Third man out

16

I spent three hours back at the house, poring over Rutka's files. I made notes, then compared them and rearranged them, and memorized the data as well as I could. When Timmy got home, I told him I'd have to postpone dinner again and would see him later at the hospital.

At six I drove out to Wolf Road in Colonic

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Parmalee, please. Could you tell me where his office is?"

The desk clerk at the Parmalee Plaza gave me a chilly once-over and said, "There isn't any Mr. Parmalee. This hotel is owned by the Zantek Corporation and they just call it the Parmalee Plaza."

"How come?"

"I really couldn't tell you that."

"In that case, I'll speak to Mr. Nathan Zenck. I understand he's the night manager."

"Is Mr. Zenck expecting you, sir?"

"No, but he shouldn't be surprised to see me show up."

"Your name, please?"

"Donald Strachey."

"And what is it that you would like to speak to Mr. Zenck about?"

"I'm trying to find out-and maybe he could help me-just who the hell is Parmalee?"

He glared, the telephone receiver he was clutching poised in midair. "I don't know whether I can bother Mr. Zenck with a question like that."

"All right, forget Parmalee. Tell Mr. Zenck I'm an associate of John Rutka and I've got some questions concerning John Rutka's death."

This loosened him up. He blinked several times. "Are you with the police?"

"Were any police officers associates of John Rutka?"

"What?"

"I said I was an associate of John Rutka, and you asked me if I was with the police. You were the one who made the connection.

How come?"

"No, I- That's not what I meant. I'll call Mr. Zenck." He picked up the receiver and dialed and waited. "Nathan, a Donald Strachey is here to talk to you about John Rutka, he says." He listened for a quarter of a minute, then hung up. "I'm sorry, but Mr.

Zenck doesn't know anyone by that name and he's in conference just now. He says perhaps you can write him a letter. Do you have our mailing address?"

I sighed. "Get him back on the line," I said, "and ask him how would he like it if I called up the Zantek Corporation and got Zantek himself on the line and told him that the night manager of his overpriced, overdecorated new hotel in Colonie, New York, out by the Albany airport, was a scumbag, greedy-ass Peeping Tom, and I had the financial records of a murdered man to prove it? Bother him in conference with that and see what happens."

He looked as if he might put in for an immediate transfer to some remote, undesirable dead end of an outpost such as, say, Albany, New York, except, ha ha, he was already there.

He dialed again.

"I think you'd better talk to Mr. Donald Strachey." He hung up. "Mr. Zenck will be right out."

"Thank you."

Like the desk clerk, Zenck was svelte and silky and meticulously mustachioed, and a little blurry, as if he'd been severely airbrushed. Twenty years earlier this effect could only be achieved on photographs but now it was being done on actual human beings, though I didn't know how.

"Mr. Strachey?"

"I am he."

"Nice to see you." He beamed. "Why don't we step into my office?"

"Let's step."

I followed him down the corridor and past an unmarked door, which he closed behind us. Zenck's spacious-enough digs included a desk with a marble top and a computer terminal off to one side, two leather couches, a small bar, and a couple of rust-colored rectangles in silver frames placed on the otherwise bare walls as if they were family portraits. Also among the furnishings was a series of small-screen video monitors mounted on racks next to Zenck's desk. One showed the spot at the front desk where I had recently been standing. Another showed a panning shot of the restaurant, which at six-fifteen was nearly filled. A third shot swept the hotel lobby and a fourth the murky bar.

A fifth screen was blank, and I said to Zenck, "What do you look at on that one, guests in the privacy of their rooms?"

"Won't you sit down?" he said.

I plopped onto one couch and he stood by the other.

"Would you care for a drink?"

"Unh-unh."

He sat down, adjusted his jacket, and said, "Did you say you were a friend of John Rutka's? That's the man who was murdered, isn't it?" He gave me a concerned look.

I said, "John Rutka's financial records show that he made sizeable monthly cash payments to you in return for reports on who among your paying guests was fucking whom. I'm investigating Rutka's death and want to ask you some things about your sideline racket. First off-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said, shaking his head and grinning. "I think you have me mixed up with someone else-Don, is it?"

"Donald Strachey. I'm a private investigator in Albany. I worked for John Rutka and have had access to his records. You're in there. All over the place-Nate, is it?"

