Third man out

8

As I pulled out, the arson squad drove up, two guys in jackets in a state car. I left Elmwood Place and turned north out of residential Handbag and past the old brick lady's-pocketbook factories the town had taken its name from in the 1880s. Handbag's last handbag had been produced in July of 1968, when the stitchers and clampers struck for a dollar-and-a-quarter-an-hour raise over three years, and management didn't even schedule a bargaining session. A union leader claimed the managers just left the screen doors flapping and drove out to the airport. I've read there's now a town in Malaysia called Hahndoo-Bahgoo.

The factories I passed were boarded up, some with roofs fallen in. Now people worked down in Albany for the state or in so-called "service industries," some of which were doing something socially useful-fixing cars, deciphering tax forms, delivering pizza-and many of which were not. Employing fifty or sixty people in Handbag was a new outfit I'd read about called Sell-You-Ler Telephone, a telemarketing firm. The company was paid large sums by other companies to bother people at home. It seemed an unlikely way to try to restore American economic competitiveness in the world, but that's probably not what Sell-You-Ler's owners had in mind. As I rolled up Broad Street, there the damn place was. I thought about going in and bothering somebody, but figured they would have systems in place to prevent this.

I grabbed a quick burger at a drive-up window, and when they asked me if I'd like an apple pie for dessert, I asked them if they'd like to read my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I said it was a wonderful novel.

The Handbag police station was in a wing of Town Hall, a two-story pale-brick and concrete-slab structure. Bland and easy to take, the building looked like a Jimmy Carter public works project. A clerk behind the counter had never heard of me, but she ushered me to a window-less room with a collapsible table and some folding chairs and asked me to take a seat. I started to count the pores in the beige cinderblock walls, and ten minutes later, at two-fifteen, the door opened and a man shambled in and shut the door behind him.

Chief of Police Harold "Bub" Bailey nodded, shook my hand cordially, and said, "Don't get up." In his gray sports jacket, yellow polo shirt, and khakis, Bailey looked less like a police chief than the manager of a bowling alley, except less harried. Sixtyish, with receding gray hair and a round face with a droll, noncommittal look, he came across as a man alert to his surroundings but not ready to get too excited by them. He seated himself across the table from me and spread out some folders.

"You're a private investigator," he said. "That's the way to live. Take the ones you want to work on and let the rest go. I wish I could get away with that."

"It has its advantages," I said. "Though the pension plan is poor."

"That's something to think about, you bet."

"If you could pick and choose your cases," I said, "would you have picked the one we're here to talk about?"

"I sure would've. Charlie Rutka was a friend of mine and he wouldn't have wanted anything to happen to his son. And I don't want anything to happen to young John, either. That's what I want to talk to you about."

"Good. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

He fiddled with the folders on the table thoughtfully and said, "How well do you know your client, Mr. Strachey?"

"I've known him casually for a year. This is our first close contact. Why?"

He looked at me somberly and said, "I think that you're a professional and I've heard that you're an honest man."

"I try to be both, but I have lapses."

"I know you've been a gay activist yourself and had run-ins with the Albany Police Department too."

"Sometimes."

"Don't quote me, but you were probably in the right. I know for a fact there are officers in that department whose conduct is not professional."

"That's putting it mildly."

"No," he said, "that's not putting it mildly at all. Those are strong words for me, and when I say a police officer is unprofessional, that's an indictment. It doesn't happen in Handbag, I'll tell you that."

"It's the minimum people should expect from their police."

He said, "I think you also consider yourself a professional, Mr. Strachey, even though the ethics of your profession are probably a little looser than the ethics of mine."

"Probably."

"But not so loose that you could afford to participate in a conspiracy that involved arson and a false report of attempted murder."

He watched me and waited.

"Chief," I said, "if you have evidence that John Rutka is involved in such a conspiracy-if that's what you're suggesting-why are you telling me? Go arrest the son of a bitch."

He arched his back, stretching to get a kink out of it, grimaced mildly, and said, "I'll explain that in a minute. First I want to convince you that I've conducted a professional investigation. Are you interested in the evidence?"

"Sure."

"Item number one," Bailey said, "is that a witness can locate Edward Sandifer in the Rutka backyard at the time the fire began."

"There may be a kind of goofy explanation for that."

"Item number two in the evidence file is the fact that Sandifer left Kopy-King half an hour before the fire started and didn't get back to the shop in Albany until twenty minutes after the fire began. The Kopy-King manager says Sandifer was out making a delivery to a customer and he named the customer. We checked that out and it was true. Except the customer, Bernie's Caterers, is just a five-minute drive away from Kopy-King. That's ten minutes round-trip. Where was Sandifer the other forty minutes?"

