Third man out

3

Rutka phoned the first thing next morning. "I need your help," he said.

"I don't think so."

"It's the Keystone Kops out here-the Keystone Kops on Quaaludes. They're useless."

"It's too early to tell."

"No, it can't be too early, it can only be too late. If they don't catch whoever shot me and arrest him, he could try it again. Or somebody else who'd like to get rid of me might see how vulnerable I am and come after me. I have to know somebody's working on this who knows what he's doing if I want to feel secure enough to go on with my work."

On with his work-Albert Schweitzer at Lambarene. I said, "I'm not sure how I feel about your work. No, that's wrong. I disapprove of a lot of it. When you crossed the line from the Roy Cohn types to the merely well-known, you lost me. That's not fair."

Timmy looked up from his Cream of Wheat and mouthed, "Rutka?" I nodded. He looked down again.

"No, it's fair," Rutka said. "Until this heterosexist society knows that we are everywhere, that a high percentage of the most popular and respected people from every area of American life are gay, gay people who are ordinary can never begin to be accepted and feel safe. It's the moral responsibility of every gay man and woman to act as a role model and to…"

He gave me his stump speech. I listened and watched Timmy trying to read my reaction across the cereal. I consumed most of three eggs, up, and an English muffin while Rutka orated.

When he wound down, I said, "I'm pretty much with you on the social analysis but not on the tactics. Doing unto ourselves as others would do unto us can't be the answer. Anyway, whether I agree with you or not is academic. The shooting is a police matter and you should give them a chance and see what they come up with. Maybe they'll surprise you."

"Are you tied up with anything else?"

"As a matter of cold, hard fact, at the moment I am at liberty. But that's beside the point. Also, I do this for a living. I cost money."

"Not always. I've heard about that. But that doesn't matter. I can pay you. I have income from the hardware store. Dad left the business to me and Ann. She runs it and draws a salary, but we split the profits. I have a decent income. What do you charge?"

Timmy was seated behind a container of the clotted sweet tea he had become addicted to in his Peace Corps days in India back at the end of the Pat Boone era, and as he sipped the roily substance, he watched me with growing apprehension.

I said, "I wear red suspenders, drive a week-old BMW, and charge ten thousand dollars a day." Timmy gave a little nod of approval.

Rutka said, "Seriously."

"Seriously, my pants are held up by a disintegrating belt I picked up at an after-Christmas sale at Penney's in 1974, I drive an old Mitsubishi with rust spots on the doors, and my rate is two hundred dollars a day plus expenses."

"That's reasonable. I'd like to hire you."

"To do what?"

"To find out who shot me and have him arrested."

"I'm telling you, John, that's the Handbag Police Department's job. That's how they'll see it and they'll be right. Police departments solve crimes."

"They can't do it."

"You don't know that," I said. "You insist on fairness but you're not being fair."

"I've never insisted on fairness. If you believe that, you don't understand me at all. It's too late for fairness. I want change. I want people to confront their own bigotry, and I want this society to confront its own ignorance and stupidity, and I want bigotry and stupidity to wither under the harsh glare of the sunlight of truth."

"Oh, well. I stand corrected."

A silence, then a long sigh. "Look, Strachey, just put yourself in my place, will you do that? Think how you'd feel and how you'd react if somebody shot a gun at you. Have you ever been shot? I'll bet you have."

"No, just at. They missed."

"But still, you know. You were very frightened."

"Yes."

"And you wanted the person who did it caught and locked up immediately."

"I sure did."

"Then you can begin to understand what I'm going through. How would you feel if your life depended on the level of competence at the Handbag Police Department?"

He had me there. "I guess I'd feel the way you do. Endangered."

"Whatever you think of me, should I be shot and killed?"

"I'm one of those who don't think so, no."

"And what about those who do think so? Can the Handbag Police Department protect me from them?"

"Maybe." When I said "maybe," Timmy's look of apprehension deepened.

"When it's your life, the only one you'll ever have, 'maybe' isn't good enough. Am I right about this?"

"Sure." I looked away from Timmy, out the kitchen window at the box of pink petunias Timmy's Aunt Moira had hauled up from Poughkeepsie on the front seat of her Dodge. The thunderstorm the night before had bent them low, but in the morning sunshine they were starting to perk up nicely. With my well-practiced peripheral vision I could make out Timmy's mouth hanging open lightly. If I'd put a square of glass in front of it, I'd have gotten a little moisture.

