Strachey's folly ds-7

by Richard Stevenson

  Timmy said, "Oh, God," and he appeared to be putting a lot of effort into not looking over his shoulder, as was I.

  "Why not let's walk on over to the Capitol," Dolan said. She led us across Pennsylvania, past the library, across the Capitol grounds with their beautifully kept greenery and their antiter-rorist reinforced-concrete barricades-would missiles with tactical nuclear warheads explode out of the bushes in the event of attack? — and around the south wing of the great building. The Capitol looked soft and creamy in the autumn morning sunlight, as if it could somehow render benign even the hard-hearted harangues of Jesse or Newt that regularly bounced off the walls inside.

  From the high terrace of the west facade, we looked out over the city and the Mall and the AIDS quilt stretching away toward the Washington Monument, and beyond that, Abe Lincoln. Tens of thousands of people milled quietly among the panels. Timmy had remarked the day before that he had never seen so many people in one place remain so subdued. The quiet was partly a sign of respect, we concluded, and of so many of the quilt visitors being lost in memory, but it was also that no words felt adequate to express the quilt's huge and complex meaning.

  Timmy said, "It's funny. Five minutes ago I was really frightened, but here I actually feel safe. In fact, this is the first time in twelve hours that I've actually felt safe. Not that I necessarily am safe," he added, and took a quick look back toward Pennsylvania Avenue. I looked around, too, but saw no one who stood out among the quilt visitors and other tourists and passersby. Dolan had not described Ewell Flower to us, so I didn't know whom to look for.

  Timmy went on, "It's interesting how most gay people aren't usually aware of feeling wnsafe. But at these big, mainly gay events, you're always aware of feeling safe in a way you never do any other time. Do you know what I mean?"

  I said I knew, but Dolan just said, "I'll take your word for it."

  I asked, "Is this Ewell Flower following us? Have you spotted him since we left the coffee shop?"

  "No, and he probably knows I made him. He's a short, skinny African-American man, gray-haired, wearing shades, in a black windbreaker. If they've got a tail on you, he probably switched off with somebody. I don't recognize anybody else from the division just now. I guess they could be using people from outside the division. So, yeah, we could still be under surveillance."

  Dolan said all this nonchalantly, but I could all but hear Timmy's sphincter squeaking as it tightened. My own bloodstream was on the move, too.

  "What reasons can you think of," I asked, "why Timmy and I might be under surveillance by the Metro Police Department?"

  "Craig might suspect strongly that you had something to do with the shooting. Is there any reason he should?"

  "Of course not," Timmy said. "That's just wacky."

  "No, not wacky, just not real smart. Ray is one of those guys out of another age who think that if you are homosexual, you are, ipso facto, mentally impaired and possibly dangerous. Ray and I have talked about his old-fashioned opinions, which for some reason he seems to want to hang on to."

  "Have you been to law school?" I asked Dolan.

  "I went to Howard prelaw for a year. I learned a lot of history and a lot of law, and I learned to speak standard American English. But I knew all I ever really wanted was to be a cop, so I switched to an M.A. program in criminal justice. I had an uncle who was an officer in the department until a sociopathic child shot him in the heart in 1989. James Dolan was the kind of man who made police work look like a noble calling. For him, it was a noble calling, I still believe, although for me it's been quite a bit more complicated than that."

  "Because you're an African-American lesbian?" I said.

  "No, because I'm a woman."

  "Oh."

  "And now my life is about to become even more complicated in the division on account of you two. I'm not complaining," Dolan said, and hoisted herself, one ham at a time, onto the stone balustrade beneath what must have been the House Speaker's office. "I'm glad you called me. What you told me is interesting.

  Maybe I can help out a little bit-I don't know yet. But word'll get back to Ray Craig, if it hasn't already, that you guys are talking to me. So we better get our stories straight, right?"

  Timmy said, "Absolutely."

