Yup.'
'How much do you want? If it's too much, I may have to have you killed.'
He was still grinning, contented with his existence and mine, and apparently not prepared to take me as much of a threat. He seemed to be a man who had found inner peace, though whether its provenance was spiritual or chemical I didn't know.
'I don't want your money,' I said. 'I just want to find out who killed John Rutka, and I thought you might be able to help me out, Jay.'
'I don't think so.'
I sat in my chair again and Gladu flopped onto the water bed and arranged the pillows behind his back.
'John Rutka paid you more than six thousand dollars last year,' I said. 'What for?'
'No, he didn't.'
'It's in his financial records-the amounts of the disbursements and the dates.'
'That might be in John Rutka's financial records, but it's not in mine. There are no canceled checks. You won't find my signature anywhere in John Rutka's records. Or in anyone else's. Except New York Telephone's, of course. I'm a phone-company subscriber and proud of it. The power company too.'
'I see your point. On the other hand,' I said, 'there's an exceptionally large number of references to the Fountain of Eden in the files Rutka kept on gay Albanians he was planning to out. In all of the files, the Fountain of Eden comes up eighty or ninety times. Apparently someone here was feeding Rutka information on the assorted couplings and quadruplings that the participants, your paying customers, assumed to be private. If the police or the tax authorities had possession of those files-which they do not, yet-they might imagine a connection existed between the cash disbursements and the carefully indexed sexual reports.
They'd think poorly of you, as would your customers once word got around. Your business inevitably would suffer.'
He shrugged and peered at me brightly. 'This place is not my only source of income. I've got an art gallery in Woodstock and a pet shop in the Millpond Mall. But don't get me wrong. I get your point. What is it you'd like to know?'
'I'd like to know who came to the Fountain of Eden with Ronnie Linkletter every Wednesday night for a year. I'd like you to instruct whoever it is on your staff here who keeps track of these things to talk to me and to answer truthfully every question I ask. And I want to leave here with copies of your license-plate records for the past year. Arrange those few things and we'll call it even.'
'What do you mean, 'even? What's in it for me?'
'After whoever killed John Rutka is caught, Rutka's records will be destroyed. I'll do it myself. All those embarrassing connections to you and your business will be gone.'
A dry laugh. 'Do I look embarrassed?'
'Not yet.'
