Suter gazed at me, his mouth open slightly, for a long moment, before indicating with a little toss of his golden locks that I should follow him into the house. He turned then and shut the door behind us. He said, "I take it you came alone.
There are people who want me out of the way, as I know you know."
"I know that that's what you said in your letter to Maynard."
"Right. God, I am so, so sorry about what happened to Maynard. I hope you can believe that."
"He's lucky to be alive. And you're lucky he's alive, Suter."
"I know. You're right. Poor Manes. He was just in the wrongest possible place at the wrongest possible time. That poor guy has been to Beirut and back, and what does he do but get shot in the gut on E Street. Talk about unfair."
"Yes, it was unfair. Who shot him?"
"I don't know," Suter said, shrugging. "Honestly I don't. You're going to have to go back to Log Heaven, Pennsylvania, for the answer to that question. Log Heaven or Engineville. But I'm confident that after you hear what little I can tell you about all of these recent disturbing occurrences, you'll decide on the spot to dig no further and concentrate instead on doing the one thing you can do safely, and that's helping Maynard get back on his feet. And don't worry, he won't be in any danger from here on out. His getting shot was nothing more than an absurd misunderstanding."
"So you're telling me that the Krumfutzes were involved?" "We can talk about that," Suter said with a little shake of his ringlets. "There's a lot you're not going to hear from me because there's no way in hell I can get away with telling you or anybody else. You're just going to have to take my word on that score. But I will tell you what I think I can, and then you can decide where you want to take it from there. I'm confident that you won't want to take it anywhere at all.
Meanwhile, Strachey, why not bring your bag in and plan to spend the night? As you can see, we've got plenty of room. You won't have to share a bed with me if you decide not to."
"A lot of people know I was headed here. If anything happened to me, they would know where to look."
He started to crack a smile, then didn't. "So, what do you think might happen?
Are you afraid you might have your heart ripped out, old Mayan style, and your body tossed down a cenote — either actually or metaphorically? Believe me, for you the greatest danger is of the latter."
"Of getting thrown down a sinkhole?" "No, of having both happen, but only figuratively speaking." "Jesus, Suter, you just don't know when to quit, do you?"
He grinned again, showing me his perfect teeth.
Chapter 20
The interior of the Ramos house contained a mix of heavy Spanish-colonial, dark-wood furnishings that looked unused, more casual stainless-steel-tube-and-leather chairs, and lots of shelves displaying good crafts from all over Mexico: pottery, figurines, tinwork, and brightly painted wooden animal and human carvings from Oaxaca and Toluca, I thought, and I wasn't sure where else. The crafts collection looked all new, as if someone had walked into the gift shop at the Cancun Sheraton, glanced around, and said, "I'll take two thousand dollars' worth of this stuff."
Only Suter's airy room on the second floor, overlooking the water, next to the one where I deposited my bag, appeared to be lived in by anyone with a life.
He had his computer there, and the beginning of a collection of books, in English and Spanish, that looked read. Suter had insisted that I come into his room to see his computer with its new Beta DVD. While he was there, he decided also to change his shorts for no apparent reason. He slipped out of the cream-colored pair, retrieved a Nantucket-red pair from a dresser drawer, then stood there for a minute, which grew longer and longer, holding the clean shorts, naked from the navel down, as he described his gigabitage.
I finally said, "Look, if you expect me to notice your bare ass, now I have. It is excellent. Now quit wasting your time and mine."
Suter laughed and stepped into his fresh shorts. "I have to be crass. I can't waste time. I'm forty."
"Don't you have a boyfriend here?"
"Sure, this is Jorge's house. But he's in Merida for a few days. Anyway, who do you think we are, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter? I'm married, but I'm not dead."
Leading me out of the bedroom, Suter added, "You're probably amazed by both. I know I am."
I ignored that, and as we headed down the tiled staircase, I said, "How did you know I was looking for you, and how did you know I had located you and that I would arrive this afternoon?"
