Текст книги "Strachey's Folly "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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A sudden motion off to the left of the terrace caught my eye, and I glanced over in time to see not a drug-gang assassin with an automatic weapon aimed at Suter and me, but a plump iguana disappearing into a crevice in the rocks.

I said, "So it's your opinion, if I've got this right, that my approaching Nelson Krumfutz would be not only highly dangerous but redundant, since he'll probably go to prison anyway?"

"Of course. Nelson is fucked no matter how you cut it. And nobody is going to lay a glove on the Mexicans anyway. So why should you or anyone else risk your lives for nothing?"

"You might as well tell me what happened to Maynard. Was it the quilt panel? Did someone think Maynard spotted something on the quilt panel with your Krumfutz manuscript on it? Did you put something incriminating in the manuscript? Something that might be discovered if you were killed?"

Suter gazed at me with a look of fright, which, at the time, I interpreted as a man confronting a dramatic sign of his own mortality. "Yeah, something like that."

"Who put the panel with your name on it in the quilt?"

"I honestly don't know. But I'm sure it was meant to intimidate me. Which, when I heard about it, it sure as hell did."

"And Maynard was shot and his house ransacked both as a way of eliminating him as a source of information on the Mexican end of the drug operation, and as a warning to me or my boyfriend, Timothy Callahan, or anyone else Maynard may have spoken to about—about this thing Maynard actually knew nothing about?"

Suter slowly nodded. "Yeah . . . yeah."

"If that's true, it's disgusting."

"I know it is. I know."

"And what about Red Heckinger and Malcolm Sweet? Who sent those two buffoons to scare me off? You or the drug cartel?"

Suter gave me a droll little grin. "They're friends of mine who used to work for Betty. They're harmless. Red and Malcolm don't even know about the drug operation. I told them you had a lot of wrong ideas about me, and would they help me get you off my back? I also wanted to save you the trouble of coming down here only to be convinced that there was nothing you needed to do to apprehend the North American who was once directly involved in the drug scam, since the law had already gotten its meaty paws around Nelson Krumfutz's skinny neck. But I guess Red and Malcolm weren't as convincing as they could have been as mob enforcers."

"No. They were just a couple of putzes."

"You could have saved yourself the airfare, Strachey. Not that I'm not enjoying your company. I am. You're an extremely attractive man. You come across as a kind of straight Tom Sell-eck. That's one of my favorite types."

"I believe you mean one of your several hundred favorite types. So, what's the deal with Jorge? You've never stayed with one man this long before. Is he not really your boyfriend? In your letter to Maynard, you described yourself as still unlucky in love. Is Jorge's father the head of the drug cartel, and is Jorge really your jailer?"

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?"

"I am. I'm doing the novel and the screenplay simultaneously."

"You're quite efficient."

"Yeah, I am. Even though I don't have to be. I've got nothing but time on my hands down here."

Fools rush in. "What's the novel about?"

Suter smiled ruefully. "It's about an exceptionally charming and attractive man with intimacy issues. Sound familiar? I confess. The novel is autobiographical."

"Oh, well. 'Intimacy issues.' I'm glad to hear you're writer enough to tackle one of the great literary themes."

"You're ridiculing me."

"You bet."

"Why? Why should you make fun of me?"

"Because you talk about yourself in vague, psychobabbly euphemisms. You don't have 'issues,' Suter. You have a history of playing with gay men cruelly. What it is, is acting like a total asshole. In fact, there's a title for you: The Autobiography of an Asshole."

Suter stared at the blackening sunset and said nothing.

"I feel sorry for you," I said, "because for whatever reason, you can't seem to help yourself. You do have some shallow understanding of your weaknesses and their cruel effect on others. But some critical part of what ought to be your moral ballast is missing, so you minimize what you do to people. You call it 'issues,' when it's actually psychological sadism. I'm sorry that you're deluded, and I'm sorry that you met a man who apparently is even more sadistic than you are. I think you deserve to be socked in the jaw, figuratively or actually. But I don't believe you deserve a lifetime of Jorge. He sounds grotesque."

