4

The first thing Rutka said was, "I want to write you a check for the retainer. Will two thousand be enough?"

"We can work that out. Five hundred should do for now. Tell me about your visit from the Handbag police."

It was mid-morning, cloudless and heating up fast, and we were seated on the screened-in back porch of the old Rutka home on Elmwood Place, a short street of angular frame single-family homes separated by narrow lawns and driveways leading to small garages at the rear of each property. The elms of the street name apparently had succumbed to blight, but young maples lent some shade to the well-kept houses, whose cozy front porches were fortified by puffy hydrangea bushes and bosomy heaps of respectable shrubs. It felt like an unlikely locale for a Queer Nation headquarters, but maybe that was the point.

Each house had a concrete walk leading down to the street, like a tasteful necktie. Some were lined with zinnias and marigolds in lurid full bloom. The flowers lent a note of welcome to the neighborhood, though as I'd driven up no human being was visible. Up the street a gray cat had scratched a hole in a garbage bag left at curbside and was rummaging through the spillage. The only sound was from a dozen or so air conditioners scarfing up what was left of the Mideastern oil reserves in atonal tandem.

Rutka, pale but otherwise shapely and fit in cut-offs and a tank top, was sprawled along an old metal fifties-era porch glider on a bed of cushions that looked as if they'd been dragged down from the attic every summer since the glider was purchased. His wounded appendage lolled over the side of the glider below a sinewy leg and well-turned, muscular thigh that was not the result of a health-club regimen, I guessed, but of a decade of plowing up and down hospital corridors eight to twelve hours a day.

I sat in a metal rocker and helped myself from time to time to an M amp;M from a large dish on an end table next to Rutka. He ate them by the fistful, as if the medical advice he'd received had been to stay off the wounded foot and eat plenty of candy. My peripheral vision searched his torso for love handles but none were visible. I chewed and swallowed my own M amp;M's slowly so as to distribute their effects evenly.

"The stupid cops thought what I thought they would think," Rutka said. "That I shot myself, or Eddie shot me, for the publicity and the martyrdom. God, I'm mad but I'm not crazy."

"They said that straight out?"

"They didn't have to. They asked me if either Eddie or I owned a firearm, and they kept asking me to repeat the story of what happened, over and over, as if they couldn't quite believe it, or they were trying to trip me up."

"Did they trip you up?"

"Look, I know what happened. No, they did not trip me up." Rutka's left eye wandered off to take in the old grape arbor, heavy with bird-pecked pale produce, that extended down the backyard away from the porch, and his right eye peered at me beadily. "I went outside, somebody shot me, and a car drove away. How could anybody trip me up? Even if I was making it up, it's too simple."

"Tell me again everything that happened from beginning to end. Start when Eddie came home from work. Is he at work now?"

"He works every day, including Saturday, from seven-thirty to four, later when they get busy. Yesterday was slow and Eddie was home by four-thirty." He repeated the story he had told me the night before in the Albany Med parking lot: Eddie's arrival home; the plan to walk down to Konven-You-Rama; stepping off the front steps; bang; car with bad muffler speeds off; Eddie comes out, finds Rutka sprawled; cops, ambulance arrive; shell found in gutter by patrolman.

Rutka's story sounded identical to the narrative I'd heard the night before. A new detail cropped up here and there; others were dropped. It sounded real, natural, truthful.

"You said the cops asked if you own a firearm. Do you?"

"I told them I didn't. But I do. I guess I can tell you."

"Oh, great."

"Here," he said, and slid a. 38 Smith and Wesson revolver out from under the cushions.

I examined the weapon, which was fully loaded, and said, "Where did this thing come from?"

He was nonchalant. "Around the corner from my old apartment on a Hundred and Sixth Street in New York.

I bought it retail, I guess you could say. These things are easier to come by in that neighborhood than take-out Szechuan."

"It's not registered anywhere?"

A mirthless laugh. " 'Register criminals, not firearms,' right, Strachey? How could I be a First Amendment purist and scoff at the Second?"

"You're right. Criminals should be required to register their crimes in advance and observe a seven-day waiting period before committing them." I returned the revolver and Rutka stuffed it back under the cushions. "How come you felt you needed one of these?" I asked.

"In New York," he said, "I was mugged twice by gangs of kids. After the second time, when they threw me in the gutter and hit me on the neck with a chain, I bought this gun from a guy I knew at the local bodega. Of course, it didn't do me any good. It was too much trouble to drag it around and I always left it at home. You can't hide a shoulder holster under a nurse's uniform."

"What was the caliber of the slug the cops found yesterday?"

He shrugged. "They didn't tell me. But it wouldn't have come from this gun. That I know."

"Because?"

"Because this gun was up on a closet shelf in our room. I brought it down this morning when Eddie left for work. I didn't really know how scared I was until Eddie left and I was alone. I have to admit, I really started to freak. That's when I called you. And I got the gun out and loaded it."

Rutka was looking directly at me now with both eyes, though if a wild man suddenly arrived on the scene spraying hot lead it wasn't at all certain where an excited Rutka's gaze might land. I said, "You have one eye that wanders. If you had to shoot that gun, how would you aim it?"

"With my right eye," he said. "It's the left one that gets away. That'd be no problem."

"Makes sense. What about the actual bullet that nicked your ankle? Have they found it yet?"

He took another fistful of candies, chomped on them, and said, "Two bozos were out here with tape measures and geometry-class instruments at six this morning, but they didn't find anything. They said they thought the bullet might have buried itself in the lawn. I got the impression that if I'd been shot through the pancreas they'd've dug up the lawn. But they said there was no reason to make a mess in the neighborhood if they didn't have to. They went through the motions."

I asked him for the names of the investigating officers and he said, "Just the chief-Bub Bailey-and the patrolman who was here last night, Octavio Reed. They only have one detective in Handbag, and he's on vacation until Labor Day."

The name Octavio Reed meant something to me, but I couldn't remember exactly what. I said, "They told you that?"

"They were civil," Rutka said with what looked like a trace of disappointment. "The chief mentioned Dad, of course. It was obvious he wasn't going to tell me what he really thought of me in the presence of Dad's ghost. The reactionaries who control this country are right in one way-what they call family values are worth something. Just make sure you're a member of the family.

And that you don't have one of those families that, when they find out you're queer, they kick you out on the street."