chewed and swallowed my own M amp;M's slowly so as to distribute their effects evenly.
'The stupid cops thought what I thought they would think,' Rutka said. 'That I shot myself, or Eddie shot me, for the publicity and the martyrdom. God, I'm mad but I'm not crazy.'
'They said that straight out?'
'They didn't have to. They asked me if either Eddie or I owned a firearm, and they kept asking me to repeat the story of what happened, over and over, as if they couldn't quite believe it, or they were trying to trip me up.'
'Did they trip you up?'
'Look, I know what happened. No, they did not trip me up.' Rutka's left eye wandered off to take in the old grape arbor, heavy with bird-pecked pale produce, that extended down the backyard away from the porch, and his right eye peered at me beadily. 'I went outside, somebody shot me, and a car drove away. How could anybody trip me up? Even if I was making it up, it's too simple.'
'Tell me again everything that happened from beginning to end. Start when Eddie came home from work. Is he at work now?'
'He works every day, including Saturday, from seven-thirty to four, later when they get busy. Yesterday was slow and Eddie was home by four-thirty.' He repeated the story he had told me the night before in the Albany Med parking lot: Eddie's arrival home; the plan to walk down to Konven-You-Rama; stepping off the front steps; bang; car with bad muffler speeds off; Eddie comes out, finds Rutka sprawled; cops, ambulance arrive; shell found in gutter by patrolman.
Rutka's story sounded identical to the narrative I'd heard the night before. A new detail cropped up here and there; others were dropped. It sounded real, natural, truthful.
'You said the cops asked if you own a firearm. Do you?'
'I told them I didn't. But I do. I guess I can tell you.'
'Oh, great.'
'Here,' he said, and slid a. 38 Smith and Wesson revolver out from under the cushions.
I examined the weapon, which was fully loaded, and said, 'Where did this thing come from?'
He was nonchalant. 'Around the corner from my old apartment on a Hundred and Sixth Street in New York.
I bought it retail, I guess you could say. These things are easier to come by in that neighborhood than take- out Szechuan.'
'It's not registered anywhere?'
A mirthless laugh. ' 'Register criminals, not firearms,' right, Strachey? How could I be a First Amendment purist and scoff at the Second?'
'You're right. Criminals should be required to register their crimes in advance and observe a seven-day waiting period before committing them.' I returned the revolver and Rutka stuffed it back under the cushions. 'How come you felt you needed one of these?' I asked.
'In New York,' he said, 'I was mugged twice by gangs of kids. After the second time, when they threw me in the gutter and hit me on the neck with a chain, I bought this gun from a guy I knew at the local bodega. Of course, it didn't do me any good. It was too much trouble to drag it around and I always left it at home. You can't hide a shoulder holster under a nurse's uniform.'
'What was the caliber of the slug the cops found yesterday?'
He shrugged. 'They didn't tell me. But it wouldn't have come from this gun. That I know.'
'Because?'
'Because this gun was up on a closet shelf in our room. I brought it down this morning when Eddie left for work. I didn't really know how scared I was until Eddie left and I was alone. I have to admit, I really started to freak. That's when I called you. And I got the gun out and loaded it.'
Rutka was looking directly at me now with both eyes, though if a wild man suddenly arrived on the scene spraying hot lead it wasn't at all certain where an excited Rutka's gaze might land. I said, 'You have one eye that wanders. If you had to shoot that gun, how would you aim it?'
'With my right eye,' he said. 'It's the left one that gets away. That'd be no problem.'
'Makes sense. What about the actual bullet that nicked your ankle? Have they found it yet?'
He took another fistful of candies, chomped on them, and said, 'Two bozos were out here with tape measures and geometry-class instruments at six this morning, but they didn't find anything. They said they thought the bullet might have buried itself in the lawn. I got the impression that if I'd been shot through the pancreas they'd've dug up the lawn. But they said there was no reason to make a mess in the neighborhood if they didn't have to. They went through the motions.'
I asked him for the names of the investigating officers and he said, 'Just the chief-Bub Bailey-and the patrolman who was here last night, Octavio Reed. They only have one detective in Handbag, and he's on vacation until Labor Day.'
The name Octavio Reed meant something to me, but I couldn't remember exactly what. I said, 'They told you that?'
'They were civil,' Rutka said with what looked like a trace of disappointment. 'The chief mentioned Dad, of course. It was obvious he wasn't going to tell me what he really thought of me in the presence of Dad's ghost. The reactionaries who control this country are right in one way-what they call family values are worth something. Just make sure you're a member of the family.
And that you don't have one of those families that, when they find out you're queer, they kick you out on the street.'
'I take it that wasn't the case with you.'
His face tightened and he said, 'No. I was lucky in that respect. Actually, they didn't know. I was pretty fucked up as a kid. I kept everything hidden. My first experiences were not what you would call ideal. I didn't really come to terms with my sexuality until I was in nursing school in 1980 and met some gay people who had their shit together. And even then I didn't come out and start thinking of myself as gay until I hit New York.
'I got down there just in time for the plague, which was horrible, but fortunately I met Eddie a couple of months after I arrived.
He was just out of the Marine Corps and really ready to let loose too. We hardly got out of bed the first month we knew each other, we had so much sex and emotion pent up inside us. I brought him home whenever I came up, and everybody in my family just sort of knew. Ann said they figured it out when I decided to become a nurse. How's that for sexual-orientation stereotyping?'
'Competent enough.'
'So they knew, and it seemed to be okay, just as long as nobody spoke the dreaded word.'
'And you never spoke it?'
'Nah. Not in Handbag. Not until later, in New York, when I went to a couple of ACT-UP meetings and started to understand how all-pervasive homophobia is in this society and how it kills people. Then I spoke the word.'
'I suppose,' I said, 'Chief Bailey was forced to speak it when he was here, or at least to allude to it.'
Rutka sneered. 'He said he thought the shooting might have had something to do with my being 'an activist.' That's all he said, 'an activist.' '
'And you conceded there might be a connection?'
'He asked me for the names of anyone who had threatened me in recent months, and I gave him my list.'
'You have a little list.'
'These are the ones who I know who they are. I've gotten so many anonymous threats in the past year I've lost count.'
He reached over the edge of the glider, retrieved from the end table a photocopied single sheet of paper, and passed it to me. As I read over it, Rutka scooped up another handful of M amp;M's and crunched on them noisily while I studied his list of names and brief biographical descriptions. The list had on it the state senate aide, the TV weatherman, and seven other names I recognized from Rutka's Cityscape outing column and from Queers- creed.
I folded and pocketed the list and said, 'These are all people you've already outed. You haven't been threatened by anybody who hadn't been outed yet but was afraid you might go after them? Somebody in your
