Now I had no hope of any of that and my headache was back, and I deserved it and worse.

I passed on to Bailey what Joel McClurg had told me about the candidate for outing whom Rutka had confessed to being deeply afraid of, but I said I didn't know anything about the files. He muttered something and we both hung up. I found some aspirin in the back of my top desk drawer. The stamp on the back of the container said, "Use before Dec. 1979," so I took three. end user

Nathan Zenck had a telephone listing at an address on Old Tyme Lane in Guilderland. I reached his machine but left no message.

I picked up a sub and ate it in the car on the way out to Handbag, where I wanted to see how Sandifer was holding up.

His car was gone and the house was locked up. Out back, a sheet of plywood was leaning against the porch and an assortment of new boards was stacked nearby, along with a roll of screen. Somebody had already started preparations for repairing the fire damage.

On Broad Street I passed the Rutka hardware store, turned around, and pulled into the lot. The place looked prosperous. A big area of the parking lot had been fenced off for a lawn-and-garden department, and the big fleet of red lawn mowers on display looked formidable enough to clip Argentina down to the roots.

Inside, past the appliances department, I asked a clerk, "Is Ann Rutka around? Or is that not her name?"

"She's using Rutka again. Ann's up back." He pointed.

Wooden steps led up to a long platform that overlooked the entire store. There was no wall with a oneway glass to spy through and spot shoplifters, just a low railing and a row of desks stacked with catalogs and invoices. Maybe a hardware store was too wholesome a place for shoplifting to occur in. Or maybe shoplifters believed that if they were caught stealing from a hardware store the owner would kill them. It felt like a complex atmosphere to be in.

A woman behind a pile of invoices at the desk nearest me pointed to the farthest desk on the deck, separated from the others by a modest fence of low bookcases filled with parts catalogs.

"Ann Rutka?"

She looked up from a cluttered desk and peered at me with dark eyes from under a heap of ringlets. Rutka's sister was as handsome and well put together as John had been, and she dressed as casually, except her T-shirt wasn't from Queer Nation but bore the logo of a manufacturer of electrical pumps.

"I'm Donald Strachey. I knew your brother and wanted to tell you how sorry I am."

"Thanks." She looked skeptical and didn't put her pencil down. "The funeral's Saturday at nine-thirty at St. Michael's. You're welcome to come." She had a musically nimbly voice that poured out like gravel on the move.

"I'd like to," I said.

She looked at me, waiting.

"I'd also like to give you something," I said, and took out the five-hundred-dollar check Rutka had written as a retainer when he hired me to protect him.

"What's this?"

"I'm a private investigator and John had hired me as a security consultant. This was the retainer he paid me, but I quit after only a few hours. I thought you might want this back for whoever has to straighten out John's finances. Or should I be giving it to Eddie Sandifer?"

She put the pencil down but didn't move otherwise. "No, I'll take it. I'm the executrix, it turns out. Can I ask why you only worked for John for a few hours?"

"Well, I think that has to be between him and me."

"Don't bullshit me, please. I get enough of that. You couldn't put up with him, could you?"

I shrugged. "No."

"Sit down. Do you have a minute?" She motioned me to a tubular chair with a cracked seat.

"Sure."

She flicked a Chesterfield out of a pack and lit it. "What do you mean, he hired you as a security consultant? Do you mean bodyguard?"

"Something like that. He said he wanted protection."

She looked at the date on the check. "John hired you yesterday, and you quit yesterday, and somebody killed him last night. You really are up to your ass in this, aren't you-how do you say your name?"

"STRAY-chee, Don. As in Lytton.' Great-uncle Lyt."

She shot smoke back over her shoulder to the air conditioner that rattled in the window frame. "So what are you doing here? Are you feeling guilty? You could have mailed me the check."

"I'm feeling partly responsible."

"I'm not a priest and I can't tell you that you'll be forgiven, Don. But you said that you quit because you couldn't put up with my brother. I believe it. John drove people apeshit. Did he lie to you?"

"Yes, it's my belief that he did."

"Oh, that's your belief, huh? Listen, nobody in Handbag ever believed a word John said. Nobody in Handbag who knew my brother ever trusted him any farther than they could toss him. You just happened to catch on fast. Good for you. Don't feel guilty."

"I guess you and your brother weren't close."

She snorted smoke and her breasts bobbed twice under the sump-pump T-shirt. "We put up with each other. For Mom and Dad's sake. That's why I don't understand something. If John trusted you, maybe you know enough to clear something up for me. How well do you know Eddie?"

"Not well. I'm getting to know him."

"They weren't breaking up, were they? My brother and Eddie?"

"That wasn't my impression. Why?"

She shook her mountains of curls. "Eddie brought me a copy of John's will. Eddie just found it this morning. I checked with our lawyer, Dave Rizzuto, who was about to call me anyway, and he says it's a good will. It was written and filed last month, and John left almost everything to me. To me-the house and his half of the business. All Eddie got was the cash John had on hand and his dirty socks. That's weird."

"Was Eddie upset?"

"I think he was. He seemed surprised, and I think hurt. There's three or four K in John's bank account Eddie will get, but it's the business that's worth real bucks, and of course the house. I'm glad to have it, I'll tell you. My divorce was final in June and I've got three kids who'll all be in college at the same time in a couple of years. But I can't figure out why me if they were still boyfriends. Eddie has been John's real family practically since he's been an adult. Eddie and the activists. So if John trusted you, maybe you know what's going on. John didn't trust too many people. Are you gay?"

"Yes, I am."

"Are you out?"

"Sure."

"Well, that would help. I don't think John trusted any straight people-'breeders,' he called us-and the people who really set him off were gay people who pretended they weren't."

"I'm aware of that. As is much of the northeastern United States."

"You might be surprised to know," she said, "that John's campaign to drag gay people out of the closet didn't bother me at all. I can't stand phonies either. We are what we are. Pete, my ex, wasn't too crazy about John going around yelling about queers-this and faggots-that. 'How can he use those words?' Pete'd say. 'If he caught me calling a queer a queer, he'd go apeshit.' Pete missed the point. Pete always missed the point. But John's carrying on was all right with me.

"One of the things I'm really sorry about was that we were never close enough for me to tell him how proud I was of the way he went off to nursing school and pulled his shit together. You'd never believe what a fuckup John was as a teenager. I'm six years older and I was away at school and missed the worst of it, but I heard the stories. And then he went ahead and turned out okay for John. I sure wish I had the chance to tell my dickhead little brother how I felt about him."