Strachey's folly ds-7

by Richard Stevenson

I reached out, took Timmy's hand, and pulled him onto the bed next to me. "And then," he continued in a tremulous voice, "this cop shows up who's some cold-blooded, suspicious, creep-show weirdo, asking all the wrong questions. And then Maynard's house is ransacked in an obvious search for something somebody desperately wants to get hold of-something incriminating, presumably. And then, and then, and then-you say I'm being paranoid?"

  I kissed him lightly on his big, white, beautifully shaped ear and spoke into it.

  "Yes and no."

  "Oh, I see. Yes, I'm being paranoid, and no, I'm not. Oh." He flopped back on the bed. I lay down beside him and lit a mental cigarette. I said, "Look, I understand that a lot of these awful things that are going on must be interconnected. Betty Krumfutz and the quilt vandalism, the shooting and the search of the house, and probably the quilt panel and Jim Suter's letter- yes, some or all of those form part of something bigger and even worse than the sum of all those ugly parts. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have observed Jim Suter's wishes-and Maynard's- and feigned ignorance with that strange, obnoxious cop.

  "I'm only suggesting, Timothy, that even actual conspiracies have limits that are nearly always narrow. Whole hospitals, whole police departments, whole taxi fleets, are not parts of plots, except in Orwell, or Kafka's imagination, or-what?

  Oliver Stone? Nixon's tapes? A Pat Robertson fund-raising letter?" Timmy smiled weakly. Then quickly he grew somber again and said, "You're right, but… how are we supposed to know which cop, or which taxi driver, or which hospital employee is the one not to trust? That's the problem I'm having right now."

  Skeptical as I was of conspiracy theories to explain evil in human affairs, it was plain enough that Timmy's fears were not groundless, just, it seemed to me, highly exaggerated. Even more important, his fear was interfering with his analytical powers and clouding his judgment-often far keener than mine-in a way I knew was not going to help. I believed that taking the first train home to Albany would have been the smartest thing for him to do until he regained his perspective. But I knew he wasn't about to do that: he wouldn't leave Maynard; lie wouldn't leave me.

  I said, "What we have to do, I think, Timothy, is find somebody in authority who we can trust absolutely-someone who is known and trusted by someone in Washington we know and trust-and then confide in that person and ask him or her to help. What we need first and foremost is an honest cop. Preferably a top-echelon honest cop."

  "That makes sense," Timmy said. "But how would we ever be sure that the honest cop was an actual honest cop and not someone whose sole purpose in the police department wasn't to pose as an honest cop and gain the confidence of people like us and then-do something. Get rid of us or whatever."

  "Boy, you are freaked out."

  "I guess I am."

  "Do you want to go home?"

  "Of course not. I mean, I'd love to, but it's out of the question."

  "I figured that. Would you like any help in getting through this? I mean beyond what I have to offer-kind words, back rubs, active and/or passive anal intercourse three point two times a week, et cetera?"

  "No, what you have to offer sounds sufficient, Don. Why? What else did you have in mind?"

  "I don't know. Pharmacological assistance perhaps, of a legal or illegal variety?"

  "Nah."

  "A priest?"

  "No, as you just pointed out, I've got you for anal intercourse."

  "How about a Jungian analyst? A little dream work might be just what the doctor ordered for a boy overcome with the heebie-jeebies. Or an orthodox Freudian perhaps. I've heard Washington is overrun with them. 'So zen, tell me, Mr.

  Callahan, vaht cumps to mind?'"

  He rolled toward me and said, "I guess we do have to just find somebody to trust with all this crap. You're right. That's a good first step. Maybe I'm feeling the way I'm feeling because we're so isolated with our dangerous knowledge, so alone with it. And we don't need a spiritual adviser, we need a good, old-fashioned clean cop. If possible, more than one. Then there'll be at least three of us to get to the bottom of this, and that'll make it easier."

  "Timmy, I don't think 'we' have to get to the bottom of anything. All 'we' have to do is find an authority we can trust and tell him or her what we know, and then make sure Maynard is safe and recovering well. I guess we could straighten up his house, too-pick the Indonesian wombat knuckles out of the kitchen sink and so forth. But we can leave it to others better equipped than we are to get to the bottom of things."