The question was asked rhetorically, but I went through the motions. "He could have been anywhere," I said. "Picking up a cup of coffee, standing in line at the bank, goofing off. Where did the Kopy-King manager think he was?"

"No idea. He was stumped too. And Bernie's says Sandifer dropped off the order and left immediately."

"Look, Chief, I have to tell you something. I know about your witness on Maplewood, Mrs. Renfrew."

"Good. You're as sharp as I heard you were. So, what'd Edward have to say? What's his explanation for going up the yard just when the fire broke out?"

I looked Bailey hard in the eye and said, "He says it must have been a guy who looks like him-somebody he knows 'who looks just like him, he says."

"That's not very good."

"There's a guy in Albany by the name of Grey Koontz who's a friend of a man John outed. I take it you've followed John's unusual career in journalism."

"Yes, I have." He tapped another of the files in front of him, a file on the file man.

"Well, this Grey Koontz is supposed to be a pretty low character, according to John and Eddie, and they think Bruno Slinger, a guy John outed, put Koontz up to starting the fire. Slinger got all unhinged when he was uncloseted, and he threatened John. It looks to me as if this Koontz character is somebody you might want to check out."

Bailey sat there slowly shaking his head. "Do you believe a word John Rutka says?"

I wanted to say no, not a single word, including "and" and "the," but instead I said, "He often makes a kind of sense. On the subject of the cruelties and injustices inflicted on gay people in this country, he can be very clearheaded."

"That may be, but it's not what I mean. I mean, does he lie or tell the truth about things that happened or what people said?"

I said, "I'm still sorting that out."

"John Rutka is a habitual liar," Bailey said with a look of melancholy. "He broke his mother's and father's hearts with his lies. From his thirteenth year on, Charlie Rutka once told me, the boy lied about everything from his homework, to his household chores, to where he went when he left the house. He even stole things and lied about that. When he was an altar boy at St. Michael's, he stole a valuable chalice, and when his mom found the chalice in the attic, John blamed his sister Ann. It seemed the boy just couldn't help telling whoppers. He lied all the time then, and I'll give you odds, Mr. Strachey, that John Rutka is still telling lies today. It's too bad, but people who are like that don't often change." I said, "It discourages me to hear that." "Of course it does. And here's some more discouraging information." He opened a folder. "In February of last year John Rutka was arrested in New York City for theft of drugs and medical instruments from the hospital where he worked. The charges were dropped when he agreed to resign his nursing position. Fifteen or sixteen other arrests over the past three years are for vandalism, trespassing, and resisting arrest. There were two convictions for trespassing that cost John two hundred dollars in fines each time. Mr. Strachey, I'll bet my bottom dollar you weren't familiar with your client's criminal record, were you?"

This was murky. " 'Criminal record' is putting it strongly," I said. "The trespassing charges were probably ACT-UP zaps demonstrations against institutions that some people think hurt and kill people with their policies on AIDS and figurative and literal gay-bashing. I haven't done it myself-I don't want to lose my license-but I greatly admire a lot of what they do. As for the drug charge, I'd want to know more about that. It's out of character-he's an M amp;M addict-and there might be an explanation. You said you had your reasons for laying all this out for me. Let's get to the point. What are you after from me?"

"I want to convince you," he said, "that John Rutka and Edward Sandifer are going to end up in jail if they stay in the Albany area, and I want you to talk them into leaving."

"Oh."

"John apparently trusts you. He doesn't trust me- thinks I'm one of the old farts who hates gays. That's not true. My education and training have taught me to be broad-minded, whatever my upbringing. But John would never listen to me, anyway. He's the family rebel and I'm too much like family. So I want to convince you that John should go out to San Francisco or someplace like that where his type of gays are more welcome and can feel at home. Just pack up and go. Now."

"He'd never do it."

"You can convince him. It's for his own good."

"Chief, I have no idea why John Rutka stayed on in Handbag after his parents died, but he's here and he thinks of it as home, and it's his right to stay here, that's for sure."

"Yes, it is. And it is not only my right but my obligation to prosecute him for any crimes he's committed-provided he's here in Handbag for the prosecution to take place. If he's gone from Handbag for good, I can probably get away with letting a few things slide by. But if he stays, I'll have to charge him, and I'd hate to, really. A lot of people who knew Charlie and Doris Rutka would hate to see it too, including my wife, who was Doris's best friend. See my problem? I don't want to prosecute John, but I will if he stays in Handbag. I'll expose the scam he's working-the arson squad's report will come to me for disposition-and I'll see that he's punished for it. I'll have no choice. Now do you see the situation we've got to deal with here?"

He gazed at me placidly.

I said, "Yes, I think I see what the situation is we've got to deal with. But I don't think John and Eddie are going to see it the same way."

"I'm going to leave that up to you," he said, and picked up his folders. end user