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My Hugh was elusive or reclusive—or perhaps had changed his name? I searched for Hugh Cutler, Cutler being the Stiver siblings' surname prior to the arrival in the household of Anson Stiver. Seven of these turned up; one was the right age, thirty-two. This Hugh Cutler was a mechanic at a garage in Arlington, Massachusetts. He had no Facebook page, and I found him through court records; Cutler was on probation following his conviction a year earlier for assault.
I phoned Jennifer Stiver. "Hey, thanks for your help today.
I just have a quick question. Was your brother Hugh a mechanic?"
"Yes, but I can't talk to you anymore. I'm just too...ambivalent about what you're doing. I'm hanging up.
Sorry."
And she was gone. So I couldn't ask her if she knew that Hugh apparently had a violent streak.
I finished the soup and salad.
I tried Virgil Jackman, reached his voice mail, and left no message.
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Janie Insinger did answer her phone. She said she and Kev were "like, going out," and she could speak to me briefly.
"Just one question, Janie. When you were interviewed by the police after Greg's death, you told them he had been despondent. That was in the police report. Did you also mention his relationship with Kenyon Louderbush?"
"You bet we did. Why not? I was so ripshit, I didn't give a crap if he was some senator or if he was just some pissant geek."
"And the police noted this and asked you more about it?
The physical abuse, for example...did that come up?"
"Sure, but this old bald guy detective—I forget his name—
he just said that wasn't anything the cops could, like, get mixed up in. It was private. He said it used to be different, but nowadays the police didn't care about gay people and their private business. The new chief would just say it was none of the police's business."
"Uh-huh. Was this a Detective Nichols, do you remember?"
"Coulda been. He had hair coming out of his ears."
This would make him easy to find. Bald and hairy. "What about Greg's brother, Hugh? Did Greg ever talk about him to you? Hugh was a couple of years older."
"Greg had a brother? I didn't know that. Are you sure?"
"Yes. I heard about him from Jennifer. Hugh left Schenectady when he was eighteen."
"Greg never talked about him. They probably weren't close."
"Is Anthony still with you, the security guy from the campaign?"
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"He's downstairs. Kev doesn't like him around, so we might give him the night off. Virgil probably would've tried to get him in the sack with us, but Kev is too straight for that, thank God."
"Well, be careful."
"You too."
I reread the police report. Why wasn't Insinger's mention of Louderbush in there? The cop would have known that Louderbush was a big cheese in the Legislature, so apparently discretion had overridden conscientiousness.
My Blackberry alerted me that something had come in from Bud Giannopolous, and I checked the laptop. This was timely. The sizeable file was the Shenango Life Insurance Company report on the death of its policyholder, Gregory Stiver. The nine-page report by investigator Lorraine Fallon included the SUNY security and Albany Police findings and the APD verdict of suicide. In a "note to the files," Fallon wrote that a handwritten "addendum" to the police report labeled CONFIDENTIAL mentioned "a physically abusive male/male relationship" and "the possibility of foul play," rather than suicide. Fallon noted additionally, "Conversation with Nichols/APD. Suggest destroy copy. Unsubstantiated.
Libelous? Leg. kahuna."
The copy of this handwritten addendum was missing from the insurance company's copy of the police report, as it was from my copy. The SUNY security report did include the scribbled note, "Call from Leg. Blessing responding." In her report, Fallon made no mention of this cryptic notation.
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Fallon's "reluctant" recommendation to Shenango Life was to withhold paying the insurance policy's beneficiary, Jennifer Stiver, because the official verdict was suicide, and standard policy precluded a payout under such circumstances.
I went over this material twice again, and each time my attention snagged on the disappearing confidential memo about an abusive "Leg. kahuna," and on the "call from Leg."
to which "Blessing" was to have responded.
I e-mailed Bud Giannopolous and asked him to please find out if SUNY had somebody on its staff named Blessing.
Then I called my pal at APD.
"I need to talk to a detective on the force named Ivor Nichols. Can you set something up?"
"Can't. Sorry. Ivor retired a couple of years ago. Even worse, both for him and for you, he passed away just last week."
"Crap."
"What's this about? Maybe I can help."
"What kind of cop was Nichols? Would he have altered a report to protect somebody important in the Legislature?"
"I guess you could say that Ivor was traditional in the regard. Yeah, I'd have to say so."
"What did he die of? Nothing violent, I hope."
"Lung cancer. It's not violent, technically speaking, although I've heard it feels that way."
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Chapter Twelve
I slept poorly. My back, legs and shoulders still ached, and the ear felt as if fire ants were gnawing at it. I had changed the bandage, per Albany Med's instructions, before I went to bed, and chowed down more Tylenol, all of this to not much effect.