  This elicited a spontaneous snort, as I suspected it might. "Don't kid me," he said gaily. "You wouldn't miss sticking your nose in this reeking swamp of intrigue for anything in the world." I shrugged. "I know it's only a matter of time," Timmy went on happily, "before you're off to Mexico, and maybe even darkest Central Pennsylvania. I might not be able to tag along-I've got lo be back to work on Tuesday. But I certainly wouldn't attempt lo restrain you. I know you're in this awful thing to the finish, and I just want you to know, Don, that I'll help out in any way I can, personally and financially, and all I ask is that you get used to the fact that I am scared to death and even acknowledge from time to time that I actually have reason to be."

  He seemed more relaxed now, and I was a lot less apprehensive about his mental health than I had been a few minutes earlier.

  Then someone knocked at the door.

  We both started, and Timmy, big-eyed, whispered, "Who knows we're here?"

  "Five friends of Maynard's I just phoned," I whispered back. "The two I talked to and the three I left messages with."

  The knock came again, three quick, hard raps.

  I got up, went over, and looked through the peephole. I said to Timmy, "Take a deep breath and let it out slowly."

  I opened the door and there stood Ray Craig glowering in at us like some grade-B film noir house dick. "It wasn't easy tracking you two down. I had to check half the hotels on the Hill." He must have been upwind of us, for his nicotine stench again rolled into the room.

  I gestured for Craig to come on in, and as my glance fell on Timmy, I could actually see his pulse beating in his neck.

  Chapter 6

  Using the pretext of having to hurry back to the hospital and check on Maynard, we were able to extricate ourselves from Craig within twenty minutes. He told us he wanted to hear our narratives of the shooting a second time. He said sometimes details floated back into memory during the retelling of a traumatic event a day later. This was true, but with Craig the line sounded phony. Again, he sat jiggling his loafer and looking both suspicious of and mildly disgusted with everything we had to say. Then, with barely a word uttered, Craig got up and left. This time, he had asked about Mexico only twice instead of six times.

  "What is it with that creep?" Timmy muttered after Craig shut the door behind him.

  "I don't know," I said, "but I think it's time we talked to somebody we can trust who'll at least be in a position to offer an informed opinion on Craig-and maybe everything else that's happened. Don't you know somebody in Frankie Balducci's office?" Frankie Balducci was the openly gay congressman from Boston who'd been a relentless voice of sanity on gay matters in an institution where understanding of, and attitudes toward, homosexuality had not yet, as the twenty-first century approached, advanced far into the eighteenth.

  Timmy said, "Bob Bittner. He was in my class at Georgetown."

  "Can you call him? Don't tell him why, but just ask him if he can find a D.C. police officer who's cleaner than Mother Teresa."

  "That treacherous, headline-grabbing, reactionary old crone?"

  "All right, then. Cleaner than… than any other cop in D.C. Gay might help, too, closeted or not."

  Timmy reached his old friend, who agreed to try to track down an indisputably clean cop, no questions asked, and he said he'd get back to Timmy in fifteen minutes. I showered and Timmy went downstairs for a newspaper, and then Bittner called back. The officer we should talk to, he said, was Detective Lieutenant Chondelle Dolan.r />
  After he hung up, Timmy said, "Bob says she's gay, she's smart, and she's squeaky-clean. Dolan is disinclined to rock any department boats, and she goes along and gets along with the mayor and his crowd of leeches and scam artists. But Bob says a woman he knows, Rain Terry, was once involved with Dolan for several months, and Terry swears Dolan is both one of the most uncorruptible people she's ever met and one of the most discreet."

  "That's our cop."

  "Bob wasn't sure she'd talk to us. Dolan is one for going through channels, he said."

  "But if she's that clean, I'll bet our story will pique her interest, at least."

  While I dialed Dolan's number, Timmy walked over and yanked open the door to the corridor. Assured that no one was lurking there, he shut the door and came back and sat on the bed while I waited for an answer at Dolan's home.

  I was about to hang up when a low, groggy voice came on the line. "Yeah, hello."

  "Lieutenant Dolan?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm Donald Strachey, a private investigator, and a friend of a friend of a friend of Rain Terry, who suggested I call you."

  "Oh, Rain did, huh?" She sounded as if I had wakened her from a long, drugged sleep.

