Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

"Funny you should ask that," the motel clerk said. "Both Luis and Hector are in the gun club, I know. They work in the kitchen at the Kozy Korner. Karen's in the gun club and she got her two Mexicans to join, she told me. But she said they already knew how to shoot, and they actually taught her a thing or two. But I doubt if they came to America for target practice. They came to get work.

Which I say, more power to them. You try to get our kids to wash dishes these days, and you might as well ask them to fly to the moon. It's even hard to get kids these days who'll rake and bag leaves. They might get their hands dirty. But Luis and Hector, why they'll even do yard work. As a matter of fact, they've been doing work lately around the Krumfutz place. Karen said Betty had hired Hector and Luis for some type of work she had, and Betty told Karen that she was quite satisfied with the good job they did."

Mexicans with guns? I locked the door behind me in my room at the Bit o'

Heaven and sat on the edge of the bed. I held my right hand out and checked it for steadiness. The tremor was minor but discernible. My Smith amp; Wesson was back in Albany-why would I have carried a firearm to a display of the AIDS quilt? — but suddenly up in Log Heaven what I was thinking hard about was protecting myself. Was I panicking, like Timmy? Was I reacting stupidly to an ethnic stereotype?

I made a credit-card call to Timmy's and my room at the Capitol Hill Hotel but got no answer. I guessed Timmy was off at GW with Maynard and his friends and, maybe by now, May-nard's brother and sister-in-law. I got hold of the hotel desk and left a message for Timmy, informing him that I would not be staying over in Log Heaven that night after all, but would be returning to Washington late.

I did not explain that I was afraid of being unarmed in a town where two Mexican sharpshooters with connections to Betty Krumfutz were on the loose; I kept it vague. Then I called GW and learned that Maynard was still "stable," a promising sign.

I showered, rumpled the sheets to make the bed look as if it had been slept in, repacked my bag, left the key on the desk, and went out into the cold, black Pennsylvania night. I threw my bag in the car and drove away from the Bit o'

Heaven Motel. The next day, Monday, was going to be Columbus Day, but I figured that even if Betty Krumfutz remained in Log Heaven for the holiday, she would probably not run into Karen, of Karen's Kozy Korner, until the following Sunday at target-shooting practice and possibly learn that a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter had been in Log Heaven intent on interviewing her-a reporter who had then mysteriously failed to show up at Mrs. Krumfutz's door.

I drove up the highway past K Mart, past E-Z Mart, past Pizza Hut, Valu-Video, and Hall's Beer Distributor to the Kozy Korner. It wasn't on a corner and with its cold-white-light and Formica interior it wasn't cozy. Two specials were scrawled on a blackboard propped next to the cash register. The fried haddock with FF amp; apple sauce was $3-85- The ham croquettes with mac and cheese was $3.15.

I asked the round, clear-skinned young woman who took my order-I couldn't resist the croquettes-if she was Karen. She smiled, showing me her braces, and said uh-uh, she was Stacy; Karen didn't come in on Sunday.

While I waited, I read the ads on my place mat for a tire store, a sealer of driveways, and, among others, Ron Diefender-fer, CPA, and Helen's Pitch-n-putt.

The other tables and booths at the Kozy Korner were occupied mainly by middle-aged and elderly married couples who had apparently run out of anything to say to each other some years back. They seemed to take their gratification from their haddock, which I figured they knew they had earned. At a table near the back, three voluble older women sat, loudly comparing doctors with Indian names. They liked Dr. Patel best because, one woman said, he didn't give you the bum's rush.

I could see over the counter and through a big window into the kitchen. I saw no Mexicans there, just a woman in a blue smock; her origins looked local. She seemed to be the cook, and a skinny teenaged boy in a baseball cap that was on frontward- was this a clue? — washed dishes.

I enjoyed the comfort food, which I followed with plain coffee-no sign was up announcing "brussels sprouts" or "Ro-bitussin" as the ground-roast flavor of the day-and I had a small saucer of rice pudding. The bill came to just over five dollars, including tip. Driving back into Log Heaven, I exercised my tongue as I attempted to pry loose the mac and cheese still stuck to the roof of my mouth. I got most of it.

Just after nine o'clock, I parked the car along Susquehanna Drive across from the address for Betty Krumfutz that the motel clerk had given me. I was up on a bluff on the western outskirts of Log Heaven. To my right was a sharp drop-off, with the river in the darkness below. Across the street to my left was a wide, split-level flagstone ranch house on a partially wooded hillside. A broad driveway, newly tarmacked, ran up to a two-car garage. A gray Chrysler LeBaron with Pennsylvania plates was parked on one side of the driveway, a Chevy pickup truck with plates I didn't recognize was on the other.

Lights were on behind the drawn drapes in the big picture window. Another room was lit-the kitchen? — between the living room and the garage. There were no floodlights or other illumination outside the house. Clouds had moved in, and I decided that I could get away with a quick bout of voyeurism under cover of the October darkness. I knew that if I was caught by the Log Heaven police, I would have no plausible explanation I could safely provide them for spying on former congress-woman Krumfutz. And if Mrs. Krumfutz and her two Mexican shootists got hold of me, I might long to be in the custody of local law officers. But a quick look around seemed minimally risky, so I got out of the car and shut the door quietly.

Susquehanna Drive was also the main road to Engineville, twenty-six miles upriver, where Nelson Krumfutz and his girlfriend, Tammy Pam Jameson, now consorted. Traffic to En-gineville on Sunday night was sparse, so I had no trouble ambling across the road apparently sight unseen. The nearest streetlight was a quarter of a mile east, and the houses on either side of the Krumfutz place were lit inside but with the shades drawn. I strode directly up the Krumfutz front lawn, passed under a good-sized maple-black trash bags apparently stuffed with fallen leaves had been piled up alongside the driveway- and on to the back of the property. I lingered there for a couple of minutes getting used to the darkness and listening for any pets Mrs. Krumfutz or her neighbors might have had on the loose. I'd once had, in a similar set of circumstances, an encounter with a warthog in a poodle suit that I did not want to repeat.

I went around to the darkened rear ell section of the house. I passed an air conditioner jutting out from a window-I could just make it out in the near-darkness-and I was careful not to whack into it. What if, when he hit the air conditioner, OJ. had been knocked unconscious? What if Kato had gone out with a flashlight and discovered O.J., knocked out, with a bag full of bloody clothes? Whom would Kato have phoned? Nine one one? William Morris? O.J.'s dry cleaner? How might it all have turned out differently? I wondered.

Staying close to the wall of the house, I moved across a stone terrace to the sliding glass doors that I estimated were opposite the picture window out front.

Heavy white drapes blocked my view in-and Mrs. Krumfutz's view out-so I continued on beyond the doors to a smaller, darkened window that looked in on what appeared to be a breakfast nook. The Venetian blinds were only half-shut, so by standing close to the window on the far side I found an angle that afforded a line of sight into the living room behind the drapes.