Third man out

22

I was mixed up and it was time to stop and think.

Whether or not Ronnie Linkletter's boyfriend was the Ail-American Asshole Mega-Hypocrite-and Ronnie's behavior suggested strongly that he was-and whether or not the Mega-Hypocrite had committed the murder of John Rutka-and he was still the most logical suspect despite the missing files maybe being a part of a scheme to frame whoever the mirror man turned out to be

— I knew I couldn't begin to confirm or eliminate Linkletter's falling-mirror man as anything at all-Mega-Hypocrite, murderer, victim of a frame-up-until I knew his identity and could check his mud flaps and his alibi or lack of one for Wednesday night.

Assuming for the time being that the motel mystery man was the Mega-Hypocrite, I needed to know if he was even alive.

I drove into town and went into the Albany Public Library. I checked all the obituaries in the Times Union file for mid-June. No pillars of the community had expired on or soon after the date of the falling mirror. Any number of those who had joined the majority during this period-Mrs. Tillie Levitsky, age eighty-seven; Franklin Moneypenny, age ninety-four; Arline M. Reilly, age one hundred and three; and several dozen others-might well have been considered hypocrites by their survivors if it came out that they had been spending Wednesday nights in a Central Avenue hot-sheet motel.

But not mega-hypocrites whose hypocrisy was so monstrous as to earn them a place at the top of Rutka's list of danger-to-society closet cases.

Then a headline about a gangland shooting on the front page of a mid-June T-U caught my eye, and for a few excited minutes I thought I'd figured it all out. From a pay phone, I called an acquaintance in New York City who specializes in the intricacies of mob life. I asked him if any Mafia figure might have visited Albany every Wednesday night for a year until mid-June, and if such a figure might have then died or disappeared with no explanation.

The reporter said no, none of that made any sense. No major mob figure needed to visit Albany (which didn't even have a good clam house), since those politicians beholden to the mob traveled without objection to wherever their bosses were situated, making it unnecessary for their bosses to journey out to visit them. Nor had any major mid-level mobster in the Northeast died or disappeared during the month of June, other than the one I'd just read about who'd been gunned down while visiting Miami. I thanked the reporter for his disappointing information and hung up.

The mirror man, I decided, was probably alive. Though maybe badly scarred. Maybe what I had to find was a deeply closeted gay man with hideous scars on his back and buttocks. Maybe the state police could put out an all-points bulletin. Or I could go around pulling down the pants of respectably dressed gay men and checking their buttocks. I felt as though that's what I was about to be reduced to.

Back at the house on Crow Street, I slapped together a two-day-old-runny-tuna sandwich and ate it with two aspirin. Two messages were on my machine, one from Joel McClurg at Cityscape reminding me of our agreement that I'd tip him off if I was closing in on the killer-I thought, Fat chance of my doing that any time soonand one message from Bub Bailey asking me to phone him with any new leads I'd come up with and telling me that he, regrettably, had none. He said he hoped to see me at the Rutka funeral the next morning and we'd catch up on each other's developments.

While I was eating, Federal Express showed up with a package from New York City. I signed for it and set it on the kitchen counter, unopened.

After lunch, I got out my list of local sources and worked the phone. Art Murphy still seemed like the best route to the identity of the motel-mirror man, so I got busy trying to find out who Art hung around with, who his family members were, and who he might lend his car to every night for a year.

Art's credit was in order, I learned, and he owned his house on Flint Street, with just two years to go on the mortgage. Art was sixty-one years old. The credit agency was also able to tell me that Art earned $42,570 the previous year, that his outstanding debts were a Key Bank car loan with monthly payments of $289, and that his unpaid Visa balance was $721. A second card-holder was a Mrs. June Murphy, age fifty-nine, same address as Art.

Through a friend in the school department records office, I found out that the Murphys had three daughters, Linda, Connie, and Joyce, who, I calculated, would now be thirty-eight, thirty-seven, and thirty-one. None was listed in the Albany phone book; they'd either married and changed their names, or moved away, or all had unlisted numbers. Or maybe they all lived at home with Art and June, happy never to leave the simple pleasures of Flint Street.