"Nathan. But you really must have me-"

"Well, Nathan, it's all down in black and white. Amounts, dates the cash was delivered, and information on your guests' activities that's noted as coming from you and could only have come from one source."

He looked at me beadily. "That's a lie. Those are lies. Is there anything in those records in my handwriting?"

"No, but the stuff obviously came from you. Anybody going through it can see that. Any jury would be convinced."

He tried to cover up the shudder that went through him, but couldn't. "Oh, God."

I said, "Your front-desk man struck me as a man who would not hold up well under cross-examination in a courtroom. And of course if the cops came out here with a flying squad and interrogated every desk clerk and chambermaid and busboy and bartender who was slipped ten bucks for tipping you off on a local personage apparently involved in some same-sex conjoining on the hotel premises, a certain number of them would be sure to own up. It's mere statistical probability. But- lucky for you-the cops haven't seen those records yet, and they may never. That depends."

"Depends on what?" he croaked.

"On whether I'm satisfied with the quality of the information you give me."

"You'd go to the police?"

"Sure."

"This is blackmail. This is fucking blackmail!"

The mind reeled. "Nathan, are you raising moral objections to my exposure of your practice of selling information on people's private sexual activities to a man who then published the information in the newspapers? Are you presuming to question me on ethical grounds?"

He twitched once but otherwise sat looking glum. "It was just dish," he finally said. "I don't see why you don't get it. I know about you, Strachey, and I know you're gay, and I don't see where you get off acting so fucking holier-than-thou. Don't tell me you never dished anybody."

" 'Dished'? You made thirty-two hundred dollars tax-free this year providing a lunatic with information on who went into which hotel room with whom, and sometimes what kind of stains were left on the sheets, and condoms in the wastebaskets, and every other piece of crud you could come up with, and you call that 'dish'?"

"Yes. I do. And maybe if you'd lighten up a little, Strachey, you would too. I'm just being gay. I don't know what the fuck you're trying to be. Gay people have been doing each other forever, and gay people will be doing each other until the end of time. That's just a part of being gay, and maybe it's about time people like you faced it and quit trying to pretend you're something you're not!"

I wished Rutka were there to hear those words. Here was the kind of classic gay self-loathing-"internalized homophobia"-that John Rutka had despised and fought against with every atom of his being, and it turned out to be coming from a man who had played a critical part in making Rutka's antihomophobia campaign possible. It was as if enlightened gay thought existed not on a spectrum but in a circle, and the evilest underside of the circle was where, facing each other from opposite directions, Nathan Zenck and John Rutka met. One outed gay people because he loved them, ostensibly, and one because he hated them, and it all amounted to the same thing: oceans of pain and conflict and nothing to show for it.

I said, "Either you answer my questions to my satisfaction, or I will go to both the cops and the Zantek Corporation with everything I've got. You choose, Nathan. How's that for gay people doing each other till the end of time? Of course, I haven't got till the end of time. I'm going to give you about twenty minutes."

"I'll get you for this."

"You will? How?"

"I'll blacken your name from Niskayuna to Selkirk."

"No, please."

"I mean it."

I felt as if I'd been caught in a time warp. Next he'd be addressing me as "Bitch." I said, "I'll just have to live with the horror of it all."

"You laugh about it now. But you wait."

I'd had enough. "Just shut up and answer my questions, you pitiful anachronism, or I swear I'll ruin your life."

That did it. He clamped his mouth shut and sat there stewing in his silk suit. I felt silly and ashamed meeting Zenck on his own terms, but he didn't know that, so I went ahead and did what I had gone there to do.

"When you first heard that John Rutka had been killed," I said, "who did you think of first? Who did you think might have done it?"

He had probably been expecting something a little more pointed and specific than this, and he appeared to relax somewhat. "I really have no idea who killed John. It could have been dozens of people. How would I know? I was just shocked."

"That's not what my question was. Who did you think it might have been? What went through your mind?"

"Well, Bruno Slinger, naturally. I know his balls went into orbit when John outed him. You just don't fuck around with Miss Bruno, Miss Queen of the New York State Senate."

"Do you know Slinger?"

"Doesn't every cute guy in Albany under the age of a hundred and six know Miss Bruno? I can't imagine he hasn't popped your cork."

"Did you ever hear him threaten Rutka?"

"Not personally, I didn't. But I get all the best dirt."

"What did you hear?"