"Let's have a drink. It's too darn hot." Suter led me into the kitchen. He retrieved two bottles of Dos Equis from the refrigerator and proceeded out onto the tiled terrace overlooking the beach. As I followed Suter, it hit me again how beautifully formed he was, and I knew he knew I was studying him and that the erotic tension in the air was not entirely of his cynical manufacture. His bronzed skin was as aglow as his hair, and he smelled faintly of whatever he had had for lunch-ham? papaya? ripe cheese?
I said, "Where does the electricity come from? For powering the refrigerator and the other appliances."
"Wind and passive solar from a house up the beach. The lines run underground. Each place has a backup generator, but none of these houses uses much power, so we rarely need the backup system."
"So all of the houses along here are owned by Jorge?"
"No, but his family built them all at the same time." We seated ourselves at a wrought-iron table in the shade of the big house. "Senor Ramos is a developer and sold off the other houses almost immediately a couple of years ago. This coast is one of the last choice, unspoiled spots left on the Caribbean. Most of the islands are sinking under the weight of development, but the Yucatan still has a long way to go. At one point, O.J. was looking at a place not far from here.
This was back during his first trial. Did you know that?"
"Would his presence have lowered the tone of the neighborhood or elevated it?"
Suter frowned, swigged some beer, and said, "You think I'm a piece of shit, I know. But I'm not as bad as you imagine, Strachey."
"Uh-huh."
"I'll admit, I do have some problems with what some people like to call intimacy issues."
"That sounds far more passive than what's been described to me." The beer was icy and fresh, and I kicked off my sandals and leaned back in my cushioned chair. I'd been up since five to catch my early-morning flight, and despite the problematical company, I was enjoying the sea breeze and the sight of the un-interrupted expanse of water, turquoise near the beach, dark blue-green farther out.
"Who did you talk to about me?" Suter said. "I know you went out to Silver Spring and harassed my mother and brother. They didn't believe for a minute that you were a reporter for the Sun, by the way. You weren't frantic and you weren't rude enough to be a newspaperman, Mother said. She was worried about who you might actually have been. Until, that is, I received another call from a friend explaining who you were, and that you meant no harm. Then I was able to reassure Mother. She was relieved."
"Who called you and told you who I really was?"
Suter looked at me with his big green Botticelli eyes. "You should know better than to ask me that."
"Was it the person who shot Maynard? Or arranged to have him shot?"
"No. Not that I know of, I guess I should say. I actually have no idea who shot Maynard. I only know of the general circumstances."
"And have you notified the D.C. cops of those general circumstances?"
Suter gave a little shudder. "Nope. Can't do that."
"You said in your letter to Maynard that he must not let the D.C. cops know where you are. Why?"
He said ruefully, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Strachey. I am, truly. But there's just no way I can go into any of that."
"You can't seem to go into much of anything."
"No."
"Who's trying to kill you because you know too much about them, or because they think you know too much about them?"
"Sorry. Can't say."
"Uh-huh." I watched him and waited.
Suter studied the horizon thoughtfully. After a moment he said, "I've decided that there is some background I can give you that will put things into perspective. In fact, when I heard that you might show up here, it became obvious that I'd have to explain a couple of things about the Krumfutzes in order to get you off my back, as well as for your personal safety and your boyfriend's."
I waited.
"It's about drugs," Suter said.
"Drugs and the Krumfutzes? That sounds unlikely."
"Not Betty, just Nelson. If you knew this man, you wouldn't find any of what I'm about to tell you surprising at all."
"Fill me in."
Suter sighed. "Here's the situation. The situation is, it all has to do with a drug operation, and drug-money laundering, and Nelson's greed, and Hugh Myers, a Log Heaven businessman who put a lot of money into Betty's first congressional campaign. There's no way I can tell you or anybody else what I know-or what some people think I might know-about the Mexican end of the operation. But I can tell you that Nelson Krumfutz is a very bad and dangerous man."
