Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

  "It's disturbing."

  "Yeah."

  "Either Jackman or Insinger could have let something slip.

  Although, I set up my appointments with them only a few hours before I met them. There wasn't much time for either of them to mention me to anybody casually and innocently.

  Either of them, of course, could have done it intentionally—

  set me up for whatever weird unknown malign reason. But when I met them, both struck me as sincere in their strong disapproval of Kenyon Louderbush and his actions, and highly unlikely to be reporting secretly to him or his staff or his Serbian militia."

  "You're right."

  "It's baffling."

  "All I can say, Don, is that I certainly have not discussed your working for us with anybody except Shy. And he was unaware of the specifics of your meetings yesterday until after they took place and you landed in here."

  "What about your staff? Beryl and her crew out there?"

  "They don't even know who the fuck you are. You're just some security guy."

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  "Right."

  "What about Myron Lipschutz?" Dunphy asked. "Timothy, your boss."

  "He knows Don is working for you, but not that it's about Louderbush. And Myron certainly didn't know Don was meeting yesterday with Jackman and Insinger."

  I said, "And you're sure your phone lines are clean? And your office? What about your computers?"

  "Absolutely. The computers are checked for hackers, and the rooms and phone lines are swept every morning just before Beryl gets in."

  "By Clean-Tech?"

  "Yes."

  "And they're trustworthy? The company isn't owned by Diebold Incorporated. or Karl Rove's brother-in-law in Florida?"

  Dunphy screwed up his pink face. "Jesus, you're making me nervous, Don. If you can't trust the firms you pay the big bucks to secure your information, who can you trust?"

  "You don't by chance record telephone conversations yourself, do you, Tom?"

  "Me? Why would I?"

  * * * *

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  Red White and Black and Blue

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  Chapter Six

  My head hurt. The doctors said I wasn't concussed—no unsteadiness, no disorientation, nothing untoward on the MRI—but every beat of my heart was like a sledgehammer against my cranium.

  "Now I know what a circus tent stake feels like when those apelike guys take turns pounding it into the ground," I told Timmy.

  "Funny, I think of tent stakes as insensate. But maybe it's because they don't have mouths that we never hear their pitiful cries."

  "When was my last Tylenol?"

  "Six thirty. You'd better wait another little while. I guess a beer wouldn't help at this point. Or a medicinal bit of weed."

  "Nah."

  I was in bed at our house on Crow Street. When I'd gotten home just after five, Timmy had warmed up some tam yam gai he'd picked up at the Thai place on Lark Street and I sat at the kitchen table and ate it. Such an improvement over the hospital boiled-chicken-in-mucus. I went up to lie down then and make some calls on my cell, but at first the throbbing was just too disconcerting. Looking at TV was out of the question—MSNBC is not the answer to a headache—so I tried some Art Tatum. That was too busy for the state of my tender brain, and Timmy put on a Bach partita, but that was even busier.

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  I tried silence for a while, thinking I might drift off to sleep, but then I kept wondering who it was who had set me up, and my mind was so busy chewing over that question that soon I was wide awake.

  While Timmy filled in the answers to the Times crossword puzzle with a military-pace hut-two-three-four, I made myself place two calls and each time concentrate hard on what I was saying and what was being said to me.

  "You're at home, Janie?"

  "Yeah, I just got in."

  "All's well?"

  "Oh, yeah, I'm like scared shitless. But other than that."

  "You're being looked after, Tom Dunphy said."

  "Some guy Anthony. He's actually kind of cute."

  "So you know what happened after I left you yesterday.

  You must have just pulled out of the Outback. I was in the parking lot on the phone."

  "I know. That is so creepy."

  "I'm trying to figure out how these guys knew I was meeting with you. Did you happen to mention our four o'clock appointment to anybody yesterday?"

  A silence. "I'm trying to think."

  "Take your time."

  After a moment she said, "Just Kev. Kev called during my break—he knows I have twelve minutes rest period from two-fifteen to two-twenty-seven—and I told him I was gonna see you at Outback and talk to you about you-know-what. But Kev wouldn't mention any of that to anybody. He respects my privacy, and he knows how I am."

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  "Kev is your boyfriend?"

  "Yeah, Kevin LeBow. He's an installer at Verizon."

  "And he supports your decision to expose Kenyon Louderbush?"

  "Oh sure. Kev hates crap like that as much as I do, and also his union can't stand Louderbush."

  "And there's nobody else you might have mentioned our meeting to ahead of time? What about your supervisor?"

  "Oh God, no. Alma would put a letter in my file. She'd friggin' call Arkansas."

  "If you were meeting with a private investigator?"

  "Walmart is suspicious. But I think, like, what they don't know won't hurt them."

  I thought, Kev LeBow. Could he have been recruited by the Louderbush people to ingratiate himself with Insinger and seduce her and report back on her contacts with the McCloskey campaign and its agents? Not likely. They'd been a pair for quite a while. Was I just practicing due diligence, or was I becoming as paranoid as Insinger's employer?

  I told Insinger I thought she should do whatever Anthony the security guy suggested, and to be watchful otherwise, and that I'd be in touch.

