Strachey's Folly - Stevenson Richard - Страница 20

Timmy said, "So you don't think she's involved in Jim's dan­ger or the attack on Maynard?"

"I'm inclined to doubt it. Anyway, I think I am. For now."

"Then who was that frightened woman at the quilt that May­nard thought was Betty Krumfutz?"

"Beats me."

"So you've more or less decided she's not involved at all in

what's going on here?"

"I think I've decided that. But I'm not sure."

"Hmm."

"Mrs. Krumfutz is certifiably amoral and devious on behalf of her causes. She brags about that. And her husband I'm even less sure about. Also, according to the missus, Nelson Krumfutz has been up to his neck in something that could land him in prison for the rest of his life. She says she's got proof, so my guess is it's more campaign-fund chicanery. And this might or might not be the criminality that Jim Suter says certain danger­ous persons think he knows about. Anyway, I'm not getting any­where near Nelson just yet. First it's important that I talk to Suter."

Timmy breathed deeply. "Well, I hate to say this."

"What?"

Two more noisy inhalations.

"What? What?"

"The other thing I found out from Bud Hively about Suter and his Mexican boyfriend is this: Jim met his terrific new boyfriend, he told Hively, through a friend who Jim wouldn't normally have thought of as a person who'd be serving as a gay dating service. And that friend is—you don't want to hear it— Betty Krumfutz."

"Oh?"

"Oh, yes."

"Hell."

"Yeah."

"Well, it'll all come clear. But not tonight. I'm leaving Log Heaven now. I should arrive down there between two and three. I'll ring you from the hotel lobby so you can let me in. Okay?"

"Sure. Drive carefully."

"I will. Traffic will be light."

As I rang off, I remembered something. I pulled from my pocket the letter Jim Suter had sent to Maynard from Mexico. I looked at the way he had signed it: "Your friend Jim, still unlucky in love." Did that mean, as it seemed to, that the wonderful boyfriend had not worked out?

Before I left Log Heaven for the drive to D.C., I made a final swing past Mrs. Krumfutz's house on Susquehanna Drive. All the lights were out now—it was just past ten-thirty—but the pickup truck was still in the driveway next to the Chrysler. I made a U-turn and pulled up the driveway so that my headlights caught the truck's rear plate. I noted the number and the state, Texas, then backed out and drove quickly—but not so quickly as to attract attention—out to the interstate.

Chapter 11

I awoke midmorning on Monday to a warm and hazy blue day, with the Washington outside my hotel window all but shut down for the federal holiday. This twenty-four-hour memo­rial to Christopher Columbus was primarily an Italian-American holiday, even though Columbus had been on the royal Spanish payroll in 1492 and had actually opened up the New World for Spanish, not Italian, conquest. What if Columbus had sailed west, say, on behalf of the Venetian Republic? How would the Amer­icas be different today? Politics and government in many nations might more readily be carried out with the consent of the gov­erned. For hundreds of years people would have traveled up and down the North and South American continents not on horse­back but in gondolas, and later vaporetti. Instead of eating rice and beans, people south of the Rio Grande would sup on brodetto and seppie alia veneziana.

I laid out this historical conjecture for Timmy over good coffee and even better croissants at a Second Street cafe. He ex­plained to me that in 1492 Venice had its own lucrative easterly routes to Asia and would have had no need to go sloshing off into the unknown western seas. I told him he was missing my point. He wouldn't drop it though and insisted on asking what my point was.

Luckily, Chondelle Dolan showed up just then. She had joined us at my request, to give us an update on the police in­vestigation of Maynard's shooting. We preferred her company to Ray Craig's. We sat around one of the little tables on the sidewalk in front of the cafe, and we quickly spotted Craig repeatedly circling the block in an unmarked car; he cruised by and peered over at us every three or four minutes. This made Timmy ner­vous, but Chondelle said, "It's just Ray being Ray. When he's out in public, the department should make him wear a sign letting people know that he's relatively harmless."

Timmy said, "Relatively?"

"Yeah."

"Relative to what?"

"To a couple of other people in the department whose names I won't mention. The names wouldn't mean anything to you anyway, Timothy."

Timmy shook his head, then changed the subject. He had gotten up early to go check on Maynard, and he said Maynard had opened his eyes several times, although he had not yet spoken.

"It looks like he's going to be okay," Chondelle said. "That's the good report the division is getting, too."

"I noticed," Timmy said, "that a D.C. police officer has been posted outside Maynard's room. Who arranged that? He wasn't there yesterday."

"That was recommended by Lieutenant Craig."

"Why?" Timmy said, looking up with a cappuccino mus­tache.

"Ray's pursuing the drug-gang angle, and he told the cap­tain he didn't want to risk losing a witness."

I said, "Craig thinks Maynard might be a member of a drug gang? He tried that one out on us, too, but he seemed to have no basis for the theory other than that Maynard was shot by a man who looked Mexican."

"Ray paints with a broad brush," Chondelle said. "A cousin < >f mine in the narcotics division told me Ray had requested any information they had on Maynard Sudbury, but the inquiry drew a blank. It's possible the request was just Ray covering his behind io justify the order for the hospital guard, which he wanted for some other reason."

"Which might be what?" I asked.

"Dunno. But I'd like to find out. One good thing, as far as you two are concerned, is this: Jim Suter's name hasn't come up anywhere in the Sudbury shooting investigation. Or anywhere else in the system. So if your aim is to keep his name out of this until you get to him, you're doing okay."

"I'm going down to the Yucatan tomorrow," I said. "But it's a big place and I haven't got much of a lead for tracking Suter down. The problem is, if I try to get information by approach­ing people in Washington who know him, they might have con­nections to the people he says are trying to kill him. I'd tip them off to his location—or, if they already know where he is, to the fact that he's letting people know that he's in some kind of bad trouble. And they might just finish him off."

I went on to describe to Chondelle my trip to Pennsylvania and my bewildering encounter with Mrs. Krumfutz. I told her how, despite Mrs. Krumfutz's essentially plausible denial of any knowledge of Jim Suter's current troubles, it was she, Timmy had learned, who had introduced Suter to the Mexican boyfriend Suter went to Mexico to be with—now, apparently, to hide out

with.

Chondelle said, "It sounds like it won't hurt if you just go ahead and ask Mrs. Krumfutz who the boyfriend is and where they are. If she's not involved in whatever it is Suter is afraid of, there's no risk at all for him or you. If she is involved, you've al­ready alerted her that you're interested in Suter and there's not much more damage you can do than you've already done. Of course, if she thinks you've got something on her, then you can bargain with her. Unless she just lets on that she's going along with your wishes and then has Jim Suter shot dead and, just to be on the safe side, she arranges to have you blown away, too."