When my wake-up call went off next to my flaming ear at five thirty Friday morning, I was already half conscious, half thinking and half dreaming about kahunas and Blessing and—
go figure—an elegant blonde woman jumping into San Francisco bay. I showered without getting the bandage soaked, just splashed a little.
After throwing on some jeans and a polo shirt, I made my way down to the hotel parking garage, bringing along only my Blackberry and the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder bag.
While the rental car appeared untampered-with, I gave the engine and wheel wells a quick once over.
Traffic was light at this early hour. I whizzed across the I-90 bridge and kept going east on the interstate, exiting briefly for a Dunkin' Donuts stop just past East Greenbush. I joined the orderly drive-thru queue—not wanting to go inside and frighten the bleary-eyed early morning customers with my repulsive hickey—and then got back on the highway and consumed the juice, coffee and bagel in the car. If anyone was tailing me, I was unaware of it, and I was staying watchful.
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I didn't have my GPS with me, which left me feeling naked and helpless on the one hand, but also gratifyingly self-sufficient. I would stalk my prey using mainly my nose and also my vague recollection that Arlington, Massachusetts was located just west of Boston. I confirmed this on a map I picked up at a Massachusetts Turnpike service area and arrived in Arlington just in time to get stuck in the morning commuter traffic inching its way into the city.
As I crept along on state route 2, I found an NPR station on the radio and caught the tail end of a news report on upcoming primary elections across the US. The roundup mentioned in passing the New York State primary. The reporter said political handicappers were putting their money on the Tea Party-backed conservative Democrat Kenyon Louderbush. The Shy McCloskey campaign was described as
"floundering." I said out loud, "You betcha."
I pulled into an Arlington Mobil station to ask directions to J&J's Auto Service, where Hugh Cutler worked, and was told that the Shell station diagonally across th
e intersection was J&J's. I made my way over there and filled the tank on the Hyundai. The station had no convenience store attached to it, just a two-bay garage, both doors up. I pulled over, out of the way of the comings and goings, and parked.
At the counter, a young guy with a rhinestone stud in his left ear and what looked like an incipient premature beer gut was giving an old lady the bad news about her alternator: kaput, big bucks to replace it. She looked downcast and said she would have to call "Mick." While she used the phone, I asked the counterman, whose name was Jim, according to 110
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some stitching on his work shirt pocket, if Hugh Cutler was there.
"Yeah. Why? Hugh's workin'."
"Need to talk. Department of Probation. This won't take long."
Jim took this in and didn't seem stunned. "What, like five minutes?"
"Or ten. No more."
He gave me a you-guys-drive-me-crazy-but-what-the-fuck-can-I-do look. "I'll get him."
I walked outside and stood on the far side of the rental car. Jim soon reappeared, followed by a frowning blue-eyed man with sandy hair over his collar, an unruly beard, and Hugh on his greasy work shirt.
"This won't take more than a few minutes," I said. "There's no problem. I just have a couple of questions."
Cutler looked apprehensive. Was I some new asshole he was going to have to deal with? "Okay. What questions?"
Jim turned and went back inside.
"This is actually unofficial." I showed him my ID. "I work out of Albany, New York and I'm looking into the circumstances of your brother Greg Stiver's death. I'm working for people who are very sympathetic to Greg and to your whole family situation. I've heard from your sister, Jennifer, how bad it was for both of you. I don't know how much you know about Greg's suicide."
He stared at me. "You're not from Probation?"
"Sorry about that. I thought your boss might be more inclined to let me talk to you for ten minutes."
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"Yeah, and what if he didn't know about my status? Fuck."
"Well, he would. Those are the rules, I do believe. Anyway, I'll be out of here in no time."
"You sure as fuck will."
"I just wanted to find out what you knew about the suicide, and if you had been in touch with Greg around that time, and what he might have told you about what was going on in his head. And why you think he killed himself."
Hugh kept staring. "This is incredible. How did you even find me?"
"Court records. The assault conviction. I guessed that you might have changed your name from Stiver. Anson Stiver was a piss-poor excuse of a stepfather, I've heard from several people."
"I just can't believe this. I've had no contact with that family for fourteen years!"
"How did you know about Greg's death?"
"A buddy in Schenectady I stay in touch with e-mailed me.
He saw it in the paper."
"I'm surprised that after you left Schenectady you didn't keep up contact with Greg. You were both victims of your stepfather's abuse. Or did you two also have some kind of falling out?"
His shoulders slumped a little. "Greg and I never talked to each other about anything. He went his way, and I went mine. He had school and all that stuff. I liked engines. There was nothing to fall out from. On my eighteenth birthday, I got out. And I never looked back."
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"Your sister Jennifer is a teacher. She seems okay in her life."
"I know. My bud back home told me. Jenny never gave a fuck about me. She was like Mom. And I don't give a fuck about either one of them."
"You knew Greg was gay?"
