blow your face off. Would that make a difference?'
She talked like an NRA fund-raising letter, and I'd run into gun people before and knew they could be dangerous. Also, I wasn't sure there weren't two Mexican hit men somewhere in the house. I looked at Mrs. Krumfutz and wondered if I should make a break for it out the front while she was still unarmed and before Luis and Hector appeared. The problem was, the cop knew my name and had my car ID-in fact, he was still holding my wallet.
Mrs. Krumfutz said, 'Cat got your tongue, dog's breath?'
Recklessly I said, 'I saw you.'
She went white. Then suddenly her color returned with a rush, and she snapped, 'I don't give a hoot! It doesn't make a bit of difference. I've got plenty on Nelson. I know it and he knows it!'
'What have you got?'
'I've still got my scrapbook, and Nelson knows I've got it. If that man messes with me, believe you me, I'll put him in the hoosegow for the rest of his life. Just don't tempt me, Donald. You tell him that. Just don't tempt Betty, tell him. And if anything happens to me-if they find my body dumped on the Log Heaven levee some fine morning-that's it. It all goes to the prosecutors, the whole kit and caboodle. Friends of mine have their definite instructions.'
'You seem to have made thorough arrangements, Mrs. Krumfutz. I'm impressed. You're quite a force to be reckoned with. Tell me more.'
'I'll tell you not one more blessed thing. Now get out of my house and out of Log Heaven, and take your filth with you!'
'My filth?'
'You tracked mud through my kitchen! I'd make you stay and mop it up, but I'm sick to death of you and everything you and my husband represent, and I want you out of here now. I'll fix it with Horse Henderson. I just want you out of my house!'
'I'll be happy to go, but I want you to understand one thing, Mrs. Krumfutz, and understand it clearly. If you unleash your Mexican paid killers, and if anything happens to Jim Suter- anything at all, now or in the distant future-I will expose you. You'll pay. You'll go down the rest of the way. All the rest of the way.
Do you understand me?'
She stood there looking baffled. 'Hit men? My Lord, is that what Nelson thinks?
Don't be silly. And Jim Suter? You mean Jim Suter the writer?'
'Who else?'
'Donald, I don't know what in the Sam Hill you're even talking about. One of us must be crazy as a loon. What's Jim Suter got to do with it?'
Chapter 10
Mrs. Krumfutz just snickered at the idea of Mexican paid killers, and she found it preposterous that Jim Suter had any connection at all to her husband's criminal activity, the exact nature of which I could not get her to specify. I thought her repeated references to 'my scrapbook' referred to additional records she had kept on the campaign- finance scam, but I wasn't sure of it, and as she began to sense how little I actually knew about her husband's activities, she grew even cagier and less forthcoming on that subject. Nor did Jim Suter seem to have anything to do with whatever it was that had gone on in Mrs. Krumfutz's house that night and which I pretended to have witnessed but hadn't actually. I had only just seen two people kneeling side by side, or so it seemed.
Moreover, Mrs. Krumfutz denied visiting the AIDS quilt the day before and having fled in fear from Jim Suter's panel. Nor could she imagine why anyone would sew a section of her campaign biography on an AIDS quilt panel.
'Is Jim dead from AIDS?' she gasped. 'But you just talked as if he's alive.'
'He is alive, but he's in danger.'
'What do you mean? How do you know?'
How much could I tell her? It had all gotten too confusing. Was she putting on an act? This was possible. Here was a woman who had been elected to Congress with the backing of the pious religious right, yet in private she connived like and spoke in the language of an Albany Democratic-machine ward healer, circa 1935.
Taking no chances, I said, 'Jim may be in trouble, but I don't know where he is or exactly what the problem is. On behalf of a mutual friend, I'm watching out for him and his interests.'
Now she looked perplexed all over again. 'Nelson is taking an interest in Jim Suter? That's hard to believe. Nelson always called Jim 'that fairy writer.' Jim's a homosexual, you know.' 'I know.'
'As far as I was concerned, Jim being a homo was up to him. I hired him to write literature for my congressional campaign.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Homosexuals always end up in trouble.' 'Where were you yesterday afternoon,' I asked, 'if you weren't at the AIDS quilt?'
'That is none of your concern. None whatsoever.' 'Three people saw you at the quilt.'
'No, they didn't. They might think they did, but they didn't. Or, those three people are bald-faced liars.'
I had been one of the three-Timmy and Maynard were the others-who had seen a woman Maynard had identified as Mrs. Krumfutz examining Jim Suter's quilt panel on Saturday and then rushing away, frantic and distraught. And yet, when I'd turned up spying on her through a rear window of her house fifteen minutes earlier, Mrs. Krumfutz gave no indication that she had ever seen me before. Or was that an act? And if it wasn't-what? Were there two Betty Krumfutzes?
'Have you got any sisters, Mrs. Krumfutz?' 'Yes, why?' 'Do you have a twin?'
'You mean an evil twin, Donald? No. My sister, Fran, is older and a good bit heavier than I am. She lives in Engineville and she's never been farther south than Harrisburg. So nobody saw her at the AIDS quilt, that's for darn sure.
Anyway, she'd be afraid of catching it.'
'I understand that you ran an antigay TV ad against your opponent in your first Republican primary. He'd accepted a donation from a college gay group, and you hit him hard for it, saying this showed he would support same-sex kissing instruction in the public schools. Wasn't that unfair?'
'Sure, it was unfair. So what? Advertising is unfair. Politics is unfair. Life is unfair.
I'm not here to promote fairness. I never said I was.'
'Oh, I see. What are you here to promote, Mrs. Krumfutz?'
I'd walked right into it. She gazed at me serenely out from under her cherry-pie-motif head scarf-she seemed to have some device stuck in her pinned-back hair, but I couldn't make out what it was-and said, 'I believe I have been put on this earth to promote the right to bear arms and the rights of the unborn. I know in my heart that in both cases-no matter how ruthless and cold-blooded my means may seem to some people-I am doing the Lord's work. Any other questions?'
I couldn't think of any.
Mrs. Krumfutz was able to convince Horse Henderson that my spying was just one unsavory feature of a nasty divorce proceeding, and she told him that she preferred not to press charges against me. She said she had nothing to hide and that her prosecuting me locally might suggest to some people that she did have some dirty laundry to cover up, even though it wasn't true. 'You know how people are,' she said, and Officer Henderson said he did. He returned my wallet and let me go, although plainly he wasn't happy about it.
I drove back into downtown Log Heaven and stopped at the only eatery open on Main Street, an old greasy- elbow diner called Teddy's. It had a grill in the steamed-up window laid out with rows of wieners, the ones on the left burnt umber, the ones on the right mauve. I went in and had two burnt umber ones with chili sauce, plus a cup of high-octane coffee. There would be plenty of opportunities back in Albany for arugula and bent-twig tea. To deal with the Krumfutzes, I needed fat and caffeine.
When I came out of Teddy's, a squat man who'd been leaning against the building when I went in spoke to me. He said, 'Duh-buh.' His hand came out of his windbreaker pocket and he tipped his porkpie hat.
