"Do these two distinguished citizens have names?" "Ronnie Linkletter and Scooter Raymond." Only in the benighted age in which we live could a local TV weatherman and a pretty-boy dim-bulb anchor on the six o'clock news be described by anyone, even a man with a mind as warped as Bruno Slinger's, as "distinguished."

Scooter Raymond was a recent arrival in Albany, brought in by Channel Eight to replace the ancient, tightly wound Clem Snodgrass after Snodgrass suffered an on-air stroke that left him repeating the words "Back to you, Flossie-Back to you, Flossie

— Back to you, Flossie" twelve or fifteen times before the picture switched to co-anchor Flossie Proctor, a woman normally seen with her head thrown back in inexplicable perpetual ecstasy but who appeared vaguely human for the first time in twenty years the night Clem Snodgrass's neurons began to pop on-camera.

In a line of endeavor where the men are permitted to bear a striking physical resemblance to Joseph Stalin in his tomb but the women are expected to show up every night looking like The Birth of Venus, Flossie Proctor was no kid. There were those who speculated that Flossie's days were numbered now that she shared the anchor desk with a man who had fewer chins than she. I knew nothing of Scooter Raymond other than what I'd learned from Channel Eight's promos welcoming him to the Hometown Folks news team: that Scooter was "an experienced newsgatherer"-like Harrison Salisbury, it was suggested, except twinklier and that Scooter had already begun to think of Albany as his hometown, as if this were an acquired trait. The station had announced additionally that "Scooter is his real name," which few doubted.

I asked Slinger, "Who else was in attendance at this get-together besides you and Ronnie and Scooter?"

"No one, actually," he said casually. "It was a combined work and let-down-your-hair session of the type I often initiate with new media people who come to town. I had the opportunity to brief Scooter on some of the ins and outs of the legislature and its personalities, and at the same time I was able to promote some of the senator's thoughts on directions the state should be taking."

"And Ronnie was there to represent the meteorological point of view, or what?"

"He drove," Slinger said, looking bemused. "Scooter needed a ride, and Ronnie drove."

"To where? Where did this informal information-sharing session take place? In public, I hope."

"Public enough," Slinger said, still looking on top of the game. "We met in a suite that I keep reserved for the senator's use at the Parmalee Plaza Hotel. It's convenient to the airport. Executives and officials from the city can fly in and meet the senator and be back at LaGuardia in an hour."

"So the people who can vouch for your whereabouts last night are Ronnie and Scooter and-who else?"

"Several hotel employees saw us arrive and depart the desk clerk and the night manager, who both know me, among others. There's no doubt I was out there, Strachey. It's easily verifiable."

"Did you tell the Handbag police chief that's where you were?"

"I most certainly did not."

"Why not?"

"Because he had no legal basis for his harassing me in my place of work. It was a goddamn outrage, is what it was."

"You were outraged, but he has a right to question you and he will likely exercise that right."

"If that mealy-mouthed constable wants to talk to me, he can show me a warrant and I'll notify my attorney and we'll see. He won't obtain a warrant, of course, because no judge will issue one without evidence. That I was once angry at John Rutka and said I was so mad I could kill him is not evidence. People say things like that all the time and it's meaningless in court."

Slinger seemed not to know about the anonymous phone calls Bub Bailey had received pointing at Slinger and the one left on my machine telling me that if I wanted to know who killed John Rutka I should find out who Slinger had been with the night before.

If Slinger was telling the truth about spending the evening at the Parmalee Plaza, it seemed likely that someone who worked at the hotel was the mystery caller, though not Zenck or the desk clerk; I would have recognized their voices. The caller, of course, could also have been anyone visiting or staying at the place who had seen Slinger come and go. It could also have been someone else present in the suite whom Slinger had not mentioned.

I said, "Chief Bailey can't make you talk because he hasn't got anything on you. But I do-the files. So, tell me this, Bruno. Who else was in the suite with you and Ronnie and Scooter?"

"No one."

"Did you have sex?"

He grinned hideously.

"The three of you?"

"Scooter watched. He's not gay, he says, but he likes to watch. He loves seeing the weatherman being fucked, he says. At the last place he worked, in Sacramento, he liked to watch the weatherman being fucked."

"I guess this is the result of Reagan-era broadcast deregulation."

"I happen to like fucking slender, angelic-looking young men like Ronnie Linkletter, and Ronnie happens to enjoy being serviced by powerful older men of superior intellect."

"Uh-huh."

"Ronnie's a beauty, isn't he? I consider myself extremely fortunate. I'd been hearing for years that he was a fag but that he was faithful to someone who had won Ronnie's heart with the majesty of his position. Lucky for me, they apparently had some sort of falling-out this summer, and I was able to move in and fill the breach, as it were."

I said, "You don't know who this powerful person was?"

"Ronnie refuses to discuss him, which I appreciate. It means he'll tend to be discreet in what he tells others about me. My motto has always been, If you're going to be indiscreet, be discreet about it. That's why I plan my assignations these days at the Parmalee Plaza. It's gay-run, as you're probably aware, and in return for an occasional remuneration, the night manager will see that his people will keep their mouths shut about who's doing whom out there."

"Right."

"Ronnie used to go to that vomitorium Jay Gladu runs out on Central Avenue, and he tried to get me into it, but I wouldn't set foot in the place. I do safe sex only, for the most part, and it's unsafe just walking in the door of the Fountain of Eden. Have you ever been out there?"

"Not yet," I said. "Why do you use motels? Couldn't you bring your sex partners here?"

"Do you see those photographs?" Slinger said, growing somber and motioning at the lineup on the sideboard.

"They're quite a bunch."

"One picture is missing. It was stolen by a man I brought here once, and it is irreplaceable. The photograph was given to me when I was very young, and it had on it a warm greeting to me from a very great man. Would you like to know who it was?"

"Yes, who?"

"Henry Pu Yi, the last emperor of China."

"Oh."

"Briefly, we were lovers."

"Were you mentioned in the movie?"

"No."

"Well, then-I guess that made the photo even more important. Your only memento."

"That's why I never bring people I don't trust into my home."

I said, "Do you only have sex with people you don't trust?"

I'd have felt pretty demeaned if somebody had asked me that question, but Slinger just shrugged and said, "It's the best way of knowing what to expect from people," and then he dropped the subject.