Red White and Black and Blue

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Текст книги " Red White and Black and Blue "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Chapter Twenty-four

The fire department found it puzzling. They doubted my story about having not tended to a fuel leak, although one fireman complained that Toyota wasn't the brand it once was.

Anyway, one fireman said, the blaze seemed to have originated in the rear of the car near the gas tank. Two cops came by, acting mildly interested, and when the opinionated fireman told them it looked to him as if it could have been arson, one of the cops said to me, "Do you have any outstanding gambling debts, sir?"

I called a cab to take me downtown, where I rented another car. Bud had outfitted me with a fresh cell phone, having transferred the memory from my old one. The account holder on the new phone was his cousin Ephram. Bud kept the old phone and said he wanted to run some tests on it.

I assumed I was being watched—by multiple parties?—but I barged right into McCloskey campaign headquarters, Mr.

Nonchalant. The multicultural young Phi Beta Kappas in the outer office didn't gasp or even look up, and I could see Dunphy in his office behind his desk.

"Holy shit, Strachey. Get in here and shut the door."

"Have you talked to McCloskey about what happened?"

"He wasn't stunned to hear about it. He had some choice descriptions of you. Loose cannon. Royal fuck up. Goddamn blithering gay caballero. Those are the appellations that are repeatable."

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"I'm no longer an example of a bygone piece of colorfully beloved Americana?"

"He didn't mention that this time."

"Who does he think is behind this?"

"Merle Ostwind."

"That nice Republican country club lady? Come on."

"Not her personally. People who want her elected. Karl Rove? Rupert Murdoch?"

"So, this is all to protect Louderbush and keep him in the race. Then he trounces Shy in the primary and the freaked-out, mild-mannered New York electorate falls in behind Merle in the general. We're back to that scenario?"

"Did we ever leave it? If so, I missed that."

"How adept is Mrs. Ostwind with a gasoline-soaked rag and a match? Somebody just blew up my car."

He sat up. "No."

"Over in Pine Hills."

"Jesus, were you in it?"

"Do I look charred?"

"Oh my God. Are the cops on it?"

"Not in any serious way. Anyway, your name never came up. Or McCloskey's."

"I don't know what to say. God, I'm so sorry, Don. But I don't get it. If you've already been knocked out of the game by Louderbush's despicable blackmail, why would anybody do such a thing? Could it be something else you're involved in?"

"I think not something else, no. I assume it's the Serbians again. Whoever they are."

"More Serbians. Jesus."

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"So, am I still on your payroll?"

"I was going to bring that up. Yes and no. Shy thinks we need to put a bit of distance between you and the campaign.

All this impersonating a federal agent crap and the rest of it has given us all the heebie-jeebies. On the other hand, the senator doesn't want you turning into some embittered ex-employee going off half-cocked. Showing up on 60 Minutes with a paper bag over your head and describing Shy and me as a reeking cesspool of political corruption, et cetera, et cetera. Also, Shy feels that you're the one who enabled Louderbush to blackmail us in the first place, and he'd like to give you the opportunity to get right with the Lord by blackmailing—I use that term facetiously, of course—by blackmailing Louderbush right back. If you can manage it this time."

"Isn't that how this all started out?"

"Blackmail isn't the word I would actually have used for threatening to expose a man's sadistic criminal activities. I'd call it law enforcement by other means. Karmic retribution?

And of course it's all been in the interest of the higher cause of saving New York State from a bunch of Republican idiots."

"The only way out of this that I can think of is, I take the incriminating material I have on Louderbush and find somebody else to confirm it independently—a Times reporter?

The National Inquirer?—and then step aside. Louderbush will blame me, of course, and McCloskey will have to disown me—

your spokesperson will say I approached you guys with this odiferous stuff and you all told me to take a hike."

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"I couldn't have put it more succinctly. This is exactly the approach we were going to suggest. Indirection. And publicly we disown you as seedy PI scum."

