Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

Walking up and boldly knocking on the front door would have been macho in a way that might have been appreciated locally, but it might also have been suicidal. So if Suter was inside the house and still alive, I knew I'd have to get to him in some other way. I turned around at the next driveway, maneuvered my rental car through the mud and potholes back out to the main highway, then drove back up 307 to a hotel near Yalku.

I rented snorkeling equipment, reluctantly leaving my passport as collateral, and returned to the beach road, parking at a closed-up and apparently unoccupied house a third of a mile up the beach from the Ramos house. I changed into my bathing suit, and ten minutes later I — was floating twenty yards off the Ramos beach, interested in the gray ray that flopped across the sandy seafloor six or seven feet beneath me, but even more interested in the scene on the Ramos terrace. Two large, muscular, dark-haired men in chinos and polo shirts were seated in the shade of the house, one on a chaise and one in a deck chair, and a third man in a skimpy bathing suit-I recognized him from the now all-too-familiar head of hair-sat stretched out on a chair in the sun.

For fifteen minutes I swam slowly back and forth, like a U-boat off Scotland, hoping the two guards, if that's what they were-was one of them Jorge? would go inside the house. Finally one of them did get up, but the other one stayed put. The one who went inside, however, returned shortly with a couple of bottles, it looked like, and another object. The second man then joined him at a round table where they both seated themselves and began to do something with the unidentifiable object. A deck of cards? No, the motions were not card-playing motions. When the two seemed to become more deeply engrossed in their activity, I moved in closer to shore. Suter now seemed to be looking my way, so I lifted my mask, pointed theatrically at my upper lip, then vigorously and repeatedly shot Suter the finger. When I saw him stiffen and continue to stare at me, I pulled my mask back down and resumed an easy breaststroke in a northerly direction.

A moment later, when I glanced his way, Suter stood up, slipped out of his bathing trunks, and headed toward me in a leisurely way. With the sun above him, he was magnificent to behold. But now his beauty kindled not appreciation or desire in me, just sudden anger. What a careless, destructive man he was.

And when he reached me and chimed, "Strachey, I thought you'd never show up!" it was all I could do to keep from swatting him with my snorkeling mask.

I snarled, "You are getting people killed! Do you know that?" Startled, Suter said,

"Who? Now who's been killed?" "Why, Nelson Krumfutz and Tammy Pam Jameson and Hugh Myers! Suter, you dumb fuck! What did you tell Jorge that you told me?"

Suter lost his coordination for an instant and nearly slipped under the water. He recovered, gestured urgently toward the north, and as we both began to swim that way, he said breathlessly, "They knew you were here on Wednesday.

They asked me what I told you. I told them I made up a story to throw you off."

He watched for my reaction as he swam.

"You made up the drug-smuggling story? All of it?"

"The part about Nelson Krumfutz and Hugh Myers, sure. I thought you'd be smart enough to be scared off by the whole drug-gang angle. These are not people you want to want to play with, even a little, and I wanted to impress that on you, Strachey. That's all I meant to do. And the Ramoses do have drug-gang connections. Not in Pennsylvania though. Just in Washington and Alexandria."

I looked back toward the Ramos house. The two men were still seated, absorbed in whatever they were doing. "Well, Jim, you miscalculated. You miscalculated badly."

"They actually killed Nelson and Tammy Pam?" Suter said, spitting seawater.

"Well, of course they did! Somebody in Washington was telling them that I was not only competent but dogged, so they couldn't risk Nelson's coming up with a convincing denial. They had to kill Nelson and Hugh Myers, not because they were witnesses to drug smuggling, but because they were witnesses to your lie.

And the Ramoses decided that once 1 uncovered your lie, I would go after the real and even worse crime that the bunch of you were involved in. For Christ's sake, Suter, don't you understand how vicious and remorseless the Ramoses are? You tell me how savage they are, but you don't act like you really understand it. Jesus!"

Suter stopped swimming and looked at me. We were close enough to shore now for our feet to touch bottom. We stood there in the crystalline blue water, the Caribbean sun blazing down on us, and he said, "You know what really happened, don't you?"

"A lot of it, yes. You can fill me in on the rest."

"How did you figure it out?"

"A number of people provided information that I pieced together. That's usually the way an investigation goes-a lot of digging, a certain amount of luck. In my asking around about you, Jim, Carmen LoBello was especially helpful."

Suter actually had the decency to blush. "Carmen's pissed off at me, I suppose."

"You don't suppose it. You know it. And let me tell you something else, Suter. I think I noticed a small sore on my upper lip yesterday. If you gave me herpes, the Ramoses are going to feel like Rosie O'Donnell in your life next to me."

"I seriously doubt that," he said mildly. "Anyway, I wasn't oozing viral fluids on Wednesday, so you're probably safe. Look, Strachey, I've made a decision. It looks like I really have no choice. I'm ready to take you up on your offer. Get me together with some uncorrupted authority, if you can find one-I'll take a chance, I guess, on Janet Reno's Justice Department-and I'll tell what I know in return for a chance just to disappear and start over."

"Oh, you've made that decision, have you? When did you make it?"

"Just now." Suter looked back at the two men bent over the table on the Ramos terrace. "I'd have made the decision an hour ago if I had known you were going to show up and rescue my ass. But I had no way of knowing you were going to find me irresistible a second time. I guess I'm just a lucky so-and-so. Now, how do we get out of here?"

I looked up at the men on the terrace and said, "I don't know. How do we?"

"Is your car nearby?"

"Just up the beach."

"Jaime and Ramon are absorbed in their dominoes. It will be fifteen minutes before they notice that I'm not here. Let's go."

"You're naked."

He shrugged. "Have you got an extra pair of shorts and a T-shirt?"

"Sure. But I don't know about shoes that will fit. And whatever else we'll need to get you on a plane at Cancun. Your passport, for instance."

Suter began to swim again, faster this time, and I swam with him. "We've got one stop to make, "where I can pick up clothes and documents. Anyway, we're not going to Cancun. As soon as they realize I'm gone, Jaime and Ramon will notify the Ramoses, and they'll be watching for me at the airports in Cancun and Merida and probably Chetumal. There's another way out of here that I've been working on since we spoke on Wednesday. It'll take more time than flying to Miami, but it's uncomplicated and I know the people involved-they're actually competitors of the Ramoses-and I know this will work."

I said, "Don't tell me. We're going to be driven for four and a half days in the back of a truck to the outskirts of San Diego, where we'll crawl under a chain-link fence by the light of the moon and hope we're not ripped apart by Border Patrol rottweilers."

Suter looked at me as he swam, his wet locks gleaming in the hot light. "No, what I have in mind is easier than that-and a lot more romantic. We'll be traveling by sea. We can cuddle naked under the stars, Strachey, and make love again."

What a piece of work he was. "Jesus, Suter, do you really call what we did the other night making love?" He seemed to hear what I said, but Suter did not meet my eye and did not reply. "Anyway, I told my boyfriend I wouldn't screw around with you again. So that's that. Forget it. What we can do tonight is have a long, informative talk. With you doing most of the talking and all of the informing."