I used the street address-name of occupant guide to search for an acquaintance of mine in Art's neighborhood, but could find none. I was luckier, though, when I phoned a friend who was a bookkeeper for another car dealer up the highway from Byrne Olds-Cadillac; he told me he knew Art only slightly, but his brother had a friend who had once dated one of Art's daughters and he'd have the brother's friend give me a call, if he could reach him, which he did. The friend, Lou Ptak, soon called, a tad suspicious of who or what I was, which he should have been.

I told him I worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and one of Art's daughters had applied for a position with the agency, necessitating a full-field security check.

"Which daughter?" Lou Ptak asked.

"Joyce," I said, taking a chance, and he started laughing. "It figures," he said, and chortled off and on throughout our conversation.

The Murphys' family life was unexceptional, according to Ptak. Art and June had devoted their lives to raising their daughters, all of whom had fled Albany at the earliest opportunity. Ptak didn't know who Art's friends were, but he thought they were the men from Byrne Olds-Cadillac and those who shared Art's interests in golf and bowling.

Art's parents were dead, Ptak thought, and June's mother was perhaps living, but in a nursing home. The extended Murphy family, he didn't know. When I asked if any of them might have achieved local renown, he said that was a funny question for the FBI to be asking, but he thought not.

Ptak said he hadn't actually been in touch with the family for ten years, since Joyce broke up with him and announced that she had decided to become a nun. Then he laughed again, and was still chuckling when we both hung up.

I called Timmy at his office and said, "I'm flummoxed. I've spent the day threatening and badgering and attempting to blackmail people who probably don't deserve it. John Rutka would have been proud of me, going around terrorizing all kinds of poor bastards who mainly just want to be left alone to work a few of the harmless scams the republic is founded on and then at the end of the day climb into bed with some simpatico struggling soul and get a little comfort. I did all that and got nowhere and ended up with next to nothing." I described my meetings with Ronnie Linkletter, Jay Gladu, Royce McClosky, and the hapless car-lender Art Murphy.

"That doesn't sound like a washout to me," Timmy said. "Slinger told you last night that Linkletter's old boyfriend was top-secret stuff, and Ronnie confirmed it, and Ronnie also confirmed that the guy is someone very, very formidable-so formidable that Ronnie would not be able to stand the big man's exposure. If that isn't a perfect profile of Rutka's Mega-Hypocrite, I don't know who would be better. I think you're close."

"Maybe I am. It's just that I'm sick of it all."

"And the stuff that the motel people told you-the way the mirror man was spirited away in a big white Chrysler with taped plates. That sure sounds like a mega-hypocrite."

"Yeah."

"Did you just call me up to whine?"

"I guess I did."

"Maybe you need to take a break, get some distance on the whole thing."

"Nah, that never works for me. The picture doesn't clarify, it just blurs. I'll have to keep at it."

"You've got my sympathy and all my best wishes, but I've got to get back to work."

"Okay."

"See you later. Good luck."

"Thanks. I could use a little."

And within a matter of hours, I got some. Though maybe it's not called luck when, as you look around, you no longer fail to recognize the obvious.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the guest room, where I'd locked Rutka's files, rummaging through them trying to make some simple key I'd somehow missed before jump out at me. None jumped.

At five, with my headache back, and feeling sicker than ever of the whole thing, I went back down to the kitchen and faced what I realized was the other cause of my headache, which was a sickness of the heart. I opened the Fed-Ex package from New York.

The hypodermic and the vial accompanying it had been well insulated for shipping and had arrived intact along with a typewritten set of instructions that were so clear they appeared to be impossible not to follow. Loving care had gone into their composition. No personal note was enclosed in the package, just the hypodermic, the vial, and the well-written instructions.

I stuffed the instrument and the vial with its harmless-looking cloudy fluid into a flight bag along with the typed instructions for what felt to me exactly like murder, and I drove with a pounding heart over to Albany Med. I was Raskolnikov, General Schwarzkopf, Albert

Schweitzer, Leopold and Loeb, Mother Teresa, Charles Manson.

"Hi, how's he doing?" I said, standing next to the curtain with the skeletal Hispanic man behind it.

Mike said nothing, just stared at the bag that hung from my shoulder.

Mrs. Meserole said, "There's no change, Donald. All we can do is pray. It was good of you to come."

I wondered if there was some way I could stick the lethal needle into her, but this was not what Mike had in mind, or what Stu would have wanted-so far as I knew-so I acceded to the wishes of others in choosing who in the room would be eased over the precipice.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yes, it's so sad. But he's so peaceful."

