Текст книги " Red White and Black and Blue "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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Chapter Thirteen
My room at the Crowne Plaza had been ransacked. Since I had hardly any belongings with me in the room—a small bag, a change of clothes, toiletries—this tossing stuff around was plainly for show. They wanted me to understand that they always knew where I was and how pathetically vulnerable I was.
My laptop was on the desk where I'd left it. So was the police report on the Stiver suicide that had been faxed to me.
They—they being the Serbians?—hadn't taken the police report with them. Why? Because they already had a copy?
I powered up the laptop. It seemed fine. My password—
whyworry—seemed to be the only thing the Serbians didn't know about me. My files were intact and the Internet connection blazed to life when I commanded it to do so. Still, I figured I'd have the McCloskey campaign's security techies check the computer out. Along with my car and...what? Our coffeemaker? Timmy's electric toothbrush?
How did they know where I was staying? I thought that I had not been followed from Crow Street to the hotel, but perhaps these people were such professionals and there were so many of them that I was simply helpless against their vast competence.
Down at the front desk, I asked the clerk if anybody had been looking for me over the past seven hours. The well-manicured young man perused his counter area, looked back up at my bandaged ear and said no. There was no point in 116
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telling him that my room had been broken into. I was the only person with a coded key card that could open the door to room 612. Just the maid and I, and anybody else who could hack into the hotel's computer system and retrieve my room number and card code.
"Will you be staying with us another night, sir?" the clerk asked.
"Yes, I will," I lied, and thought about where I might actually spend the night where the Serbians would not be able to find me.
Back in the room, I ordered a Cobb salad from room service and called Timmy. He wasn't answering, so I left a message saying I was back in Albany from Massachusetts and would be in touch.
My Blackberry got excited, and it was a message from Bud Giannopolous. He said there was a Blessing at SUNY, a Millicent Blessing in the public information office. I called there and was told that Ms. Blessing would be leaving the office in a short while and perhaps I could have an appointment with her next week. I explained that I was with BBC America and we were on a tight schedule, and it would be so great if my crew and I could drop by that afternoon. I was put on hold briefly, then informed that an afternoon interview would be feasible.
I got Tom Dunphy on the phone.
"I'm waving at you. Can you see me?"
"No. The windows over there are tinted. You're still at the Crowne Plaza?"
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"One more night. Two at the most." I told him about the break-in at my hotel room. "These people are amazing, Tom.
They see me when I'm sleeping. They know when I'm awake.
They know when I've been bad or good. So, what's going on, for fuck's sake?"
I could hear another phone going off nearby, but Dunphy stayed with me. "This does sound very professional on Louderbush's part. Too professional. It's almost like it's the feds or something. I'm trying to puzzle this out. It is too, too peculiar."
"The feds don't try to rip people's ears off or slash their tires. If they want to intimidate somebody, they are generally subtler in the way they go about it. Anyway, why would federal agents care if Kenyon Louderbush is a total asshole, or why would they even know about any of this? No, this is somebody else with an interest in the primary campaign, probably Louderbush's people themselves. Who's your counterpart over at their campaign?"
"Leonard Sample. Len's young and crass and an anti-Obama true believer. I'd be surprised, though, if Len resorted to violence. He's a religious guy and pious as shit. His violent tendencies are all in his policy ideas."
"Oh? Maybe I'll keep an open mind about that."
"Of course, you should."
I told Dunphy I was going out to pick up my car with its four new tires—these would show up on my expense statement—and I'd like Clean-Tech to check out the vehicle for tracking or listening devices and also my laptop for any weirdness.
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"Come by the office later this afternoon, and I'll get some of their geniuses over here. Five o'clock?"
"Make it the Crowne Plaza garage. I'm being watched, and I want it known that I am not alone in this and we have a veritable righteous army at our disposal. They can scare me off, but twenty more just like me will pick up the baton."
Dunphy took this seriously. "The campaign can't afford twenty more like you, Don, but I take your point."