"Plus, all the risk will be mine."

"But you'll still be paid. Though from a special fund—an investigative journalism fund set up by a few of Shy's supporters."

"Oh, it's journalism now."

"Will the muck you've raked get in the papers? I should certainly hope so."

I thought, I'm in over my head. It had been a sense of liberal civic duty along with outrage over Louderbush's cruelty along with morbid curiosity along with the need to make a buck along with a comically exaggerated sense of self-importance that had gotten me mixed up in this sociopolitical-twisted-personality phantasmagoria in the first place. But there was still so much I didn't understand about any of it, and it all felt so fraught—would my next car explode with me inside it?—that I considered for about thirty seconds saying to hell with the whole thing.

Then it hit me that that's exactly what somebody wanted me to do at this point: quit. It felt all of a sudden that from the very beginning, I had reacted exactly the way somebody had wanted me to. The more I got roughed up—but never seriously injured—the more determined I had become, and that suited somebody just fine. Under the guise of warning me off, somebody who knew who I was, was egging me on.

Somebody wanted an impasse between the McCloskey and Louderbush campaigns—but an impasse that could collapse at 213

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some third party's whim. A couple of carefully placed phone calls to reporters on spying, dirty tricks and corruption at the McCloskey campaign, along with a couple of carefully placed phone calls to other reporters on Greg Stiver's suicide and Kenyon Louderbush's involvement in it, would tip the election instantly to Merle Ostwind and the Republicans. It was all about timing.

So partly out of political loyalty, and partly out of a sense of injured pride and the need to get even, and partly out of a need to understand a set of circumstances that I knew was ultimately understandable, and partly out of the conviction that this unknown mendacious third party might also be neutralized or even exposed and sent to jail alongside Bud Giannopolous and me, I decided to stay in it. I now knew that all I had to do was look back at the way I had been manipulated and follow the motives.

* * * *

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Chapter Twenty-five

"What phone are you calling from?" Timmy said. "I almost didn't answer the call."

"My phone was hacked. That's how my movements were being monitored. I'd tell you or other people where I was or where I was going, and then when I got somewhere I was kept under surveillance—or beat up or my tires slashed. I'm using another phone somebody lent me. So make a note of the number."

"That's appalling. Is Louderbush behind it? I thought this was the big day. When you met him and convinced him to drop out of the race."

"I'm at the house. The confrontation with Louderbush didn't go well. What happened was, I tried to blackmail him—

I'm using the term in the jocular sense the campaign likes to employ—and he blackmailed me right back. Louderbush and his little wifey."

"What? He threatened to expose you as a homosexual?

How are you blackmailable?"

"He knew about Bud."

He collected his thoughts. "Well. Mister penitentiary-bound Giannopolous."

"Somebody tipped Louderbush off. Though tipped off may be too limited a term." I described the packet of materials that had been shoved through Louderbush's mail slot. "This stuff was dropped off at his house in Kurtzburg anonymously—or so Louderbush said. We know he lies 215

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through his teeth. He told me some wild story about being present when Stiver went off the roof at SUNY, and it was all just an accident, and now the assemblyman has put his unfortunate habits behind him, and we should all just leave him alone."

"Good grief. And his wife was there when he told you this story?"

"She was aiming a microphone at me apparently. All I had with me was a lethal weapon."

"Good for you for not using it."

"So, now I'm semidetached from the campaign and reduced to trying to find somebody else who's unblackmailable to drive Louderbush out of the governor's race, and I have to save my own ass to the extent that I am able. Also, somebody set my car on fire."

"But not your hair."

"I'm serious. The car was parked in front of Bud's place in Pine Hills, and while I was inside the Toyota went up in flames."

I could hear his head wagging. "You should quit."

"Nope."

"I'm frightened."

"So am I."

"This can't be the Republicans. It's somebody worse. The mob."

