Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

I waited for Heckinger to break into a sly grin and then maybe give me an affectionate noogie, but both he and Sweet continued to regard me gravely.

They believed that hooey?

I said, "My opinion, based on the results of several federal investigations and on the thorough reporting in an excellent daily newspaper, the New York Times, is that you are incorrect."

They both snorted, dismissing both the national law enforcement establishment and the Sulzbergers as, I guessed, either patsies or coconspirators in the Vince Foster plot.

I went on, "It's not that I believe conspiracies never happen. They do, obviously.

There were all those CIA plots to overthrow governments in Guatemala and Iran and Guyana and the Congo, and of course, Hoover trying to ruin Martin Luther King or drive him to suicide. And the King assassination itself I also wonder about-James Earl Ray came out of a rat's nest of racist crazies, and King's murder could easily have been a plot hatched in the back of a Southern barroom.

"On the other hand, Sirhan Sirhan pretty clearly acted alone when he shot Bobby Kennedy. And I've never seen any really good evidence that the JFK assassination was the work of-to use your terminology-'a consortium of powerful interests,' including, in the popular Oliver Stone version, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyndon Johnson, the mob, and the board of directors of the Marriott Corporation. I think Oswald did it himself because he was a pathetic schmo with some confused leftist ideas who thought he'd knock off the suave, good-looking rich guy who was the president of the capitalist United States, and damned if he didn't somehow pull it off. People can't stand to think that a dork like Oswald could turn history upside down, so they look for some larger, darker, more sensationally evil explanation. But there probably isn't any.

"In fact, the Lee Harvey Oswalds are the source of most of the evil in the world, I think. Individual persons who are mad at the world, or mad at their wives, or just mad, or just weak and mixed up-they gradually or suddenly lose it, and then they rape or rob or commit murder. There are criminal conspiracies, sure-mob racketeering, drug smuggling, savings-and-loan rip-offs, and other organizational crimes. Sometimes angry, disturbed people do commit their crimes in groups-I know that-ordinarily for reasons of greed. There's violent mass folly, too, like Vietnam or Bosnia, but that's another story. By far, most of the people who inhabit the jails around the world, or ought to, are people whose folly is only personal. For reasons of their own, they are impelled to do the wrong thing, maybe a very wrong thing, and somebody else gets hurt.

"That's what I am inclined to think has happened to May-nard Sudbury. He was the victim of a few people doing the wrong thing in concert with one another, probably in order to make a fast buck. But a monstrous mass conspiracy?

Something 'bigger than you are, Strachey,' as you guys so melodramatically put it? I don't think so. My question about all those people I listed is not how are they all interrelated? It's which one put Jim Suter's name in the AIDS quilt, and who's the asshole who had Maynard Sudbury shot?"

Heckinger and Sweet regarded me dully throughout this second oration of the early afternoon. When I had wound down, Heckinger sipped from his wineglass and said, "You're awfully old-fashioned, aren't you, Strachey?"

"Old-fashioned? I don't hear that one often. Can I get a signed affidavit to that effect to show to my boyfriend?"

Sweet shot me the hairy eyeball and snarled, "I'll give you an affidavit to think about!"

Then the waitress was back. "You gentlemen ready to order? Or do you need a few more minutes?"

"I'll have the ham club on wheat toast. This one," I said, indicating Sweet, "would probably enjoy the thumbtack salad with croutons of gypsum and a tapenade of ground glass."

The waitress chortled, then glanced at Sweet and saw the look on his face. She said, "If you'd like a little more time to think it over, I'll come back in a few minutes. Take your time." Instantly, she was gone again.

Ignoring Sweet, I looked at Heckinger and said, "So, how about spitting it out?

You're a friend of Jim's-that I know-and you say he doesn't want to talk to me.

Why?"

"Because if he talks to anyone," Heckinger said mildly, "he may be killed."

"Please explain that."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you that."

"But he talked to you, and you're alive."

Heckinger and Sweet glanced at each other and shared a moment of amusement over this. "Yes, we are alive," Heckinger said. "Indeed we are."

"Why are you threatening me?" I said. "Are you with the people who are threatening Suter? Is that what you do? Is the consortium of interests you say you represent an organization that, as part of its normal operating procedures, routinely threatens people?"

Heckinger said mildly, "That pretty much describes it."

So what were they then? They came across as a couple of unemployed bad actors, hired down at the union hall for an afternoon of impersonating thugs.

But since actual thugs, more than they used to, pick up their styles and techniques from popcorn movies and TV series, maybe these two were authentic- what? Mobsters? CIA? KGB? Agents of the National Realtors Association?

I said, "Whoever you are, there is one question you can answer for me without violating your instructions. Give me this much. Is Jim, in fact, in Mexico?"

"He is, actually," Heckinger said.

"Where?"

He looked at me levelly. "I've told you all I can tell you, Strachey, and that is all the farther I can go. Don't go down there. That is Jim's wish and that is his instruction to you. If you get near him, you could get him killed. Now, there is potential folly for you, some human anger and confusion, and a resulting distinct evil."

All the farther I can go? This, I knew, was a Pennsylvania Dutch construction German actually-meaning "as far as I can go." I hadn't heard it since my college affair at Rutgers with Kenny Womeldorf, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Kenny occasionally carne out with these peculiar locutions that the Amish and German Mennonites had, over the years, deposited in the otherwise Mid-Atlantic Standard English of rural and small-town southeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

I took a leap and said, "Look, let's quit playing games here. You seem to know a lot about me and my current activities, and the fact is, I know a lot about the two of you. I know, for example, that despite your amateurish goonish threats, you work for neither the CIA nor the Mafia. You work for one or both of the Krumfutzes."

Heckinger and Sweet both got very busy now not reacting at all. "Oh, you know that?" Heckinger said tightly. Heckinger's face was red and Sweet's was white.

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I do believe you have been misinformed."

"Nope."

They stared at me.

"Moreover, additional disturbing information I have obtained concerning you and your colleagues up in the Keystone State has been handed over to reliable outside individuals. And if anything bad happens to Jim Suter or to me or to Timothy Callahan, or if anything else bad happens to Maynard Sudbury, that information will move swiftly to (a) the Washington Post and (b) the U.S. attorney's offices in both Philadelphia and Washington."

Heckinger and Sweet both sat stone-faced and silent. Just then the waitress showed up and made another tentative foray. "Ready now?"

Heckinger gestured to Sweet, and the two of them stood up abruptly and walked out of the restaurant. I made a mental note to bill them later for the wine and the Sam Adams.

After lunch, I found a pay phone in the hotel lobby and tracked down Chondelle Dolan again.

"I had a quick look," she told me, "at the case file on the Bryant Ulmer homicide.