where they were being animatedly chatted up by Timmy, a nominal Jesuit but actual Platonist who was always ready to let the question lead where it might, short of poor taste.
There was to be no graveside service, just a family brunch at the Rutka house, and I went over to beg off on the family get-together and to wish Ann well in her struggles. Between drags from a Chesterfield, she introduced me to lawyer Dave Rizzuto, who congratulated me on finding the killer and then excused himself and said he had to be on the tennis court in twenty minutes, no offense meant. Ann said she wasn't offended, just envious of anybody who had the time to do anything just for the fun of it.
When Rizzuto was gone, Ann began to thank me profusely for my help, and I said, 'I thought after a point I'd be doing it as a public service, but it turned out that won't be necessary. Eddie's going to pay me my usual fee. Of course, he hasn't seen the bill yet.'
She laughed. 'Oh, he'll be able to handle it. Now that he's rich.'
'He is? How did that happen? I thought John just left him a few thousand dollars.'
'Dave Rizzuto told me this morning there's a huge life insurance policy with Eddie as the beneficiary. John took it out about a year ago. Dave set it up through his brother's insurance agency, that's how he knows about it. In a week or so, Eddie will be about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars rich. How's that for not getting left in the lurch? Eddie didn't even know about it until yesterday.'
I said, 'D.R.'
'What's that?'
'John's financial records show fourteen thousand dollars in cash disbursements over the past year to a D.R.- Dave Rizzuto. Why would he have paid in cash, though, and not by check, for a legitimate insurance policy?'
I thought I knew the answer to my own question, but I let Ann, who knew her lawyer, say it. 'Hey,' she said, 'you know how some lawyers are. It was probably Dave's idea. The more untraceable cash they have floating around, the more they can cook the books and not pay taxes on actual income. It was probably part of some complicated scheme of Dave's and his brother's. By going along with it, John probably got a break on the premiums. It's just the way most people do business these days, that's all.
It's a lot harder in the hardware business not to be honest, but you know lawyers.'
'Well,' I said, 'eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars doesn't buy what it used to buy, but it's still a decent piece of change.'
'Yeah,' she said with a raised eyebrow, 'especially in Mexico.'
'Mexico?'
'Dave says the money is going to be forwarded to a Mexican bank in New York. I didn't say anything to Eddie, because I didn't think this was supposed to be any of my business, and I'm probably not supposed to be telling you. So don't say anything to Eddie. But eight hundred fifty thousand dollars must be about a zillion pesos.'
Timmy came over and said, 'Eddie says good-bye and thanks again. They're all headed back to New York now.'
'He's leaving right away?'
'He's leaving John's car for his niece and he's riding with his friends from New York. They're just stopping at the house to pick up his things.'
'Eddie packed up most of his belongings last night,' Ann said. 'I stopped over and we talked. It meant a lot to both of us, I think.
He said such sweet things about John. I cried all over again.'
Sandifer and the Queer Nation group were climbing into two cars, one a commodious old Buick station wagon. I excused myself and walked over to Bub Bailey, who was talking with a couple of Rutka cousins.
'Got a minute?'
He followed me back into the shadows of the church entryway.
'Tell me again,' I said, 'how the pathologist identified John Rutka's body.'
'Why? You don't think that's John in the hearse?'
'I guess it must be. Forensic pathologists don't make mistakes, do they?'
'Only very rarely.'
'Oh. Only very rarely.'
He said, 'There was the circumstantial evidence, of course-the wallet, and some traces of clothing. A belt buckle, I think. Then there was the chipped ankle bone from the gunshot wound. The clincher was the dental work. John's records were with Dr.
Glossner right here in Handbag and the mouth on that corpse was indisputably Rutka's.'
I saw the filthy glass half full of cloudy water on a shelf by the sink in John Rutka's bathroom. I said, 'The mouth was John Rutka's, or just the teeth in it? Rutka didn't wear dentures, did he?'
Bailey thought about this. 'I don't know. He would have been kind of young. The report just said the pathologist's findings were consistent with the dental records submitted by Dr. Glossner.'
I trotted over and caught Ann Rutka as she was climbing into her car. I said quietly, so that her bored- and irritated-looking children could not hear, 'Bub Bailey and I are just tying up a couple of loose ends, and we have a peculiar question.'
'Go ahead.'
'Did your brother wear dentures?'
'Oh, God, yes. Since he was twenty. The dummy practically lived on candy bars, and when he was a kid getting him to brush his teeth was like-pulling teeth. In fact, that's what Dr. Glossner did. John's teeth were so rotten by the time he finished nursing school that Dr. Glossner pulled them all out and gave John dentures. He never seemed to mind, though. By then I guess he had other things on his mind besides what he looked like when he went to bed and got up. Why do you ask?'
'Just something about the pathologist's report. But that clears it up,' I said. 'One other thing. When John was a nurse at St.
Vincent's, what kind of nursing did he do? What unit did he work in? Do you know?'
'For a long time John worked in critical care,' she said. 'And then later with AIDS patients. Eddie says John was one of the best they had. He knew what he was doing, and he cared. I'm sure it's true. When John believed in something, there was no stopping him.'
'It must have been devastating to him when he was fired from the hospital.'
'It was hard on him, yes, but I think he never regretted what he was fired for-taking morphine to give to AIDS patients who were in pain. Anyway, John wasn't fired from the hospital. He just wasn't allowed to work as a nurse anymore. He was so well thought of he was kept on in the hospital for several months as some kind of junior administrator until he moved back up to Handbag. Whatever mistakes he made, John was still appreciated.'
'What did he do in the hospital after he left nursing?' I asked.
'He worked in the morgue. Creepy, huh? Not for this Rutka, I'll tell ya. In fact, some of John's best friends who came to the funeral worked in the morgue, too.' We looked out toward the street in time to see the station wagon and the other car from the city just pulling away. 'Well,' Ann said, 'I've got a house full of cousins to feed, so I'd better hit the road. Stop in the store sometime when you get a chance. And thanks again for all your good work. I don't know this Father Morgan they say killed John, but it doesn't surprise me at all that Bishop McFee had something to do with it. He always seemed to be mad at somebody or something. I guess it was himself.'
We said good-bye and I went back over to Bub Bailey. 'He wore dentures. He used to work in a morgue in New York. That crew that just pulled out of here, they work in a morgue in New York. They could have filched a male corpse Rutka's size-New York is overflowing with homeless dead people nobody knows or cares about- and chipped the ankle bone and substituted Rutka's dentures for the dead man's dental work. The crude surgery would have been covered up by the effects of the fire.
'Then, all they needed to do to pin the 'murder' on Father Morgan was tear off some of the white Chrysler's mud flap and leave it at the abduction scene. And then make a couple of anonymous, knowing phone calls to you and to me directing us to Slinger, and then to Linkletter, and then onward to the bishop for his grand outing.'
'It'd be something John Rutka might dream up.'
'That's what I think.'
'He was always a boy who kept people on their toes.' end user