"Not likely, but it could be some Gordon Liddy type on the fringes of the party. A psychotic true believer. If so, it's a psychotic true believer with resources. But I've got resources, too. I've got the goods on Louderbush, and I've got Bud."

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"Oh, wonderful."

I told Timmy I'd be in touch but that I might be spending another night away from home.

"How's your ear doing? And your hickey?"

"My ear just itches a little, and my hickey is now a pale aquamarine, barely disfiguring at all. When this is over, I want a fresh one, though not from the Serbians."

"I'm sure you'll be able to find someone in the federal pen at Danbury who can fix you up."

* * * *

I called my car insurance company and gave them the info on where the Toyota had been hauled off to. They would receive the police report, and I hoped they didn't deny me coverage on the grounds that my car had been destroyed on account of my unpaid gambling debts.

I got Bud on the phone he gave me, which presumably was secure. "Everything okay in Pine Hills?"

"I have Ephram and a few colleagues in the trade out here, and we're doing some security work on my systems. I got seriously hacked, and now walls are going up. It won't happen again. One of Ephram's more butch pals is down front keeping an eye on the front door. I'm cool. I'm also making some discreet inquiries as to who among the fraternity might have been working on the other side in this—whoever the other side turns out to be."

"That's exactly what I need to know. Who the other side is."

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"Let me get back to you on that. We're all dying of curiosity."

I tracked down Frogman Ying at the state assembly taxation committee.

"Don Strachey here. We talked the other day about the Greg Stiver memorial scholarship fund?"

"Yeah. How you doing?"

"Just checking—did anybody else contact you about the fund? There seems to be some contact-list overlap."

"Yeah, somebody did. But I said I'd already talked to you."

"Do you remember who called?"

"Jim Jameson? Or John?"

"Right, right. We'll get this straightened out. Sorry to have troubled you."

"No problem."

I skipped Millicent Blessing at SUNY; she was probably still waiting for the BBC America crew to show up.

Melanie Fravel at HCCC answered her own phone.

"Hi, Ms. Fravel. It's agent Don Strachey. I was in your office yesterday morning about the case involving misuse of assemblymen's names?"

"Oh, sure. How are you today, Mr. Strachey?"

"I'm well, thank you. And you?"

"I'm super. But I hate this cold weather in June."

"Well, that's the Northeast for you. But if you don't like the weather, wait a day and it'll change."

She chuckled. "What can I do for you?"

"We talked yesterday about duplication of effort among law enforcement agencies. You told me that a John Jameson 218

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had visited you previously about the same case I'm working on. I'm curious. Has he by chance been in contact with you since I came by yesterday?"

"Funny you should ask. Mr. Jameson hasn't, but another man was here yesterday afternoon only a couple of hours after you left. He was asking the same questions about the same situation, and he was asking about you. He seemed to know you."

"Hm. What was his name?"

"Robert Smith."

"That sounds phony to me."

"Well, that's what I thought. I have to say, I was suspicious. He said he worked for the federal government, but his badge didn't look anything like yours. And he just didn't inspire the same kind of trust that you do."

"Can you describe this man?"

"He could have been Mr. Jameson's cousin. Very sort of Slavic and quite big."

"Another Serb war criminal?"

She laughed. "Those are your words, not mine."

"But well turned out for a Balkan thug?"

"Well, yes. In a Paulie Walnuts sort of way."

"Sorry to have troubled you again. I'm going to get this straightened out if it kills me."

"I hope you don't have to go that far, ha ha."

* * * *

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Chapter Twenty-six

A mutual friend gave me the name of a lean and hungry able reporter at the Times Union. It wasn't time for any of that yet, but I knew it had to be soon. I was running out of ears, cars, etc.

I spent the afternoon checking back with people. Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman were both in good shape, and the McCloskey campaign had pulled back their security for the time being. Neither objected to this; Insinger said Anthony had been doing a running mocking commentary on her relationship with Kevin, and she was "like, getting sick and tired of both of them."

