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
23
I drove over to the Cityscape office on Greene Street and found Joel McClurg about to leave for the day.
"Do you keep a Times Union library?"
"Only as far back as 76."
"Good enough."
"What are you looking for?"
"I found John Rutka's Mega-Hypocrite-the one he told you was evil and John was scared to death of. Now I want to find out how he knew the man was evil. I'll bet I know, but I want to confirm it."
McClurg's eyes got big. "You actually found the guy that killed Rutka?"
"No, not yet. That's somebody else. That part will be simple, I think. But first things first."
"You're not telling me a thing, Strachey. And after all the help I gave you."
"Just let me look something up. Then we'll take a ride and you can take a picture of the murder car. How would that be? Or do you have someplace else you have to be?"
McClurg led me quickly to the Times Union index and showed me how to use it. Within a minute I'd found the October 1982 newspaper with the front-page story on Father Mortimer McFee's investiture as bishop of the Albany diocese. The ceremonies were of only passing interest to me; it was Father McFee's background I wanted to learn about, and I did.
Born in Buffalo in 1931, and raised there, Mortimer McFee had attended seminary in Batavia and served as assistant pastor at a church in New Rochelle for three years. Then he became pastor at St. Joseph's in Water-town, where he ministered from 1956 to 1968. In April of 1968 Father McFee was appointed parish priest at St. Michael's in Handbag, where he served until his elevation to bishop of the diocese in 1982. During Rutka's troubled teen years, full of turmoil and lies, his parish priest had been Mortimer McFee.
As we drove out to the diocese headquarters in Latham, I described to McClurg the chain of evidence and happenstance that had led me to Bishop McFee-from the All-American Mega-Hypocrite listed in Rutka's index but missing from his files, to Nathan Zenck, to Bruno Slinger, to Ronnie Linkletter, to Jay Gladu, to Royce McClosky, to Art Murphy, to June Murphy, to the room at Albany Med I'd stood across from nearly every night for a month.
McClurg took notes and gasped quite a bit. He shouldn't have been shocked. It was the oldest story in human history-not that a new bunch of pious phonies didn't keep showing up every generation to imbue the story with a grand new stench.
McClurg said, "When this comes out, aren't you afraid Ronnie Linkletter will kill himself?"
"I don't think so. I think Channel Eight will release him from his contract and he'll get a job in Gum Stump, Idaho, where he'll boost the ratings of whoever hires him. Ronnie's sweet-looking, he opens his mouth and mind-numbing inanities fall out, and he can tell when it might rain. Ronnie wants to be on television more than he wants to die, and a man like that has a future in American broadcasting."
"But if you're right about who killed Rutka, Linkletter will have to testify at the trial. He was there the night the mirror fell and the white Chrysler showed up."
"I feel bad for Ronnie," I said. "But he knew the character of the man he lay down with, and he's paying the price. Causes have effects. Acts have consequences. If Linkletter had come out and come to terms with his homosexuality and grown up, none of this would have happened to him."
McClurg shuddered theatrically. "Jesus, Strachey, you sound just like John Rutka-really quite pompous. I'm not gay, but I'll bet it's not as easy as that. Straight people hardly ever change their personalities and just start being sensible all the time and unaffected by the past. Are gay people superhuman that they should do any better?"
There was a logic to what McClurg said, which I immediately recognized because it was in many ways my own. But there was more to it, too.
"Up to a point," I said, "I agree with you. But when somebody's fear and self-loathing and self-delusion can actually get somebody killed, then we have to say: He should have done better. None of the people in the McFee-Linkletter-Slinger axis behaved as well as he should have-had to have done-and John Rutka lost his life as a result. And my guess is, during his adolescence Rutka lost something else to the demented Mortimer McFee, and that's what set all this violent craziness in motion."
"We'll never know for sure."
"No," I said, "but with Rutka dead and the bishop as good as dead, it's all academic now. Except, of course, for the killer of John Rutka."
At a quarter of seven we drove into the stone-walled grounds of the beaux-arts mansion that housed the diocese administration offices and the living quarters for Bishop McFee and his staff. The beds of purple snapdragons blooming on either side of the main entrance were lovely next to the shiny car under the porte cochere, a big white Chrysler.
No one appeared to greet us as I parked behind the Chrysler, and no one came out to inquire when I removed from my wallet the photocopy Bub Bailey had given me, of the slice of mud flap found outside the Rutka house after the murder. I crouched down, found the mud flap on the Chrysler that had a slice missing-it was the rear left-and held the photocopy up to it. The fit was perfect. I had found the murder car. McClurg took notes and pictures.
Still, no one appeared-we were not expected, after all-so we got back into my car and drove over to Route 9. I phoned Bub Bailey from the diner where McClurg and I had a couple of burgers, and Bailey agreed to meet us outside the eatery at eight. I phoned Timmy, who wasn't home and was probably a
t Albany Med, I guessed, and left the message that it was nearly all over and I'd see him later at home.
Bailey showed up promptly at eight with a Handbag patrolman and two state police detectives. I gave them a six-minute version of what I had learned and approximately how I had learned it, leaving out the blackmail, Dirty Harry tactics, impersonating an FBI agent, etc. They listened very, very gravely. The two detectives then took Bub Bailey aside and they conversed quietly. They knew they would have to either act or kill both Joel McClurg and me. Bailey must have advised acting-or maybe the state cops were professionals, too-because that's what we did next.
I followed the two police cars to the diocesan mansion. Bailey matched up the murder-scene mud-flap slice, which he had brought along, with the incomplete flap on the Chrysler. Then we followed him up the steps and pushed a button. Something went ding-dong deep inside.
The priest who came to the door looked downcast at the sight of two police cars, but he ushered us inside, where we gathered in a sparsely decorated lobby with highly polished marble floors but little else in the way of furnishings. He identified himself as Father Andrew Morgan and said he was the bishop's secretary and what was the problem?
When Bailey introduced all of us, the two state troopers said wait a minute, no press, so McClurg was sent outside. I could see him peering through an open window and snapping pictures of us during the exchange that came next.
"Father, we're investigating the murder of a man by the name of John Rutka," Bailey said. "Maybe you've heard about it."
"The homosexual activist?" His rosy cheeks got redder.
"That's right. That's the man. Would you tell me, please, who is the owner of that car in the driveway, the white Chrysler?"
"Why, it's the diocese car. It's owned by the diocese."
"Who drives it normally?"
"The bishop does. He did until his accident. Or I do."
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