  I got Virgil Jackman on his cell at Jock World. He said he couldn't talk but that he had an eleven-minute break coming up and he'd call me back in ten minutes.

  Timmy said, "What's a five-letter word meaning ancient stringed instrument? First letter R, third letter B?"

  "Robot?"

  "Come on."

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  "Rhubarb."

  "The second letter might be E."

  "Rebar."

  "Not exactly a musical instrument."

  "It could be. Percussion."

  "Keep trying."

  "I'm doing my best."

  "I hope not."

  Soon, Jackman called back. I asked him first how things were going with the security Tom Dunphy was providing.

  "I don't really need it, but this guy Damien is okay to hang with. He follows me around in this Hummer he has. He's even bigger than I am. I'm glad he's on our side."

  "It's good," I said, "that these guys went after me and not you and Janie. It means that their employer has some sense.

  Going after you two could generate serious backlash if you went public right away and linked Louderbush to the attacks.

  But by beating on me they send the message to the McCloskey campaign that they are prepared to play rough and McCloskey should have second thoughts about pursuing any exposure of Louderbush's vile behavior. Anyway, Tom Dunphy is prepared to press on, if you are. So am I."

  "Sure. I'm scared, I have to admit. But I'm not gonna take any shit from somebody who did what Louderbush did to Greg. What about Janie? Is she cool?"

  "It's a little bit murky as to her usefulness as a witness.

  But she's accepted security from the campaign, and she's still talking to us. One thi
ng I'm doing is trying to find other people who might have witnessed the abuse or who at least 60

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  had some direct knowledge of it. People Stiver confided in and who maybe saw the shiner and the split lip and the other physical damage from the beatings. There has to be somebody who knows something, even if not as much as you and Janie do."

  "I got the idea," Jackman said, "that maybe Greg dropped some of his friends after he got involved with Louderbush. He was embarrassed or whatever. I know he dropped out of the gay Republicans and that other organization—upholding the Constitution and so forth. He told Janie and I he had to finish his thesis, and he didn't have time for all those people, but I'll bet it was that he didn't want anybody asking a lot of questions about his messed up appearance. I mean, how many times can you tell people you slipped in the shower or you were in a car wreck? Especially when your car wasn't banged up or anything."

  "The story about his suicide in the Times Union said he had friends who were concerned about his being despondent. Who do you think the paper might have been referring to?"

  "A reporter called Janie and I after she talked to Mrs.

  Pensivy. So I guess maybe that means us?"

  "What about Greg's parents and his brother and sister in Schenectady? Might he have confided in any of them?"

  "He mentioned his sister, Jennifer, sometimes. She might've known something. But his mom and dad he had nothing to do with. His dad was a violent jerk and his mom was no help. I don't know about Greg's brother, Hugh. I think he moved out at some point and was no longer part of the family equation."

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  I made a note to track down Stiver's sister. As well as his thesis advisor.

  I told Jackman that I was puzzled as to how anybody knew I was meeting him and Insinger on Wolf Road Tuesday afternoon. I asked him if he had mentioned to anyone that we planned on meeting.

  "Not that I can think of," he said. "In fact, no. I was so busy at work...oh fuck! Shit! My break is over. I'm two minutes late. Shit. Gotta run, dude!"

  He hung up.

  I said to Timmy, "I still don't know how the Serbians knew they could find me in the Outback parking lot. Nobody involved recalls telling anybody I'd be there."

  "The two Serbians and one Roma."

  "Right."

  "You never saw the driver of the Navigator?"

  "No, just the three who jumped me."

  "And you tend to believe Insinger and Jackman?"

  "I tend to, yeah."

  "And you trust Tom Dunphy?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  "He's well thought of. Of course, the line of work he's in...well."

  "You would know."

  "You bet."

  "No, it's not Dunphy or Jackman or Insinger who set me up, I don't think. There's something I'm missing here."

  Timmy said, "Rebec."

  "What?"

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  "The ancient stringed instrument is a rebec."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Now you have."

  "I would think rebec meant to bec again."

  He ignored this and moved on. I could see that he had about three quarters of the puzzle filled in, all of it in ink.

  I said, "Would you hand me the phone book, please?"

  I looked up Stiver listings in Schenectady and found two: Anson on Ridgemont Drive and J Stiver on Pond Street. J for Jennifer?

  I dialed the J number.

  "Yes, hello?" Female, firm, clear.

  "Is this Jennifer Stiver?"

  The expected pause. Was I a telemarketer? "Yes, I'm Jenny. And you?"

  "I'm Donald Strachey, a private investigator, and I'm calling about a matter concerning your late brother Greg. I understand from friends of Greg's that you and Greg were close."

  I made out what sounded like a muttered oh shit before the line went dead.

  * * * *

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  Red White and Black and Blue

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  Chapter Seven

  Thursday morning my joints and muscles were still telling me Don't move, just don't move at all, and I had an enormous bruise on the side of my neck that Timmy said looked like a kind of evil hickey. The pain from my ripped ear felt as if I'd been gone after with a cheese grater, and something bad seemed to be going on with the five stitches under the bandage. My hearing was in fact impaired to a degree, but not so much that I couldn't hear Timmy's electric toothbrush buzzing in the bathroom as well as his nose-hair trimmer, his early-morning carbon footprint surprisingly sizeable for such a diehard environmentalist.