Suter lay very still on his chaise through this. Then he said, without much emotion, "It won't be a long lifetime, however. My looks will soon fade, and Jorge will lose interest. He'll find another, younger, beautiful slave. His mother will die, I'll lose my protector, and then I'll be killed."

I thought of Timmy back in Washington and his conviction that Maynard's shooting was one of the events flowing from a vast and terrible conspiracy, and then I thought of my own belief that surely all these gruesome events flowed instead from more mundane examples of human weakness and folly, and I told myself with no satisfaction whatsoever that I was right and Timmy was wrong. A drug gang—even one that reached from Mexico into small-town new-car dealerships in Central Pennsylvania—was brutal, but it was also contained and, in the United States of the 1990s, such things bordered on the banal. And Jim Suter? Here was individual-human folly personified.

I said, "But you don't have to be killed, Suter. Before Jorge finished with you, you could go to the feds. You've got the goods on Jorge, his father, Nelson Krumfutz, Hugh Myers, and, I'll bet, others in the organization. You must know enough to buy your way into the Witness Protection Program. No?"

"All I really know is what Jorge told me. None of the threats I've received from Senor Ramos or his business associates, as he calls them, were in writing, or even that direct. I know the outlines of the drug operation but not enough of the specifics to be of much help. I doubt, honestly, that I'd have all that much to offer."

"You've got plenty to bargain with, including the fact that large quantities of coke are being smuggled into the United States inside the seat backs of cars assembled at the plant that supplies GM products to Central Pennsylvania. That will make for a well-attended news conference and thirty or forty promotions at the DEA. If you walked into the U.S. attorney's office tomorrow, Suter, I'll bet you could name your price for the information you've got inside your head."

Suter watched the sun disappear and seemed to mull this over. After a moment he said, "If I went into the Witness Protection Program, would they have to change my appearance?"

What a vain fool he was. "Not significantly, I think. Maybe a mustache or something. I doubt you'd have to have your nose bent sideways or your head shaved." After our walk up the beach, Suter had showered and shampooed his locks, which shone dark orange now in the last light of the day.

"My looks aren't going to last anyway," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm getting crow's-feet and my teeth are yellowing. And if I eat more than one flan a week, my skin breaks out like an adolescent's. This week I've got a zit on my upper lip and one on my butt." I had noticed both, in fact, and thought they only lent a touch of becoming vulnerability to Suter's otherwise flawless appearance.

I said glibly, as if normal bodily deterioration were of scant concern to me, "I'm sure you'll be nicely presentable toward the middle of the next century, Suter. Meanwhile, you've got more urgent matters to consider, such as making sure you're still alive at the end of this one."

"I know that," he said, and shuddered. "By the way, you would not take it upon yourself, I hope, to talk to the feds on your own, and to get them breathing down my neck? That might just get me killed within a matter of hours."

"No," I said, and meant it. I believed that Suter had to get out of the box he was in on his own. "I'm not going to put you at immediate risk—or myself or Timmy or Maynard or anybody else. I am going to check out some parts of your story discreetly. But I won't go to the cops or the feds with any part of this thing without your permission. I wouldn't mind seeing you punished, Suter, for the way you have toyed with people's emotions—a good spanking might be in order—but I certainly don't want to see you killed, and neither does Maynard."

Suter sighed. "Dear, sweet old Manes. That man was one I could have stuck around a lot longer if we'd both been a little differently put together. It was just too bad he was such a bleeding heart. I tend to go for more tough-minded men, for men who are realists, with no illusions about the nature of the human beast. Men such as yourself, for example. But then you already know that. I keep repeating myself in that regard."

I ignored the continuing come-on, which was far too crude for my tastes, and I said, "As I understand it, you broke up with Maynard not just because of your clashing political philosophies but because he refused to play your psychological S-and-M games. When your romance was hot and you suddenly turned cold, he was disappointed but he just let it go. And you couldn't stand that, so you lured him back. Then you did it again—froze him out—and Maynard concluded in his Midwestern way that you were ill-mannered—an extremely serious matter in Southern Illinois—and that was the end of that. Not true?"

