Strachey's folly

Chapter 18

At twelve-thirty I met Red Heckinger and Malcolm Sweet in a restaurant at the Hyatt Regency just north of the Capitol. These were the two friends of Jim Suter's that Bud Hively had told Dana Mosel about and I'd tracked them down. They were a couple, it turned out, and neither had been at all reluctant to meet with me, despite my vague description to them of my professional identity and my current role. As we sat down, the reasons for their willingness to have a word with me became all too plain.

"Jim Suter knows you're looking for him," Heckinger said, "and he wants you to stop looking. Now."

"Do not pass go," Sweet added. "Do not collect two hundred dollars. Or, if you feel you must, do collect two hundred dollars from anybody you think might provide that sum. That's up to you. Just don't go looking for Jim Suter. Do you understand what we are saying? That way, no one will have to go looking for you."

I sat for a moment and considered this new wrinkle. Heckinger and Sweet watched me and waited. Both men were in their forties, in the mandatory dark-suit/bright-tie get up, and loafers that shone as bright as a thousand suns.

Heckinger, with thinning, pale orange hair, was a slight man with a little face and big words that came out of it in a voice that sounded as if he were forcing it down an octave or two. Sweet was bigger and thicker, with a muscular neck, a nose like a shoehorn, and a sandy-colored brush cut that looked as if it could shred a turnip with a couple of swipes. Sweet had a big mouth that had smiled broadly when I introduced myself, but now neither Sweet nor Heckinger looked congenial at all.

"Care for a drink while you're deciding?" A waitress dressed like somebody's idea of a mod Dolley Madison had appeared. Heckinger asked for the house Chablis, Sweet a Sam Adams, and I decided a Molson might provide some welcome false reassurance.

Then I said to Heckinger and Sweet, "I detect a note of threat in your words.

Or is my inference unwarranted?"

Sweet looked at me and said, "Bite my ass."

"My inference was correct then, I see."

Heckinger had lowered his head and was shaking it with regret tinged with disgust. "Strachey, Strachey, Strachey." He sighed.

I said, "Yo, bro."

"Don't you understand, Strachey, that this is bigger than you are?" Heckinger said, and it was all I could do to keep from guffawing.

"Are you guys for real?"

They both glared, and Sweet said tightly, "Do you know who we are? If you did, you wouldn't be so fucking… so fucking soigne."

Soigne? "I haven't the foggiest idea who you are. Are you escapees from some Lawrence Sanders Washington potboiler? That's what you talk like. When I walked in here today, I was under the impression I was experiencing actual human life. Now I'm not so sure."

Heckinger sneered. "Malcolm and I represent a consortium of interests. A consortium of powerful interests. Let's just leave it at that. Is that real enough for you?"

"A consortium of powerful interests. Heavens. Everybody stand back, for I'm starting to feel somewhat less soigne."

"Maynard Sudbury isn't feeling too soigne," Sweet said ex-pressionlessly. "Is he?"

I said, "No, he isn't."

They watched me and said nothing.

"Did you have Maynard shot?" I asked.

Heckinger leaned toward me, sighed, and shook his head. "No, of course we didn't have Maynard shot. Malcolm shouldn't have said that. We don't know who shot Maynard. He's a nice guy-Malcolm and I have known Maynard for years.

I'm sorry he got dragged into this, and Jim is very sorry about Maynard, and we're all relieved that he seems to be recovering well. Malcolm was just trying out a bit of shock treatment on you, Strachey, when he said that. But he didn't mean anything besides emphasizing the point we're making. On Jim's behalf, we're simply trying to get your attention, basically, and to convince you to stay away from Jim. That's all we want from you. And that's what Jim wants.

Comprende, amigoP"

"Yo comprendo. And it's also what your powerful consortium of interests wants?"

"That's part of the picture, yes."

"To me, that part of the picture is still awfully blurry. Once it's clear, then I'll see what I'll do. I'll bet you fellows are in a position to help me out in that regard, no?" They sat tight-lipped and I went on, "Here are some questions I'll need comprehensive answers to before I'll even begin to consider backing off. Ready to take some mental notes? Got your thinking caps on?"

They glowered.

I said, "Which powerful interests do you represent? Where exactly is Suter, and why is he hiding? Is he in Mexico? Is he in danger there? Are others in danger there or here? Who shot Maynard and ransacked his house, and why?

"Are drugs involved? Have there been other illegal activities Jim's involved in?

What is Betty Krumfutz's connection to whatever is going on here, if any? Does Betty's husband fit in? Does Tammy Pam Jameson? What about Jim's ex-lovers, such as Carmen LoBello and/or Alan McChesney? And Jim's mother and brother-what's the deal with them anyway? Is Bryant Ulmer's murder related to any of this? Why was a panel with Jim's name on it placed in the AIDS quilt, and why was the panel vandalized late Saturday afternoon and portions of Jim's Betty Krumfutz campaign biography taken?