I ate half my Cobb salad, then had to get up and get going. I drove out to Schenectady on Route 5, assuming I was being followed but not caring overly much. I returned the rental car and picked up my Toyota with its shiny new tires.
The tab came to $712 for the tires, towing, and so on, an unanticipated expenditure for donors to the Shy McCloskey gubernatorial campaign. It was up to me—and maybe only me?—to see that they got their money's worth.
Heading back to Albany on the interstate, I took the Washington Avenue SUNY exit and made my way to the administration building that housed the public information office. No one seemed to be following me. I checked the skies overhead for miniature drone aircraft with cameras but didn't spot any.
I identified myself to the department receptionist and said,
"I'd like to talk to Ms. Blessing, if I may. It has to do with the death of a student five years ago."
She nodded sympathetically. "I'll check with Millie. People are coming from BBC America to interview her, but they haven't shown up yet."
"I'll try to be quick."
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I was soon ushered into an office like Paul Podolski's—
spare design, functional gizmos, bookish clutter—except three times the size of his and with a couch. A window looked out on the spot half the length of a rugby field away where Greg Stiver had fallen to his death.
Millicent Blessing, stylish and fiftyish, with a ready smile and a firm round bottom, offered her hand and said, "I'll be happy to talk to you, Mr. Strachey, but it's really the lawyers who the McTavishes should be in touch with. At this point, we're all at the mercy of Chilton, Quarrels and whatever they might work out with the McTavishes' law firm. Or is that who you're representing?"
"Who are the McTavishes? What's their involvement? I'm confused."
"Oh. Gail said death of a student. Is this about something else?"
I took a seat, as did Blessing, now looking a bit tentative about my presence.
"I'm making some inquiries for a client about graduate student Gregory Stiver's suicide five years ago. I understand you were here at the time."
The smile melted away and Blessing may actually have blanched. "Oh yes, I remember that. It was horrible. I was thinking of another death on campus. One more recent—a binge drinking tragedy. But, yes, Gregory Stiver. That one was heartbreaking, just heartbreaking."
"Greg was about to receive his master's degree. All that achievement, and then he jumped to his death. From that building just over there, I understand. The Quad Four tower."
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She blinked back tears. "That's right. The awful thing is....
It's hard to talk about this, but the terrible thing is, I was here in the office at the time sitting right at my desk where I am now. And if I had looked out the window a few seconds later than I did, I might actually have seen Gregory fall. I think—I'm saying I think—I noticed him on the roof before he jumped off of it. But I didn't make anything of it. I suppose I just assumed it was university maintenance people up there.
Then a couple of minutes later there were security staff and the police and the ambulance, and that's when I went down there. I saw that boy's broken body. It was a sight I'll never forget. It was devastating, just devastating."
"You said you might have seen what might have been maintenance people on the roof. People, plural. Not just Greg?"
"Maybe. I don't really know. There was so much confusion at the time, I wasn't really sure what I saw or when I saw it. I thought about it afterward, trying to remember. But I do have this image in my head that I can't get rid of, of two people on the Quad Four roof before the thing happened. That's all it is, just a kind of blurry image, like a picture that's out of focus."
"In your image, what were the two people doing?"
She sighed. "God, I wish I knew. Nothing. Just standing or—I don't know. Working on the roof? Of course, maybe I just imagined I saw anything at all. I told the police detective about what I thought I remembered, and he said nobody else had reported seeing anything similar. He said it seemed as though it was just Gregory on the roof, because his backpack was up there and his cell phone. And of course if anybody 121
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else was there at the time, presumably they would have tried to stop Gregory from jumping, and then they would have reported whatever they knew about the whole hideous situation."
"Do you remember the police detective's name?"
"I don't, really. He was a middle-aged man with male-pattern baldness. Rather emotionless. I remember thinking he wasn't just stoic but rather cold."
"Could it have been Detective Ivor Nichols?"