  "I'm looking for the cleanest, most discreet police officer in Washington to talk to about, among other mystifying events, the shooting last night of a gay man by the name of Maynard Sudbury on E Street, Southeast. There may be more to the attack than the police have been told, and I need to bounce some of what I know off somebody in the department I know I can trust. Rain told Bob Bittner, of Frankie Balducci's office, that you are that person. Can we meet somewhere and I can run what I know by you?"

  A silence. "Give me your number. I'll call you back."

  I recited our hotel and room numbers and hung up. I said, "She's checking on Bittner with Terry and on us with Bittner."

  I glanced through the Post — Bob Dole was threatening to take off the kid gloves in his second debate with Clinton-and Timmy checked the corridor again and then looked out the window for suspicious characters two stories below on Second Street, SE.

  Within minutes Chondelle Dolan had called back and agreed to meet Timmy and me at a Pennsylvania Avenue bagel shop in half an hour. Meanwhile, I checked GW again to verify that Maynard was still stable. He was. With Timmy's concurrence, I went ahead and phoned a number in Tilton, Illinois, and reached, as I hoped I would, old Peace Corps ties aside, May-nard's brother. Neither Timmy nor I wanted to be the one to notify Maynard's parents, if we could avoid it. Edwin Sudbury said he would do that, and he said he and his wife would leave for Washington as soon as they could make travel arrangements.

  "Was it a mugging?" Sudbury asked anxiously.

  I said the motive for the attack had not yet been determined, but that given Washington's robbery rate, a mugging was what a lot of people seemed to suspect it might have been. Seated nearby, Timmy rolled his eyes.

  "You got ID?" she said.

  "Sure." I showed her my New York State PI license, and Timmy presented his card identifying him as the chief legislative aide to New York State assemblyman Myron Lipshutz.

  "Bob Bittner says you guys have your idiosyncrasies but I hat you're responsible enough citizens, and I should take you seriously even if what you have to say might sound a little gonzo at first."

  "That sums us up," I said.

  Dolan looked at me with no hint of enthusiasm but with large dark eyes that were interested and alert. In her midthirties, she had a big, handsome Ibo face with the kind of sharply ridged, ample lips that I'd always found deeply erotic on black men and pleasing in a less hormonal way on black women. Dolan's shoulder-length hair, done in a near-flip, was black and gleaming, and her eye shadow was the same shade of cobalt blue as her two-piece silk suit and blouse. Had it not been for her bulky muscularity, she'd have looked less like a cop than a prosecuting attorney, or a regional administrator of the Department of Labor. She was both cool and formidable-I guessed that even in Marion Barry's age of racial payback in Washington, her rise through the police ranks had not been easy-and it looked as if we had lucked out in hooking up with Chondelle

  Dolan.

  Timmy fidgeted with his bagel and said, "Do you mind if we look at your ID, too, Ms. Dolan?"

  "No problem," she said, and flipped open a black leather wallet so that we could examine her name and badge.

  "Thanks," Timmy said. "We're nervous-I am, anyway- and — when you hear about all this grotesque stuff, I think you'll understand why."

  "Uh-huh. Well, you go ahead and tell me your story. I've got plenty of time. I've got a lunch date at one, but till then I'm interested to hear what you got to say about this shooting you mentioned."

  I began to speak, but Timmy's eyes darted quickly around the bagel shop at the other customers, and he cut me off with, "You used to date Rain Terry? I just met her a few times and she seemed awfully nice."

  "Yeah, Rain's a peach." Dolan picked up on Timmy's antsi-ness and leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Rain's got two kids now with her partner-two little boys. Did you know that?"

  "No, I didn't," Timmy said.

  "That's not for me," Dolan said in a matter-of-fact way. "I got nine brothers and sisters, seven of them younger than me. Somebody else wants to overpopulate the world, fine. Me? Uh-uh."

  "I'm the father of a child in Edensburg, New York, north of Albany," Timmy said, and with an accustomed gesture whipped out his wallet. "Two lesbian friends asked me to be the father of their child-via artificial insemination, of course and it turns out I love it. This is Erica Osborne-Kotlowitz."

  Dolan glanced briefly at the photo of a tiny person in a white dress and said,

  "Looks human to me, Timothy. Good for you, honey."

