our two dinner companions, Martin Dormer and Peter Vicknicki, two of Jim Suter's embittered former lovers who had since met and become friends. We didn't know what they looked like, but the maitre d' had been alerted to send them our way.
I asked Timmy if Ray Craig had spoken to him, and he said, 'Yes, and he asked where you were.'
'What did you say?'
'I told him you were dropping some clothes off at the dry cleaner's.'
I laughed. 'Why did you say that? I think I know.'
Timmy laughed, too. 'You probably do. It was the first thing that popped into my head, and I guess I was trying to plant the idea that maybe Ray ought to have some clothes dry-cleaned, too. Although, Don, even Freud said, sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.'
'No, I don't think Freud ever actually said that. That was disinformation put out by the behaviorists.'
'Right. Next you're going to tell me Freud never said, 'Round up the usual suspects.' Or, 'At least we had Paris.'' _ t 'No, those are both Freud.'
'Anyway,' Timmy said brightly, 'if Craig was in the hospital checking up on Maynard, that means he wasn't following you. That's reassuring.'
I could have said, 'Yes, but maybe Craig had you under surveillance and one of his junior officers was following me,' but Timmy already had enough gnawing on his mind. Anyway, I had watched carefully for a tail out to Silver Spring, and I hadn't spotted any.
I said, 'I suspect maybe Ray has done some checking on us, Timothy, and he's been reliably informed that we're not likely to turn out to be agents for the Medellin cartel. Did he say anything to you about how the shooting investigation was going?'
'No. I asked, but he didn't answer me. He just asked where you were. Maybe it's because he's an orthodox Freudian that he always answers a question with a question.'
I said Timmy's analysis of Officer Craig sounded as good as any I could come up with and went on to describe to Timmy my unsettling meeting with Jim Suter's chilly and unforthcoming mother and brother.
'Jeez,' Timmy said, 'it does sound as if they know more than they're letting on.
Do you think they're protecting Jim, or even that they're in on it?'
It again. 'I'm clueless. I was able to extract precisely nothing out of them. In fact, that's what made me suspicious, the care they took in chatting me up lengthily about themselves while revealing no fact at all about Jim.'
'So I guess it's more urgent than ever that you track Suter down yourself.'
'That's what I think.'
The maitre d' now appeared briefly alongside our table and left behind two men.
The shorter and more compact of the two, a tidy, clear-skinned, strawberry-blond, preppy-looking man with a cream-colored sweater tied around his neck, said, 'Don Stra-chey? I'm Martin Dormer.'
There were introductions all around, with Dormer, and with Peter Vicknicki, a tall, thin man with a bushy, dark beard and small black eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He had on faded jeans and a well-worn black sweatshirt with SWEATSHIRT spelled out across the front.
I thought about the four former lovers of Jim Suter that I had laid eyes on-these two, Bud Hively, and Maynard-and saw no physical resemblance among any of them. I guessed that the men who turned Suter on were simply those men who were strongly attracted to him, and they had come in a broad spectrum of types.
As soon as we'd all been seated, with no preliminaries, Vicknicki asked, 'Is there something really weird going on? The Post story on the quilt said a panel with Jim's name on it had been vandalized. And then somebody told me that a detective- I guess that's you-was asking around about Jim, who seems to have disappeared. At least, nobody we know has any idea where he is.'
'And,' Dormer added, 'we heard that Maynard Sudbury, another one of Jim's exes, was shot in front of his house Saturday night and he's in the hospital in bad shape. Although I don't suppose there's any connection between that and Jim's disappearance and his name turning up on the AIDS panel. Is there?'
'We don't know if there's any connection,' I was able to say honestly.
'I just hope there's not some bizarre conspiracy unfolding here,' Vicknicki said, and I glanced at Timmy, who looked alert. 'Jim Suter probably has more ex-lovers in Washington than all the Kennedys combined-a very large number of people fall into this category-and Sudbury was the second one of them inside of a year to be shot on the street on Capitol Hill. Maynard's expected to live, though, unlike poor Bryant Ulmer.'
Timmy fidgeted with his water glass and said, 'Who's Bryant Ulmer?'
'You haven't heard about Bryant?' Dormer asked. 'Where are you guys from?'
'Albany, New York,' Timmy said, and Dormer stared at him as if Timmy had announced that we were down for the weekend from Bleeding Gums, Ontario.
'Bryant was quite well known on the Hill,' Dormer said, 'and he was Jim's boyfriend for a month or so… a couple of years ago, I'd say. Then last winter Bryant was murdered. It was horrible. Bryant was shot in front of his house, too, about eight blocks from Maynard's. The police said it was a mugging and they never got whoever did it. But now with Maynard Sudbury getting shot the same way, some of us are beginning to wonder.'
'Tell me again,' Vicknicki put in, 'what your connection is with Jim. Did you say his mother hired you to find him? From what I heard from Jim about Lila, I'm surprised she'd hire a gay detective. She's extremely homophobic and never wanted to know anything about Jim's personal life. You two are a couple, aren't you? You seem like you are.' The deep black eyes behind Vicknicki's specs had hardened as he waited for one of us to answer.
I said, 'We're partners, yes, and we're actually friends of Maynard's. The business about Mrs. Suter hiring us was a line to get you here. Sorry about that.' 'Oh. I see.'
'We were with Maynard Saturday when he discovered the quilt panel for Jim, and he was upset and concerned. He wanted to find out what had happened.
Then he got shot, so we're investigating on our own. I am, at any rate. I'm a licensed private investigator in the state of New York.' I took out my wallet and held up my license with its photo ID, and Dormer examined it with interest.
Vicknicki still looked skeptical. 'You could have been honest with us.'
'I can see that now,' I said.
The waiter appeared, a slight Asian man in shiny black pants and a white shirt with a speck of cilantro on his sleeve. 'Are you ready to order?'
'We haven't looked at the menu,' Timmy said. 'Sorry.' 'Take your time,' the waiter replied, and zipped away. I said, 'Martin, how come Bryant Ulmer was so well known on the Hill? Maybe we ought to be aware of who he was. Timothy and I do read the New York Times every day and when channel-surfing we pause from time to time at C-Span. But you can help us out by reminding us of exactly what Ulmer's claim to fame was.'
'He was Burton Olds's chief of staff,' Dormer said, then sat looking at me as if no further explanation were needed. I did recognize the name as that of an influential Republican congressman from Illinois who was chairman of an important House committee, although I couldn't remember which one. His name had also come up as the current employer of Alan McChesney, Betty Krumfutz's former chief of staff who was a friend of Jim Suter's boyfriend Jorge Ramos.
I said, 'Olds is head of what? The banking committee?'
'Commerce,' Dormer said. 'And since Olds is both lazy and preoccupied with skirt-chasing-as men of Burton's generation in the House like to term it Bryant Ulmer pretty much ran not only the office but the congressional seat.
Bryant's murder was a real blow to Olds.'
'Who,' Vicknicki added, 'is one of more than a few elected representatives serving in this city who possess, instead of a brain, an effective staff.'
'Luckily for Olds,' Dormer said, 'Ulmer had a deputy who was able to step into the job when Bryant died. Alan McChesney is every bit as tough and capable as Bryant was. If not quite so nice.'
Vicknicki said, 'And like Bryant, Alan knows where all the bodies are buried.' We stared at him, and Vicknicki added, 'Figuratively speaking, I mean. I mean, I think I mean.'
Timmy said, 'Alan McChesney-isn't he another one of Jim Suter's exes? I've heard that name somewhere recently.'
'They were briefly an item,' Dormer said, 'back when McChesney worked for Betty Krumfutz. Do you know