Dunphy gave me the information on who my new paymaster would be: something called the Fund for Restoring Ethics in Journalism.

I said, "Is that a joke?"

He laughed. "Of course it is."

I made a number of calls in which I impersonated a Louderbush staffer—in for a dime, in for a dollar—and tried to find out if the assemblyman had intervened on behalf of other young male job seekers. "Hello, yes, I'm just following up on Assemblyman Kenyon Louderbush's endorsement of a faculty position applicant at your institution some years ago. The assemblyman wishes to know if everything worked out to the college's satisfaction.... The applicants name? I don't seem to have it here. Oh it was, uh...." I couldn't say it was that 220

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handsome young fellow with the cracked ribs, so nobody had a clue as to what I was talking about.

Then Giannopolous called. "I got hold of something you wanted. Louderbush's cell phone contacts over the past two weeks."

"Excellent."

"Most are just numbers, but some are voice mails. I've got it on a disk. Can somebody drop it off somewhere?"

I packed up my laptop, my weapon and my personal gear and drove out to Colonie, where I took a room at a Comfort Inn. Bud's cousin Ephram, who was even smaller and weirder looking than Bud, arrived ten minutes later with an envelope, the second of the day for me to open.

Some of the numbers Louderbush called or had been called from had names attached to them, and some didn't. The only name I recognized was Deidre. I figured I'd contact Bud and ask him to obtain a list of Louderbush's office staff so that I could probably eliminate them as persons of interest.

But that wasn't going to be necessary. I listened to a number of innocuous voice mail messages—meet for lunch, campaign meeting at four, don't forget Heather's birthday—

before I landed on this one.

A male voice choked out, between sobs, "I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! I have to see you, I have to see you, I have to see you!"

The name of the caller was Trey, and I noted his number.

Louderbush had returned Trey's call on the same day, but there was no recording of what was said. The date of the call 221

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was June 19, the night Louderbush arranged to meet me at the Motel 6 but never showed.

I called Bud back, and within an hour I had Trey Bigelow's address in New Baltimore, fifteen miles down the Hudson from Albany.

* * * *

I didn't know what Louderbush's car looked like, so I had no way of knowing if the twenty-year-old Ford Fiesta parked in the driveway of the house was his. It seemed unlikely that he would be visiting his boyfriend at five forty on a Tuesday afternoon. He was probably at the Capitol in Albany attending to important legislative business, like not passing the budget.

The house, on a side street uphill from the river, was a single-story 1920s stucco cottage that was not in the best of repair. An old trellis was leaning off the right wall, and nothing was growing up it. Any flowering bushes that had once graced the area around the cavelike front porch—

hydrangea? forsythia?—had long since been cut back to the roots.

I pulled in behind the Ford and noted the Louderbush bumper sticker on the rear.

Bigelow didn't answer the door right away. But he finally opened it using the one arm he had that wasn't in a sling.

I said, "I don't know you at all, but whoever you are, you deserve better than Kenyon Louderbush."

He started to close the door, but I got a foot and a shoulder between the door and the jamb. "Either you talk to 222

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me or you talk to somebody who's going to be a lot less sympathetic and understanding than I am."

"Well, fuck, I can see I certainly deserve better than you."

Indicating the sling, I said, "Is this what you really want?"

I pushed my way on into the foyer and shut the door behind me.

He said, "Who are you, anyway? Are you, like, from the SPCA?" I could smell the beer on his breath.

"You know," I said, "this time it's your arm. The next time it could be your neck."

"He already did that. Collarbone anyways."

He was tall and gawky, with a beaky nose, a nice set of cheekbones and huge green eyes. His big head of flaxen hair needed tending to, and his jeans and tank top were stained with what could have been Chef Boyardee or could have been blood. The living room, through an archway to the left, was a mess—beer cans, supermarket tabloids, an empty pizza box—

and the TV was tuned to Judge Judy.

I said, "What do you think the judge would have to say about the way Louderbush beats you?"