"Yeah. He used to yell it around the house when he was in high school. It was a way to get back at Anson. But I couldn't care less whose pants he got into. That's the way Greg was, and so what?"
"Were you surprised when you heard he killed himself?"
Hugh leaned against the car and looked at the ground.
"Yeah."
"He'd never seemed suicidal to you?"
"No. Greg was strong. I was really surprised when I heard that."
"In what ways was he strong?"
He thought about this. "I dunno. Just...he had a lot of ideas about the way things worked. He was like that kid on Family Ties. He was conservative and had all these Republican opinions. I really got tired of hearing it. That didn't seem very gay, but what do I know? Greg wanted to change the world, and he thought he could do it. That somebody who knows all that boring crap would just go ahead and kill themselves just didn't make sense to me."
"What were his gay relationships like? Were you aware of who he dated?"
"Not really. In high school he hung out with some other nerdy gays. A kid named Bootsy was kind of girly. I think 113
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they fooled around with each other, but Greg didn't have any big crushes or great loves that I ever saw. The only crush Greg had that I knew about was Ronald Reagan. Greg had a picture of Reagan on the wall in his room."
"What were your stepfather's politics? Or did he have any?"
"Dipped if I know. Anson hated all politicians. And everybody else, too."
"Was he violent with other people that you knew of? Or just you and Greg?"
A bitter look. "Why would Anson pound anybody else besides me and Greg? If it was a kid, he'd go to jail. If it was a grown-up, the dude might smack him back. No, he had it made, Anson did. I don't know who he must be knocking around now. I hate to think."
"Can I ask you about your assault conviction? What were the circumstances?"
He almost laughed. "You could figure it out."
"Maybe. What happened?"
"An asshole in a bar in Somerville. I was drunk. So was he.
Big sack of shit, he starts ragging this kid, some Harvard dweeb, and he grabs the kid's glasses off and smashes them with his foot. The stupid kid is drunk too, and he pushes this guy, and the asshole slams the kid in the face and breaks his nose. That's when I lost it. I jumped the guy and pounded his head on the bar, and he ends up with a concussion. The cops come in and charge both of us with assault, and then we both get probation. Now I'm a criminal. Unlike Anson Stiver. Not fair, my man, not fair."
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"Had you ever been violent before?"
He looked at me stonily. "Not really. Unless you count the day I left Schenectady."
"Anson?"
"I knocked out three of his front teeth. He never called the cops. The fucker knew better."
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Chapter Thirteen
My room at the Crowne Plaza had been ransacked. Since I had hardly any belongings with me in the room—a small bag, a change of clothes, toiletries—this tossing stuff around was plainly for show. They wanted me to understand that they always knew where I was and how pathetically vulnerable I was.
My laptop was on the desk where I'd left it. So was the police report on the Stiver suicide that had been faxed to me.
They—they being the Serbians?—hadn't taken the police report with them. Why? Because they already had a copy?
I powered up the laptop. It seemed fine. My password—
whyworry—seemed to be the only thing the Serbians didn't know about me. My files were intact and the Internet connection blazed to life when I commanded it to do so. Still, I figured I'd have the McCloskey campaign's security techies check the computer out. Along with my car and...what? Our coffeemaker? Timmy's electric toothbrush?
How did they know where I was staying? I thought that I had not been
followed from Crow Street to the hotel, but perhaps these people were such professionals and there were so many of them that I was simply helpless against their vast competence.
Down at the front desk, I asked the clerk if anybody had been looking for me over the past seven hours. The well-manicured young man perused his counter area, looked back up at my bandaged ear and said no. There was no point in 116
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telling him that my room had been broken into. I was the only person with a coded key card that could open the door to room 612. Just the maid and I, and anybody else who could hack into the hotel's computer system and retrieve my room number and card code.
"Will you be staying with us another night, sir?" the clerk asked.
"Yes, I will," I lied, and thought about where I might actually spend the night where the Serbians would not be able to find me.
Back in the room, I ordered a Cobb salad from room service and called Timmy. He wasn't answering, so I left a message saying I was back in Albany from Massachusetts and would be in touch.
My Blackberry got excited, and it was a message from Bud Giannopolous. He said there was a Blessing at SUNY, a Millicent Blessing in the public information office. I called there and was told that Ms. Blessing would be leaving the office in a short while and perhaps I could have an appointment with her next week. I explained that I was with BBC America and we were on a tight schedule, and it would be so great if my crew and I could drop by that afternoon. I was put on hold briefly, then informed that an afternoon interview would be feasible.
I got Tom Dunphy on the phone.
"I'm waving at you. Can you see me?"
"No. The windows over there are tinted. You're still at the Crowne Plaza?"
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"One more night. Two at the most." I told him about the break-in at my hotel room. "These people are amazing, Tom.
They see me when I'm sleeping. They know when I'm awake.