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 his 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.
Chapter 21
Do you know a D.C. cop named Ray Craig?' I asked Suter.
'No, who's he?'
'How about a Captain Milton Kingsley?'
'I don't recognize the name.'
We were on the southern terrace of the house now, watching one of the sunsets that must have been an
