Third man out - Stevenson Richard - Страница 26

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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.

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