'Unh-unh. It was the miracle so many had been praying for.'
'Oh, no.'
'The bishop woke up. He just blinked awake while the mayor and his wife were in the room praying over him, and the old guy looked around and asked what all the flowers were for. Pretty nifty, huh? Now tell me about your evening.' end user
24
The story was too late for the Times Union's deadline, but Joel McClurg called in his staff at eleven Friday night and paid his printer a cash bonus out of his own pocket, and on Saturday morning the weekly Cityscape put out the first extra in its history.
Father Morgan was to have been arraigned at nine A.M., but all the Albany judges recused themselves and plans were made for a late-afternoon hearing to be presided over by a Presbyterian judge driving in from Erie County. A diocesan attorney would say only that Father Morgan would plead not guilty to the murder charge. The lawyer refused to comment on 'related allegations,' meaning the report in Cityscape of 'antigay Bishop Mortimer McFee's history of homosexual assignations that were brought to light by Handbag police and by Albany private investigator Donald Strachey in the John Rutka murder investigation.'
By nine Saturday morning, the comatose truck driver had been moved across the hall to the bed occupied until the night before by Stu Meserole, and the bishop's room had a police guard and a diocesan PR flack by the door. 'The outrageous statements about the bishop that were published in a radical publication may be actionable,' the PR man told the fifteen or twenty reporters who showed up, but he said he wasn't going to 'dignify the report by getting into specifics.'
The funeral mass for John Rutka at St. Michael's in Handbag was now news, too. The local mainstream print reporters and the TV knuckleheads were there in force, racing to catch up with Cityscape. I also recognized in rear pews the Albany bureau chiefs of The New York Times, Newsday, and a free-lancer I knew who had been trying for years to sell something to the National En-quirer. He was beaming.
I arrived with Timmy and referred all questions by reporters to Bub Bailey, who in turn advised the press to attend the arraignment that afternoon for a full reading of the charges and a presentation of evidence.
Bub pulled me aside and said, 'Thanks for your help.'
'Always glad to lend a hand to a professional.'
'I've wanted to nail him for years.'
'Father Morgan? He's killed other people too? What do you mean?'
'Nah, the bishop. When he was in Handbag, he always had a boyfriend-usually underage. Three fathers came to me over the years he was in Handbag and said McFee was molesting their sons, but when I'd talk to the boys, they'd refuse to cooperate.
McFee was shrewd. He'd spot the ones who were gay-whether they knew it yet or not-and he'd-what do you call it?'
'Bring them out.'
'This one kid absolutely refused to press charges, but he told me the whole thing. McFee convinced him he was rotten and sinful and corrupt, and then McFee took advantage. The kid believed he was rotten and corrupt, because he knew by then where his sexual interests were and McFee knew too and had him in his power. It must have been hell for those boys. He's an evil man, and he's no Christian, and the humiliation being heaped on him now is what he's had coming for a long, long time.'
I looked Bailey hard in the eye. 'You knew before I did that McFee was mixed up in this?'
'Nope. How could I? I didn't have John Rutka's famous files to help me in my investigation. They're in Utica, remember?'
His expression didn't change at all. 'But you knew where to look even without the files, and who to talk to. I guess you're smarter than I am.'
I said nothing.
'It's just a shame John Rutka isn't alive to see justice done,' Bailey said. 'I'm reasonably certain he was one of McFee's adolescent victims and that's what drove young John to expose exploiters and phonies. I wonder why he didn't out McFee sooner?
If he had the goods on Ronnie Linkletter, he must have had the same goods on McFee.'
'Who'd have believed him?' I said. 'Linkletter and all the people at the motel would have denied everything. And the bishop was held in such high esteem that the community would have been outraged by the accusation, and Rutka might just have had some awful accident, or he'd have been pounded senseless by a couple of Albany police detectives who claimed he resisted arrest in a drug deal. Even though McFee may have been the man he most wanted to get, that's one outing Rutka couldn't have gotten away with.'
'I suppose you're right.'
'It's only with the pressure of the murder investigation,' I said, 'that all the principals are being forced to tell what they know and the bishop is being revealed as a mega-hypocrite. Without the murder investigation, it could never have happened.'
'It's a cruel irony,' Bailey said, shaking his head. 'It's a good thing, too, that you happened along to solve the case. I doubt I could have done it on my own-me not being nearly as smart as you are, Mr. Strachey.'
'Give me a break,' I said. 'Okay, so I've got the files. You knew all along I had them, didn't you?'
He laughed.
'Anyway,' I said, 'I didn't just happen along. John Rutka hired me after he'd been shot in the foot and his house was firebombed.
Of course, it turned out he and Sandifer had been behind all that.'
'The way it turned out,' Bailey said, 'it's almost as if he'd planned the whole thing-to expose the evil McFee. Rutka was a devious kid and I wouldn't put anything past him. But I don't suppose he would sacrifice his own life even to get McFee. McFee isn't worth it.'
'No, you're right. He isn't.'
Inside the church, Ann Rutka was seated in a front pew with her three teenaged children, and behind her were fifteen or twenty people Bub Bailey said were cousins, employees of the hardware store, and the family attorney, David Rizzuto. I sat on the opposite side of the aisle with Timmy and Bailey. Up ahead of us were Eddie Sandifer and five men in Queer Nation T-shirts.
Sandifer turned around once and spotted me. He gave me thumbs-up and mouthed what I thought was 'Thank you.'
The mass, said by the St. Michael's rector, was meditative and serene and accepting of life's vicissitudes, and the Queer Nation crowd sat there and kept quiet. The priest's eulogy made no specific mention of John Rutka's politics or sexual orientation but did refer once to his being a man who 'wanted to help the downtrodden.'
At the conclusion of the service, the coffin was carried out by six of the cousins, Rutka's Queer Nation friends apparently not having been asked to participate.
Outside, I asked Sandifer why he and his friends, who had been so central to Rutka's life, had been so peripheral to the ceremony marking his death.
'He's gone now,' Sandifer said unemotionally. 'What difference would it make? John told me a long time ago that when his time came he wouldn't mind being buried by his family and laid to rest with his parents. He said himself it would make other people happy, and what difference could it make to him?'
'I'm a little surprised, though, that he didn't insist on a nonchurch send-off,' I said. 'Knowing what we know now.'
'I guess I'm a little surprised too,' Sandifer said, and then thanked me for the investigative work I'd done. 'I'm going to pay you for your work, too. I've talked to the Rutkas' lawyer, and he'll send you a check when he receives your bill. John was going to pay you and I think he'd want me to do the same. I'm going back to New York. The only reason I came to Albany in the first place was to be with John. But you'll be paid, Strachey.'
'If you can afford it, fine. There's no rush, though.'
'It won't be long,' he said. 'Just send the bill to Dave Rizzuto.' Sandifer drifted off to the Queer Nation group