When I didn't react to this and just sat watching him, Suter went on, "Okay, here's the deal. The deal is, when the Log Heaven furniture factories folded up about ten years ago, the GM dealership Nelson owned with Hugh Myers nearly went belly-up. Hugh had other investments to fall back on, but Nelson was in deep shit financially. Betty was still teaching high school Spanish at the time, and Nelson went with her on one of the Spanish club's spring-break trips to Mexico. Nelson met some people down here who saw the shipment of GM products from the Chihuahua assembly plants to U.S. dealerships as a means for smuggling coke. The deal saved Nelson's ass. He didn't actually have to make a profit on all those cars he brought into Central Pennsylvania. He just had to disassemble and remove the packages sealed into the seat backs. It wouldn't surprise me if the entire eight-mile-long Log Heaven dike-levee system is stuffed with new Buicks and Chevies that Nelson didn't need to sell."
Suter watched for my reaction to this story, which was, "Hmm."
"Quite a production, wasn't it?"
"Remarkable."
"So the point is," Suter went on, "Nelson got nailed by the feds not for the drug operation, which they don't know about, and which Nelson and Hugh Myers have since sold to another GM dealer in Wilkes-Barre, but for pocketing a quarter of a mil of Hugh's and a couple of other guys' campaign money-all of which was part of some crazy-ass scheme Nelson and Hugh developed for laundering the drug profits. If you really want to know how it worked, you'd have to ask Nelson. But of course if you did that, then he would tell the Mexicans you know about him-and them-and they would kill you. That's what they do. With no hesitation whatever, they kill you. So now do you understand what your problem is with this thing, Strachey? And mine?"
"I'm starting to. If you're telling me the truth, Suter."
He laughed once. "Do you really think I could have made that up? I've never been big on conspiracy theories to explain evil in the world. So my mind just doesn't work that way."
"So Betty wasn't in on this… this drug-running operation?"
"No. I don't think she ever even suspected. Betty is ripshit over Tammy Pam Jameson, but that's something else. Nelson not only ruined Betty's political career, but then he moved in with Tammy Pam, who he'd been keeping on the side up in En-gineville for ten years. Not that Betty doesn't have her own romantic idiosyncrasies. She likes to pretend that she's the first queen of the Mayas, and she hires Mexican guys to fuck her and then kneel at her feet while she rips their hearts out for breaking warrior training. She doesn't rip their real hearts out naturally. Betty's a good egg. She uses beef hearts that she picks up when they're on sale at the Log Heaven A and P."
I remembered the scene I had briefly witnessed through Mrs. Krumfutz's back window, which added to the plausibility of Suter's lurid tale. "That's pretty wild, Suter. How do you know about Mrs. Krumfutz's playacting habits?"
"Alan McChesney told me. He used to be on Betty's congressional staff. He caught her at it once, and anyway word got around among the Central Pennsylvania illegals on how to pick up a couple of extra bucks. Of course, she made them do yard work, too. If George Bush had been reelected, Betty would probably have been his second-term ambassador to Mexico. That's the job she was after, and she certainly would have livened up the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. It's a stodgy place, from what I hear."
A sudden motion off to the left of the terrace caught my eye, and I glanced over in time to see not a drug-gang assassin with an automatic weapon aimed at Suter and me, but a plump iguana disappearing into a crevice in the rocks.
I said, "So it's your opinion, if I've got this right, that my approaching Nelson Krumfutz would be not only highly dangerous but redundant, since he'll probably go to prison anyway?"
"Of course. Nelson is fucked no matter how you cut it. And nobody is going to lay a glove on the Mexicans anyway. So why should you or anyone else risk your lives for nothing?"
"You might as well tell me what happened to Maynard. Was it the quilt panel? Did someone think Maynard spotted something on the quilt panel with your Krumfutz manuscript on it? Did you put something incriminating in the manuscript?
Something that might be discovered if you were killed?"
Suter gazed at me with a look of fright, which, at the time, I interpreted as a man confronting a dramatic sign of his own mortality. "Yeah, something like that."
"Who put the panel with your name on it in the quilt?"
"I honestly don't know. But I'm sure it was meant to intimidate me. Which, when I heard about it, it sure as hell did."