"Oh. I think it was. Ivor is an unusual name for an Albany police officer."
"He was the investigating officer. I can't ask him about his own recollections because Detective Nichols died a couple of weeks ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Was his passing work-related?"
"Lung cancer."
"So not work-related, exactly. Though you have to wonder how much cancer is triggered by stress."
"Or the nicotine and tar a lot of people still employ to cope with stress."
"I smoked in college. Nicotine is such a powerful drug. I can't say I think about it much anymore. But if there's an afterlife and smoking is allowed, I'd be tempted to take it up again. What harm would there be in it at that point?"
"Sounds awfully good to me. How much," I asked, "did you know about Greg Stiver's personal life? Apparently it had been stressful in the months before his death."
"I knew very little. The police looked into that. Apparently friends of Gregory talked about job-hunting difficulties. I 122
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know he was gay, but there was no evidence that he was bullied or anything like that. Nothing that I heard about, or that the police mentioned. And there was a suicide note, the police said."
"Yes. Although I don't know where that note is today.
Three people saw it, and where it went after that is unclear."
"Why, may I ask, are you looking into Greg's death five years after it happened? Does this have something to do with insurance? There were no legal complications at the time involving the university. The stairwell door had been left unlocked, but no one at the time made anything of that at all.
If someone is determined to jump from a high place, they can easily find somewhere to do it."
"There are some lingering questions about a relationship Greg was in and whether or not its abusive nature contributed to his taking his own life."
"Oh no. How horrible."
"It's murky, but apparently there was something violent going on with another gay man that contributed to Greg's despondency."
"So are legal proceedings underway? I mean, what's the statute of limitations on something like that? And who are you conducting this investigation for?"
"My clients are people sympathetic to Greg and his fate."
"His family?"
"No, they're a bit of a conundrum in all this."
"I don't know that they ever contacted the university after Gregory's death. I'm trying to recall, but I think I heard that 123
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his belongings stayed with the campus police and no one ever picked them up."
"Might campus security still have them? His backpack? His phone?"
"You'd have to ask. I can tell you who to talk to over there."
"There's one puzzling note on the campus cops' report, which I've seen. The note says Call from Leg. That's L-E-G-period. Then it says Blessing responding. What was that about? Did L-E-G mean Legislature?"
She didn't flinch or turn white again. "Hmm. It probably meant Legislature. Our office is involved with university relations with the Assembly, the Senate and the governor's office. It's entirely possible someone from the Legislature contacted me about the circumstances of Gregory's death.
Maybe an assemblyman or senator who knew the family. I have no memory of it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
You know, I could check. My notes on the incident are in our system."
"Would you? That'd be great."
"Then, Mr. Strachey, I'm afraid I can't spare you any additional time. BBC America is sending a crew out to interview me. I assume it's for something they're doing on budget cuts or tuition increases. Budgetarily, we're under the gun like never before. The Brits are, too, so I suppose they want to know how were handling the financial crunch."
"Probably."
She fooled around with her computer for a minute or two, scrolling up and down, this way and that.
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"Here it is," she said finally. "Assemblyman Louderbush's office called asking for a copy of the campus police report.
Security knows that we liaise with the Assembly, so they passed on the request to us. I'm sure I sent the report, as per the request. It is odd, though. Isn't Mr. Louderbush's district out in the western part of the state? Gregory was from Schenectady."
"He was."
"And now Kenyon Louderbush is running for governor.
Mister Tea Party. Your investigation has nothing to do with that, does it?"
"That remains to be seen."
Now she was starting to look apprehensive. "What happened to your ear?"
I gave her a quick rundown on the ex-girlfriend. She seemed skeptical, but before I left she did give me the name of the campus police official who might know where Greg Stiver's phone and backpack could be found.