  "Let's say you heard about me from Bob Bittner, over at Frankie's office-which is true-and you wanted to check in with a gay cop and tell your story to somebody who'd lend a more sympathetic ear than Ray did. That's true, too, and even more important than being true, it's plausible. Ray'll probably just say,

  'Oh, they have to go and be PC What we don't need to repeat to anybody at this point is all that interesting stuff you told me about this Jim Suter, and the quilt panel, and Betty Krumfutz. Let's keep all that amongst ourselves for now. If there is somebody in the department who is criminally involved, we don't want it to get back, okay?"

  We both said no, we didn't want that.

  "See, the thing of it is," Dolan went on coolly, "I made a couple of calls before I met you at the bagel shop, and early this morning Craig came up with two witnesses to your friend getting shot. A man and a woman were sitting in a parked car- sharing a joint, it sounds like-about forty yards down E Street. And they saw the whole thing: Sudbury come out his door and walk to his car, a white Honda with Maryland plates roll down the street, stop beside him, and then gunfire. Then the car- which probably was a white Honda stolen earlier in the evening in Kensington-proceeded at a high rate of speed down E Street and turned left at First. The witnesses got a quick look at the driver-who was probably the shooter-and at his front-seat passenger. Both of them, the witnesses said, looked Latino, they thought. Central American, Indian-looking, not Spanish. What the witnesses actually said was, the perpetrators looked Mexican."

  Timmy shook his head in amazement. "This is all for real."

  I asked Dolan, "If I can locate and talk to Jim Suter and get his story, can you help me find a way to protect him?"

  Grimly she said, "Look, this whole episode has drug-operation turf war written all over it. If that's what Jim Suter is involved in, maybe nobody can protect him and you will want to do one thing and one thing only, and that is, stand way clear. You mean this didn't occur to you, Donald? Mexico is now a key transit point for South American narcotics entering the United States. Mexican officials, police agencies, often the narcs themselves, want a piece of this billion-dollar pie. It's a poor country where a lot of people just go ahead and grab what they can. You didn't consider that that might be the source of Jim Suter's troubles?"

  "It occurred to me," I said. "But what's a former Republican congresswoman from Central Pennsylvania got to do with it? That part of it makes no sense."

  "I guess that's a question you'll have to ask Jim Suter."

  "Will you help me investigate?" I said. "I'd like to do what I can to bring in the people who shot Maynard, and to do it without hurting Jim Suter, if that's possible. That's the way Maynard would want me to do it, I think-not that he has any real idea of what Suter's involvement is. The one thing that's certain in all this is that Maynard had no known connection to whatever is going on here, and he does not deserve to be lying shot up in a hospital bed struggling to stay alive."

  "Yeah, that's usually the way it goes," Dolan said. "No, I won't help you investigate the case. I haven't been assigned to it, and I won't be, and I've got another six or eight dozen cases open at the moment. What I will do is: I'll keep you up to speed on the department's progress on the case as well as I can without actually doing anything that might jeopardize my job. I'll also try to find out who else in the department is keeping close track of the case, and why.

  That should help out."

  Timmy said, "What if you find out a lot of people in the department, especially higher-ups, are keeping close tabs on the case?"

  Dolan shrugged. "What if I do?"

  "But wouldn't that be significant?" Timmy was pale and looked a little woozy.

  "I guess it would be," Dolan said,
and caught my eye. She seemed to be thinking what I was thinking, that maybe it was time for Timmy to head back to Albany.

  Chapter 7

  I know why you're doing this," Timmy said. We were back in the hotel room, where a call to GW had just confirmed that Maynard was unconscious but still in stable condition. "You're acknowledging that there's at least a possibility that some well-connected gang of some type thinks it needs to kill Maynard for whatever weird reason. And you're showing by your actions that the only way to guarantee Maynard's safety-or at least ease my mind about it-is either to disprove a conspiracy, or to expose it and end it. Is that right?"

  "Not exactly."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean what you say is partly true, but-Timothy, while the size of my ego may fall within the upper midrange of normal, I do not suffer from delusions of grandeur. I can poke around and try to come up with an educated guess as to the nature of this-thing. But if it's extensive at all, there's precious little I'll be able to do about it. Especially if it's a Mexican drug-gang operation. To those people, I'd be gnatlike, an insect they'd swat. I'm selectively ambitious, yes, but I'm not suicidal."

