Jim's desk that looked like some kind of Hill papers, and I stuffed it in my bag. I went over the damn thing with a fine-tooth comb, and all it was, was the stupid campaign-bio manuscript. What a waste of time, and what a bore. But I kept the thing, even after Jim called all irritated and indignant and demanded that I mail it back to him, and then in May I sewed a chunk of the stupid thing on the quilt panel. So I got to use it to stick Jim and give the knife a twist after all.'
I said, 'When did this conversation about the scandalous situation take place?'
'In January of this year. Around the tenth or twelfth, it would have been. On the twenty-seventh I became another of Jim's ex-lover nonpersons. I guess you've heard about that category. There are hundreds of us. Thousands maybe.'
'Did Jim give you any idea of when the shocking event, or events, actually took place?' I asked.
'Not really. Only that it was on his mind at the time, and he said he'd be lucky if he didn't come out of this one with an ulcer.'
'You said, Carmen, that you were sharing a joint when this thing came up. Is it possible that drugs were involved in the scandalous circumstances? And that your smoking marijuana somehow triggered Jim's discussion of this large matter that was eating at him?'
LoBello gave me a don't-be-ridiculous look. 'Honey, we shared a joint just about every night. Both before and after we made love. And making love with Jim Suter is about as good as making sweet love gets. You can take my word for that and put it in the bank. It's just too bad Jim was also a liar, an emotional sadist, and a morally empty shell. Except for those, he was the best. But he was all of the above, and worse. And for doing what he did to me, Miss LoBello regrets to say, Mr. Suter is going to have to pay. He's going to have to pay very dearly.'
I said, 'Carmen, among the Washington power-women you impersonated in your drag act-and impersonated quite brilliantly, by all accounts-was one of them Betty Krumfutz?'
LoBello affected a poker face and said, 'Oh, yes. I did Betty.' He was both trying hard not to grin and obviously enjoying letting us know that he was trying hard not to grin.
'And did you reprise your Betty Krumfutz routine Saturday afternoon at the AIDS quilt display? Maybe to draw extra attention to the Suter quilt panel you sewed and submitted to the Names Project in order to embarrass Jim among his Capitol Hill friends, acquaintances, and colleagues?'
LoBello beamed. 'Am I good, or am I good?'
Timmy and I looked at each other. I thought, yes, LoBello is an accomplished actor-as is Jim Suter.
Chapter 24
I needed to speak with Betty Krumfutz fast. I called her office at the Glenn Beale Foundation and was told that she had left Washington Thursday night for Log Heaven and would not be back in her office until Monday morning. I could have phoned her in Pennsylvania, but a face-to-face meeting was what I wanted. I needed to question her in depth, if I could, on whatever it was that she had on her husband, Nelson, that would put him away 'for the rest of his life,' as she had worded it to me during my visit to Log Heaven, but which she had held back at his trial.
Did Mrs. Krumfutz hold incriminating evidence of the car-dealer-drug-smuggling scheme? If she knew about an illegal narcotics operation and didn't report it, that was obstruction of justice, at least. Although any knowledge Nelson Krumfutz had of his wife's variations on Mexican Indian rituals might have kept her from hitting him with a full legal whammy. But why, then, would it not have kept her from hitting him with any whammy at all?
Jim Suter had insisted to me that Mrs. Krumfutz knew nothing of the drug scheme. But now I knew that Suter had lied to me about the origins of the quilt panel-attributing it to the drug gang, even though he knew Carmen LoBello had made off with the Krumfutz campaign-bio manuscript-just as Suter had lied to me about the 'zit' on his upper lip, a matter that Timmy had agreed to postpone discussing until the arguably larger questions surrounding an attempted murder and a major drug-smuggling operation had been cleared up.
There was also the puzzling matter of the scandalous goings-on that Jim Suter had alluded to when he'd gotten high with Carmen LoBello. Revelations of a drug gang involving the husband of a Pennsylvania congresswoman would have made headlines certainly, although such news would not, as far as Timmy or I could judge, 'rock the nation' or alter the outcome of the 1994 congressional elections. So, I figured, maybe the scandal was something else entirely, or even that it was just some weird type of inside-the-Beltway braggadocio on Suter's part.
Timmy was even more intrigued by the historic-scandal possibilities than I was, for they fit his theory of a large, many-tentacled conspiracy. I had been unable to persuade him that the D.C. police had us under clumsy surveillance simply because they were poorly led and lacked imagination, and that neither hospital personnel nor bagel-shop cashiers were threats to us. I agreed with him that drug gangs were ruthless forces to be reckoned with, but that in Washington, unlike in Tijuana and Mexico City, the gangs' reach did not extend into every facet of official and private life. Timmy told me I was naive and I told him he was paranoid, and for the time being we decided to let it go at that.
I arrived in Log Heaven just after two on Friday afternoon and drove directly to the Krumfutz house on Susquehanna Drive. I saw the Chrysler in the driveway but no sign of the pickup truck with Texas plates. Five days earlier bagged leaves had been piled at the side of the Krumfutz lawn. Now the bags were gone, and the yard needed raking again. I guessed Mrs. Krumfutz had her yard crew in on weekends-both for tidying up outdoors and for heartrending rituals indoors and since it was Friday afternoon, I wondered if her crew might be showing up soon.
I parked in front of the house, walked up to the front entrance, and pressed the button next to a door with three small stepped windows in it. A face soon appeared at the lowest window, and then the door swung open.
'Oh, for heaven sakes, what are you doing back here? I thought I was rid of you last-when was it? Sunday? And now here you are deviling me again. Well, you can just tell Nelson that if he sends you down here one more time, he has had it! He's got nothing criminal on me, and I've got the pictures in my scrapbook of him committing a felony, and I'll use them if I have to, believe you me!'
Mrs. Krumfutz stood glaring out at me in her pale pink sweat suit, and while she did not appear Mayan- queen-like at all, she did look as if she might rip my heart out if I said the wrong word.
I said, 'Mrs. Krumfutz, I left a wrong impression on Sunday. I don't work for your husband.'
'How's that? Come again?'
'I am a private investigator, but I'm actually looking into the danger Jim Suter is in, which I mentioned to you, and into the shooting of a friend of mine in Washington. I'm no threat to you. I have no interest in your personal life. I just need more information about a couple of things. May I come in?'
Looking wary, she said, 'Information about what?'
'About what you have on your husband that could send him to prison for life, as you put it to me on Sunday. Whatever you've got seems to be in addition to the campaign finance scam he's already been convicted of. Am I right?'
'You bet. Right as rain.'
'Is it that you have evidence of the drug-smuggling operation your husband was running with Hugh Myers?'
She screwed up her face and said, 'The what operation?'
'Are you going to tell me that you know nothing of an elaborate scheme that your husband and Hugh Myers concocted for smuggling narcotics into Central Pennsylvania from Mexico in the seat backs of the GM cars Myers imports?'
'Are you off your rocker!' Her eyes were bright with anger and her voice rose with indignation. 'Why, Hugh Myers was a deacon in the Presbyterian Church! My word, don't be spreading a ridiculous story like that around Log Heaven, especially right now. Poor Hugh passed away this morning. He was hit by a car in front of his house on River Street, and the fool driver never even stopped. It was dreadful, just dreadful.'
'I'm sorry to hear that. Were Mr. Myers and your family close?'
'No, not close. We're Methodist, and Nelson always bought Chrysler products.
