Third man out - Stevenson Richard - Страница 4

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Stu shared a room with a skeletal, vacant-eyed Hispanic man no one had ever been known to visit. Across the hall lay a truck driver rendered comatose when his semi overturned on the Thruway. Sharing the trucker's room, in an uncharacteristically democratic gesture- and possibly as a cost-saving measure for the not-so-flush-as-it-once-was Albany diocese-was Bishop Mortimer McFee, who'd slipped on a lovingly waxed rectory floor in mid-June and landed on the back of his head, and now lay in medical and presumably spiritual limbo somewhere between the Albany diocese and the seraphim.

Traffic in and out of the bishop's room was considerable. Priests, mayors, nuns, columnists, restaurateurs, a U.S. senator, the lieutenant governor all came and went with whispers-apparently so as not to disturb anybody's irreversible coma-and heads bowed. One day Timmy himself had even looked in on the bishop to offer a mild novena for the soul of this man who had once told a Catholic gay group they would not be allowed to meet in a church's sub-basement because it wasn't "low enough for the likes of you."

"I went in and forgave him," Timmy told me when he came out.

"And did a look of peace spread slowly across his visage?" I asked.

"You're being sarcastic," Timmy replied, and said no more. On certain topics I never was sure what was going on in his head and knew enough not to try to find out.

Mike Sciola wandered out of the room now, dazed and bleary-eyed, and radiating the heavy medicinal scent carried by people who spend hours a day in hospitals. His cheeks were gaunt under his graying beard, and his dark hair was matted with sweat.

"Thanks for coming," Mike said.

"No change?" I asked.

"Nah."

"How are Rhoda and Al?"

"The same."

"Can you talk to them at all?"

"Not about turning off the feeder. If I talk about who's on Oprah today, they're cordial enough. But if I try to talk about Stu, forget it."

"You might as well quit for the day," Timmy said. "Visiting hours are nearly over anyway. Have you eaten?"

"I ate something."

"I haven't eaten at all," I said. "Let's walk over to Lark Street and sink our teeth into something greasy and refreshing."

"I guess. Maybe in a while."

"Somebody shot John Rutka," Timmy said. "Did you hear?"

This got a rise. "Holy shit, is he dead?"

"I just talked to him down in the parking lot. Whoever it was just clipped him on the foot and he's not too bad off."

Sciola's red eyes were alert now. "I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner. You can do what that guy's been doing in New York or Hollywood and get away with it, I guess, but Albany's too straight and nineteenth-century. Gay people just aren't used to that radical stuff around here. I've seen guys who are ordinarily levelheaded go absolutely bananas when the subject of John Rutka comes up. I've even heard people say somebody should shut him up permanently, and some people seemed to mean it."

"Who did you hear say that?" I said.

He had to think about this. "Well, Ronnie Linkletter. I heard him say one time Rutka should be boiled in oil. Maybe that sounds as if he was speaking figuratively, but he said he'd love to light the match. And when the other people who were there joked about a John Rutka fondue party with Rutka the thing being fondued, Ronnie said he wasn't kidding, that anybody who set out to ruin people's lives had to be stopped, and if the legal system couldn't do it then it was all right for people to do it on their own. He really seemed serious."

"Was this before or after Ronnie was outed?" I asked.

"Well, I think it was actually before, believe it or not."

"Ronnie must have known he was an easy target," Timmy said, "being a media superstar and all."

"He's still there doing the weather on Channel Eight, isn't he?" Sciola asked. "I can't stand to watch those shows."

Timmy said, "They make USA Today look like Le Monde."

I said, "They're trying to push Ronnie out. They've got him on at some godawful hour in the morning, instead of at six and eleven, but he's got a contract. I've heard he's looking around though, in places like Yuma and Winnemucca. He's been hurt and I'm sure he's very, very angry at Rutka. Who else have you heard say anything threatening?"

Sciola mentioned three other people: a closeted Albany cop he knew; a Schenectady dentist whom Rutka, to my knowledge, had not gotten around to outing; and a married Lesbian vice president of an Albany-based bank. Their remarks, as Sciola recalled them, were vaguer than Ronnie Linkletter's, and less menacing. They were not, in fact, much different from comments I'd been hearing directed at Rutka at gatherings for the past six months. I told Sciola this and said I could probably compile a list of twenty-five people who'd been pretty nearly unhinged by Rutka's crusade and had shown it in public.

"So half the gay people in Albany are logical suspects," Timmy said. "Maybe they all did it. It's like Murder on the Orient Express. Everybody had a motive and everybody had a hand in doing it."

"In shooting a man in the foot?"

"That would explain why they only got him in the foot. It sounds like an assassination attempt by a publicly appointed commission."

Sciola managed a wan smile and said, "I'm tired. Let's get out of here and eat something. Someplace with cold beer."

"I'm for that," Timmy said.

"Let me just check on Stu," Sciola said, looking suddenly apprehensive. He turned and strode back into room F-5912. Ten minutes later, when he hadn't come out, I waited while Timmy went downstairs to find a vending machine. He came back with two Snickers bars and a foam cup of watery coffee.

"He hasn't come out yet?"

"He says we should go ahead. He's not hungry."

We left the candy bars and the coffee on the floor outside the room and went out into the semitropical Albany night. We weren't so hungry ourselves anymore and rode over to the house on Crow Street in Timmy's car.

The eleven o'clock news on Channel Eight led with "an attempt on the life tonight of a controversial gay activist in a residential neighborhood in Handbag." Rutka, who must have phoned the TV stations just after I left him in the hospital parking lot, was seen on his front steps grimacing and condemning homophobic murderers.

The report was brief and the interview heavily edited. It did include Rutka's comments that "internalized homophobia" was gay people's biggest problem and that from then on "no gay hypocrite in Albany will be safe" from Rutka. A spokesman for the Handbag Police Department said only that the incident was being investigated. end user

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."

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