  "Do you think it is a drug operation that Suter's mixed up in?"

  "I know too little to have formed a strong opinion, but right now I'd say probably not."

  "I don't think so either."

  "It's the involvement of the quilt," I said. "And Betty Krum-futz." Timmy nodded enthusiastically. "What could they possibly have to do with drug gangs?"

  "A lot of religious-right types are hypocrites," Timmy said. "But their hypocrisies are usually more mundane-sexual or un-sensationally financial. Nobody ever suspected Pat Robertson of running a drug cartel."

  "He does have ties with Mobutu in Zaire. Robertson controls mineral concessions there, and he's an apologist in Washington for the tyrant. But, as I understand them, Betty Krumfutz's misdeeds were of a more parochial variety. Or, to be more accurate, her husband's transgressions were. He was actually the only one charged and convicted of the fraudulent use of campaign funds."

  "That's right. I don't remember reading about anything international in the Krumfutz case. And they wouldn't have been involved in any CIA-Nicaraguan contras drug connection. Whatever that amounted to, or didn't amount to, it took place in the early to mid eighties-way too long ago."

  "On the other hand," I said, "I think we have to take seriously Chondelle's hunch that the actual attack on Maynard was done by drug people. She'd have a reliable feel for that. Maybe Betty Krumfutz wasn't involved in anything really awful. Maybe just her husband was-or is."

  "As I recall, Maynard told us Nelson Krumfutz isn't in prison yet, pending the outcome of his appeals. Maybe Betty stumbled onto something-about drug dealing by her husband possibly- and she-what? — heard that some incriminating evidence had been sewn onto Jim Suter's panel in the AIDS quilt.

  That sounds far-fetched, I guess."

  "It does. Although we are talking here about a husband and wife who actually went out and did what people have to do in the United States in order to get elected to Congress-lust after cash like methadone addicts in search of a fix and act civil to some of the biggest assholes in the country. So, where the Krurn-futzes are concerned, feel free to give your imagination wide latitude."

  "Ah so," Timmy said. "Am I now to believe that you may be ready to entertain the idea of an actual plot? Earlier today my imagination was feverish and possibly in need of medication. Now I'm supposed to give it free rein?"

  "Don't go that far. Look, I'm ready to accept that there are connections among several disturbing events here. And speculation on what those connections are can serve as a pastime, for now, in the absence of facts. I'm just not ready-and I don't plan on getting ready-to implicate entire hospitals or entire transportation fleets or entire agencies of government in a monstrous conspiracy."

  "I get that. You've made your views plain."

  "It's not that I don't believe in conspiracies. I know, recent American history is full of them, from plots to use the Mafia to kill Castro, to the FBI plot to drive Martin Luther King to suicide, to Cointelpro, to Iran-contra. But nearly all human folly and evil, Timothy, is individual-bad or just fallible people caught in the act of being their wicked or weak selves. This has been my experience in life-from crooked pols in Albany, to greedy developers, to people who, when they are backed into an actual or emotional corner, lash out and kill."

  "Yes, Don, that's been your experience. But aren't you being just a tad solipsistic?" he said, yet again waving his gilded degree from a Jesuit institution in my face. "Maybe your experience with evil has been relatively narrow, and now it's being broadened. Usually you're as rigorous as anybody I know in insisting on empirical evidence to support your analyses. But this time, you're not. All the evidence here says something complex and very dangerous is happening. I know you think I'm going all nellie and wussing out, but that's not it. It's not me, it's the facts. I am afraid, and fear is the only rational reaction to what has happened to Maynard and to you and me over the past twenty-four hours. If you've got facts to the contrary, I'd like to hear about them."

  "I didn't say I wasn't afraid."

  "No, but you keep acting as if I'm the Grady Sutton character to your Joel McCrea. I saw the way you and Chondelle were looking at me a while ago-as if I were a small child who would probably have to be sent to the countryside until the war is over. Yes, I am afraid, and I guess I show it, but-I've made a decision about something."