* * * *
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Chapter Fourteen
At first, the campus cop didn't want to look for the stuff. It was in a room he didn't have a key for. And the guy with the key was on his break. I asked where the break was taking place, and I tracked the officer down in a cafeteria. He couldn't give me the key, of course—even though I was Gregory Stiver's Uncle Donald—but he said he'd be returning to the office in ten minutes. I sat down and watched him read the New York Post.
"Yanks are for shit this year."
"Looks that way."
In the office, I was required to sign something certifying I was a Stiver family member. I did so and walked off with Greg Stiver's backpack. I checked to see if the cell phone was in it. It was, along with books and other items.
I had a number of chargers in the car and found one that fit Stiver's five-year-old Verizon phone. It was just a telephone, no aromatherapy apps or IMAX. I charged the phone while I drove downtown.
Back in the hotel room, I checked the phone first. There were eighteen stored numbers and I made a note of each.
The only ones that rang a bell were Jenny, Prof P, and KL . I guessed KL was not Kuala Lumpur but Kenyon Louderbush.
Moreover, the last number called from this phone five years earlier was the one listed for KL.
Otherwise the backpack yielded nothing useful. It contained a copy of Stiver's thesis, two books on economic 126
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theory, a copy of the National Review and a half-full bottle of drinking water. There was no notebook or other more personal item. The Albany cops had undoubtedly been through the bag, so it was possible some of its contents had been removed.
I phoned Timmy, who answered this time. I asked him if everyone in his office was frantic, what with the state budget many weeks overdue and the state coming close to running on empty.
"Very funny."
"Right. It is Friday afternoon."
"Myron's on his way into the city, and the rest of us are sitting around figuring out ways to add some generous new perks to our pension plans."
This was a joke, for Timmy's boss, Assemblyman Lipschutz, had led countless fights to reform both the nonsensically overstuffed state budget and the way the Legislature was a mere plaything for the corporate and union lobbyists who underwrote election campaigns. None of these reform efforts had come close to succeeding, and Shy McCloskey had pledged his support for another reform go-round. He may even have been sincere.
I brought Timmy up to date on my visit with Hugh Cutler, who had been surprised that his estranged brother had killed himself, and on my meeting with Millicent Blessing, who believed she had seen two people on the roof of Quad Four just before Greg Stiver plunged to his death.
"So is it looking as if Stiver's death wasn't actually suicide?
That's unnerving."
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"I don't know. As it adds up, the evidence keeps coming back to that possibility. It's hard to imagine, though, that anybody—Louderbush or anybody else—would have pushed Stiver off a building in broad daylight. It's true that it all happened while classes were in session, and you know how deserted a college campus can become while everybody is indoors taking notes and trying hard not to look at their watches more than once every five minutes. But there are always a few people out and about, so any kind of rooftop confrontation would be tremendously risky for anybody intent on foul play."
"Of course, foul play isn't often intended. Sometimes it just happens."
"There's that, yes. Maybe especially among people with a history of violent behavior between them."
"Also, how tall is the building?"
"Eight stories."
"So anything happening on the roof wouldn't be visible from down below unless it was happening at the very edge.
Witnesses would have to be some distance from the building to have a view of any activity on the roof. And that distance would make it hard to make out what was going on."
"Hence Millicent Blessing's uncertainty over what she saw."
"But," Timmy said, "if it wasn't suicide, how at this late date—or anytime—would anybody know what the truth was without having been there at the time? Only the other person on the roof—if there was another person—would know what really happened. So, are you feeling kind of at a dead end in this?"
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"My assignment is to find out if Kenyon Louderbush really did have an abusive relationship with Greg Stiver, and if so, might it have contributed to his death? Figuring that out still seems doable, even though the only two witnesses so far, Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman, are far from perfect as credible moral finger pointers, and Janie is unlikely to go public at all. I'm convinced, though, that Louderbush did do something very, very bad—so bad that the Serbians keep trying to scare me off the case. So I have to keep slogging.
This guy has to be stopped."
"Louderbush plus his Balkan gangsters."
