Red White and Black and Blue (5 page)

"Yeah."

"How could you be so certain?"

"Well, jeez. I mean, like, if you were involved with a person who was giving you a black eye once or twice a week and making your lip hang off and bleed all over, and you just couldn't help yourself and get away, and you didn't know any other way out, wouldn't you think about just ending it all?

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When life is a living hell, and the person who is making it that way won't back off, it's just what people do sometimes."

"But is that 'driving' someone to suicide? It's not clear-cut.

There are alternatives."

"Well, it's clear enough cut to me. What do you want, for me to draw you a freakin' diagram?"

* * * *

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I thought Jackman and Insinger both might have been right that in a real enough sense Assemblyman Louderbush

"drove" Greg Stiver to suicide. At a minimum, Louderbush preyed on Stiver's vulnerabilities, cruelly manipulated him psychologically, and treated him sadistically—and illegally. If Jackman's and Insinger's description of events was accurate, Louderbush was a man of despicable character who was unfit for public office, even in a country with traditionally low standards of electability. While the American electorate was often at home with officials who had some outsider-y rough edges—rampant infidelity, expense-account ambiguity, a DUI or two—violently unstable men ordinarily did not receive a pass from voters.

And yet the situation remained murky. While Virgil Jackman was willing to sign an affidavit attesting to Louderbush's physical abuse and said he would "go on Liz Bishop"—a Schenectady TV news anchor—if asked to do so, Insinger said she wanted her name kept out of it. Her parents would not want her in the public eye in a matter of such heated controversy, and neither would Walmart.

From the Outback parking lot, I phoned Dunphy.

"Tom, this may take some time. I'm going to need more to go on than what Jackman and Insinger are offering. They're both credible enough for our purposes, but Insinger doesn't want her name used, and Jackman's family has union ties—

his dad was an IUE shop steward—and that'll have the 44

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Louderbush people yelling foul. I'd like to keep digging and see if I can come up with some other people who will corroborate Insinger's and Jackman's allegations and are willing to do it publicly."

"Go for it. I told Shy that you were on Louderbush's case, and he is positively thrilled that you're taking this on."

"Good."

"He is so disgusted by the abuse story and the suicide of a gay young man that he asked if it might be possible to have Louderbush prosecuted. I'm not sure what the statute of limitations would be on that, but I'm going to have our legal guys and gals look into it."

"If it's all true, sure."

"Just work fast. It's three months till the primary, and we're all strapped to the ass of a charging rhinoceros. Our TV

ad campaign for the primary launches just after the Fourth of July, and it would be just loverly if we could scrap all that and husband our ever-too-meager resources for the general. Get Louderbush the fuck out of the way, and we can save a pile of dough
and
sail past Merle into the governor's mansion. Think you can do it, Don? From what I've heard about you, I'm betting you can."

Dunphy liked to lay it on. "If I can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in television ad buys," I said, "maybe I should be working on a percentage basis. Twenty-five percent of whatever you would have spent."

His breathy pause suggested he thought I was serious.

"That would possibly be against the law, but I'm sure a bonus 45

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above and beyond your reasonable fee might be doable.

Maybe five K. Or something in that neighborhood."

"Thanks, but let's see what I come up with."

"Of course."

It occurred to me that Dunphy might be recording our conversation. This would have been illegal in itself since Dunphy had not informed me he was doing so. But he had never met me before that day, and he probably didn't fully trust Myron Lipschutz and whoever else in the party had recommended me.

I said, "Assuming I get the goods on Louderbush's rotten behavior and then you go the media-leak route as opposed to the privately-confront-Louderbush route, I want this to be air-tight. Even cable news will be wary of a story as incendiary as this, so it's essential, I think, that I find more witnesses willing to go public with what they know. In the Spitzer case, how was the initial leak handled?"

Dunphy hesitated and seemed to be choosing his words carefully, and now I was convinced that our conversation was going straight into a recorder. "Nobody knows for sure exactly how it was done. The guys at the
Times
and the
Post
who broke the story aren't talking as to who their sources were.

But the assumption is that private investigators hired by Sam Krupa, the old GOP dirty tricks guy, followed the gov when he walked into post offices to buy untraceable money orders to pay off his K-an-hour gal-pals. Other operatives bribed hotel workers. They had names and places and dates, and they checked this stuff against the governor's official schedule, and it all jibed. Then they found a prosecutor in Miami who was 46

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eager to make history by busting one of the entrepreneurial gals and offering her a deal if she named the governor. Then Krupa leaked word of the official investigation, and the caped crusader's cook was goosed."

"But there's no official investigation of Louderbush underway," I said. "So the witnesses we offer up have to be a hundred percent credible, and the more of them there are, the better."

"I agree."

"So who hired Sam Krupa to bring down Spitzer? The Wall Street guys he'd gone after as AG?"

"That's the common assumption. Nobody is admitting to it.

The big bank guys hated him to the depths of their tainted souls. Spitzer inspired such rage in the financial community that any number of those people would have done just about anything to bring about his comeuppance. In the end—an end that gathered itself soon after he took office and then fell upon the governor with the speed of light—in the end, his enemies didn't need hit men or sabotage or the political equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons to finish him off. It was death by floozy, that most commonplace of downfalls. Who would have thought? Who in
hell
would have thought?"

"It's a compelling enough story," I said, "but it has something the Louderbush situation lacks so far, and that is direct participants in the misdeeds of the accused who are willing to offer first-hand testimony. Some of Spitzer's call girls and their employers talked in the end, but Greg Stiver is dead and unable to do that. So you'll need more to go on, and that's my job at this point."