Suter said simply, "Maynard is a strong individual. Don't get the idea I never appreciated him or didn't know what I was losing." He smiled weakly and added, "But the problem is, of course, that I have . . . can I say 'psychological sadism issues'? Is that an honest enough description for you?"

"Almost."

He laughed once, pulled himself off his chaise, and said, "Let's eat."

Suter drove me in his big Chevy back to the main highway, then south five miles to a resort-hotel complex near Chemuyil. The palapa-roofed restaurant where we ate was not at all crowded– Christmas to early April was the tourist season here—and it served a nice slab of grouper with grilled onions, tomatoes, and peppers. The dessert flan was good, too. The after-dinner coffee was the characteristic Mexican cup of tepid water, served with a jar of Nescafe and a sticky spoon—a well-loved old Aztec ritual apparently.

During dinner, Suter told me he would consider my suggestion that he throw himself on the mercy of the U.S. narcs and attempt to enter the federal Witness Protection Program. He said any such exercise would have to be swiftly and expertly carried out, and I agreed. He said he had never really thought of this as a possibility for his salvation from Jorge and the Ramos family, and the idea of it was both intriguing and terrifying. He said if he decided to do it, he would like my help in making the arrangements. I said, whenever he was ready.

Back at the house, I tried to reach Timmy on Suter's phone for an update on Maynard's condition. But Timmy wasn't yet in our room at the hotel, so I left word for him at the desk that I had arrived safely at my destination and that I was finding my visit useful.

Suter and I sat for a while longer on the terrace talking mainly about Mexican history and politics—his knowledge was wide and deep—and looking up at the moon and stars. A warm breeze off the water kept the insects at bay and felt lovely against my skin. I wished Timmy were with me, and I resolved to plan a vacation with him on this sensuous tropical coast early in the wintery New Year.

I was in bed and dozing off by midnight. Soon after, there were bare footsteps on the tile floor and I felt Suter lift my sheet and ease in next to me. As he kissed me, I looked into that face, moonlit now, and ran a hand through the famous curls. But otherwise I was more efficient than passionate, and when I dropped into a deep sleep no more than ten minutes later, I sensed that Suter's predominant reaction to our encounter had been, like mine, exhaustion.

Chapter 22

Timmy's first words, when I stepped off the plane at National Airport Thursday night, were "That was fast."

"You have no idea."

"I'm so relieved you're back."

"And I'm so happy to look into your guileless eyes."

"Did Suter get you into bed?"

"Something like that."

"And you liked 'it,' probably, but you didn't like him."

"I wouldn't even go so far as to say I liked 'it,' fleeting as it was. God knows what it was like for Suter. He had to prove to himself that he could at least get that far with me, and he did. But for me it was almost entirely aesthetic."

"Do you mean like visiting the Uffizi?"

"Yes, except with a shorter queue to get in. That was the case last night anyway."

"And there was no risk to anybody's health?"

"There was barely any risk to the bed linen."

"Even so, do not do that again, please." His look said he meant it.

"Okay. I won't."

During the cab ride from Alexandria into Washington, I tried to give Timmy an account of my under twenty-four hours with Jim Suter in Los Pajaros and of the dramatic and complex story he had told me. Timmy kept indicating the cabdriver with his eyes, as if Mulugeta Fessahazion might be more than passingly interested. So I gave up on the Suter narrative and instead  described physical  developments  along the Yucatan Caribbean coast since Timmy and I had vacationed there in the mid-eighties. We planned another trip together in January or February—not to include, Timmy suggested, Los Pajaros. "It sounds as if it's not our style," he said.

Timmy did tell me during the cab ride that Maynard was still weak but recovering from his wounds and that he was alert and bordering on the garrulous. I asked if he had told Timmy anything useful to my investigation about Suter or anyone else. But Timmy raised an eyebrow in the direction of Mulugeta, locked his lips, and threw away the key.

Back on Capitol Hill, something pungent was in the late-evening autumn air. It wasn't burning leaves, just Ray Craig, who stepped out of the shadows near the hotel entrance as we climbed out of our cab.

"Buenas tardes, " Craig said to me, sneering.

"Yo, Ray."