"Don't you sometimes do security work?" Rutka said. "Protect people and property for a fee?"

I said I'd done it from time to time.

"Well, how about protecting me? The fact is-" There was a tremulous pause. "The fact of the matter is, Strachey, I'm scared to death. I really am. This time I really put my foot in it. I went after somebody who must be totally wacko. Whoever it is wants me dead and there isn't a fucking thing I can do about it. I'm vulnerable and I don't know what to do. For God's sake, can't you help me just because I'm fucking scared and I want help? I'll pay you, for God's sake, but I really need help."

He waited. "I could talk to you," I finally said to the petunias.

"Will you?"

"It would be a security thing."

"That's what I mean."

"Did you ask the police for protection?"

A half-laugh, half-sob. "They're going to drive by the house once an hour. A fucking lot of good that will do as soon as the killer sees them leave for the next fifty-nine minutes. Or if I leave the house to go anywhere."

"This is true. You're not as well protected as you might be."

"Bub Bailey said they were short-staffed, it being August and vacation time for some of the officers."

"I couldn't stay with you twenty-four hours a day," I said. "If you wanted bodyguards I'd have to hire them and that could become expensive. Is that what you think you want?"

"I'll have to think about that."

"But I could spend some time with you, become a known presence that would have the effect of unbalancing somebody trying to get at you. And I could advise you on precautions to take."

"That could help a lot. And while you were around, I could fill you in on the people who would be the most likely to try to get at me. And naturally you could go through my research material and maybe come up with some leads on your own-stuff you could pass on to the cops without them having to go directly into the material, which I am not about to let the government see."

I said, "Oh, your files, right." I looked Timmy directly in the eye and tried not to blink.

"You might spot something I missed myself," Rutka said. "I've got tons of notes and letters and memos. Sometimes I can't even read the handwriting. Mine or somebody else's."

"I could sift through it. It couldn't hurt. And if I ended up assisting the police in their inquiries in a small way, maybe they would appreciate it, if I was tactful."

"I can't tell you how relieved I am," Rutka said. "You might think I'm dogmatic and overly aggressive, but I'm human too and you recognize that. Whatever some people think I have coming, I don't deserve to be shot dead."

"No."

"Can you come out here this morning and we'll talk? I'm supposed to stay off this foot."

We set a time and he gave me the address.

As I hung up, Timmy set down his mug. "Why are you doing this?"

"Several reasons. Two, anyway. Three."

"This guy has done things that turned your stomach."

"He's also done things I approved of. Bruno Slinger, for one, had it coming." This was the state senatorial aide who had lobbied vigorously, and successfully, to have a hate-crimes bill killed. I said, "Having that low slug sauteed was a public service worthy of a Nobel Prize."

"The Nobel Prize in outing?"

"Biophysics, then."

"Except the stunt backfired, because Slinger is a man comfortable with the big lie. He just denied it and said the fags were trying to smear him. What good did any of it do?"

"It did some good," I said. "People believed it. They don't take Slinger as seriously anymore. His effectiveness could be cut down. People snicker at him behind his back."

"Indeed they do," Timmy said, looking both smug and disgusted, one of his more practiced expressions. "But they don't laugh at him because he's a liar and hypocrite and probably borderline psychotic. They do it because he's gay. He's another wretched homo. See, that's my point: When Rutka outs the monsters, people start talking about monstrous homosexuals. When he outs nice guys who are just well-known, then people talk about gay people as pathetic victims. Either way distorts the truth and hurts the cause. Rutka is unfair and he's wrong and he's dangerous."

I said, "I know. I mean, I agree with you up to a point."

"Which point?"

"Irrationality has its uses. Irrational people have theirs. They draw attention to a problem that's pretty much ignored otherwise, and then the more rational people on the same side of the issue move to the forefront and get taken seriously and the problem starts to get solved." Then I added, all too superfluously, "Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette."

"Oh. Oh, please."

I hardly believed I had uttered anything so callously puerile to Callahan, no matter how offhand. I knew that it would not have passed muster at Georgetown, to which Timmy returned every five years along with other alumni to have the gilt on his high moral tone freshly applied, and I doubted the argument would even get by at Rutgers anymore. But I played out my assigned role in our customary dialectic nonetheless, and said, "Progress is necessarily messy. Simply getting straight America's casual acceptance of gay people requires a lengthy battle in which collateral damage is inevitable. Some people are going to get hurt.

