But I've known Hugh and Edna for years, and my heart goes out to that girl. It's a tragedy, just a tragedy. Now, where in the world did you get the idea that Nelson and Hugh were drug traffickers? Hugh would never even have thought to do such a thing, and Nelson couldn't even organize some campaign-fund pilfering and get away with it.'
'So if it's not drug dealing that you've got on your husband, what is it?'
She signaled for me to enter the house. I followed her in and she shut the door behind us. The place was hung with Yu-catecan landscapes, and the shelves were loaded with Mexican pottery and photographs of Mayan ruins. Chichen Itza, Coba, and Uxmal were the ones I recognized. The furniture was old, overstuffed pieces draped with colorful scrapes. The picture-window drapes were open, and the view was across the Susque-hanna to the autumn hills beyond.
'Make yourself at home,' Mrs. Krumfutz said, indicating the couch, and she disappeared down a corridor. I leafed through a magazine called South of the Border Living, which was aimed at U.S. retirees who lived or planned on living in Mexico. There were pieces on property ownership, tax dodges, and on keeping the help in line. Nothing on the reenactments of Indian rituals that employed beef hearts from the A amp; P. Or could Suter have been lying about that, too?
Mrs. Krumfutz returned with a K Mart-style photo album done in pale green artificial leather with golden curlicues in the corners. She sat down beside me and said, 'Are you squeamish?'
'Not especially.' I hoped she wasn't about to show me her collection of aborted fetuses.
Not yet opening the album, Mrs. Krumfutz said, 'I'm going out to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Look through this, and then just holler when you're through.
Or when you've had more than enough. If you need to toss your cookies, the bathroom is down the hall. You wanted to know what I've got on Nelson? 'Well, this is it.' She looked over at me, her face sad and tired.
'Thank you.'
'Don't look till I'm in the kitchen.'
'All right.'
'I'm showing this to you,' she said, getting up, 'even though I hardly know you from Adam, for the same reason I've started showing it to other people. If anything should happen to me, I want the truth to be known about Nelson.
Nelson has treated me no better than a dog, and I want the word out on what a big turd my ex-husband is.'
'Why didn't you use what's in this album in Nelson's fraud trial, Mrs. Krumfutz?'
Looking weary and resigned, she said, 'Because Nelson has a photo album, too, and I'd be pretty darned embarrassed if it got passed around the district.'
'Oh.'
'So, in that way, we're stalemated.'
'I see. A sort of Mexican standoff.' I hadn't meant that as a mean joke, but I realized it was one as soon as it came out. Mrs. Krumfutz forced a thin smile, then turned and left the room.
I opened the album and leafed through it. It contained page after page of color photographs showing a nude, middle-aged man, presumably Nelson Krumfutz, performing a wide variety of sex acts with a nude young woman many years his junior. Nelson was a wiry little man, and the young woman-Tammy Pam Jameson? — was slight also and, in many of the photos-which seemed to have been taken on a number of occasions over a period of years-just barely pubescent.
Nelson had begun to develop a paunch in the later pictures, and the young woman's hair color changed from mousy brown to auburn to blond. If it ever occurred to Nelson that the girl's age might have posed a legal problem for him, surely he erred when the two were photographed with the girl seated on a kitchen counter, grinning toothily, her legs spread, Nelson's head between them, and clearly visible next to the girl, just above a butter- yellow rotary wall phone, was a Hall's Beer Distributor's calendar whose current page located the event in April of 1985. My guess was, Tammy Pam was thirteen or fourteen at the time.
I closed the album and walked into the kitchen, where Mrs. Krumfutz was seated in the breakfast nook perusing the front page of the Log Heaven Gazette. 'Who took the pictures, Mrs. Krumfutz, and how did you get hold of them?'
She looked up and said, 'Tammy Pam's best friend, Kelly Bobst, took the pictures. For several years Kelly dated Floppy O'Toole, who runs O'Toole's camera shop in Engineville. Floppy developed the pictures and then kept the negatives. And when he fell out with Kelly in '93, he sent me these prints and asked me if I'd like to buy the negatives. I said no thanks. Floppy thought I'd like to use the pictures to put the screws to Nelson. But, as I say, I couldn't.
What I think is, Floppy then offered the negatives to Nelson, and Nelson bought them and paid a high price, using cash he diverted from the campaign fund.
About fifty thousand dollars is still unaccounted for, and my guess is, that's where it went, to Floppy. Though I can't prove it.'
The teakettle on Mrs. Krumfutz's electric range began to whistle, and she got up and removed it from the burner. 'Care for a cup of tea?'
'Thank you. Have you got coffee?'
'I've got Nescafe.'
'I thought you might. I'll have a cup of that, please.'
'Why, sure.'
As she mixed the coffee crystals and hot water, I said, 'I can see why you decided not to remain in Congress. Campaign fraud is one thing-that's as American as cherry pie. But these photo albums-that's something else.'
'Yes, if the pictures had started coming out… I've got two grown daughters, Terri in Aliquippa and Hilaine in Frackville, and I wouldn't want them to be hurt, or their husbands or their kids. So I threw in the towel, despite my ongoing commitment to the rights of gun owners and the unborn.'
Mrs. Krumfutz served my coffee in the breakfast nook and slid in across from me with her cup of tea. I said, 'None of this may have anything to do with Jim Suter's current troubles. But it might. Either way, I'd appreciate your telling me what you know about Jim, Mrs. Krumfutz.'
Apparently relieved by the change of subject, Mrs. Krumfutz spoke for several minutes about her onetime campaign employee and sometime professional acquaintance and casual friend. She described Suter as a committed conservative and an able — writer and political operative. She recited a long list of Suter's successes for a number of conservative causes, most of them election campaigns. Suter had also been involved, she said, in several lobbying operations on the Hill, including the campaign to prevent legalization of gays in the military. 'Jim's a pansy,' Mrs. Krumfutz said, 'but first and foremost he's an American.'
I let that go, and she went on to mention Suter's work on behalf of a right-to-life constitutional amendment and his pro-NAFTA organizing efforts with Alan McChesney for her and for her colleague Burton Olds.
I asked Mrs. Krumfutz straight out if she had ever doubted Suter's truthfulness.
After a long, thoughtful moment she said, 'Not on matters that were all that earthshaking, if that's what you mean. Why do you ask?'
Before I could reply, the telephone twittered, and Mrs. Krumfutz excused herself and went to answer it. As she stood by the kitchen counter, I heard her cry out,
'Oh! Oh, my Lord! When?'
Mrs. Krumfutz fell back against the counter and shook her head in anguish. I quickly went to her side, for her face had gone gray and the hand holding the telephone receiver trembled.
Again, she cried, 'Oh, no! No! Oh, no!' After a moment, she said, 'I've got to hang up and call the girls. I'll call you back.'
Shakily, she placed the receiver back in its cradle. She moaned, 'Oh, my heavens! Oh, I can't tell the girls!'
'What happened?'
'Nelson is dead!' she cried out, and then she began to weep.
Between sobs, Mrs. Krumfutz told me that the caller had been Engineville police chief Boat Pignatelli. The chief told Mrs. Krumfutz that a few hours earlier an explosion had struck the house occupied by Nelson Krumfutz and Tammy Pam Jameson. Both had died in the fire that quickly engulfed the structure. The cause of the explosion