"And Maynard was shot and his house ransacked both as a way of eliminating him as a source of information on the Mexican end of the drug operation, and as a warning to me or my boyfriend, Timothy Callahan, or anyone else Maynard may have spoken to about-about this thing Maynard actually knew nothing about?"
Suter slowly nodded. "Yeah… yeah."
"If that's true, it's disgusting."
"I know it is. I know."
"And what about Red Heckinger and Malcolm Sweet? Who sent those two buffoons to scare me off? You or the drug cartel?"
Suter gave me a droll little grin. "They're friends of mine who used to work for Betty. They're harmless. Red and Malcolm don't even know about the drug operation. I told them you had a lot of wrong ideas about me, and would they help me get you off my back? I also wanted to save you the trouble of coming down here only to be convinced that there was nothing you needed to do to apprehend the North American who was once directly involved in the drug scam, since the law had already gotten its meaty paws around Nelson Krumfutz's skinny neck. But I guess Red and Malcolm weren't as convincing as they could have been as mob enforcers."
"No. They were just a couple of putzes."
"You could have saved yourself the airfare, Strachey. Not that I'm not enjoying your company. I am. You're an extremely attractive man. You come across as a kind of straight Tom Sell-eck. That's one of my favorite types."
"I believe you mean one of your several hundred favorite types. So, what's the deal with Jorge? You've never stayed with one man this long before. Is he not really your boyfriend? In your letter to Maynard, you described yourself as still unlucky in love. Is Jorge's father the head of the drug cartel, and is Jorge really your jailer?"
Suter reddened under his tan. He took a long swig of beer and swallowed it.
He looked at me and said, "He's both."
"Your boyfriend and your jailer?"
"If he were only my jailer," Suter said impatiently, "what would the point be? To silence me, they could just kill me. Like they tried to kill Maynard. The reason they don't kill me is that Jorge is my boyfriend. His father would prefer to kill me, but he lets me live because Mrs. Ramos, Jorge's mother, considers me her sonin-law. To her I'm family. To Senor Ramos I am an embarrassment and a dangerous pain in the ass. And to Jorge I'm his lover and his prisoner. I'm hi
s love slave, like in the popular song. Except this one is not much fun to dance to.
"And, of course, to other higher-ups in the drug operation, I'm a potential witness against them in court. That's the reason I fear for my life. I don't really know that much about the actual operation, of course. Not the incriminating particulars. But there are people down here who think I know more than I actually know, and they have let me know that they would feel more secure if they were to gouge my eyes out.
"So, you see, Strachey, I've learned to take care who I talk to and who I'm seen with. That's why I panicked and ignored Maynard in Merida last month. What's ironic, of course, is that I first learned about this sordid shit the first night I went to bed with Jorge. Alan McChesney introduced us, and I thought wouldn't it be fun to have a quick tumble with this cute Mexican who was probably one of Betty Krumfutz's love slaves? And what happened instead? I became his love slave-for life, it appears."
"Jesus, Suter."
"Now you know all the essentials," Suter said wearily. "Hey, how did that happen?
I guess you used your wiles on me, Strachey. This keeps happening lately. I mean to be the fucker and end up the fuckee. The royal fuckee, it seems."
"I feel bad for you, Suter," I said, and meant it. "I wouldn't have thought that was possible. Not after I heard what a contemptible creep you've been with the many men in your life. But what you have described to me is poetic justice of a rather severe variety. You can't redeem yourself because you can't free yourself.
You're trapped in a kind of eternal, awful reversal of fate."
"You put it ever so vividly."
"The lines of your dramatic narrative emerge boldly on your own."
"Since you feel so bad for me, will you go to bed with me? That would cheer me up, and I know you'd enjoy it hugely, too."
"No, of course I won't go to bed with you. Don't be absurd."
He put down his beer. "Let's go for a swim then and have a lovely dinner instead. You might as well get something satisfying out of your visit to this tropical paradise." Then Suter flung off his shorts and shirt and ran naked toward the surf. I figured there was no harm in that and did the same.
Strachey's folly ds-7 Page 15
