at ourselves with nauseated looks.
I said, 'How does your insurance company feel about those mirrors?'
He looked queasy. 'They don't know about them, actually.'
'Ah.'
'The mirrors have all been tightened up. Hey, if you ever bring a trick out here, you won't have to worry.'
'I happen to be in a monogamous situation, but thanks for the reassurance.'
'Maybe you and your boyfriend would like to come out for a weekend getaway sometime. We have special weekend rates.'
'What are they, higher?'
'Naturally.'
I said, 'Who was working here the night the mirror fell?'
'Royce. Poor Royce was wrecked for a week.'
'I'd like to speak to him. Is he here?'
'Over in the house.'
'Is Royce his first name or his last?'
'It's Royce McClosky.'
'Do you know who D.R. is?'
'D.R.?'
'The initials D.R.'
He thought about this. 'Donna Reed?'
'I don't think so. Who besides you was John Rutka paying to spy on people and feed dirt to him for his outing files?'
'That's confidential, but since you're blackmailing me, I'll tell you. Nathan Zenck at the Parmalee Plaza was paid, I know.'
'Just Zenck?'
'He's the only one I know of. I know Nathan. He's a silly queen but an excellent businessman. We're different but we have a lot of respect for each other.'
I told him I wanted to look at his license-plate records and we walked over to the office. I bent down briefly to check the mud flaps on Gladu's Mercedes. Both were intact. Inside the registration alcove, Gladu flipped up the hinged end of the counter and went behind it to rummage through some drawers. He produced a long box of index cards with dates, times, and license-plate numbers written on them.
'Some people we actually register. The state says we have to,' Gladu said, and brought out a much smaller box of registration cards filled in with probably mostly phony names and addresses. 'We like to respect people's privacy,' he said, 'so not everyone is required to register, and all transactions are in cash.'
'What crap. You cheat the state and federal governments out of the taxes and you sell information on people's private lives for additional cash.'
He suddenly glared at me and slammed his left fist on the counter. His other hand came up from behind the counter with a. 38 caliber revolver, which he aimed at me. 'Now I am going to see that you die, you scumbag blackmailer, and I'm going to do it myself right now!'
'Gladu, just shut up and get me the files. And put that thing away before it goes off and the rest of your mirrors drop.'
He chuckled and put the gun back under the counter.
'Where's Royce?' I said.
Gladu pressed the buzzer on the counter.
'She's out back!' came a voice from above.
'Royce is off-duty now. He's probably watching Geraldo with Lemuel and wishes not to be disturbed. But I guess you're going to insist on disturbing him.'
'Yes, I am.'
'Royce, get down here!' Gladu yelled. 'A blackmailer wants to talk to you.'
He placed the two file boxes on the counter along with a sheet of paper on which was written a license-plate number, a name, and an address.
'Who's this? The owner of the car Ronnie Linkletter's mystery man came in?'
'That's what John told me. But not the man himself, according to John.'
The name on the paper was Art Murphy, and the address was 37 Flint Street, Albany, a short street I'd passed a thousand times that ran off Washington Avenue in the old Pine Hills section of the city. Art Murphy did not sound like an arch-hypocrite, but maybe Art regularly lent or rented his car to a man who was. I wondered if Art had ever been blackmailed and if he ever thought he would be.
'This man's name is Strachey,' Gladu told Royce when he appeared. 'He's a pond-scum degenerate blackmailer, and as your employer I am directing you to answer every question he asks you. Later I'm going to have him killed, but for now tell him whatever he wants to know.' Gladu beamed.
Royce, a skinny, bleary-eyed man in his fifties with a stubble of beard, and mouthwash on his breath, looked at me uncertainly and then back at Gladu. 'Tell him what, Jay?'
'Anything. Everything. I told you-he'll never live to use any of it against any of us.'
'Let's go outside,' I told Royce.
Royce didn't like the sound of that. He looked as if he had last been exposed to sunlight in the year of the Watergate break-in, but Gladu beamed contentedly and motioned for Royce to move out.
I carried the Fountain of Eden registration and license — plate files with me, and we sat in my car with both doors open.
'Where you going with those?' Royce asked.
'I'll bring them back eventually,' I said, 'so not to worry. The only thing you need to concern yourself with, Royce, is doing what Jay said and telling me the absolute truth on all the topics I bring up. Okay?'
'Sure.'
'Who got hit with the mirror?'
He'd been looking bewildered up to now, and only vaguely apprehensive, but now his eyes narrowed and he looked at me with suspicion tinged with dread.
'Who are you?' he said. 'Are you a cop?'
'No, I'm just a blackmailer. I have tons and tons of incriminating crap on Jay, so you better answer my questions or he'll be ruined and you will too. This is all off the books, and I know you're used to that, Royce, so let's get on with it and everything will be cool. Once again, who got hit with the mirror?'
'How did you know about that? If you were one of the people who came out that night, you'd know who it was. If you're not one of them, how did you know it happened? Jay doesn't know, or even Sandy. Lemmie didn't tell you, did he?'
I said, 'Nobody had to tell me. Linkletter and his boyfriend were here every Wednesday night for almost a year, and then the mirror fell and they stopped coming. Jay swallowed your story that the mirror fell after Ronnie and his friend had left because Jay has a lot invested emotionally and financially in believing that that's the way it happened. But it's mighty unlikely that Ronnie's failure to come back to his habitual trysting place ever again is mere coincidence. How much did they pay you to keep your mouth shut?'
'Two hundred dollars,' he said, brushing away a sweat bead from the end of his nose with a trembling hand.
'Who was hit? The boyfriend?'
He gulped and nodded.
'Who was he?'
He shook his head. 'I never saw him-that night or ever. I don't know who the heck he was.'
'Did he die? Was he killed by the falling mirror?'
'I don't know. Ronnie called somebody from the pay phone and they came and carried the guy out and took him away in a car.
They gave Ronnie the money to give to me for keeping my mouth shut, and since I didn't know anything about the man, it was no problem keeping mum. And Ronnie said it was okay, just tell Jay the mirror fell
