Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

"Why?"

"Because Ulmer, a bit of a wuss who couldn't be trusted, wasn't in on the Rarnos-McChesney plan to fix NAFTA. And when Ulmer found out-Ian Williamson got drunk one night and let it slip-Bryant went to Burton Olds and threatened to go to the FBI if Burton didn't go himself. That wasn't going to happen, since Olds had been part of the scheme from the beginning and knew where all the bodies were buried. Olds warned Alan that Ulmer was about to stray from the reservation, and Alan had the Ramoses' drug people kill Ulmer on the street and make it look like a mugging."

Suter lay quietly, looking up at the stars. I said, "Did you know this at the time?"

"No. Jorge told me a few days later. It's part of what he had over me." Suter still did not look at me.

"And it was McChesney who ordered the murders of Nelson Krumfutz, Tammy Pam Jameson, and Hugh Myers just so they couldn't tell me that your big, elaborate diversionary tale about drug smuggling in Central Pennsylvania wasn't true?"

"You'll have to ask Jorge-or Alan. But that would be my guess."

I thought about everything Suter had just told me, and of his plans for us to make our way to Havana, and from there by air to Mexico City and on to Washington and directly to the Justice Department.

"Are you certain," I asked Suter, "that when we get back to Washington, you'll be able to make anybody important believe that this bizarre story of yours is true?"

"Oh, sure. Or if I don't, you will." I didn't know at the time what Suter meant by that. I should have asked, but-yet another botched job on my part-I didn't.

When I went belowdecks at eleven, Suter said he had some more letters to write-to his mother and to a couple other people he said would be concerned about his disappearance-and he said he would come down to his bunk in another hour or two. I had my own small cabin, and with the door securely locked from the inside, I went straight to sleep, body and soul depleted.

I awoke the next morning just after seven with the boat rolling this way and that way, and my stomach trying to keep up. Out my single porthole I could see low clouds and a choppy sea. In the distance, a palmy shoreline was visible, and green hills.

I shaved, washed up, dressed, and went in search of coffee. The galley was deserted-no steak and eggs sizzling on the grill, no conch fritters even-so I guessed Suter was still asleep. Up above, the second-youngest crew member was at the boat's wheel. The captain, seated nearby reading a Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald, looked up impassively and said, "Buenos dias."

I returned his greeting, and when he went abruptly back to his newspaper, I returned to the galley and found my own Nescafe and a couple of mushy pldtanos. Nor was I optimistic about stumbling on an IHOP near the harbor in La Coloma.

By eight-thirty, with still no sign of Suter, I went up to the captain, who was back at the wheel as the Leona Vicario moved even closer to land. It was now evident, in fact, that a midsize harbor lay dead ahead.

"Donde esta Senor Suter?" I asked.

"No hay."

"No hay?"

The captain shook his head and retrieved a business-size envelope, folded in half, from his jacket pocket. He handed it to me and did not react in any way when I muttered, under my breath, "Hell."

I made my way to the aft deck, took a seat, and looked at the front of the envelope, which was addressed to "Married Man Donald Strachey, barricaded in his chambers." I opened the envelope and removed four handwritten, legal-size, yellow sheets of paper, taking care that they did not get away from me in the stiff breeze. The letter from Suter read:

Dear Strachey,

Sorry, my friend, but the plan I described to you- no can do. Oh, can-but won't. There's a better way for both of us.

You go ahead and round up the bad guys. They're all yours. Be a moral hero-a role I seem destined not to play. I guess I've just got too many "issues"-or whatever you choose to call them.

Enclosed herewith please find a list of the seventeen congressional out-and-out crooks, along with descriptions of their rewards for their NAFTA votes and the means by which these transactions were conducted and concealed by Alan McChesney. I'm not sure how exactly to nail McChesney for Bryant Ulmer's murder. But my guess is, once you nail McChesney on the NAFTA scam and tie him to the Ramoses, he'll go all blubbery and begin to name names-or Ian Williamson will, or better yet Jorge will, in order to strike a deal. Let's just hope that none of them implicates Hillary! Hey, just kidding about that.

As for moi — what to do? I have no intention of putting myself at the mercy of pointy-headed bureaucrats, especially Clinton-administration pointy-headed bureaucrats, who'll want to resettle me as a forest-fire-tower maintenance crew chief in Coeur d'Alene. I like the tropics. Washington? Los Pajaros? Havana?

There's not much difference for me. So, by the time you read this, Strachey, I will have been picked up by an associate of Captain Munoz off Cabo Corrientes and deposited there along with my ample grubstake.

You might reasonably ask, Strachey, why it's going to be socialist Cuba for a capitalist pig-weasel? — such as myself. Because, my friend, Cuba is nothing if not the future of capitalism in the Caribbean. Latin America knows this, and Europe, and Asia-they're all doing deals ten miles a minute with the socialist Cuban officials who will instantly metamorphose, I can assure you, into capitalist Cuban officials mere seconds after Fidel's last cigar finally explodes.

Only Jesse Helms-ridden Washington-O! A principled man in the Congress! is failing to prepare for that delicious, highly remunerative moment when Fidel croaks, and within days a thousand resorts and casinos and sneaker factories blossom!

But I'll be there-have, in fact, already made elaborate arrangements to establish myself quite soon under a new identity, the name on my passport of another country-my flag of convenience, as it were. I can't be the golden boy forever, Strachey, but I can be the man that the other golden boys wish to get to know better. We all do what we must in life, or, failing that, what we can. Am I right? What this all means is, finally I'll have the time and the wherewithal to write my novel.

I am honestly sorry to have fucked you over in this way, Strachey-even though you are, I have to say, one of the smuggest men I have ever known. Talk about attitude. And naive? Less so than you were just a week ago, I think.

Still, you've got your simple charms. There's a part of me that wi\\ always remember fondly our fifteen minutes of love-rather a lengthy commitment, really, for a man as emotionally unreliable as I'm alleged to be by some. And, of course, I'll always grow sentimental whenever I think of the little viral souvenir I may or may not have left on your fetching upper lip.

Captain Munoz lias arranged for another associate of his to drive you the hundred miles from La Coloma to Havana airport, when: a. seat on a flight to Mexico City has been booked in your name and the ticket paid for. After that you're on your own.

Please extend my regrets once again to Maynard. Tell him I loved him more than any other man in Washington whom I ever made briefly happy. He's a real prize for whoever wins him.

So long, Strachey. Come for a visit in post-Millennium Havana. Bring your wise boyfriend-a man who obviously knows a lot about the nature of human folly, past, present, and future.

Altogether sincerely this time, Jim Snler

I glanced at the pages with the names and details of the NAFTA scam, then refolded the papers and placed them back in the envelope. This I stuffed deep in my pants pocket as the Leona Vicario cruised into the harbor of a port town that looked as if not a single thing in it had changed in thirty-five years.