Richard Stevenson - Strachey's folly

"It does," Maynard agreed. "But of course that's a lot of people. Jim is among the more prolific hacks in the District. He's always been a writer who gets around, professionally and otherwise. Writer-slash-operator is a more apt description of what Jim does."

Timmy said, "Do you think Betty Krumfutz saw something on Jim's panel today that freaked her out and she sent some goons over to rip those pages off the quilt?"

Maynard said, "Well, yeah, it does look as if she did," and then he shook his head, as if he was both baffled and apprehensive and had no idea what to make of any of the afternoon's peculiar events.

We sat silently for a minute, deep in thought, the television jabbering in the background.

"I'm wondering," Maynard finally said, "what-if anything- I ought to tell the Names Project. Or even the police. I guess I can't tell anyone that I heard from Jim, or where he is. Not if it might actually endanger his life-or mine." Maynard smiled nervously, and we smiled nervously back.

"No," Timmy said, "and you specifically are not to tell the D.C. police where he is.

Or anybody on the Hill. I take it that means Capitol Hill the national legislative establishment, not Capitol Hill the neighborhood."

Maynard said, "It probably means both."

"Has Jim ever had problems with the law?" 1 asked. "Of a political nature or otherwise?"

Maynard looked doubtful. "Not that I've ever heard about. And if he'd been mixed up in the Krumfutz scandal, that would have come out in court. I'd guess no. His ethics are malleable, but Jim has plenty of lawyer friends, and my guess is lie's been able to stay a centimeter or two on the nonindictable side of the law."

Timmy sat up straight. "Then that probably means that- jeez! It might well mean that the D.C. cops are actually involved in whatever the conspiracy is that Jim knows about!"

"Conspiracy?" I said. "What conspiracy?"

"Well, what would you call it?"

"Timothy," I said, "it seems to me unlikely that the entire District of Columbia Police Department would conspire to assassinate a political writer." I told Maynard, "Timothy, as you know, is overall a rational man. But when he "was a boy in Poughkeepsie, the nuns told him stories about Masons plotting to snatch and devour little Catholic children, and to this day Timothy's imagination occasionally runs away with itself."

Timmy gave Maynard a look that said, "I've told you about how off-the-wall Don can be on the subject of my Catholic background, and now you've seen it for yourself." What he said out loud was, "Some cops are corrupt, and often dirty cops are dirty together. Word of this phenomenon has even reached some lapsed New Jersey Calvinists, I think."

Maynard, already unsettled by the letter from Jim Suter and the strange vandalism of the even stranger quilt panel, now looked alarmed over the possibility that his houseguests might be headed for a spat. He said, "Don, Jim did say explicitly that I shouldn't mention his whereabouts to the D.C. police, and he seemed to be saying not any D.C. cop."

"Right," Timmy piped up. "That was in the letter."

"I get the point," I said. "The point, it seems to me, is this: be careful of the D.C. cops because one or some of them may be connected to threats against Jim Suter or even attempts on his life. Let's just not become unduly paranoid, imagining some Oliver Stone-style plot against Jim Suter that everybody from the D.C. meter maids to the ghost of LBJ is a party to. Just for the moment, let's be cool-whatever that might turn out to mean in practical terms."

"But that's just it," Maynard said. "What do I do with what I know? I guess I'll have to do something. I told that woman from the Names Project that Jim Suter is alive, and then his panel was vandalized. So she might give the cops my name."

We pondered this dilemma. After a moment, Timmy said, "Why don't you call the Names Project woman-what's her name?"

"I left it in the car," Maynard said.

"And find out if she told the cops about you, and if she didn't, ask her not to.

Tell her you have your own reasons for not wanting to get involved at this point, which is true. Ask her if she'd mind keeping your name out of it, at least for now, and then get in touch with her when you have a clearer idea of what this.. this conspiracy is about, and how far it extends, and exactly what the dangers are to Jim and to you. I have to use the word conspiracy, based on the situation Jim described in his letter. In English, there just isn't any better word for it."

"Timothy," I said, "maybe it wasn't the nuns. Maybe it's all the years you've spent as an employee of the New York State legislature, an institution that makes a Medici court look like a Quaker meeting. Whatever the reason, your overstimulated sense of melodrama is getting the best of you-as I suspect Jim Suter's might be getting the best of him. Maynard, has Suter spent a lot of time in Mexico? Living among the cops there could certainly leave a man with a powerful sense that somebody might be out to get him."

"Jim's been taking vacations in the Yucatan for years," Maynard said, "and I think he has friends there. As for the Mexican police, they're an ugly fact of life down there that people have learned to live with when they must and avoid when they can, like the bacteria in the water supply. I doubt that Jim has been unhinged by them. He's a worldly guy. You know, I think I will call the woman from the Names Project and at least find out what she told the cops. Just so I'll know what to expect."

Timmy said, "I think you should."

Maynard crossed his living room full of primitive and modern art and artifacts paintings, carved-wood fertility totems, village-life-narrative wall hangings in brilliant primary colors- and walked out the front door.

"I wonder," Timmy said, "whether Maynard should tell the quilt official that the pages ripped off Jim Suter's quilt panel were from Jim's Krumfutz campaign biography and that he saw the actual Betty Krumfutz down on her hands and knees at the quilt this afternoon. I really don't see, Don, how you can sneer at the possibility of a conspiracy when-"

From outside the open front door came three loud pops. Then we heard the revving engine of a car speeding away down E Street, followed by silence.

Seconds later, when we reached Maynard-sprawled on the brick sidewalk next to his car, his blood pumping out of his body-he was still breathing, but only faintly. Timmy knelt by Maynard and began to speak softly to him as he searched for the correct pressure points to push against, and I raced back into the house.

The George Washington University Hospital trauma center was where the Secret Service had rushed Ronald Reagan after John Hinckley Jr. shot him, along with James Brady, a Secret Service agent, and a D.C. policeman on the sidewalk alongside the Washington Hilton in 1981. Nancy Reagan later told reporters that as the Gipper was wheeled into the emergency room, he had cheerfully quoted W. C. Fields to the effect that, given a choice, he'd rather be in Philadelphia. But in fact, Reagan was lucky he had been shot in the District of Columbia, just blocks from GW. This hospital's emergency staff specialized in treating the thousands of gruesome gunshot wounds arriving each year from various points, mainly in the Northeast section, of one of the world's bloodiest capitals outside the Balkans.

Maynard was not jocular on his arrival at GW, he was unconscious. Timmy had been allowed to ride with him in the ambulance, and I followed soon in a cab.

Maynard's wounds, one abdominal and one to the head, were so serious that he was quickly evaluated and moved directly to an operating room.

Timmy and I settled into a lounge outside the recovery unit where Maynard would end up if he lived. "He's in tough shape" was all we'd been told by an ER resident, and we both understood what that meant.