Strachey's Folly - Stevenson Richard - Страница 37

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 son-in-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 inspiration for those big Mexican oil paintings that are full of Spanish-conquest blood and gore—another inspiration being the Spanish-conquest blood and gore itself.

After our swim, Suter and I had put our shorts on and walked up the beach a mile and then back. The houses we passed, built by Jorge's father, were even bigger and more opu­lent than Jorge's. They were owned, Suter said, by wealthy North Americans, many of whom spent little time in their tile-and-stucco palaces. We walked by an occasional well-tanned bather or sunbather, many of them nude. Most seemed to be foreigners. I heard mainly North American accents, as well as a few German and Italian speakers. The scattering of Mexicans on the beach tended to be families, in bathing suits or fully clothed. Suter said the Mexicans considered the nudism shameful but that they are an almost endlessly tolerant people. Also, Mexican men who otherwise were not necessarily nature lovers liked strolling on the beach and staring at the bare-breasted European women, quite the erotic spectacle in a society where only the men were allowed to be lewd.

We also passed a beautiful young Mexican woman in a white, one-piece bathing suit in the company of a man I recog­nized as a well-known U.S. congressman from a Midwestern state. Suter greeted them both, and then told me that the con­gressman, Lawrence Grandchamps, was a frequent visitor to a house owned by a Mexican cement tycoon whose exports to the south-central United States increased by roughly 1,000 percent after the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed and signed. Suter laughed and said he was sure the two men's deep friendship was based on a love of scuba diving out by the reef and not on a love of cement profits.

Back at Suter's house, he was stretched out on a chaise with another Dos Equis in his hand, and I shoved myself back and forth in the string hammock that hung between two coconut palms alongside the tile terrace. When he told me he didn't rec­ognize the names Ray Craig or Milton Kingsley, I asked Suter again why he was so anxious that the D.C. Police Department not know where he was.

"Unpaid parking tickets."

"I don't think so."

"Well, then—here's the actual thing," Suter said, sucking in air. Then he didn't go on.

"Yes? And?"

He sighed again and said, "I'm being sued. There's a sum­mons going around looking for me, I'm told."

"Oh? Sued for what?"

"I don't want to go into it. It's a professional thing that has no bearing on the Krumfutzes or Jorge or why I'm down here."

"Is the dispute with a publisher?"

"No."

"Anyway, what have the cops got to do with a civil suit? The plaintiffs lawyers will go after you, or maybe a process server will. But cops only deal with criminal matters."

"This situation is a little more complicated than that."

"Complicated. Uh-huh."

I waited, and when it was plain that Suter had nothing more to offer on the lawsuit against him, I said, "I'm sure the D.C. cops know where you are. If I found you, they could do it. I knew from your letter to Maynard that you were in the Yucatan, and my partner, Timothy Callahan, extracted from Betty Krumfutz the name of the town where you were most likely to turn up. Ray Craig is investigating Maynard's shooting and made his first Mexican connection when two eyewitnesses described the shooter. He knows, too, that Maynard was down here in Sep­tember. Craig has been investigating me, so he undoubtedly knows by now that I'm investigating you."

"Thanks for nothing," Suter said sourly.

"Milton Kingsley is a D.C. police captain who, according to a source of mine in the department, was set to travel down here around the same time I came."

"Well," Suter said, "thanks to Jorge's father, this cop would have a very hard time finding a Mexican judge or any other Mex­ican official who would agree to have me extradited. Anyway, this awkward situation is not criminal, which means I can't be ex­tradited. It's just that I'd prefer to avoid the hassle of having to deal with the suit right now. I need peace and quiet and the chance to concentrate. The thing is, I'm working on a novel." His eyes shone brightly.

"Ah. Working on a novel." So was the weekend weatherman on Channel 8 in Albany. And Timmy's aunt Moira. And six or eight of Timmy's colleagues in the New York State legislature. And Kathie Lee Gifford probably. And Radovan Karadzic. I said, "But the novel is dead. Why aren't you writing a screenplay?"