fair, and far more wholesome.
Those excursions pretty much satisfied the urges in both of us for sexual variety.
So, the Yucatecan jungle heat notwithstanding, I expected that in the department of erotic temptation, my meeting with the allegedly irresistible Jim Suter would be- in the words of a droll Mexican I'd once met who liked to imitate the speech of gringo touristsnoproblemo.
About halfway between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, just north of the resort complex at Akumal, I saw the road sign for Los Pa-jaros. It directed me off Route 307, the two-lane blacktop that ran the length of the coast from Cancun down to Chetumal on the border with Belize.
A third of a mile off the highway, behind a strip of jungle thicket, Los Pajaros consisted of an assortment of perhaps a hundred small houses along a scraggly network of muddy streets. Most of the houses were cement, but there were a couple of traditional Mayan palapas, too, made of sticks and palmetto thatch, and it w/as the palapas that looked the most inviting in the midafternoon wet heat.
Few people were out and about, just some kids kicking a soccer ball around the grassy town square and a woman in a white Mayan huipil toting what I guessed was a bucket of cornmeal down the main street. A cow was tethered under a shady scrub oak in front of one house, and a skinny dog that looked as if it might have been the source of the term hangdog expression sniffed at some trash in a front yard.
The few remaining older towns on the coast had Mayan name-Muchi, Pamul, Chemuyil-and I figured that the newer Los Pajaros had been built to house workers at the same time the nearby beachfront resorts went up. The central plaza had nothing identifiable as a Catholic church, just a one-story community center with a ramshackle arcade and some faded endorsements by the PRI, the forever-dominant Mexican political party, of former presidents who now were dead, fled, or under indictment somewhere.
Away from the highway, the only sounds in Los Pajaros were of the soccer-playing kids exclaiming in an unfamiliar language I took to be Mayan, and the recorded hymns, in Spanish, coming out of the front of the Seventh-Day Adventist meetinghouse. I recognized 'Onward, Christian Soldiers,' although on this torpid Wednesday afternoon no one in Los Pajaros was marching as to anything.
I had a hard time envisioning the scintillating Jim Suter in this place and wondered if maybe Timmy hadn't been misinformed by a wily Betty Krumfutz. I found a small tienda that was open, and using my combination of phrase-book and hazily remembered high school Spanish, I asked the elderly proprietress where I might find the norteamericano Jim Suter. 'Laplaya,' the old woman replied.
I asked her if she was acquainted with Senor Suter, and she gestured vaguely in an easterly direction and repeated, 'En la playa.' I took this to mean that she did not know Suter personally but that all the North Americans in Los Pajaros lived over by the beach and not here in the village. She explained to me where to find the beach road. I bought a two-liter bottle of aguapu-rificada and swigged from it as I drove another mile down the main highway and then turned onto a road marked by a small sign that read Playa.
So as not to damage my Outtie's tender underbelly, I drove slowly and carefully down a potholed muddy road with thick, low jungle on either side of it for half a mile. Then the thicket ended and the road swung sharply left and ran parallel to the beach. The first house I came to was a big, two-story, L-shaped, white stucco job, between me and the sea, with terraces on either side of it, a terra-cotta-tile roof, and lots of big, louvered windows thrown open. A small satellite dish pointed skyward from the roof, although I saw no electrical lines and I wondered what the house's power source was.
A chest-high stucco wall crawling with vermilion bougainvil-lea wound around the house on three sides. It was interrupted by a gravel driveway that led up to a two-car garage and a smaller outbuilding. The only vehicle visible was a blue Chevy Suburban with muddy fenders. From my vantage point, some flowering trees obscured the front door, so I pulled my tiny Chevy up alongside the big one and climbed out into the bright heat. As I shut the car door, a couple of grass-green parrots shot out of the flame tree next to the garage and careened into the jungle squawking. So here were some actual pajaros.
Then the afternoon air was quiet again except for the sound of the light surf beyond the house. Off to my left the beach road continued on northward with other similar large, nicely designed stucco houses along it every twenty-five yards or so. I meant to ask at this house where Jim Suter was staying. But that wasn't necessary, for when I walked around the trees and approached the front door, it was already open and a man in cream-colored running shorts and a powder-blue tank top was standing just inside the doorframe grinning out at me.
'Don Strachey?'
'I am he.'
'God, where have you been all my life?'
'That's an awfully tired line, Suter.'
'It sounds as fresh to me as it did the first time I uttered it more than twenty years ago. It must be you who's jaded, Strachey. '
'Not jaded, just well informed-about you and your habit of seducing and abandoning men.'
'Oh, and you're too frail for that?'
'Not frail, just not interested.' He was radiant, and now I saw why otherwise rational men had lost their senses in Suter's presence. Trying hard to keep my voice steady, I said, 'Anyway, we've got more urgent matters to discuss, no?'
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
