Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

"Yes, it's a gorgeous piece of Caribbean real estate. Have you been there?"

"I visited the Yucatan about ten years ago and enjoyed it. Does your boss go there, too? I saw his picture outside with some Mexican leaders."

"Those pictures were taken here in Washington. My former employer, Representative Krumfutz, is the real Mexico maven. She taught Spanish in the Log Heaven, Pennsylvania, high school before she ran for office, and she used to lead summer student tours of Mexico and during school vacations. She really knows the place and was the one who first got me interested in it, and I fell for Mexico the way a lot of people do-the quiet friendliness, the mix of traditional and modern cultures, the inexpensive comfort, the climate. My visits to the Yucatan, unhappily, have been curtailed since my falling out with Jorge. If you're tracking down Jim Suter, it looks as if you may be getting to Mexico well before I do, if that's where he is. And if, that is, your anonymous client is prepared to finance your trip to Cancun in search of Mr. Suter. What are you supposed to do when you find him? Shoot him?"

"No. Why do you ask that?"

"It's an impulse a lot of men have probably felt toward Jim Suter," McChesney said with no discernible emotion. "To take out a contract on him."

"I've no assassinations on my resume."

"You're to be commended. Incidentally-or not so incidentally-I see that Jim made the news."

"That's right."

"Somebody put him in the AIDS quilt."

"Yes."

"What an insensitive thing to do. Not to Jim necessarily, but it sullies the quilt. A lot of dead friends of mine have panels in the quilt. So as much as I dislike Jim Suter, I think this is an extremely tasteless way for anybody to hurt him."

"I agree. I understand that you lost another friend last winter. Not to AIDS, but in a murder-Bryant Ulmer, your predecessor in this job. Or wasn't Ulmer a friend?"

"Bryant was not only a friend but a mentor. I'd been his deputy for two years. I miss Bryant very much, professionally and personally. I moved over here with Burton after Betty left office. Representative Krumfutz's career was fucked by her dim-witted husband, Nelson-and, I think, that ignorant cunt he's shacking up with in Engineville. Ever been up to Central Pennsylvania, Strachey?"

"Just passing through."

"It's beautiful country, but culturally it's a wasteland. If you're stuck up there for a month, as I was once, don't, say, go looking for tickets to the opera. Friday-night high school football, yes. The Ring cycle? Forget it."

"Unlike Washington, of course. Home of La Scala. Or is that someplace else?"

"We take the Metroliner to New York," McChesney said, and Williamson nodded.

So these two were a couple?

"It's the same for us in Albany," I said, as if I'd ever set foot in the Metropolitan Opera more than twice. I hoped McChesney didn't start palavering about Wagner. What had happened to his tight schedule?

To my relief, he said, "I didn't like the way you bullied your way in here, Strachey, but I don't mind having been able to offer you my views on Jim Suter-unhelpful as I've been in locating him. I haven't got a current address for Jorge. I understand he's got some new place south of Cancun somewhere. So if Jim is with him, you'll have to find someone with more up-to-date information than I've got. But if I've added to your knowledge of Jim's foul history and rotten character, I'm happy to have been of assistance in that regard."

"Thank you."

"I've been far more forthcoming than anything I know about you suggests you deserve, Strachey. Now it's your turn. Who's your client?"

"I can't say."

"I could find out if I badly wanted to."

"How?"

"Ask around. I already knew you were in town looking for Jim."

"Well, go ahead. Ask around. That's up to you."

McChesney studied me for a moment, then said, "I might do that." Then he stood up, and as I stood, McChesney said, "If you go down to the Yucatan, I hope you have an enjoyable time, as you say you did ten years ago. But if you locate Jim Suter, the chances are, you won't. He's poison. And for Christ's sake, don't let him get you into bed. You wouldn't know what hit you. Not for the first week, I should say. That's bliss. But after a week or so, Jim Suter is Satan and life with him is life in hell."

I told McChesney I'd be extra careful. I thanked him and left. Williamson accompanied me to the corridor, and I made my own way out of the Rayburn Building and into a cool fall drizzle.

Who was my client, anyway? I wondered about that as I walked the four blocks back to the hotel-Ray Craig not visible but surely in the vicinity, for I caught a whiff of his nicotine spoor as I left the Rayburn Building.

Was Maynard my client? Timmy? Jim Suter, even though he hadn't asked me to be? I guessed it was Timmy, since he was planning on paying my expenses. In fact, I figured that he and I could split the costs of the investigation. That would make me my own co-client, and not for the first time either.

Luckily, I was solvent that month, having received a good bonus on top of my standard fee for tracking down the daughter of a commissioner in the Pataki administration and talking her into avoiding prosecution by returning to its owners the state police aircraft often used by the governor for official jaunts around New York State. The young aviatrix, who had only recently begun to suffer from emotional problems, had somehow made off with the plane at Albany County Airport and intended to follow Amelia Earhart's fatal 1937 route. The disturbed young woman had gotten only as far as Northampton, Massachusetts- not on Ms. Earhart's itinerary-when I caught up with her.

Did Alan McChesney really want to know who my client was? Or did he already know all or much of what there was to know of the past four days' events, and his alternating expressions of curiosity and pique were smoke-machine distractions? I was inclined not to trust him, but my mind was open.

I did plan on checking out McChesney's remarks in passing-if that's what they were-on Betty Krumfutz's Mexican connection as a high school Spanish teacher who, prior to her years in the Pennsylvania legislature and the U.S.

Congress, could have taken part in illegalities-maybe Log Heaven schoolkids running drugs in their pencil boxes? — that Jim Suter later got wind of or was somehow involved in. But if Mrs. Krum-futz was knowingly connected to Jim Suter's danger-and May-nard's shooting and the ransacking of his house-she certainly had not betrayed any of that to me during our Log Heaven encounter. She had, on the contrary, seemed genuinely surprised that Jim might be in trouble. Or was that all an act put on by an experienced pathological liar?

I'd run into that before.

Soon, I hoped to meet the actual Jim Suter. Then I would know if Mrs. Krumfutz was up to her neck in "it," or Nelson Krumfutz was or Tammy Pam Jameson or Alan McChesney or Carmen LoBello or any of Suter's other angry ex-lovers or his mother or brother or Ray Craig, or any other person or persons I had yet to meet from Jim's personal or professional life who had a reason, they believed, to threaten and badly frighten Suter and to try to kill Maynard Sudbury.

The only thing I was sure of was, it was Jim Suter who held the answers to all my questions. And, of course, I also knew that Suter was the Gay Male Siren of the Decade, the great sex bomb who had lured Washington's strongest gay men onto his irresistible shoals, where all were wrecked and some sank. I'd always thought of myself as being immune to the obvious-it was subtlety that could dampen my palms-but I was certainly interested in seeing for myself what all the excitement was about.

Back at the hotel, Timmy had left a message for me at the desk, saying that Maynard was doing well and Timmy expected to speak with him over the lunch hour. Timmy said he'd be back at the hotel by late afternoon.