Strachey's folly

Chapter 15

A Names Project speaker at the start of the candlelight march on Friday night had termed it "a miracle" that the entire outdoor quilt-display weekend would be warm and dry, but Tuesday morning was unmiraculous and rainy. The tables outside the cafe with the excellent croissants were deserted, and we sat jammed inside the place, semimuscular thigh to semimuscular thigh with Capitol staffers jolting themselves with caffeine into states of wakefulness sufficient for conducting the nation's business.

Timmy read aloud from the Post while I nursed a double espresso and an imaginary cigarette. Dana Mosel had not yet filed her follow-up story on the Suter quilt panel-Dormer and Vick-nicki had told us Mosel phoned them and they'd given her an earful on Suter's treatment of the legions of men in his life-but the paper had printed a brief update on Maynard's shooting and his improving condition. Ray Craig was quoted as saying that the police had no suspects but were pursuing "a number of leads."

"I wonder what 'a number of leads' means," Timmy said. "Is it a high number of leads or a low number of leads, and what are they?"

"That's just a thing police say to reporters," I told him. "It doesn't necessarily mean anything."

"I guess we're two of the leads if they're following us around."

I had relayed to Timmy the night before Chondelle's report to me on the D.C.

Police Department's twenty-four-hour surveillance of the both of us, and he had received the news glumly.

"The other lead," I said, "is the two witnesses to the shooting saying two Mexicans did it."

"The police are not releasing that information to the press. I wonder why. That makes me nervous."

"I have to admit, Timothy, that I'm curious about that, too. Craig may actually know more about the shooter and his friend than Chondelle has been able to find out. And maybe whatever he knows has got this Captain Kingsley flying down to the Yucatan the same day I'm flying. It would seem unlikely that they'd assign a captain to follow me up and down the Western Hemisphere, so our travel dates could be pure coincidence. Although, it's also possible they scoured the airlines' reservation lists for my name, and when they spotted it, they saw it as an opportunity for a department big cheese to take a pleasant trip at taxpayers' expense while he keeps an eye on me. Or maybe they sincerely believe that I'm at the center of something important."

Timmy stared at me in amazement over what he obviously saw as my thickheadedness. "But, Don, obviously you are at the center of something important." "Think so? We'll see."

Timmy just shook his head, then read more from the Post. Timmy told me that Bob Dole, numbers low and stagnant, was still predicting that the public would catch on to the ethically dubious Clintons before election day and virtue-i.e., Dole- would prevail.

I said, "Let's hope not."

Timmy said, "Clinton will win, but the voters will punish him for his endless parade of dreary misdemeanors by giving the House and the Senate to the Republicans again."

"No, people are sick of conflict and divided government. The party will not only retake both houses but Newt will even lose his own congressional seat. He'll abandon Georgia in a fit of pique and move to Absecon, where he'll finish out his career as a southern New Jersey late-night talk-radio host."

"Sure, and when John Sununu is on vacation, Newt will sub for him on Crossfire, and his liberal antagonist on CNN's hollering contest will be Carmen LoBello doing G. Gordon Liddy Dole."

"I hope I can track down LoBello soon. He's as likely a candidate as anybody to be the Jim Suter quilt-maker. I'll bet he sews."

After our Thai dinner the night before with Martin Dormer and Peter Vicknicki, the two ex-Suter boyfriends had accompanied Timmy and me to Starkers, the Fourteenth Street gay club where Carmen LoBello had performed for several years. We located a number of LoBello's acquaintances there, but none had been in touch with him in recent months. And everyone who knew LoBello, including the club manager, described him as all but deranged by his brief affair with Jim Suter.

Soon after that romantic debacle, LoBello turned into G. Gordon Liddy Dole, a character unwanted by Starkers' customers, or by those in the few other D.C. drag venues where- as Hillary or Nancy or Judy Woodruff-LoBello might have been welcomed. We had struck out at Starkers, but my plan was to try to track LoBello down later that morning at his secretarial job at the Bureau of Mines.

"The thing I don't get," Timmy said, "is how Carmen LoBello could possibly be connected to Betty Krumfutz."

I said, "Maybe he isn't. There are connections so far either between or among Suter, Mrs. Krumfutz, Jorge the boyfriend, Alan McChesney, the dead Bryant Ulmer, probably Maynard, and maybe somebody in the D.C. Police Department.

But so far LoBello is just another enraged Jim Suter dumpee."

"One of a cast of thousands apparently."

"There is a possible connection, of a sort, between LoBello and Mrs. Krumfutz.

Which is, the Betty Krumfutz Maynard believes he saw at the quilt display on Saturday wasn't Mrs. Krumfutz at all. It was Carmen LoBello."

All in a fraction of a second, Timmy grinned, gasped, and winced. "Oh, good grief!"

"It makes sense."

"It does? I guess it could."

"Betty Krumfutz convincingly denied to me that she was anywhere near the quilt on Saturday. Nor is she, I think, a woman who goes around on a fall afternoon in Washington wearing shades and a trench coat, like some character out of Godard."

"She might if she wanted to examine the Jim Suter panel for whatever was typed on it about her, and she didn't want to be recognized."

"This is true. Still, I want to find out where Carmen LoBello was Saturday afternoon. And, if I can, what he was wearing."

Timmy was looking doubtful again. "But why would LoBello do that? What would he get out of it?"

"Good question. Maybe LoBello had spotted, or he had been told about, the Suter quilt panel-or he was the one responsible for getting the panel put into the quilt-and he wanted to hurt and embarrass Suter additionally by associating Jim's old employer and ideological cohort with this shocking fraud. Or LoBello could have had other strange reasons. Remember, by all accounts LoBello was driven pretty crazy by the collapse of his affair with Suter."

Timmy stirred his cappuccino thoughtfully. "I don't really understand that part-I mean, why LoBello was so traumatized by his breakup with Jim Suter that his life all but collapsed. Rejection is painful, yes, but this was not a ten-year relationship that fell apart overnight. It was a fling that had lasted a couple of weeks. No matter how shabbily they may have been treated, people tend to bounce back from disappointments of that limited magnitude. Whether or not he's responsible for the Suter quilt panel, and whether or not he did a Betty Krumfutz drag number at the quilt on Saturday, it's plain that LoBello did not recover normally from his affair with Suter. And I think knowing why would help us understand a lot of what's going on here." "I think you're right, Timothy.

Assuming, of course, that LoBello has anything at all to do with the quilt, or Mrs.

Krumfutz, or any of the other awful events that we are currently so preoccupied with. Maybe Carmen LoBello has nothing to do with any of it."

Timmy grunted and glanced around the cafe. Ray Craig was nowhere in sight, so we assumed someone else from the DCPD was watching over us.

Trying to pick out our minder had become a mordant game we played whenever we moved around Washington by cab or on the metro, and while we dined out or stopped for our morning coffee or a late-night beer.

Timmy had even brought up the possibility that our hotel room had been bugged. I considered that far-fetched. I did not go along with Timmy's request that we discuss my investigation and our respective plans only in the hotel bathroom with all the sink and bathtub faucets running loudly. Instead, I suggested that while in our hotel room we hold confidential conversations only when our voices were muffled and our words distorted by our lying on the bed with our pants down or off and with our mouths stuffed with each other's genitalia. Timmy said I wasn't taking our situation seriously enough.