'I saw on TV that it's still done.'
'I heard he woke up from his coma,' Rutka said.
'Oh, yes.'
He was radiant. 'Now he'll pay. He's damned.'
'I think so.'
'So let me go. You know you want to, and you know it's right. If you had eight hundred fifty thousand dollars you didn't need, wouldn't you give it to AIDS research and treatment?'
'Actually, I did make a sizeable donation to AIDS care one time when some ill-gotten cash fell my way. But I gave it to Gay Men's Health Crisis, a fine organization whose work is demonstrably excellent. Can you say the same about this Valladolid Clinic?'
'I know the people who set it up and I know they are honest and sincere and they care more about their patients than their own egos. Anyway, since it's my T-cell count that's involved here, and Eddie's in the future, don't you think we should be allowed to choose where our money goes?'
The Mexicana lobby was growing increasingly crowded and I tried to keep my voice low enough not to be overheard but loud enough to be understood by Rutka. I said, 'But it is not your money.'
'Look,' he said, almost serenely, 'aren't the insurance companies spending millions of dollars on lawyers and lobbyists trying to weasel out of insuring people with HIV? They'd refuse to insure gay people at all if they could get away with it. They'd fuck us over completely. What I'm doing is not a rip-off, it's just me doing those corporate assholes' job for them. Anyway, what's eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to an insurance company that spends ten times that much on lobbyists and campaign contributions trying to get the legislature to let the company piss on gay people and abandon us at exactly the time we need the insurance companies the most? You asked me to be fair. Now that's what I'm asking you to be.'
I shook my head in wonder.
'Go back and tell them you found evidence that I'm not really dead and get Father Morgan off, but let us go and do this socially useful thing we want to do. Just say you followed Eddie, but you lost him and you don't know what became of him. That's all you have to do. It's that simple.'
I said, 'How can I be sure you're not making this all up? That it's not part of another devious scam?'
He shrugged and gave me a little crooked smile. 'I guess you can't.'
Back on Crow Street, I told Timmy, 'I lost them. I lost them in the traffic on the Major Deegan.'
'No, you didn't,' he said. 'But I don't want to hear about the con Rutka ran on you this time. And I don't think Bub Bailey does either.'
'Good,' I said. 'I heard it on the car radio. Father Morgan is out?'
'Insufficient evidence. Plus, his hospital-visit-and-shopping alibi for Wednesday night holds up. Lots of people saw him in the bishop's room-I think I might have seen him there myself-and at the Colonie Mall and four or five other places.'
'What about McFee? Is he still sentient but incommunicado?'
'He's under guard, but his reputation in the diocese has fallen even further.'
'That's an accomplishment. How did he manage that?'
'There was a lot of irrational concern growing around town about how the bishop might have spread AIDS-at church suppers he ate at and so on.'
'That's dumb.'
'But Ronnie Linkletter heard about it and knew that a lot of people were taking it very seriously and were scared, and he did what he perceived to be his duty as a member of the Hometown Folks news team.'
'What was that?'
'Ronnie came forward and told a group of reporters that nobody had to worry, because the bishop was always careful and he-he always wore a condom.'
I said, 'No, he didn't.'
And Timmy said, 'Yes, he did.'
And I knew I was back in Albany.
