Red White and Black and Blue (22 page)

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.

* * * *

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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."

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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."