"Well, whoever the bastards were who beat me up and wrecked my tires and ransacked my room."
Now he was paying even closer attention. "What do you mean, ransacked your room?"
"Oh, didn't I mention that? While I was in Massachusetts this morning. They got into my room at the hotel."
"God, how did they do that? Those rooms are supposed to be secure."
"They're supposed to be."
Timmy fussed for a few minutes over my physical vulnerability, and then asked, "Do you have your gun with you?"
"I do."
"I don't know why that makes me feel worse, not better.
Well, I do know why. As I have pointed out previously, it's the statistics."
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"It's true that statistically handguns are far more of a risk to their owners than to the average violent criminal. But you know me. Remember, in college I got a C in statistics."
"Oh, well, then. So was anything taken from your room?"
"No, the break-in was just more mau-mau-style waving of bones and feathers in my face. They want me off the case, and this was part of their instant-message booga-booga routine."
"They must be wondering what it would take to actually get you to throw in the towel. Or, maybe they aren't wondering that at all. Maybe their aim in threatening and harassing you is entirely different."
"Like what?"
"I don't know."
"These guys do seem to be holding back. But they let me know constantly that they're on top of my every move. Clean-Tech is going to check the car for a tracking device, and they'll go over my laptop, too."
"How's your ear? And your big hickey?"
"The ear hurts. The hickey is sexy as all get out."
"Will you stay at the hotel tonight? If the Louderbush gang knows your every move, why not just come home? We can keep a cauldron of boiling XVOO at a second floor window in case the Croatians start marching up Crow Street."
"Serbians. No, let's keep you and the house out of this. I'll let you know where I end up."
"Be careful."
"Yep."
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It was nearly five, and I grabbed my laptop and took the elevator down to the hotel parking garage. A white Clean-Tech van was waiting near the entrance, and out stepped Tom Dunphy and two stringy gimlet-eyed men in sports jackets. A fourth man drove the van as I led them all down one level to where my Toyota was parked. I handed the computer over to one of the solemn guys, who climbed into the back of the van with it. The other man had a black box with a wire and a wand, and he began waving it around my car. The van's driver got out, and he opened all the doors on the Toyota and popped both the hood and the trunk.
While these guys worked, I stepped into the shadows of the garage with Dunphy. I watched other cars come and go while we talked. Nobody looked our way or stopped. No Serbians appeared, or Croatians or Roma.
Dunphy told me the McCloskey campaign was creeping ahead but was having trouble raising money because Louderbush was draining off a good bit of cash in the Buffalo area. And even downstate around heavily Democratic New York City, donations were down. Too many Dems assumed Louderbush would win the primary and Ostwind the general, and a dank fatalism had set in. Big givers were already looking ahead to other electoral races two years down the road. It was becoming more and more critical, Dunphy said, that Louderbush be forced to drop out of the gubernatorial contest soon. Otherwise, just around the bend lay colossal ruin.
I gave Dunphy an update on my findings, including the report from Millicent Blessing that Louderbush's office had 131
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made inquiries about the Stiver suicide soon after it happened, even though Stiver was not Louderbush's constituent and his district was over 200 miles from Stiver's Albany residence.
Dunphy said, "That's evidence of something, it sounds like."
"It seems to be. Why were his staff people asking? I'd love to find out. You don't happen to have a mole working in Louderbush's office, do you?"
"No, we don't. A dirty trick like that would be wrong."
Why did he talk like this? "Tom, you aren't wearing a wire, are you?"
"Of course not. Why would you ask that?"
"It's my Walmart training."
"You worked for Walmart?"
The guys checking my car out came over and said they couldn't find any tracking or listening device. They said a more thorough search in their shop could be arranged but was unlikely to yield a different result. They were certain no electronic transmissions were being broadcast from anywhere in my car.
This was a relief in the sense that I could now drive my own car and not have to worry about leading Louderbush operatives to my every encounter. But it was disappointing in that I still had no idea how these people always seemed to know exactly where I was at any given moment.
