"She saw him herself? She's sure it was Sandifer?"

"That's what she says."

"Interesting." "Be careful of those two."

"I've been being careful of them, but maybe not careful enough." end user

Reed got into his cruiser and rode away, and I went back into the house and looked up the Kopy-King number. I checked my watch-11:57 A.M., about half an hour since the fire started-and dialed. Sandifer answered.

"Hi, Eddie, this is Don Strachey. Do you know what's happened out here? I'm at the house in Handbag."

"What happened? What do you mean?"

"There's been a fire. It's okay, it was put out without much damage, but somebody threw a firebomb onto the back porch. It looks like another attack on John and it was sort of a close call."

I could hear his breathing quicken. "Is John all right?"

"For now. Later I'll try to get him to a safer place."

"I've got my lunch break," Sandifer said. "I'm coming out. Don't leave till I get there, okay?"

"How long does it take to drive out here?" I said.

"Twenty minutes. I'm leaving right now."

"See you soon."

Rutka was seated at the big mahogany table in the dining room looking morose and going through some papers he'd taken out of a drawer in the sideboard. "I guess I'd better call the insurance agency. Even though those people are such a hassle."

I said, "I phoned Eddie. He's driving out."

"I know. I heard you."

"He's concerned about you, he says."

He continued to peruse the documents. "If he wants to come out, fine. Though you're here now." He looked up. "You're not crapping out on me, are you? Now that I'm relying on you more than ever?"

I looked at him but didn't answer.

"I don't have any friends in this town," he said.

"You do have enemies. That I believe."

Now he looked worried. "Is there something you don't believe?"

I seated myself in the chair across from Rutka and looked into his face and said, "The cop who was here asked around the neighborhood for people who might have seen something at the time of the fire. He found one."

Rutka blinked. "He did?"

"A woman on Maplewood Place was looking out her bathroom window, which overlooks your backyard."

"Vera Renfrew."

"She told the cop she saw someone she recognized cut through her back yard and into yours before the fire started. Guess who she says she saw?"

"I don't know. I'd love to know. Who?"

"Eddie. She saw Eddie Sandifer."

He slumped forward and shook his tresses. "Oh, no."

"Can you explain that, John?"

He kept shaking his head. "She told this to that dumb cop?" He was grinning stupidly.

"That's what I've been told. The police will pass it on to the arson investigation unit."

Rutka suddenly went all red and he glared at me fiercely. "I'm being set up," he said. "I'm being goddamn fucking set up." His left eye headed west.

"By Eddie?"

"No, no!" he snarled, his dark locks trembling. "Of course not by Eddie! I'm being set up by Bruno Slinger, that sleazoid scumbag! Slinger and Grey Koontz are trying to frame me."

"Who," I said tightly, "is Grey Koontz?" My head had been feeling hot and greasy on the outside and now it was starting to feel hot and greasy on the inside, too.

"Koontz is one of Slinger's tricks and a dirtbag from the word go. He looks a lot like Eddie, except maybe younger, maybe twenty-four or — five. From a distance, or even in a dark bar or someplace, people sometimes get them mixed up. Slinger must have planned the whole thing after I outed him. He's one of the ones who threatened me and he is absolutely ruthless, ask anybody. It was probably Koontz or Slinger who shot me last night, and now they're trying to frame Eddie, the fucking degenerates!"

I looked into the one of Rutka's eyes that was looking at me and said, as calmly as I could, "Are you using me?"

"No. Not underhandedly, if that's what you suspect."

"Don't. I'll catch on. And then you'll have another enemy."

"I wouldn't. I know you're sharp, Strachey. That's why I hired you. If I wanted to run a con on somebody, I'd do it with those stupid Handbag cops. Trust me."

I said, "The Handbag cops aren't doing badly at all, so far. And it strains credulity way past the limit that the famous senatorial aide you outed should have a boyfriend who looks just like your boyfriend and would be in a position to frame you. That's quite a coincidence."

"They're not boyfriends," Rutka said, and turned to snatch a Snickers bar from the sideboard behind him.

"Koontz is an occasional trick, that's all. It's in the files-you'll see it. Slinger's current boyfriend is Ronnie Linkletter. I can't imagine that wimp Linkletter coming after me. But Slinger and Koontz-those two douche-bags are capable of anything."

He went to work on the candy bar and I sat there watching him eat. "Are you hungry?" he said. "Help yourself."

"No."

He finished the sweet. "You don't believe me, do you?" he said, giving me his poor-misunderstood-thing look.

I said, "It's about the dumbest explanation I ever heard."

"No, it's not," he said, looking bitter now. "It's the obvious explanation. Just because you've never seen Grey Koontz, you don't believe it. What kind of solipsistic bullshit is that? If you have no personal knowledge of something, then it can't be true? I thought you were smarter than that. What other explanation could there be, anyway? Eddie was at work. He was there when you called."

"I called half an hour after the fire started. It takes twenty minutes from here to Kopy-King. Eddie could have been back with plenty of time to spare."

He waved this away. "All right, he could have done a lot of things, but he didn't. Look, the cops will check Eddie out, and where he was at the time of the fire, and then you'll be satisfied. In the meantime, who knows what that fucking Slinger has in store for me next. If you want to be skeptical, be skeptical. I don't care. Spend as much time investigating Eddie as investigating me. Just help protect me, will you? If you want to think of it as protecting me from myself, go ahead and think of it that way. I'm going to write you a check right now." He pulled out a checkbook from under the stack of documents.

I said nothing and watched him write the check, and I thought about it. Then I made a decision. More out of curiosity over what I had come to see as a fascinating disturbed personality with a tiny role to play in gay history-more for that than for any other reason (such as my wanting to get a longer, closer look at the despicable files), I said, "John, I'm willing to work for you for the next twenty-four hours."

He said, "That's a start."

"I'm not going to cash the check," I said. "And if at the end of twenty-four hours I have concluded that you have lied to me and involved me in an elaborate hoax, I'll return the check personally and I'll stomp on your shot foot. How's that?"

He handed me the check. "I understand your position," he said. "You have a reputation to protect and you have to do what you have to do. But I'm not worried. I don't have much to fall back on, but I do have my personal integrity. And if that's your only concern, I'm on firm ground. Just let me know when your belief in me has been restored."