"Been south of the border, Strachey?"

"Could be."

"I guess going down is nothing new for you." Craig snorted with satisfaction over his witticism.

"Did you follow me all the way to Argentina?"

"You weren't in Argentina. You were in Mexico."

"Oh, I guess you're right about that."

"Calling on Jim Suter."

"Was I?"

"The question is, why?"

"No, that is the answer, Ray. But what is the question?"

He glowered at me for a long time. Timmy stood nearby sending ESP messages my way: Don't irritate him, just get rid of him.

Craig finally said, "The question is, when am I going to bust your ass, Strachey, on a narcotics charge?"

"Not ever, Ray. Because I'm involved in no such thing, and you know I'm involved in no such thing."

"Do I? And do I know that Maynard Sudbury was never involved in smuggling controlled substances from Mexico?"

I sensed Timmy stiffen. "I think you know that, yes," I said.

"Then why," Craig said, giving me the beady eye, "did my two eyewitnesses to the E Street shooting pick Reynaldo Reyes out of a mug book of violent offenders with known drug-gang connections? The -witnesses had gotten a good look at the shooter as he passed under a streetlight, and each witness independently ID-ed Reyes yesterday afternoon. We'll put Reyes in a lineup when we find him and pick him up. Suddenly he's either out of the country or he's under a rock over in the Alexandria barrio. Now, why would this lowlife want to shoot your buddy, who had traveled to Mexico just a couple of weeks earlier for travel writing, you say, if they weren't both involved in the same degenerate occupation? You tell me, Strachey."

Telling Craig what Jim Suter had told me would have explained Maynard's innocent involvement in the affair, but I couldn't do that. I said, "I can't answer that. But Timothy and I know Maynard Sudbury well enough to know that he's about as likely to be involved in drug dealing as Newt Gingrich is. Less probably. Sudbury is one of those ex-Peace Corps, liberal, dilettante types with no particular interest in accumulating money. They're all in the arts and journalism and social services and education. The profit motive seems alien to these people, and I'm not sure how so many of them seem to survive in post-Reagan America, but they do. Without becoming criminals even. Ray, this is strange but true."

Timmy was shifting from foot to foot. Not only had he to put up with Craig, he had also to endure my joshing on the subject of his dearest friends, the ex-Peace Corps mob. But he knew when to keep his mouth shut, and now was one of those times.

Craig said, "I hope for your sake that what you're telling me about Maynard Sudbury is the truth, Strachey. If it's not, you'll have me to answer to. What did you find out from Jim Suter?"

"You still haven't explained," I said, "why you think I went to Mexico to see someone you keep referring to as Jim Suter."

"Skip the bullshit game-playing. If you knew your ass from your left nut, you'd know that I've talked to Suter's mother and to six other people, most of them admitted homosexuals, that you've interviewed about Suter. What's Suter's connection to Sudbury? Is Suter Sudbury's drug connection in the Yucatan?"

"No, Ray. Suter and Sudbury were once boyfriends, and I'm talking to all of Maynard's ex-lovers trying to develop a lead on the shooting. You're hung up on this drug thing, and that's a nonstarter. In order to see that Timothy's and my friend's attacker is brought to justice, I'm simply doing your job the way it ought to be done. Instead of ragging me and having me followed everywhere I go, you ought to be cooperative. Grateful even."

At that, Craig spat a wad of tobacco-y phlegm at my feet and said, "What a bullshitter you are."

I said, "Tell me about Suter's lawsuit."

"His what?"

"Somebody is suing him, he says. Suter convinced me he knows nothing about the Sudbury shooting. But he said there's a lawsuit against him here in D.C., and the cops are involved in it somehow. What's that about?"

Craig said, "It's chilly out here. Let's go up to your room. We can sit down where it's comfortable, maybe throw back a couple of brews, and have an exchange of information."

Timmy said, "It's getting late. What about tomorrow? Could you have your exchange of information tomorrow?"

"Let's have an exchange of information here and now," I said. "Why wait? Ray, why don't you light up a butt and relax? Timmy, if you want to take a load off your feet, you go on up. But I'm going to tell Ray right now that Jim Suter has two connections to Maynard, and both, I discovered, apparently have nothing to do with the shooting.