The computer man returned my laptop and said it didn't seem infected in any way, and my files had not been accessed except via my own password.
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"There is some gay porn in there," the guy said. "I have to mention that in case you didn't know it was there. College wrestlers in sexual activity with teammates?"
"I'm aware of that material."
"That's up to you. It's not uncommon. And this is your own PC, not a government apparatus, so it's your business."
"True enough."
Dunphy said, "Gay college wrestlers. Holy jeez. I'm sure that wasn't the case at Williams."
The Clean-Tech crew departed, and Dunphy said he would make his own way back down the hill to his office. I walked with him out to State Street, and he asked me what was next according to my plan of attack.
I said I wasn't sure, but I knew I needed to chase down any additional witnesses I could find to the Stiver-Louderbush abusive relationship. I said I also wanted to talk to Stiver's parents, if possible, and anybody else who might offer insights into Stiver's intentions and his state of mind in the weeks and days before his death. I planned, too, on checking out the college where Stiver's thesis advisor said he'd been offered a job after he supposedly told others that he had been rejected twice for teaching positions.
"That all sounds," Dunphy said, "as if it might take a while.
I'm getting nervous as hell that by the time you nail this guy to the cross—and eventually I'm sure you will nail him—by that time Merle Ostwind will be up there at the top of State Street hill with her pretty little white-lady right hand raised up in the chill January air being sworn in as New York State's next governor. Can you speed this up just a wee bit, Don?
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God, tempus is fucking fugiting. Can you understand the position we're in here? Well, of course you can. And I know you can do this job for us. I've heard that about you. That and all kinds of other good things. Mister-Get-the-Job-Done-One-Way-or-Another. Just do it faster, please, if you don't mind my saying so. I'm putting pressure on you, and pressure is good. Grace under pressure. That's all I'm insisting on. Grace and, more importantly, speed. Can I make it any plainer?"
I said, "Dunphy, I think you need to walk across the street to Jack's for happy hour and take a load off. You're unraveling and that's not helping. In the meantime, either keep me on the payroll to finish this job as fast as I can humanly do it, or fire my ass and bring Pinkerton in, or Rudy Giuliani, or Captain Marvel. Think it over. I'll be in touch."
I left him on the sidewalk looking alone and dejected, and I felt pretty rotten myself. In fact, I had no idea what exactly to do next. I rode back up to my room, popped more Tylenol—the earache had seemed to spread deep into my brain—and stuffed my meager belongings into my bag and prepared to head off to—where?
My cell phone rang.
"This is Strachey."
A long pause. I noted the number calling me, and I saw that it was the same number that was stored in Greg Stiver's phone as belonging to KL.
I said, "Take your time. I know who you are."
More static. Then, weakly, "How could you know who I am?"
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"Your number was stored in Greg Stiver's cell. I saw it there."
More static. Where was he calling from? Finland?
He said, "I need to talk to you."
"Sure. That could be helpful."
"No. I just need to explain. You don't understand any of this."
"Okay."
"Can we meet? Privately?"
"Yes, we can. My house on Crow Street?"
His voice was the one I'd heard countless times on television going on about horrible big government and out-of-control taxes, but now the voice was wobbly and a bit hard to make out. He said, "No, outside of Albany somewhere. Where we can talk and I won't run into anybody."
"There's a Motel 6 on Route 7 just east of Troy. I'll get a room."
Another pause. "I suppose that would work."
"Seven o'clock?"
"No, it's better after dark. Ten is better. Ten o'clock."
"My car will be parked in front of my room. I'll tape a note to the door that says Don." I described my car and gave Louderbush the license number.
"I've got that. Thank you. Thank you so much."
"Will you be coming alone, Assemblyman?"
"Absolutely. That's the whole point."
"Right. See you at ten."
He rang off and I wondered how I was going to sit still for the next three and a half hours.
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