He said, "She'd throw his ass in jail," and then he began to tear up. "Hey, look, I have to get ready for work. I don't know who you are, but I can't talk to you. I gotta pull my shit together, man."

"Where do you work?"

"Price Chopper. Checkout."

"You're miserable. You're a mess. Don't you want out of this?"

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"Yes. No. Yes and no. I mean, yes. Yes, I think I do. I've had e-fucking-nuff."

"It's not as if you're dependent on him."

"No, not financially. Though he helps me out. Beer money."

I pushed a pizza box aside and sat on the couch. Judge Judy was giving a tongue lashing to a black woman with impressive decolletage and a hairdo that looked like a small Las Vegas casino.

"What do you get out of it?"

"Unconditional love." He looked at me with the big eyes and more tears ran down his cheeks.

"What am I not understanding here? The conditions seem to be, he gets to seriously hurt you."

He perched on the edge of a folding metal chair. "It's usually not serious. This thing"—the arm—"is unusual. I don't think he meant to break it."

"What did you tell the hospital?"

"That I fell off a ladder."

"Do you have health insurance?"

"No, I'm not full-time. But Kenyon takes care of it. He has state insurance, and he gave me some fake card that says I'm one of his kids. He says I can say I'm adopted."

"How old are you, Trey?"

"Nineteen."

"Where did you meet Kenyon?"

"Online. Silver Daddies. He looked so butch and so sexy and so dangerous. That appealed to me. I'd been in this type 224

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of relationship before, but never with a dude who was so rough and important."

"And you really want to keep this up? It's only a matter of time before you suffer brain damage or something else that can't be fixed. Do you want to end up in a wheelchair at your age?"

"Maybe. I know I have low self-esteem. Maybe that's the only thing I'm good for. Being treated like shit."

"Have you ever tried to get out of the relationship?"

"A couple times. But it's just pretend. It's just so Kenyon can come down and get really liquored up and beat the crap out of me. He scares me though. One time I really meant it.

He broke my fucking nose and it hurt like all get-out, and I told him that was it. I was serious this time, and he knew it.

He went bananas. He was drunk as shit, and he started yelling about how if I tried to leave him he would kill me. He said he did it before—shoved some kid off a roof. Some SUNY

student. I believed him too. He was so wild that night and crazy drunk."

"Did he mention the SUNY student's name?"

"I think it was one he mentioned before. Greg somebody.

Kenyon had gotten this kid a job somewhere—Price Chopper maybe—and then the kid changed his mind about getting pounded by Kenyon all the time. He had some friends who talked him out of it. And when he told Kenyon he was breaking it off, Kenyon chased him up on a roof somewhere and pushed him off and killed him. He said every time I think about locking my door when he wants to come down here and 225

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get a little and then kick the crap out of me, I should remember what happened to this other poor kid."

"So you think it's true?"

"Sure. Kenyon's a celebrity. They can get away with shit like that."

"What if somebody offered to protect you from Kenyon?

Get you into some kind of program?"

"Like Judge Judy?"

"I don't know about that."

"What about The Price is Right?"

"No, I meant some kind of program to help you deal with your need to get beaten up by your boyfriends."

"Like shrinks?"

"Sure, some kind of counseling. Have you ever been in a relationship with a man that was just pleasant and fun and nonviolent? Like friendship except with sex, too?"

"Yeah, in high school. With Jason Phipps. But my dad caught us one time and beat the holy bejesus out of me."

"I'm sure I can get you into something. And if you have no health insurance, I know some people who will help out on that end."

"So, what are you? Are you with the government? I'm not under arrest, am I?"

"No, I'm not connected with the government. I'm private."

"What happened to your ear?"

"Somebody hit me. But I was an unwilling victim. If I run into the guy again—and I hope to—I'll try to put him behind bars."

"In jail."

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"You bet."

"So, let me get this straight. You're not one of Kenyon's other boyfriends?"