Red White and Black and Blue (2 page)

Armageddon only lasted as long as an election cycle, and The Liberal Rapture was always just around the corner.

I said, "I've never done opposition research before, and generally I disapprove of it."

"Uh-huh."

"From what I understand of the practice, it rarely produces information voters need to know about a candidate. Any news that somebody smoked pot in college or had a love child at seventeen who's now the Norwegian minister of fisheries is basically just a meaningless distraction. Unless, of course, the candidate has made a secret pact with Norway to have all the school children in his jurisdiction eating herring noodle surprise for breakfast and lunch."

A mild shrug. "The stuff you get from oppo's a meaningless distraction, yes, but it's a meaningless distraction that often matters. Elections, as I'm sure you know, are generally won or lost by a few percentage points. And if you can manipulate 13

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even a small fraction of voters into being turned off by your opponent's one-time or even current dropping-his-drawers problem, say, or by his having neglected to file his state tax return in a timely manner when he was nine years old, chances are you win. To the sensible folks you and I dine with at La Serre, these rude matters are an irritating distraction, of course. But to that always unhappy segment of the electorate that's eager to focus its inchoate resentments on a public figure who wants something from them—such as a vote—

these irrelevancies can reign supreme. Especially if the irrelevancies have to do with things these unhappy voters aren't getting enough of, such as sex or money."

I said, "I've never heard anybody use
inchoate
in conversation before. What were you, an English major?"

Dunphy laughed. "Why else would I end up in a job like this?"

"I know."

"Anyway," he went on, "opposition research can turn up information that's not merely ugly but does in fact bear on character, which is not irrelevant at all for public officials.

Example A is one of our own. It was almost certainly a hired investigator such as yourself who tracked down Eliot Spitzer's wayward peregrinations. I know, I know—a man hiring prostitutes. Ideally that ought to be between a man and his wife and his conscience, not for the readership of the
New
York Post
to drool over. But our formerly revered crusading Democratic briefly-governor had cracked down on call-girl operations when he was AG, and it was the monumental hypocrisy that was so universally galling. It pains me to say 14

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it, but this was a legitimate call by the other side. And think of the closeted gay pols who scorn gay marriage and sexual-orientation job-protection laws, and so on, and then it comes out they've got wide-stance tendencies in airport restrooms.

No, matters of character do count—openness, honesty, actually being the person voters are led to think a candidate is. Which brings us, Don, to why I've asked you to come over here today."

"Good."

Dunphy's cell phone warbled, and he picked it up, checked the number and shut the phone off. "That'll wait."

"Thank you."

"Before we proceed, I can assure you that this office has been swept recently for listening and recording devices.

Somebody comes in every morning at six. It's Clean-Tech. We use them, and the Republicans use Hunsinger, and Louderbush uses Price. You should know that about Louderbush."

"All right."

"Since what we're about to discuss is extremely

'sensitive'"—Dunphy waggled a set of quotation marks—"and by that I mean very dicey falling-into-the-hands-of-the-media-wise. I would normally ask that you sign a confidentiality agreement. But I'm told that you can be trusted, so a handshake is going to have to do."

"Fine."

"It's your reputation for borderline-difficult, independent-minded integrity, in fact, that got you recommended for this 15

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job. That plus, of course, the fact that you are said to be gay as a Greek sailor. That's true, am I right?"

"I've taken it up the butt more than once."

Dunphy grew even pinker. "So you're going to have an entree into gay circles, and you'll be able to gain the trust of gay people involved in this thing far more reliably than any heterosexual investigator we might have taken on."

I said, "I never heard that about Greek sailors."

"Really?" He looked as if somebody had given him bad information, and what was this going to mean?

"So, what you seem to be getting at, Tom, is that Assemblyman Louderbush is secretly gay? If that's what this is—me outing another closeted pol—I'd have to give that some thought. Louderbush is anti—gay marriage, but otherwise he's not as rabid as a lot of his supporters. He did vote against the hate crimes bill, as I recall. But he's for civil unions, and otherwise he seems to prefer to avoid gay issues altogether. I can think of elected officials far more dangerous to the cause of gay rights than Louderbush. And there are some of those virulently antigay fellows who—if it was established that they'd had a few call boys up to their hotel rooms for back rubs or for luggage-toting duties on junkets to Ibiza—then I'd be prepared to go to town on the situation.

But I don't know about Louderbush. In the hypocrisy department, he wouldn't rank high on most lists."

Dunphy looked somber. "If it was just his being gay, I might agree."

"So he is gay? What else?"

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"Here's the deal. If it's true, it's really bad. There's no two ways about it. It is shameful and ugly. Two sources have led us to believe that Louderbush was once in a physically abusive relationship with a young gay man. Louderbush was the abuser. The young man committed suicide—driven to suicide by Louderbush, two of the young man's friends insist.

I'm not sure exactly how that would work; it sounds exaggerated. But whatever the truth of the situation, it does seem as if Louderbush was involved in a gay relationship that was messy and ugly and reflects poorly on his character. It was certainly a violation of his marriage vows, not that that alone disqualifies anybody from public office in this easygoing day and age, or should. But it's the physical and emotional cruelty to his boyfriend that—if true—is something I believe voters need to know about before deciding whether or not to cast a ballot for or against Shy McCloskey's primary election opponent."

I thought about what I'd seen and read of Louderbush. "He doesn't come across as mean."

"I agree."

"He's aggressive and noisy on behalf of what he sees as his libertarian principles. But the only people he seems nasty to are elderly people with medical problems. He wants to abolish Medicare, which at this late date has to be considered a sick joke. But that's all ideological and theoretical, and it's hard to imagine Louderbush actually beating up on any individual he's face-to-face with."