"Answer these questions clearly and concisely, if you can, guys, and then I'll begin to think about winding up my investigation. But not before then." I didn't ask about Ray Craig, who was nowhere to be seen but whose distinctive scent I'd been aware of less than a minute after my arrival in the restaurant.

Heckinger and Sweet sat glaring at me. Neither could see the sweat trickling down my sides nor the muscular twitch on the back of my left calf. No one spoke for a moment, then Heckinger said, "You must be quite the conspiracy buff, Strachey, to imagine that all those persons and all those events that you enumerated could possibly be interrelated."

"Nope. Not at all."

"No?"

Dolley Madison reappeared with our drinks and said, "Ready to order yet?"

"Not yet," Sweet snapped without looking at the waitress, who, apparently experienced in her line of work, was unruffled by bad manners, and away she flew.

Heckinger said to me, "You're not among the sizable percentage of the American public who believe that Vince Foster was murdered at the White House and the U.S. Park Police, under Hillary Clinton's direction, dumped Foster's body in a Virginia glade with a gun in his hand, and then moved a truckload of incriminating Whitewater and other documents out of Foster's office and into the Lincoln bedroom, where the papers were shredded and flushed down Mary Todd Lincoln's bidet?"

"No," I said. "I doubt anything like that happened."

"Then you're very naive," Heckinger said. "Minus the embellishments that I added for my own amusement, something very much like what I just described is very probably what happened to the unfortunate Mr. Foster-a man who knew too much and may have been wavering in his loyalty to the extremely powerful people he knew it about."

I waited for Heckinger to break into a sly grin and then maybe give me an affectionate noogie, but both he and Sweet continued to regard me gravely.

They believed that hooey?

I said, "My opinion, based on the results of several federal investigations and on the thorough reporting in an excellent daily newspaper, the New York Times, is that you are incorrect."

They both snorted, dismissing both the national law enforcement establishment and the Sulzbergers as, I guessed, either patsies or coconspirators in the Vince Foster plot.

I went on, "It's not that I believe conspiracies never happen. They do, obviously.

There were all those CIA plots to overthrow governments in Guatemala and Iran and Guyana and the Congo, and of course, Hoover trying to ruin Martin Luther King or drive him to suicide. And the King assassination itself I also wonder about-James Earl Ray came out of a rat's nest of racist crazies, and King's murder could easily have been a plot hatched in the back of a Southern barroom.

"On the other hand, Sirhan Sirhan pretty clearly acted alone when he shot Bobby Kennedy. And I've never seen any really good evidence that the JFK assassination was the work of-to use your terminology-'a consortium of powerful interests,' including, in the popular Oliver Stone version, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyndon Johnson, the mob, and the board of directors of the Marriott Corporation. I think Oswald did it himself because he was a pathetic schmo with some confused leftist ideas who thought he'd knock off the suave, good-looking rich guy who was the president of the capitalist United States, and damned if he didn't somehow pull it off. People can't stand to think that a dork like Oswald could turn history upside down, so they look for some larger, darker, more sensationally evil explanation. But there probably isn't any.

"In fact, the Lee Harvey Oswalds are the source of most of the evil in the world, I think. Individual persons who are mad at the world, or mad at their wives, or just mad, or just weak and mixed up-they gradually or suddenly lose it, and then they rape or rob or commit murder. There are criminal conspiracies, sure-mob racketeering, drug smuggling, savings-and-loan rip-offs, and other organizational crimes. Sometimes angry, disturbed people do commit their crimes in groups-I know that-ordinarily for reasons of greed. There's violent mass folly, too, like Vietnam or Bosnia, but that's another story. By far, most of the people who inhabit the jails around the world, or ought to, are people whose folly is only personal. For reasons of their own, they are impelled to do the wrong thing, maybe a very wrong thing, and somebody else gets hurt.

"That's what I am inclined to think has happened to May-nard Sudbury. He was the victim of a few people doing the wrong thing in concert with one another, probably in order to make a fast buck. But a monstrous mass conspiracy?

Something 'bigger than you are, Strachey,' as you guys so melodramatically put it? I don't think so. My question about all those people I listed is not how are they all interrelated? It's which one put Jim Suter's name in the AIDS quilt, and who's the asshole who had Maynard Sudbury shot?"

Heckinger and Sweet regarded me dully throughout this second oration of the early afternoon. When I had wound down, Heckinger sipped from his wineglass and said, "You're awfully old-fashioned, aren't you, Strachey?"