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"It is indeed."

"I'm going to work on this because (a) you are paying me, but also because (b) Louderbush's crime is far worse than Eliot Spitzer's. Hubris and a wayward dick are serious misdemeanors in a political context, but assault is just plain rotten and indefensible. Especially when it's an older person beating on a young and vulnerable person over a period of time. If Louderbush did what Jackman and Insinger claim he did, even if it didn't lead directly to Stiver's suicide, he should be run out of office and maybe, if it's not too late, into jail."

Standing next to my Toyota near the sparsely utilized rear of the Outback parking lot, I was aware that a dark-colored SUV with tinted windows had pulled in next to me and three men had quickly gotten out of it. One immediately ripped the phone out of my hand as another whacked me in the back of both knees with something metallic.

As I was going down, a third man pounded my face with a leather-gloved fist. The pain that roared through me was so overwhelming that I was surprised there was still room for the intensity of the nausea that hit a millisecond later. The three were kicking me now on the back and shoulders, and at my midsection whenever it was exposed. I fought back through a fog of blood, but these three were as coordinated in their joint efforts as the New York Giants, except they seemed larger and meaner.

I rolled and tried to protect my head as more blows were struck, and I managed to get part of my lower body under a vehicle before I realized it was theirs and they might climb back into the thing and drive over me. I tried to wriggle free 48

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again and was aided in this effort by grabbing an ankle and hanging onto it while its owner attempted to wrench himself free. The man was wearing finely made summer-weight dark wool slacks and his excellently crafted shoes had been nicely shined, if now scuffed.

Somebody else kicked me hard on the side of my head, and then I saw red and left all my cares behind.

* * * *

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I said, "What happened to my Blackberry?"

"Somebody picked it up. I have it."

Timmy was in the chair next to my bed, and at the foot of the bed Dunphy had planted himself in a wheelchair he had dragged in from the corridor on the sixth floor D-wing at Albany Med.

Dunphy said, "Don't worry about using your phone anytime soon. Just concentrate on healing. Even if you're out of here later today, take a day or three to regroup. Obviously the situation is urgent, but the most important thing you can do for all of us at this point is for you to be able to function at one hundred percent."

"Nothing's broken," I said. "No concussion either, apparently. I'm just scraped up and bruised all over and sore as shit, and my head hurts where they mangled my bad ear.

That ear has been through it: D-Day, the siege of Hue, Albany politics."

"You can't hear very well through that bandage," Timmy said. "Shouldn't you wait until the bandage comes off before you try to work again?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Exactly."

I said to Dunphy, "Timmy tells me that Jackman and Insinger are both okay. Nobody went after them. And they have protection now?"

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"Some discreet security guys for when they leave work.

Jackman we had to talk into it, but Insinger was grateful.

Budgetwise the campaign can't legitimately pick this up at this point, but some friends of Shy have stepped up to the plate, no problem."

I pointed at the curtain behind Timmy. "Anybody in that other bed?"

"He died overnight," Timmy said. "And elderly man from Scotia."

"Oh."

"What did you tell the cops?" Dunphy asked. "They haven't been in touch with us, so I assume we're keeping them out of it at this point? And I do think it's preferable that they remain out of the loop for the time being."

"A police dick I know was in a while ago, Bill Hanratty. I told him I was working on something but preferred not to say what. He knows I consort with dubious types such as yourself, Tom, so he wasn't surprised to see me banged up, and he was okay with letting it ride for now. Anyhow, he's a humble cop who's busy with your garden-variety apolitical criminals, and he feels no deep need to involve himself in the glamorous world of democracy-at-work savagery."

"Hanratty did talk to a couple of witnesses," Timmy said,

"who Don plans to interview."

"Witnesses to the attack?"

"The tail end of it apparently. Three guys who work for an insurance office up Wolf Road. If they hadn't come out of the restaurant just then, the beaters might have gotten some more licks in. I was lucky. The attackers took off when these 51

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insurance guys saw what was going on and one of them took out his cell, Hanratty said, and got 911."

"This could have been so much worse," Timmy said, squeezing my arm. "I'm the one who's still shaky when I think about that."

I said, "Ouch."

"Sorry."

"What's interesting was how they seemed to know exactly what they were doing in the sense of inflicting pain but minimal permanent damage. They hit the backs of my legs but not my kneecaps. They smacked me good on the upper back but not lower down where they could have messed up any number of organs. The head stuff was nasty. It knocked me out, and it bloodied my scalp and messed up my ear. But the hits were glancing. These guys were not trying to kill me or even wreck me for life. It was more of a violent warning."

"But they didn't say anything?" Dunphy asked.

"Not a word. It was as if they knew I knew why this was happening."

"Are you working on any other cases this could be related to?"

"No, just routine stuff. Missing ex-husbands and girlfriends, some insurance scams, a township pilfering thing involving probable theft of road department fuel supplies. This thing is related to the Louderbush situation, I'm pretty sure.

My question is, though, why did whoever it was go after me and not Jackman and Insinger? Why warn me off and not them? I'm replaceable in this equation. Any number of Manhattan PIs I know of could handle it, but the two 52

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witnesses to Louderbush's crimes are central. Yet nobody's laid a finger on them. There has to be a reason for that."

"Both of them were upset when we told them what had happened," Dunphy said. "Especially Insinger. She said Walmart doesn't like violence."

"Did the TU have anything? Or the TV stations?"