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