"Just that Bruno said people like Rutka should be exterminated like roaches. I can't remember who told me exactly, but I heard it more than once."

A phone next to Zenck rang once and he picked it up.

"Yes?" He listened. "Well, you'll just have to handle it. I do not wish to be disturbed." He listened again. "We are not. Winston, you handle it." He slammed the receiver down.

"Who else did you think of," I said, "when you heard John had been killed? Bruno and who else?"

"Oh, I don't know. Ronnie Linkletter. He was going around saying John should be boiled in oil. Stuff like that. Naturally, I'd think of dear Ronnie."

"Were either Slinger or Linkletter into S amp;M at all? Tying people up with chains or whatever?"

"I never heard that. I don't know. They never left any chains here. I'd have heard about that."

"And sold the information to John Rutka?"

"Why not? He was buying, and why shouldn't I sell him what he wanted if I had it? That's what makes the world go 'round."

It was becoming apparent that there wasn't anything Zenck knew that might be useful that wasn't already in Rutka's files, because Zenck had sold the dirt to Rutka, who put it there.

I said, "Who's the All-American Asshole Mega-Hypocrite?"

"The what?"

"Did Rutka ever mention a mega-hypocrite-somebody who was gay and closeted and deserved more than anybody else to be outed? Somebody who was sicken-ingly or even dangerously hypocritical?"

This involved a moral consideration that might simply have been outside Zenck's ken. He looked baffled. "I wouldn't know about that. Miss Bruno, maybe. After the job she did on that law some gay people were in favor of against beating up fags and what have you. I wouldn't really know who else it could be." He glanced at his watch. "You know, Strachey, delicious as it is sitting here being whipped with your rubber hose, I do have other responsibilities to attend to. Could we wrap this up in about, say, half a sec?"

"No, we can't. Where were you last night between six and nine, Nathan?"

He simpered. "Right here, honey-chile. The same place I am every night Monday through Friday from six P.M. to two A.M. Now, I think I am going to have to ask you to excuse me, Donald. People are starting to wonder what we're doing in here." He started to stand up.

"Sit, Nathan. I'm not finished."

He hesitated, got into a sulk, and sat.

"Who else performed this sleazy snooping service for Rutka besides you?"

He sniffed. "Just Jay, that I know of. Jay Gladu. Isn't he in the records too?"

Jay Gladu-JG. "Just answer my questions, please. Who else?"

"He's the only one I know about. I just happen to know Jay because he's in the hospitality and guest-accommodations business too. If you want to call it that."

"He's where-at the Sheraton?"

This got a snicker. "You must have him mixed up with someone else. Jay runs a hot-sheet motel on Central Avenue, the Fountain of Eden. Who's at the Sheraton? John never mentioned that he had a contact there."

"I'll ask the questions, Nathan, and you'll answer them. Whose initials are the letters DR?"

He sniffed and thought. "DR?"

"DR, yes."

"Zantek has a hotel in the D.R.-the Dominican Republic. It's a full resort and convention facility, and we had a sales meeting down there two years ago, the Surf 'n' Smurf. That's the only D.R. I know of."

"Zantek actually has a hotel that's called the Surf 'n' Smurf?"

"It's a family resort. If you want fast-lane resort life, the Surf 'n' Smurf is not for you."

"I suppose not."

It seemed unlikely that John Rutka had been making cash disbursements to the Dominican Republic, but that was the only D.R.

Zenck seemed to know. Maybe Jay Gladu would know who or what D.R. was.

I said, "Nathan, I'm going to get up and leave now and you are going to utter a deep sigh of relief. I'm not going to notify the police or the Zantek Corporation of your sleazy practices-not, that is, unless I return for additional information and you refuse to give me what I want. In that case, I'll destroy you. Also, if I ever learn that you are once again spying on any of your guests, as you did for John Rutka, I will do everything within my power to smash your career in hospitality and guest accommodations to little tiny bits and pieces. You'll be an assistant towel boy by the pool at the Surf 'n' Smurf until you're collecting Social Security. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He glowered up at me. Now he's going to call me a bitch, I thought, but the moment passed and he didn't. He stood up, opened the door to the corridor, and said, "Good night!"

"Don't forget my warning, you weasel," I said, and shoved the door shut in his face. The shouted word was just barely audible through the thick door, but I could make it out. end user