"Old-fashioned? I don't hear that one often. Can I get a signed affidavit to that effect to show to my boyfriend?"

Sweet shot me the hairy eyeball and snarled, "I'll give you an affidavit to think about!"

Then the waitress was back. "You gentlemen ready to order? Or do you need a few more minutes?"

"I'll have the ham club on wheat toast. This one," I said, indicating Sweet, "would probably enjoy the thumbtack salad with croutons of gypsum and a tapenade of ground glass."

The waitress chortled, then glanced at Sweet and saw the look on his face. She said, "If you'd like a little more time to think it over, I'll come back in a few minutes. Take your time." Instantly, she was gone again.

Ignoring Sweet, I looked at Heckinger and said, "So, how about spitting it out?

You're a friend of Jim's-that I know-and you say he doesn't want to talk to me.

Why?"

"Because if he talks to anyone," Heckinger said mildly, "he may be killed."

"Please explain that."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you that."

"But he talked to you, and you're alive."

Heckinger and Sweet glanced at each other and shared a moment of amusement over this. "Yes, we are alive," Heckinger said. "Indeed we are."

"Why are you threatening me?" I said. "Are you with the people who are threatening Suter? Is that what you do? Is the consortium of interests you say you represent an organization that, as part of its normal operating procedures, routinely threatens people?"

Heckinger said mildly, "That pretty much describes it."

So what were they then? They came across as a couple of unemployed bad actors, hired down at the union hall for an afternoon of impersonating thugs.

But since actual thugs, more than they used to, pick up their styles and techniques from popcorn movies and TV series, maybe these two were authentic- what? Mobsters? CIA? KGB? Agents of the National Realtors Association?

I said, "Whoever you are, there is one question you can answer for me without violating your instructions. Give me this much. Is Jim, in fact, in Mexico?"

"He is, actually," Heckinger said.

"Where?"

He looked at me levelly. "I've told you all I can tell you, Strachey, and that is all the farther I can go. Don't go down there. That is Jim's wish and that is his instruction to you. If you get near him, you could get him killed. Now, there is potential folly for you, some human anger and confusion, and a resulting distinct evil."

All the farther I can go? This, I knew, was a Pennsylvania Dutch construction German actually-meaning "as far as I can go." I hadn't heard it since my college affair at Rutgers with Kenny Womeldorf, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Kenny occasionally carne out with these peculiar locutions that the Amish and German Mennonites had, over the years, deposited in the otherwise Mid-Atlantic Standard English of rural and small-town southeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

I took a leap and said, "Look, let's quit playing games here. You seem to know a lot about me and my current activities, and the fact is, I know a lot about the two of you. I know, for example, that despite your amateurish goonish threats, you work for neither the CIA nor the Mafia. You work for one or both of the Krumfutzes."

Heckinger and Sweet both got very busy now not reacting at all. "Oh, you know that?" Heckinger said tightly. Heckinger's face was red and Sweet's was white.

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I do believe you have been misinformed."

"Nope."

They stared at me.

"Moreover, additional disturbing information I have obtained concerning you and your colleagues up in the Keystone State has been handed over to reliable outside individuals. And if anything bad happens to Jim Suter or to me or to Timothy Callahan, or if anything else bad happens to Maynard Sudbury, that information will move swiftly to (a) the Washington Post and (b) the U.S. attorney's offices in both Philadelphia and Washington."

Heckinger and Sweet both sat stone-faced and silent. Just then the waitress showed up and made another tentative foray. "Ready now?"

Heckinger gestured to Sweet, and the two of them stood up abruptly and walked out of the restaurant. I made a mental note to bill them later for the wine and the Sam Adams.

After lunch, I found a pay phone in the hotel lobby and tracked down Chondelle Dolan again.

"I had a quick look," she told me, "at the case file on the Bryant Ulmer homicide.

On the night the crime occurred last January the eighth, it did look to be a robbery. Ulmer's expensive watch was taken, and his wallet with cash and credit cards. But there was something a little bit different about this robbery that made the investigating detectives wonder about it. Ulmer was shot six times-a lot for a perpetrator who wants to gather up his loot and start running away with it. And the gun that killed Ulmer wasn't an MP-25 or some other piece of street junk. Ulmer was killed with a Cobray M-ll. This is a mean nine-millimeter firearm that's rare among everyday street thugs in Washington. Only the serious drug professionals carry M-lls-usually just to terrorize people they want to keep in line. And you know what else, Strachey?"

"What else?"

"I checked Ray's case file on the shooting of Maynard Sudbury. Your pal Maynard was shot with the same type of weapon."

"Does Ray know this? Is he having forensic comparisons done on the bullets in the two shootings?"

"If he is, there's nothing in his file on it."

"I wonder why."

"Me, too."