Beached In Omaha

POSTED AUGUST  10, 2000--

By Mr. Claude Peck

OMAHA, NEBRASKA--Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but Omaha is a mighty dreary place to visit in January. They slaughter a lot of animals there, and it is a messy, dirty place. I had no idea how I expected to find Budd Rugg in that town, and truth be told I did not expect to find him. I checked into a cheap room in a place called the Plain View, which was truth in advertising if ever there was such a thing; my window looked out on an endless stretch of parking lots and low, ugly buildings. The room smelled like it had been used for interrogations or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. On the television I heard about a half-wit drug abuser who had killed his mother and burned her up in a dumpster over an argument that had something to do with a toaster oven. 

I had brought along a writing tablet for note taking, and I decided that the first order of business was to find a pancake house where I could get a bite to eat and map out my strategy. I drove all over Omaha and could not find a place that specifically catered to my tastes. I’ll confess that I am an International House of Pancakes man, but those terrific establishments are getting harder and harder to find. You would think that the last place in the world that you’d have a hard time finding a pancake house would be Omaha, but there you have it. I saw plenty of places that I felt certain would offer pancakes on the menu, but I prefer a place that specializes. When it was clear that I was out of luck on this count, I eventually settled on a Perkins. My old friend Eddie Herring used to say that every time you settled for something less than what you really wanted you gave away another little pinch of your soul, and Omaha was looking more and more like the kind of place that would take a pinch from you every time you turned around.

I got settled in my booth and ordered pancakes and a cup of coffee from a most unhappy-looking young woman.  Eager as I was to play my part as sleuth I showed her a couple photos of Budd and asked if she had seen him around.  Imagine my surprise when she seemed to recognize Budd instantly.  “Oh, sure,” she said.  “That’s Rusty.  Rusty Gatenby.  He worked down the street at the Taco Time for a couple weeks.  Used to call into the morning radio show all the time.”

Turns out being a gumshoe is the easiest job in the world in a little jerkwater cesspool like Omaha.  This waitress recalled that Budd had been staying at a Red Roof Inn near downtown, but she hadn’t seen him for a couple weeks.  I finished my breakfast and drove out to the Red Roof, where the clerk also recognized Budd from the photos.  Seems he’d left just after the Fourth of July and left behind an unpaid bill and a few personal possessions.  The clerk fished around in his desk and produced a Polaroid snapshot of a bathroom mirror, with the name “KRISTIN TILLOTSON” scrawled across it in what appeared to be lipstick.  “Rusty was a nice young fellow,” the clerk said, “but he left behind quite a mess, and there’s the issue of the unpaid nights.”  I assured the gentleman that I would look into the matter further, and would see what I could do about the bill.

Back at my room at the Plain View I called the local AM radio station and made inquiries.  They were familiar with a fellow they also knew as Rusty, who had apparently been a regular caller to their morning program.  He allegedly claimed, among other things, that he had once been Andy Williams’s chauffeur.   Budd, it seems, had stopped by the station on one occasion as well, inquiring about a position as a traffic reporter.  “We don’t really have a position for a full time traffic person,” the program director told me.  “He seemed pretty serious about wanting to work at the station in some capacity, however, and I gave him an application for a receptionist job we had available.  That was the last we heard of him.”

At the local television station a woman at the front desk also seemed familiar with Budd, and recalled that he had inquired about job possibilities there as well.  There had been nothing available, but she thought that she had later seen him working as a crossing guard at her daughter’s school.  I followed up on this lead as well, but it turned out to be a dead end, and I returned to my motel and called Mrs. Rugg to report on my findings to date.  She encouraged me to wait around for a couple more days in the hope that I might yet cross paths with Budd.  For two days I crisscrossed Omaha; I checked with people at the newspaper, asked questions at the taco restaurant, and made inquiries at every motel in the phone book.  Everything I learned seemed to indicate that Budd was no longer in Omaha, and absent any further leads or communication I reluctantly returned to the Twin Cities.

I have made my continued services available to Mrs. Rugg, and am prepared to follow up on any and all leads that may surface in the coming days and weeks.  Budd’s mother is understandably at wit’s end, and though she realizes that he is now a grown man and is free to do as he pleases, she wishes it known that she would be most grateful for any information on her son’s whereabouts, and is praying for a happy resolution to this confusing and unhappy episode. 

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