Read Red White and Black and Blue Online
Authors: Richard Stevenson
Red White and Black and Blue (17 page)
He said, "I don't know that Greg had much contact with the other students the assemblyman mentored. They lived out in his district for the most part. In any case, Greg's 161
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situation was different. The assemblyman assisted Greg with his master's thesis, as I recall. That's what he told me after Greg died, and Mr. Louderbush asked me and another staffer to get hold of the SUNY report on the suicide. The assemblyman wanted to make sure the investigation was thorough and that the death was actually a suicide and not some sort of absurd accident the university was covering up."
"What did you find out?"
"That it was in fact a suicide. There was a note that the police found, and they notified the university."
"How well did you know Greg? His death must have come as a terrible shock. Or did it?"
"I liked him, but I didn't know him terribly well. He came into the office once for a tour, and I saw him occasionally at SUNY Federalist Society get-togethers. Have you talked to his rugby buddies? I don't know who they were, but I'm sure they'd be interested in the memorial."
"No, I haven't talked to them. I'd love to locate some of them."
"Ask the assemblyman. It's one of the interests he and Greg shared. It's a rough sport, too messy for a gym addict like me. But I know Mr. Louderbush played sometimes. Even at his age. He'd come into the office with scrapes and bruises.
But he always said he found it invigorating."
"I know all about that."
"You play, too? Is that what happened to your ear?"
"Yep."
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"Softball is rough enough for me. I grew up in Taipei and played Little League. My family moved to the US when I was twelve. Rugby was a bit exotic for me and my brothers."
"What's your favorite sport now?"
He laughed. "I'm tempted to say muff-diving, but I guess that's not what you were thinking about when you asked the question."
"Ha ha."
"Anyway, are you Timothy Callahan's friend? Why is a raving progressive like Timothy interested in a memorial for someone like Greg Stiver? Or is he a friend of the Stiver family? Or are you?"
"I am. Greg's sister, Jennifer, asked me to help out. This all goes beyond politics."
"Oh sure. It's one of the reasons I love this country. You can hold the most passionate ideological beliefs and still be friends with the opposition. It's one of the ways I disagree with the Tea Party types. They make it all too vehement and too personal. On the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsberg tear each other to pieces on the bench, and yet off the bench they're the best of friends. Take you and Timothy. You can disagree with Assemblyman Louderbush's positions, and yet you still respect him enough to want to memorialize an unfortunate young man who meant so much to him and to the conservative youth movement in Albany.
What you're doing just serves to reaffirm my faith in my adopted country."
"Great."
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"So are you supporting Shy McCloskey for governor? I gather you are."
"Timmy works for Myron Lipschutz. So, sure."
"It's not Shy's year. Four years ago maybe. But Kenyon Louderbush's time has come. He'll be a great governor. At a minimum, he'll keep New York State from turning into a basket case like California. Overspending, fiscal paralysis, government by the special interests—that's all over."
"You think Louderbush can really beat Merle Ostwind? New York has never elected anybody as far right as your former boss. Anyway, you don't go for the Tea Partiers' extreme partisanship. And yet they're Louderbush's main supporters."
"The assemblyman won't be dictated to by anybody. He's his own man. He's going to do what's right. He's not interested in Obama-hating and all that craziness—birthers and deathers and that crap. He simply wants to support and enable the capitalists that built this magnificent country and to let them work their magic the way they once did."
"Like in 1890? Before child-labor laws and food safety and minimum wage and any clean air or water laws at all?"
He smiled. "I'd go back even further than that. 1870?"
"Why stop there? Why not 1840 or 1850, when the US was a virtual paradise?"
"Except for slavery and the cultural genocide of the Native Americans, sure, why not? Hey, you know what? I thought of somebody you should talk to about the scholarship fund.
Randy Spong was a SUNY student who did his master's thesis on the Missouri Compromise and other ways the South fought politically to retain slavery. I remember him because he was 164
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in the Federalist Society for a while, and he came into the office once with the assemblyman. Randy was a year or so ahead of Greg, but I'm guessing they knew each other. As I recall, Randy was a rugby player, too."
"Any idea where Randy is now?"
"I think he's teaching at UVM. He was a couple of years ago, I know."
"The University of Vermont?"
"In Burlington."
"I'll try to track him down."
"I'm sure he'd like to help remember Greg."
"I'll be sure to get in touch."
Ying checked his watch. "I have to get going. I have a date—actually two dates." He grinned. "One at two and another one tonight. I promised my parents I'd be married by the time I was thirty. I'm twenty-eight, so I'm sowing my wild oats while I still can. They have a nice Chinese girl they want me to meet, and that'll be fine when it happens. But meanwhile it's gather ye rosebuds while ye may, if you know what I mean."
I said I thought I did.
* * * *
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I asked Dunphy, "Does the campaign have an airplane I could use? I have to be in Hall Creek Monday morning and Burlington, Vermont Monday afternoon. I'm actually making some progress."
"We occasionally charter a plane for Shy, and we'll be doing a lot more of that as the campaign heats up. But do we have an aircraft standing by for your personal use? No, Strachey, we don't."
I told Dunphy about the possibility of other young men with whom Kenyon Louderbush had had abusive relationships and that I was trying to track down at least one of these people.
"Fantastic! That'd be the final nail in that asshole's coffin.
Great work, Strachey. This is terrific!"
"I'm not there yet, but it's looking worse and worse for the assemblyman. Though here's a new twist, Tom. Louderbush has actually contacted me, and he wants to meet with me and his wife on Tuesday. He claims this is all just a misunderstanding, and once I hear his side of the story I'll report to you and McCloskey and we'll drop this whole opposition research operation. I think it's a crock, but I'm going to go ahead and hear him out. Can you get me wired up for the meeting?"