But it's necessary and it'll all be seen to have been worth it in the end."

He made a little explosion of air that sounded like "Sploooph." He said, "I thought you were in favor of the all-volunteer army.

And I know you're against cruelly mindless euphemisms."

"Yes, I am against conscription," I said, "unless people are routinely offered a choice to do something nonmilitary that will contribute to the common weal. And I'm not even so sure about that."

"Right, you're not so sure. Because you believe that in a civilized society people should pay taxes-even plenty of taxes-to buy civility and to help out the unlucky, but otherwise people who obey just laws should be pretty much left alone. I've heard you say that."

"Yup. Pretty much."

"So if the government of a nation that calls itself civilized should let people alone, why shouldn't John Rutka let people alone?"

He raised his voice, a rare occurrence.

I'd had enough. "Well, on second thought, maybe you're right. As usual."

He snorted and began gathering up the soiled china and utensils. "Donald, I cherish you." He snorted again and turned on the hot-water tap all the way, as his mother had taught him, to prepare for scalding the dishes and cleansing them of the Trichomonas, cholera, scurvy, and athlete's foot that surely were lurking there. He said, "So it sounds as if you're going to go to work for this man you disagree with and don't like. Why?"

"I've worked for lots of people I disagreed with and didn't like. If I hadn't, I'd've starved."

"But this is a special situation. And I know you don't need the money. What you made from the Hapgoods should carry you well into the fall." This was a recent case wherein I discreetly recovered a purloined family portrait-the grandmother of a Presbyterian grande dame from Latham in a pose startling even by present-day standards and barely imaginable in 1878, the year of its creation-and received for my efforts an appropriately obscene fee.

"No, I don't need the money," I said. "Though Rutka claims he can afford it and he's paying me."

The scalding process began; you could almost hear the little screams of the rinderpest. "Then why are you doing it?" he said.

"Three reasons. One, I don't need the money now, but

I might need it later. This is a chancy business. The second reason is, Rutka is in danger and he's frightened. He needs protection

— not from criticism or maybe even from the odd sock in the jaw. But he does not deserve to be shot and killed."

"That's two reasons. What's the third?"

I knew he'd guess. "It's the least important of the three."

"Uh-huh."

"You don't know?"

The faucet was shut off, the cloud of steam began to dissipate, and he looked at me. "You want to get a look at his files."

"I'm curious. I admit it."

He began to laugh. "People deserve their privacy. Except you'd like to get just one little peek."

"Something like that."

"I know what you mean. Naturally I recognize the impulse."

"Except you would never act on it, would you?"

He thought about this. "I can't say never. I'm not perfect."

"Yes, but your imperfections lie in other areas."

This was irrelevant and unfair and I wasn't sure why I said it. He knew exactly what it meant, and briefly he was struck uncharacteristically speechless.

Timmy's imperfections had been a sensitive topic in recent months. The previous spring he had had a terrified hour-and-forty-five-minute sexual assignation with a diminutive huge-eyed Bengali economist who was passing through town. It had been Timmy's first lapse from his fourteen-year pledge of sexual fidelity. (I had made no such promise, and we had survived the onset of the HIV plague by the skin of my teeth.) Though health precautions were taken, he had done it, he immediately confessed, when he'd become unhinged, he said, by the little professor's uncanny resemblance to the district poultry officer Timmy had had the unrequited hots for in Visakhapatnam in 1968.

It may have been the briefest midlife-crisis fling on record, and it was only minimally hurtful to me-except to the extent that the incident was so out of character I feared that Timmy might be coming down with Alzheimer's, rare as it is among men in their forties. The event passed quickly by and was rarely referred to anymore, except on those occasions when I would get to point out that even a man educated by Jesuits could make a mistake. "Yes, every fourteen years," was the usual reply to this.

This time he was late for work, he said, and didn't have time for a nervous jocular exchange at his expense. He trotted upstairs to finish getting into his legislative aide's duds. With an hour to kill before I headed out to Rutka's house in Handbag, I read the newspaper account of Rutka's run-in with "an assailant possibly angered by exposure of his homosexuality." When Timmy sped through, I kissed him, careful not to leave egg on his lip. end user