  "She'll be seventeen months old this Thursday," he said.

  "Uh-huh."

  I said, "Chondelle-may I call you Chondelle?"

  "Yes, you may."

  "Chondelle, to get to the point, a close friend of Timmy's was shot and seriously wounded in front of his house on E Street, Southeast, last night."

  "Maynard Sudbury is his name," Timmy put in, leaning close to Dolan. "We were in the Peace Corps together in India in the midsixties. A poultry development project. Few of us had any real experience with farming of any kind. We were what the Peace Corps calls BAGs-B.A. generalists. The Peace Corps phi-losophy at that time was-"

  "Timmy, Chondelle has a date in a couple of hours, so maybe we need to just explain to her what happened yesterday and last night and postpone the theories of rural development until a later date."

  "Yeah," she said, "I'd love to hear about you and your friends raising chickens.

  But let's save that."

  I looked around, and nobody was seated at the tables adjacent to ours, and none of the Sunday-morning coffee drinkers and Post readers in the shop showed any sign of being aware of us at all. I said, "Timmy is afraid that the shooting and a number of other disturbing events yesterday are interconnected-part of an extensive Robert Ludlum-style conspiracy. I don't agree, but his suspicions are not entirely off-the-wall. It was a pretty wild twelve hours yesterday." Then I laid it all out: the first un-expurgated version of Saturday's events spoken out loud by Timmy or me to anyone.

  While Timmy shifted uneasily in his seat, I described to Dolan Maynard's shock at discovering an AIDS quilt panel for Jim Suter; the mysterious appearance at the panel by a woman Maynard recognized as former congresswoman Betty Krumfutz; the letter from Suter warning Maynard that Suter's life was in danger and the admonition not to reveal Suter's whereabouts to anyone, especially not to the D.C. cops or to any people on "the Hill"; the reported vandalism of the Suter panel on the quilt; the brutal shooting; the ransacking of Maynard's house while Timmy and I were at the hospital; the unnerving multiple appearances by D.C. police detective Ray Craig.

  Dolan listened to this recitation carefully and with a look of concern and growing distaste. When I mentioned Suter's warning not to reveal any of this
story to the D.C. cops, Dolan raised a carefully drawn eyebrow but did not react otherwise.

  When I had finished, she said, "I'm sorry about your friend. I hope he makes it.

  Firearms do terrible damage to human bodies, but at GW they deal with these injuries all the time. So he's in good hands."

  "And Maynard's resilient," Timmy said. "He's survived things almost as bad as getting shot-parasites, plagues, guerrilla wars, mobs, you name it. So there's reason to hope he can withstand this attack, too."

  "Maynard sounds like a real tough bird."

  "So, what do you think?" Timmy said. "Am I crazy, or is there really something big going on here? Something… something interrelated with… with a lot of people involved in it?" He took a quick look over his shoulder, as if he might catch another patron of the coffee shop in the act of pointing a directional microphone our way, or aiming a bamboo pipe with a poisoned blow dart.

  Dolan said, "No, it's not crazy to consider the possibility that there's a connection between everything that went on yesterday. That's not crazy at all. It does sound to me like it's more than a run of bad luck."

  "But," I said, "Timmy may be letting his imagination roam a bit too freely, don't you think? Such as imagining, to cite just one example, that some of the GW hospital staff may be out to do Maynard in, and the same for large segments of the D.C.

  Metropolitan Police Department. I think he needs to be reassured on these points, among a number of others."

  Dolan sighed heavily and said, "Look, I gotta make a phone call. I told my date I'd check in with her around now. Come on with me while I make a quick call, okay? There's a phone down at the corner, by Second."

  Before we could question Dolan, she stood up and we quickly got up, too, and followed her out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. None of us had finished our coffee, but Dolan paid no attention to that.

  As we walked up Pennsylvania toward the Library of Congress, Dolan looked straight ahead and said, "I just wanted to get us out of there. Don't turn around, don't look back, but another plainclothes officer was in the coffee shop. He came in right after I did and sat three tables behind you all. He was too far away to hear much of anything you said, but after you told me what you told me, Donald, I thought, why is this man sitting here? The officer's name is Ewell Flower, and he works under Ray Craig."