Dunphy whooped, "Holy shit, Strachey! Louderbush just called you up? That is incredible!"
"I was surprised, too."
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"Oh my God, of course we can get you wired. Clean-Tech can probably do it. I'll check with them to see if they're equipped for that type of thing. Let me just run it by legal."
"Meanwhile, I can't be in two places at the same time.
What's the air charter service you use? I'll set it up myself and bill you."
He fumed for another minute and then gave me a name and number. "I guess," he said, "after Kenyon falls by the wayside, the serious dough will start pouring in and the campaign will be able to afford you. But fuck, this had just better work."
"My thoughts exactly."
My semidetached ear was feeling more itchy than painful by now, but I went home and changed the dressing per my instructions from Albany Med. My headache was pretty much gone, and the atrocious hickey was fading away, too. My muscles were still achy, but I felt as though I could function more or less normally and would be ready to do what I had to in case the Serbians showed up again. I carried the gun in the chic shoulder bag with me at all times.
I got the air charter service on the phone and made arrangements for a Sunday night flight to the airport nearest to Hall Creek—it turned out to be Kurtzburg—and then a late-morning Monday flight up to Burlington, Vermont. Dunphy had already phoned the service and okayed the billing. I also asked for a rental car with a GPS at each location and a motel room in or near Hall Creek.
I e-mailed Bud Giannopolous and requested the name of someone in the human resources office at Hall Creek 167
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Community College. I said I also needed everything Giannapolous could come up with on a Randy Spong, who was on the faculty at UVM—or had been as recently as two years earlier.
Timmy came home, and we spent a couple of hours looking at
Humpy Mat Humpers
and wearing ourselves out in ways that were so much more enjoyable than my exertions on behalf of the Shy McCloskey gubernatorial campaign. I fantasized about Alex Ying's incredible long tongue and asked Timmy if he was doing the same. He said, "Eeww."
* * * *
tuk-tuk
soon lifted off successfully and pitched about for two hours and fifteen minutes—I could see highway traffic down below moving only a little more slowly than we were—before oofing down onto the runway at Kurtzburg Municipal Airport. It was June and still light out, and I worried about running into Louderbush. But he was nowhere in sight among the business and recreational flyers I passed as I crawled out of my saltine tin and was led out to the rental car.
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The motel the air service had booked me into—Walt would be putting up there also—was a locally owned relic called the Hall Creek Lodger Inne that advertised "color TV." The plumbing rattled as I unpacked my few belongings, and the fluorescent light in the bathroom buzzed like an alarm clock going off. But the place smelled of nothing worse than disinfectant, and after dining at the KFC down the road, I came back, read through the
Times
I'd brought along, and fell asleep. I dreamed yet again of the elegant blond woman jumping into San Francisco Bay.
The nice woman in the human resources office at HCCC, Melanie Fravel, asked me if I'd like some coffee, and I said thank you, I would. As I mentally rummaged through her files, she walked down the hall and came back shortly with a mug of coffee with the HCCC logo on it and two cinnamon buns, one for each of us.
"I can't recall that we ever had a visit from the FBI before now, so I have to tell you that this is a special occasion for us. I hope you won't be offended if I tell you that it's actually a bit creepy."
"Creepy? How so? Most special agents think of ourselves as workaday public servants."
Ms. Fravel went to work on her sweet bun, which from the looks of her was not her first of the day.
"It's not creepy because of you, but because this is the second time in—what? three days?—that someone from law enforcement has come asking about Gregory Stiver and his faculty appointment at HCCC five years ago."
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"Really?" I chuckled knowingly. "Your tax dollars at work.
What agency was my law enforcement colleague attached to, may I ask?"
I had shown her a badge I'd picked up at a security company uniform supply store on Suan Plu Road in Bangkok a few years earlier, and she hadn't taken notice of the Thai script on it.
"Well, he
said
he was with the Capitol Police in Albany."
"I'll check with them."
"I have to say that this gentleman didn't inspire trust and confidence the way you do, Mr. Strachey. He was more rough-hewn."
"Like some war criminal from the Balkans?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, that's it exactly! You've described the gentleman to a T. Do you know him?"
"Possibly. What was his name? Do you recall?"
"John Jameson. He said he was Captain John Jameson.
And that was the name on his ID. My goodness, could his credentials have been fraudulent?"
"I have no way of knowing. I'd have to examine them first hand or our lab would. What was Captain Jameson's interest in Greg Stiver and his faculty appointment?"
"The same as yours, if I understood your call this morning.
He said Mr. Stiver's name had come up in an ongoing criminal investigation involving people still alive. Something about members of the state Assembly whose names had been used wrongly and without their knowledge to give candidates for state jobs a leg up? Is that it?"
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"It is. I can see that the bureau needs to get its act together and coordinate better with other police agencies. I can't begin to tell you how embarrassed I am."
"Yes, isn't that how 9/11 happened? Poor coordination between agencies? I mean, I'm not blaming you."
"Well, we all share responsibility to some degree."
She ate some of her bun, and I had a chunk of mine.
She said, "In any case, there was certainly no misuse of our assemblyman's name in that regard. Mr. Louderbush personally called Mitch Darnell, our president, and endorsed Greg Stiver's faculty appointment. Not that any favoritism was involved. Faculty appointments are of course above politics. But we had a sudden opening for an associate professor of history and economics when one of our faculty resigned unexpectedly after her husband was transferred to Florida by his company. Mitch knew that Kenyon had this bright young man he'd previously mentioned to us. And all things being equal, Gregory Stiver filled the bill as well as anyone. We were all shocked and disappointed when Mr.
