Strachey's folly

Chapter 13

By four Monday afternoon, I was back in the hotel room working the phone.

Timmy had the list of Jim Suter's family and friends that Bud Hively had given Dana Mosel on Sunday, and I had the names of the five embittered Suter ex-lovers that Hively had described to Mosel earlier on Monday. After several unproductive calls-answering machines and services, or no answer at all-I reluctantly called the airline and postponed my reservation to Cancun from Tuesday to Wednesday morning. I immediately felt pangs of regret, even irritation-mixed with a strange but powerful sense of relief-that I would not be leaving for the Yucatan first thing in the morning. But at the time I didn't realize what those pangs meant.

I was able to reach two of Jim Suter's friends, as well as his mother and brother in Maryland. With the friends and relatives I identified myself as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. This was a low subterfuge that would have disgusted my journalist friends but which I justified by Suter's own alleged precarious life-or-death situation. Admitting that I was a private detective might have tipped off one of the people Suter was afraid of that someone besides Maynard might be aware of Suter's terrible danger.

I guessed, though, that the angry ex-lovers would be unwilling to speak with a reporter, so I told the two I reached late Sunday afternoon that I was a private investigator employed by Jim's mother to look into the disturbing AIDS quilt panel.

Timmy termed this particular lie "squalid," but he couldn't come up with an approach that was morally superior.

Anyway, it worked. By 5 P.M. Monday, I had interviews lined up with Suter's mother and brother at six-thirty, with Peter Vick-nicki and Martin Dormer, two of Suter's angry former lovers, later in the evening, as well as two of Suter's friends at lunchtime Tuesday.

Timmy phoned his boss, state assemblyman Myron Lip-shutz, in Albany and requested several days off "for personal reasons. " He told the politician he was unable to explain exactly what was going on, but he said he wanted Lipshutz to know how gratifying it had been working for him over the years and how much respect and affection he felt for the assemblyman.

It was obvious from Timmy's end of the rest of the conversation-"No, don't worry, I'm fine, Myron, really"-that Lipshutz had been unnerved by Timmy's remarks, which could easily have been interpreted as (a) a prelude to suicide, (b) the veiled announcement of a fast-moving terminal illness, or (c) an indication that Timmy had fallen under the influence of Deepak Chopra.

Afterward, I said, "It sounds as if you may have scared Myron to death."

"I guess I did leave him a little bit shaken. I didn't mean to frighten Myron. But after what happened to Maynard, I've got this heightened sense of the fragility of human existence-everybody's, including my own-and I feel impelled to tell people how I feel about them before it's too late."

I had never been seized by the need to exclaim my love to anyone other than my lover-for a WASP Presbyterian from New Jersey, that was chore enough but I liked that Timmy could be selectively, though not promiscuously, spontaneous with his affections. He didn't need to tell me how he felt about me-he'd done it countless times over the years with all the force and clarity of his strong Irish heart-but he did tell me yet again, and I replied unexpectedly in kind. We made love, and it was excellent.

Soon, though, my mind divided, and part of it began to wrestle with ways of clearing up the Jim Suter-Maynard Sudbury complex mystery at the earliest possible moment, and of extrieating Timmy and me-and Maynard-from it.

Just as I did not want to live in a state of fear and paranoia, neither did I want to live with-or to live with a man with-a twenty-four-hour-a-day overwhelming sense of doom. As Timmy and I excitedly generated sweat and other fluids, I also couldn't seem to help imagining, a bit guiltily, my upcoming encounter with the beringleted former wrestling star, Jim Suter, although I did that only for a fleeting moment.

My six-thirty meeting with Jim Suter's mother and brother at Mrs. Suter's condo in Silver Spring was not only unhelpful in any specific way-neither George nor Lila Suter knew much about Jim's private life, they told me several times-but I immediately sensed that both of them were continually lying, at least by omission.

Both Suters were handsome, conservatively dressed people who looked as if they would have been comfortable posing for a Buick ad in Town amp; Country.

They served cocktails and hors d'oeuvres and chatted volubly about themselves in a way that felt just a little forced. Mrs. Suter was a real estate agent and George a computer-program analyst for a big Maryland HMO. It came out in the conversation that Mrs. Suter had been married four times and George twice.

Both were currently unattached.

Mrs. Suter had agreed to meet with a reporter, she said, in order to reassure me. She said she was certain that the quilt panel with her son's name on it was "a prank." The vandalism of the panel was harder to explain, she said, but

"nothing James gets mixed up in ever surprises me," she added with a laugh.

"James has always gone his own way." She said she had told the Post reporter the same thing and was surprised that editors might continue to consider the incident newsworthy.

"I've been told," I said, "that Jim may be out of the country, and that's why he hasn't responded personally to the quilt-panel mystery. Is that the case?"

George Suter glanced at his mother, who hesitated for just an instant before replying, "I think he is, yes. That's the case in-sofar as any information I have."

Her language was flat and without nuance, but she spoke to me in the "gracious" tone I guessed she employed with potential buyers and sellers in her real estate business.

"You aren't sure where Jim is?" I asked.

"No, not precisely," she said. "He did say he thought he might be abroad for some time. But Jim's travel plans hadn't quite firmed up the last time we spoke."

Mrs. Suter and her son both peered at me now in a way that said no additional information would likely be forthcoming on this topic.

"When were you last in touch with Jim? Either of you."

"To tell you the truth," George said, "I haven't seen Jim-or talked to him at all since early summer sometime, I'd say it was. I don't recall his discussing any particular trip he had planned. But Jim has always been something of a gadabout, and he doesn't always inform me or Mother where he's off to or when he'll be back. It's actually a rather annoying habit Jim has." Suter, who appeared to be in his midthirties, had a head full of the famous male-Suter locks, and they were indeed golden and fell across his brow fetchingly.

"So Jim might not be out of the country, just out of the Washington area?"

"That's right," George said. "Jim hasn't answered his telephone or returned messages for some time. So I'd say there's a good possibility that he's out of town."

"That would be my guess, too," Mrs. Suter added.

Jim Suter's mother and brother sat watching me with eyes that looked as if they were going to reveal nothing because the Suters did not intend for them to reveal anything. I guessed they were not only lying-poorly-but that they knew Suter was in trouble and probably that he was in trouble in Mexico. But if that's all they knew, then there was no point in pressing them, for I already knew that much and more. And if they knew more than I did, they certainly weren't about to reveal it to a newspaper reporter from Baltimore. They had agreed to see me, they said, only to dampen interest in the strange quilt panel and the vestigatory quest, and I headed back out in the direction of the Silver Spring metro station.

As I — walked away from Mrs. Suter's building-La Fuente, it was called, spelled out next to the entrance in a silvery script- I turned and looked up at the location where I estimated her third-floor balcony must have been. In the dimness behind the glass door at the rear of the balcony, two figures were standing and seemed to be watching me go.