  Still flat on my back, I phoned a friend at APD and asked him to e-mail me the Greg Stiver suicide police report. He said those files were on paper and he would fax the report when he got a chance later in the day.

  I tried to recall who all I knew out at SUNY, preferably anybody with access to Stiver's academic and other records.

  No one came to mind who would have had that kind of access. Instead, I phoned a brilliantly clever IT guy I knew named Bud Giannopolous who I feared would one day end up in either the federal penitentiary or the CIA, depending on who came to appreciate his computer hacking abilities first.

  "Can you get into the SUNY system?"

  "Which one?"

  "Student records."

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  "Piece of cake. But is this a grade change thing? I don't do that."

  "Even for five hundred thousand dollars?"

  "You jest, do you not?"

  "I do. It's not that. I just want a look at the records of a guy named Gregory Stiver, a master's candidate, who killed himself in April five years ago."

  "Jumped off a SUNY building, right?"

  "You remember?"

  "Sure. I'm acrophobic, so I always notice news stories about death by falling."

  "It's not how anybody wants to go. Some of the people who jumped from the World Trade Center towers leaped in twos, holding hands. I guess that would somehow make it easier. But this Stiver jumped alone, and I can't think of anything lonelier."

  "So you want his academic records?"

  "Yes, including his master's thesis and who his advisor was. Plus the university's report on the suicide, as well as anything else that's in SUNY's records on Stiver. How long will this take?"

  "I want to be thorough, so say an hour."

  "You can e-mail me?"

  "Well, yeah. Did you think I might bring it over by oxcart?"

  When Timmy emerged from the bathroom, I told him I was driving over to Schenectady later in the morning to talk to any of Greg Stiver's relatives I could locate and who were willing to talk to me.

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  "Why don't you take a health and beauty day—both your health and your beauty have suffered—and go back to work tomorrow? The primary's not until September, and twenty-four hours won't make any serious difference."

  "I'm okay. Just achy. It might be better if I keep moving."

  He was getting into his perfectly laundered and pressed go-to-work duds, which had been meticulously laid out the night before. "Donald, somebody is obviously watching you, and they're going to know that you weren't scared off by the pounding they gave you on Tuesday. If the campaign is providing bodyguards for Insinger and Jackman, maybe they could also offer you a little help in that regard. Not somebody who would get in your way, but who could just tag along and serve as a deterrent. Or more than a deterrent if ever the need arose."

  He waited for my response and looked as if he knew what was coming.

  "Timothy, who are you talking to?"

  "Yeah, I know."

&nb
sp; "You're wasting your breath."

  "Right. Macho-macho-maa-haan."

  "No. It's not machismo. Alpha male strutting and posturing hold no interest for me. You know that by now, or should. I just work better alone. It's as simple as that. I need space and I need flexibility. Anyway, I'll be armed this time. I'll carry the Smith and Wesson."

  He shook his head and went back to elegantly armoring himself for a day inside one of the most dysfunctional legislative bodies in the western hemisphere. "I guess I don't 66

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  have to remind you of the statistics on people who carry guns around. It's nearly always the innocent that the weapons end up getting used on. With those innocent dead or maimed persons being the gun owners themselves, more often than not."

  "I've avoided shooting my own pancreas out for some years now. Trust me."

  "Of course I trust your judgment and your skills. But when guns start going off, luck is always an element. And you've been lucky in that regard for quite some time now."

  "Timothy, remarks about my number coming up are not helpful. Jesus."

  "Well, anyway it's all moot, since you stopped listening to me five minutes ago."

  "No, I didn't. I'm going to be careful."

  "Yes, I know you'll be careful, in your own particular way of being careful. Okay. Okay, okay."

  He had his necktie on straight now, and he came over and leaned down and—holding his tie against his chest with one hand—gave me a sweet lingering Colgate kiss. Inasmuch as I had not yet brushed my teeth, it was an especially large and loving gesture.

  "Careful, don't touch my ear."

  "I should give it a good smack."

  "Oh, you will, you will, at least figuratively speaking. But make it later in the month."

  He pressed his lips against my uninjured, unbandaged ear and said into it, "Have a safe, productive day, Detective Strachey."

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  "That's what I aim to do, if at all possible."

  * * * *

  Bud's e-mail arrived just after nine. I had dragged out of bed, showered, pulled on some jeans painfully, and made it down to the kitchen table and my laptop. Timmy had made coffee for me—his own preference was for South Asian milky sweet tea—and he left one of his favorite mugs at my place, a battered relic of his Peace Corps days in India. The mug bore the image of Ganesh, the elephant god, helper of scribes and remover of obstacles. While I ate some yogurt and a banana, I looked to see what Bud the remover of privacy walls had sent along. Greg Stiver's undergraduate academic record was solid but otherwise unrevealing. He had been a steady B-plus, A-minus student from the beginning of his SUNY career. He did consistently well in history and the social sciences and faltered only in a freshman geology course, where he got a C.