"One connection is, many years ago Suter and Sudbury were lovers for a short time. The other connection is, a panel with Suter's name on it appeared in the AIDS quilt on Saturday, and Maynard recognized this and notified the Names Project of this strange occurrence the day he was shot. The Names Project is where I plan to concentrate my investigation next, Ray. And if you were smarter than I'm afraid you might be, that's where you'd start asking questions, too."

Craig was sucking in the carbon monoxide, etc., from a Camel Light now, probably reducing the chances that in the throes of withdrawal he would suddenly yank out a service revolver and slam hot lead into our chests. I hated to sic him onto the Names Project—these people deserved better—but I needed time to check out Suter's wild tale of drug gangs in Central Pennsylvania and then to talk him into the Witness Protection Program and save him from his lover-jailer Jorge and the Mexican drug cartel killers.

Craig said calmly, "I already am in touch with the AIDS quilt organization." "Hey, good."

"They faxed me a copy of the form that came in with Suter's panel. The panel was submitted in April by a David Phipps, but the name seems to be phony. He used a Mailboxes, Etcetera drop, and now I gotta get a fucking court order to find out who rented the box. I'm working on it. Am I conducting my investigation to your satisfaction, Strachey?"

"Nice work, Ray. Now tell me this. Who is Captain Milton Kingsley, and why did he follow me to Cancun? I know that a couple of your junior officers have been tailing me around D.C. since Sunday morning. But am I such a criminal celebrity in your department that I merit a captain to keep tabs on me?"

In middrag, Craig went very still. "You spotted Kingsley? Tailing you? In Mexico?"

There was no way I could have blabbed to Craig that a pal of Chondelle's in the department had been the source of Captain Kingsley's travel plans. "I spotted him, yeah."

"How do you know Kingsley?" Craig said grimly. "How did you recognize him?"

"Suter recognized him. He knew him from a piece he once wrote for Washingtonian magazine."

Craig dragged deeply on his cigarette and said nothing more.

I asked him, "What about the lawsuit? Suter wouldn't tell me what that was about. He seemed embarrassed by whatever it was."

Craig still stood looking pensive, disturbed even, apparently over my report that I had spotted Milton Kingsley in Cancun. Finally Craig said, "I ran Suter's name. It came up once. He was charged with assault last year. The judge threw out the assault charge. But the court record says the victim told the judge that he planned on pursuing a civil action. I've got somebody checking to find out if that was done."

"Who brought the charge, and what was the nature of the assault?"

"The alleged victim was a Carmen LoBello. LoBello is a man who used to do a drag act, pretending to be Mrs. Liddy Dole. The so-called assault was this: Suter gave LoBello herpes, LoBello claims, and now LoBello's got a big cold sore on his upper lip half the time. LoBello can only do G. Gordon Liddy Dole, with a big mustache that covers up the cold sore. Except, nobody wants to go see a drag act with somebody called G. Gordon Liddy Dole. So LoBello is up shit creek. You queers sure pick up some interesting ways to get yourself in trouble," Craig said, and I had to agree with that.

Chapter 23

Of course I'm going to sue that evil man!" LoBello spat out. "Because of Jim Suter my career is in ruins! Until I kissed Jim Suter, I was a star! God, I was fabulous. I did Hillary to a tee, my Jamie Gorelick was dead-on, and I had Dianne Feinstein nailed, and Barbara Bush and Maxine Waters, and– God, can you imagine what the demand would be for my smarmy-marmy Liddy Dole now that that nine-faced Southern bitch is all over the tube, doing her white-bread Oprah routine at the Republican convention! I'd be doing Liddy on Jay, on Let-terman, on Nightline. Instead, I'm still pushing mine-acid reports around, and it's all because of that lying, manipulative, vicious, evil rodent Jim Suter. Oh, I'm suing him, all right. I'll sue his ass from Dupont Circle to the Supreme Court! When I catch up with Mr. Pretty-head-herpes-mouth Jim Suter, just you watch the subpoenas fly!"