"It could be a Jekyll and Hyde type situation with him. This happens."

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"I guess."

"If it's not true, of course, we'd pay you for your time and effort, and that would be that. Truth, justice, and the American way would prevail whatever you came up with. But if it is true, well, you'd be doing your bit to help elect a good man governor of our state, and Louderbush could slink away and enter rehab and refind Jesus and live to drive us all nuts another day."

I said, "Okay."

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I'll do it."

"Excellent."

"I hate this stuff."

"So do I."

"Gay people should be held to the same moral standards for their behavior as other people. But anybody Louderbush's age—what is he, in his fifties?—grew up with so much homophobic crap getting heaped on them, it's a miracle most American homosexuals aren't seething and twisted deep inside. Seething or ashamed."

"Really? Are you?"

"No. I got bored with all that long ago. There's just a bit of residual melancholy."

"Before you start looking into what we've got on Louderbush," Dunphy said, "I should tell you one other thing."

"What?"

"We know that the Republicans have gotten wind of this and they don't want it to come out. They want Louderbush on 18

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the Democratic primary ballot. The Ostwind campaign will be working overtime to discredit anything bad you come up with on Louderbush."

"Oh, great."

"They'll say it's all a smear. So you'll need to have all your ducks in a row before we leak this stuff to selected media outlets. Have I whetted your appetite, Don, for your work in the days and weeks ahead?"

I told him no, he hadn't.

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"What do you know about Kenyon Louderbush?" I asked Timmy. I was hiking up State Street hill, and I was one of those people who walk around on sidewalks looking as if they're trying to keep their left ears from falling off. "I mean, besides the obvious."

"You met with Dunphy?"

"Just now."

"So it's Louderbush he wants you to dig up dirt on? Or was that not it?"

"That was it. Opposition research, so-called."

"That's the euphemism."

"Did you ever hear that Louderbush is gay?"

"No, never. And if he is, what else is new? We're almost at that point."

"Not quite. But it's more than gay."

"Oh?"

"It's physical abuse. Supposedly he repeatedly beat up a young gay man he was involved with about five years ago.

Don't repeat any of this. It's a horrible thing to say about anybody."

"Of course."

"The young guy, a SUNY student, committed suicide.

Supposedly because Louderbush drove him to it. Dunphy wants me to check this out and find out if it's true. And if it is, get the goods and drive Louderbush out of the race."

"How awful."

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"They're terrified that all these right-wingers are registering Democratic, and Louderbush will win the primary, and then Ostwind'll bring the Republicans back in. So Louderbush has to go."

"If it's true," Timmy said, "he should go."

"I know. You've never picked up anything in the assembly about Louderbush? You know the scuttlebutt up there."

I was passing the Bank of America now, and the sidewalk was filling up with people heading out for an early lunch.

Several other pedestrians were also holding their ears in place and talking, and a few were jabbering away, hands-free, at what looked like no one at all.

Timmy said, "Louderbush is thought of as a conservative Democratic straight arrow. His mostly rural district, out beyond Rochester, is heavily Republican. He's a First Gulf War vet who, I think, unseated a GOP old-timer with senility problems who didn't know when to quit. This was fifteen or so years ago. He rose through the assembly ranks as an antitax zealot—the guy seems to be a genuine libertarian—and then when the Tea Partiers came along, Louderbush was all of a sudden more than just another antigovernment kvetch. He's a good speaker, and he has the right personal resume: nurse-wife, three personable teenaged kiddos with Silly Bands on their wrists but probably not on their genitalia, and he teaches Sunday school. When the Republicans looked like they were going with the centrist Ostwind, Kenyon suddenly became the answer to the right wing's prayers."

"Teaches Sunday school. Ah, now we're onto something.

He's a fanatic."

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"No, he's Presbyterian, like you were."

"That's what I mean. They play Guy Lombardo arrangements of Beethoven. On second thought, that's about as violent as Presbyterians generally get."

"Bad enough."

"When I was thirteen, the teen boys' Sunday school teacher, Lawrence McCool, read us sports stories. Heroes, exciting games, sportsmanlike behavior. Mr. McCool was partial to the Yankees, even though central New Jersey had its share of Phillies fans such as myself. There was a prayer before we left the church each week—that's when Jesus elbowed his way in—but the class was mostly sports. Also the odd off-color joke. It was in Sunday school where I first heard the joke whose punch line is, 'Little man of Spic 'n' Span, where were you when the shit hit the fan?'"

"Donald, now I finally grasp what the Reformation was all about."

I passed the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It was in the bar here where some years earlier, when the place was still a Hilton, I interviewed a man in a case that led to my having one of my ears bitten off. The ear was soon re-attached, and now it was practically everybody else out in public who went around apparently in fear of an ear coming loose.

I said, "This afternoon I'm talking to these two people making the accusation against Louderbush. Meanwhile, I'll be in the office googling up what I can on the suicide. Dunphy says what's there is sketchy."

"If it was a SUNY student, you might get something from the school. Although I suppose their records are confidential."

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"Yes, I suppose they are."

He heard this the way he often hears things I say, and he briefly moved on to another topic before ringing off.

* * * *

Stiver, 24, was actually a graduate student in economics—

I had imagined someone a bit younger—who had jumped to his death from the roof of the Livingston Quad 4 classroom tower at the State University of New York's Western Avenue campus in Albany. Police had found no evidence of foul play in the late April incident five years earlier. The TU story said friends had described Stiver as despondent in recent weeks.