Mike followed me into the corridor. I handed him the bag. "There are clear instructions inside," I said.

He placed the strap over his shoulder and caressed the bag, as if examining its strange properties with his fingertips.

"She's leaving at six," Mike said, "to go with her sister to the movies. It seems I've finally earned her trust."

"Oh."

He shrugged miserably.

"You don't have to do it now," I said. "Or at all. He's not suffering."

"I'm not doing it for him," he said. "I'm doing it for me. I want this over with."

"Sure."

"Maybe I'm doing it for Rhoda and Al too, because it's what they want, but they don't know it. Is that too presumptuous?"

"I think it is."

He thought about it. "Yeah, but-I can't live this way. Maybe they can, but I can't. Don't I count?"

"Yes. What you're doing's not wrong. He's as good as dead, after all. Stu's long gone. What's going on now is just ceremony."

"Well, it's the longest damn ceremony I've ever had anything to do with."

This was where Stu was supposed to stick his head around the corner and say, "Didn't you watch the Academy Awards this year?"

But he didn't do it.

I said, "I'd do it for you, but I don't think you want me to. It's too- It's about as intimate as two people can get."

"That's right, Don," he said. "That's exactly what it is. Thanks for your help." He pulled my cheek against his and held it there, and then he turned with the bag on his shoulder and walked back into the room.

I stood there for a minute, feeling light-headed, and wondering if there was a lounge nearby where I could sit down for a while, or maybe curl up in fetal position and weep, when two people walked out of the room across the hall where the comatose truck driver and Bishop McFee lay.

One of the two was a middle-aged woman with a tight perm in a primary color. She said, "Arthur's been a tower of strength through all of this, Edna, so I don't think it's up to you to criticize him."

"June," said the other woman, equally permed to within an inch of her life, "he had no right to talk to you that way about your own brother. I'm sure the Murphys have a skeleton or two in their own closet somewhere, and Arthur just had no right."

"Mrs. Murphy," I said, and she turned. "I'm so sorry about your brother. Has he shown any signs of improvement?"

"No," she said, and both women gazed at me mournfully. "The bishop is sleeping peacefully, but we don't know if he's going to wake up or not."

"It doesn't look good," the other woman said.

June Murphy said, "All we can do is pray. We just hope the bishop is having sweet dreams."

"It's a tragedy," I said. "How long has he been in his coma?"

"Since June eleventh. It's coming up on seven weeks now. We're all praying for a miracle."

"But it doesn't look good," the other woman said.

"Your brother-what? Slipped in the rectory?"

"One of the brothers had just waxed the floor," June Murphy said somberly. "Mort was hurrying down the hall and he slipped and fell backwards, and he tragically landed on the back of his head and it affected his brain. And he'd been so vigorous and active right up until the time of the accident."

"And so admired throughout the diocese," I said. "I'm Bob Mills, by the way, and I know your husband, Art. We've bowled together." They both nodded and smiled wanly. "Sometimes I gave your husband a lift on Wednesday night when your brother was using his car."

It took a second for this to register, but then it did, and she said, "Oh, yes, the bishop always left his car to be waxed out at Byrne's Wednesday night and Mortimer used Art's car to make his calls. Wednesday night was his night to visit the homeless.

Mortimer never forgot the unfortunate, even after he became a media personality."

"I suppose the bishop's accident must have been almost as hard on Art as it was on you, Mrs. Murphy."

I could see that this made them both a little uncomfortable, and she said, "Yes, Arthur is deeply saddened," and let it go at that.

"Maybe I'll just look in on the bishop and say a little novena," I said.

"Thank you," Mrs. Murphy said. "It's all anyone can do now."

We said good-bye, and as the two moved on down the corridor I heard Mrs. Murphy's friend say, "Well, now, that was nice of him, wasn't it?"

I walked into the room past the vacant-eyed truck driver and stood at the side of the bed of the vacant-eyed bishop. He was surrounded by flowers and cards and statuary, as if he'd already arrived at the cemetery, but instead of a white clerical collar around his neck, he was hooked up to a feeder and a respirator, and he had a big white bandage wrapped all around his head.

I leaned down to his ear and whispered, "Hello there, Ail-American Asshole Mega-Hypocrite."

If, in his mind, he formulated a furious reply, he did not speak it. end user