  "About what?"

  "I'm staying in Washington until Maynard is safe. I'll call Myron today. It'll screw things up in the office, but he'll understand, and Fred Ginsburg can cover for me.

  I've got three weeks of vacation time coming, and I'm taking it. I'll stay with Maynard-if he lives-and if I have to, I'll hire a private security service to keep us both secure. Also, if you're going to go ahead and investigate Jim Suter and the mysterious quilt panel-which it looks as if you're going to do, because you're a good guy and because you're hopelessly nosy and curious-then I'm going to pay your expenses."

  "I guess you have made a decision. More than one decision. For both of us."

  "No, I've just decided what I'm going to do. You have to make your own decisions."

  "You Peace Corps guys stick together. I've noticed that."

  "That tends to be true."

  "When we go back to the hospital, we'll probably find Sargent and Eunice Shriver kneeling in prayer at Maynard's bedside."

  "I wouldn't be surprised."

  Timmy had my number, as always. "So okay then. I'll never be a full-fledged member of the Peace Corps club, but I'll do my bit for the cause, and for Maynard-and of course for you. I'll follow the question wherever it leads. My belief is, it won't lead far. But we'll see."

  "Thanks, Don."

  Then came a sudden sharp rapping at the hotel-room door. Timmy started, then quietly moaned, "Oh no, oh no."

  I didn't want to believe what I thought Timmy was thinking. But as I approached the door, even before opening it, I thought I caught a whiff of Ray Craig's nicotine aura.

  We let him in. He sniffed the air. He glared. Without being invited to do so, Craig took a seat. I thought, he's going to light a cigarette. He didn't, but he fiddled with the pack in his jacket pocket. I wondered if a map was in the packet in the pocket of the jacket-a routine from an old Red Skelton movie-but I decided that mentioning it was unlikely to bring a chuckle to Craig's lips.

  He said, "You two had coffee with Detective Chondelle Dolan this morning and went walking around with her. Why?"

  "How do you know that?" I said.

  His ordinarily dead eyes flashed at my insolence. A Ray Craig of fifty years earlier would have pulled out a sap and worked me over while his goonish partner held me in a head-lock. But the times had changed enough for me-if not for every U.S. inner-city resident-and Craig apparently felt not only constrained by the law, he was even unable to avoid answering my question.


  "I've had you two under surveillance."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "For your own protection."

  "I doubt that we need protection. What makes you think we might?"

  He eyed me coldly, glanced at Timmy, then looked back at me and said,

  "Washington can be a dangerous place."

  "Your decision to have us followed was based on local crime statistics?"

  Craig snapped, "I use my professional judgment. If you think I'm some fucking incompetent with shit for brains and my head up my ass, I'd like to hear about it."

  This produced a long, strained silence. I knew Timmy would be considering, as I was, Craig's vivid but visually confusing metaphor.

  Craig himself finally broke the tension. "Let's talk about Chondelle Dolan."

  "Sure. Let's."

  "You people stick together, don't you?"

  "Chondelle was never in the Peace Corps. For that matter, neither was I."

  "You know damn well what I mean. She's a lesbo. She's a big nigger lesbo."

  Timmy said evenly, "I'm requesting that you do not talk like that."

  "Come again?" Craig eyes were blazing.

  "Never mind."

  "What do you want with us this time?" I said. "We were just on our way out."

  "I've got news concerning my investigation. You'll be interested in this. I've got two eyewitnesses to the E Street shooting. My witnesses say the perpetrators were Mexicans."

  Timmy and I feigned surprise. "Oh?"

  "Did Sudbury use drugs?" Craig said.

  Timmy said, "No."

  "Do you?"

  "No," Timmy repeated.

  I said, "We get high on life. How about you? What do you get high on?"

  Craig was seated on the desk chair and I was on the edge of the bed. He flushed and spasmed once, but he didn't lunge at me. Instead, he clapped his notebook shut violently, stood up, and tramped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.