Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

I said, "But you don't have to be killed, Suter. Before Jorge finished with you, you could go to the feds. You've got the goods on Jorge, his father, Nelson Krumfutz, Hugh Myers, and, I'll bet, others in the organization. You must know enough to buy your way into the Witness Protection Program. No?"

"All I really know is what Jorge told me. None of the threats I've received from Senor Ramos or his business associates, as he calls them, were in writing, or even that direct. I know the outlines of the drug operation but not enough of the specifics to be of much help. I doubt, honestly, that I'd have all that much to offer."

"You've got plenty to bargain with, including the fact that large quantities of coke are being smuggled into the United States inside the seat backs of cars assembled at the plant that supplies GM products to Central Pennsylvania. That will make for a well-attended news conference and thirty or forty promotions at the DEA. If you walked into the U.S. attorney's office tomorrow, Suter, I'll bet you could name your price for the information you've got inside your head."

Suter watched the sun disappear and seemed to mull this over. After a moment he said, "If I went into the Witness Protection Program, would they have to change my appearance?"

What a vain fool he was. "Not significantly, I think. Maybe a mustache or something. I doubt you'd have to have your nose bent sideways or your head shaved." After our walk up the beach, Suter had showered and shampooed his locks, which shone dark orange now in the last light of the day.

"My looks aren't going to last anyway," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm getting crow's-feet and my teeth are yellowing. And if I eat more than one flan a week, my skin breaks out like an adolescent's. This week I've got a zit on my upper lip and one on my butt." I had noticed both, in fact, and thought they only lent a touch of becoming vulnerability to Suter's otherwise flawless appearance.

I said glibly, as if normal bodily deterioration were of scant concern to me, "I'm sure you'll be nicely presentable toward the middle of the next century, Suter.

Meanwhile, you've got more urgent matters to consider, such as making sure you're still alive at the end of this one."

"I know that," he said, and shuddered. "By the way, you would not take it upon yourself, I hope, to talk to the feds on your own, and to get them breathing down my neck? That might just get me killed within a matter of hours."

"No," I said, and meant it. I believed that Suter had to get out of the box he was in on his own. "I'm not going to put you at immediate risk-or myself or Timmy or Maynard or anybody else. I am going to check out some parts of your story discreetly. But I won't go to the cops or the feds with any part of this thing without your permission. I wouldn't mind seeing you punished, Suter, for the way you have toyed with people's emotions-a good spanking might be in order-but I certainly don't want to see you killed, and neither does Maynard."

Suter sighed. "Dear, sweet old Manes. That man was one I could have stuck around a lot longer if we'd both been a little differently put together. It was just too bad he was such a bleeding heart. I tend to go for more tough-minded men, for men who are realists, with no illusions about the nature of the human beast. Men such as yourself, for example. But then you already know that. I keep repeating myself in that regard."

I ignored the continuing come-on, which was far too crude for my tastes, and I said, "As I understand it, you broke up with Maynard not just because of your clashing political philosophies but because he refused to play your psychological S-and-M games. When your romance was hot and you suddenly turned cold, he was disappointed but he just let it go. And you couldn't stand that, so you lured him back. Then you did it again-froze him out-and Maynard concluded in his Midwestern way that you were ill-mannered-an extremely serious matter in Southern Illinois-and that was the end of that. Not true?"

Suter said simply, "Maynard is a strong individual. Don't get the idea I never appreciated him or didn't know what I was losing." He smiled weakly and added, "But the problem is, of course, that I have.. can I say 'psychological sadism issues'? Is that an honest enough description for you?"

"Almost."

He laughed once, pulled himself off his chaise, and said, "Let's eat."

Suter drove me in his big Chevy back to the main highway, then south five miles to a resort-hotel complex near Chemuyil. The palapa-roofed restaurant where we ate was not at all crowdedChristmas to early April was the tourist season here-and it served a nice slab of grouper with grilled onions, tomatoes, and peppers. The dessert flan was good, too. The after-dinner coffee was the characteristic Mexican cup of tepid water, served with a jar of Nescafe and a sticky spoon-a well-loved old Aztec ritual apparently.

During dinner, Suter told me he would consider my suggestion that he throw himself on the mercy of the U.S. narcs and attempt to enter the federal Witness Protection Program. He said any such exercise would have to be swiftly and expertly carried out, and I agreed. He said he had never really thought of this as a possibility for his salvation from Jorge and the Ramos family, and the idea of it was both intriguing and terrifying. He said if he decided to do it, he would like my help in making the arrangements. I said, whenever he was ready.

Back at the house, I tried to reach Timmy on Suter's phone for an update on Maynard's condition. But Timmy wasn't yet in our room at the hotel, so I left word for him at the desk that I had arrived safely at my destination and that I was finding my visit useful.

Suter and I sat for a while longer on the terrace talking mainly about Mexican history and politics-his knowledge was wide and deep-and looking up at the moon and stars. A warm breeze off the water kept the insects at bay and felt lovely against my skin. I wished Timmy were with me, and I resolved to plan a vacation with him on this sensuous tropical coast early in the wintery New Year.

I was in bed and dozing off by midnight. Soon after, there were bare footsteps on the tile floor and I felt Suter lift my sheet and ease in next to me. As he kissed me, I looked into that face, moonlit now, and ran a hand through the famous curls. But otherwise I was more efficient than passionate, and when I dropped into a deep sleep no more than ten minutes later, I sensed that Suter's predominant reaction to our encounter had been, like mine, exhaustion.

Timmy's first words, when I stepped off the plane at National Airport Thursday night, were "That was fast."

"You have no idea."

"I'm so relieved you're back."

"And I'm so happy to look into your guileless eyes."

"Did Suter get you into bed?"

"Something like that."

"And you liked 'it,' probably, but you didn't like him."

"I wouldn't even go so far as to say I liked 'it,' fleeting as it was. God knows what it was like for Suter. He had to prove to himself that he could at least get that far with me, and he did. But for me it was almost entirely aesthetic."

"Do you mean like visiting the Uffizi?"

"Yes, except with a shorter queue to get in. That was the case last night anyway."

"And there was no risk to anybody's health?"

"There was barely any risk to the bed linen."

"Even so, do not do that again, please." His look said he meant it.

"Okay. I won't."

During the cab ride from Alexandria into Washington, I tried to give Timmy an account of my under twenty-four hours with Jim Suter in Los Pajaros and of the dramatic and complex story he had told me. Timmy kept indicating the cabdriver with his eyes, as if Mulugeta Fessahazion might be more than passingly interested. So I gave up on the Suter narrative and instead described physical developments along the Yucatan Caribbean coast since Timmy and I had vacationed there in the mid-eighties. We planned another trip together in January or February-not to include, Timmy suggested, Los Pajaros. "It sounds as if it's not our style," he said.