Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

  "You have a history of both."

  "Can you show me any evidence you have connecting me to any such BS? I have a lot to atone for, but having my political opponents' henchmen attacked is not one of them.

  You're just way off the mark on this one, my friend."

  I knew it was possible he really had been told nothing of the ugly stuff being done on his behalf. Rogue staffers could be behind it, or even fringe Tea Partiers who wanted Louderbush elected and were operating independently. But with his record as an accomplished liar, it was impossible to 194

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  know which. I was certain, though, that whoever had been all over me for days and was determined to scare me off had been operating at a level of sophistication beyond the normal means of Second Amendment loonies and anti-tax hysterics in Minute Man costumes.

  I said, "Whatever you know or don't know about the way I've been roughed up, Mr. Louderbush, the basic facts here are indisputable. You did a lot of bad stuff that's cruel and illegal and disgusting, and if the electorate found out about it, they would say no to your candidacy. Some would congratulate you on getting a grip and halting your destructive practices, and they would wish you well in your future private life. But most would not want to take a chance on you as governor. I know I don't. What you did to Greg Stiver is unforgiveable. If the voters knew about it, most of them would not forgive you either."

  Louderbush reddened and slumped in his chair. "I was trying to help him," he said.

  Mrs. Louderbush looked away.

  "What do you mean, help him?"

  "I was there."

  "Where?"

  "It was an accident."

  "Greg's fall from the roof at SUNY?"

  "I had tried to end the relationship. I was so guilt-ridden. I helped Greg find a teaching job near Kurtzburg—he hadn't had any luck on his own—and then I was overcome with...guilt. It was so close to home, and to my family, who mean everything to me."

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  "Were you overcome with guilt, or were you overcome with fear that you'd get caught?"

  "All right, yes, both."

  Mrs. Louderbush looked as if she wanted to get down on her hands and knees and crawl out of the room, but she sat there three feet from her husband, her angry gaze fixed on the gladiola.

  "What happened?" I said.

  "I called Greg and told him I needed to talk to him. He was at the SUNY library, and he agreed to meet me in an empty econ classroom on the eighth floor of Livingston Quad Four."

  "Okay."

  "We met, and we talked, and he was very, very angry with me. He said I was teasing him, setting him up a few miles from where I lived and then refusing to continue the relationship. He said I was torturing him."

  "Funny choice of words."

  Louderbush bristled. "Do you want to hear the truth or not?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Greg began to cry. I couldn't console him. I tried to hold him, but he shoved me away and grabbed his backpack and ran out of the room. I followed him, and when the elevator didn't arrive immediately, he ran into a stairwell. I think he heard voices down below, so instead of running down the stairs, he ran up. I followed him and suddenly we were somehow on the roof. He walked around and around weeping, and just to get him down off there I said I would reconsider ending the relationship. I admit I didn't mean it, but Greg was 196

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  just so desperate and out of control. We were near the edge of the roof. There was no railing of any kind. And when I moved toward Greg to lead him by the hand away from the edge, he dropped his backpack and was turning toward me when he lost his balance somehow—he was sobbing and completely dazed and distraught—and he fell backward over the edge. Suddenly he just wasn't there anymore."

  I thought, He's seen Vertigo. Does an old nun appear behind him at this point and make the sign of the cross?

  "Mixed with my horror," Louderbush went on, "was my fear that someone might have seen Greg and me on the roof and would think that we were fighting and that I had pushed him to his death."

  "Mm."

  "I couldn't see anyone who might have observed us, so I took the elevator down and left the building and headed toward my car as fast as I could without being conspicuous."

  "Did it occur to you that Greg might be alive and he would need help?"

  "After a fall from that height? That would have been impossible."

  "Maybe."

  "I knew it would look like suicide—why else would he have gone up to the roof?—and I drove to Greg's apartment to fake a suicide note. I had a letter he had once written to me at a time when he had decided to end the relationship. He had written in big letters at the end of the note I hurt too much. I had the letter with me—I wanted to show it to Greg and remind him that the relationship was as painful and difficult 197

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  and unrealistic for him as it was for me—and I ripped off that line and left it on Greg's desk. His friends found it there, and even the police were convinced that Greg's death was a suicide."

  "Yes, they were. And your office snooped around SUNY and the Albany cops trying to find out if anybody had any suspicions regarding the verdict."

  "You know that already."

  "I do."

  "And were there suspicions?"

  "Some. But an Albany cop who didn't want any political high mucky-mucks involved in something dubious or messy saw to it that the case was closed and the suicide verdict certified."

  "I was incredibly lucky."

  "You bet you were."

  "I drove back to my office. I mean I assume I drove there.

  I actually have no memory of it. I went into my office and cleared my schedule, and I sent my staff home. And then I got down on my knees and I prayed to God for forgiveness."

  Here we go. "And were you forgiven?"

  "That's a question I won't have an answer to until the day I meet my maker. But I went into therapy the next week, and now I have the kind of understanding of myself that makes it possible for me to control my impulses. And they are under control, as Deidre can attest to."

  "How would she know?"

  "I can read my husband," Mrs. Louderbush said. "I've lived with the man for twenty-six years."

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  "You didn't read him very successfully before last January."

  "That's not true, not that it's any of your bleeping business. I sensed something was gnawing at him. I just assumed it had to do with his troubled childhood. Kenyon had always been moody because of that. If you'd ever met his father, you'd understand."

  "And now he's a man at peace with himself?"

  "More or less, yes, he is. Not of course taking into account the stress of the gubernatorial campaign and from having to put up with people of your ilk."

  "Who's your therapist in Rochester?" I asked Louderbush.

  "You know I can't tell you that. Or if I did tell you, my doctor would certainly not respond to any inquiries you might make."

  "He or she might talk to me if I have some kind of waiver from you."

  An incredulous shake of the head. "Forget it."

  What was Louderbush doing? Was he being utterly honest and sincere, telling some reasonable facsimile of the truth even? And did he believe deep in his heart that I—and the McCloskey campaign—should accept his melodramatic tale on its face, and with a mixture of compassion for him and his family, as well as a belief in Christian redemption, simply drop the whole matter of questioning his fitness for office? Or was he, as I suspected, a pathological liar who had made up most or even all of the version of events he had just laid out for me so cogently, so tidily—too tidily, I was inclined to think.<
br />
  I said, "Look, Mr. Louderbush, even if the McCloskey campaign agreed to overlook your past depredations, 199

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  somebody else is bound to come along and get wind of this reeking stuff. I mean, I know about Greg Stiver and about Randy Spong, but how many other of these relationships were there?"

  "A few."

  "A few. Well, it looks to me as if you might be facing broken-nosed-college-boy eruptions throughout the general election campaign and, if you managed to beat Merle Ostwind and were somehow elected, well into a governorship you'd then be forced to resign from."

  "No," he said firmly. "No one I was involved with would ever turn on me that way. They all respected me—even adored me."

  His wife was looking a little queasy now, but she kept her mouth clamped shut. I thought of Frogman Ying, but I supposed Louderbush was referring to his resplendent conservative ideology and principles.

  "You underestimate confidential anecdotal slippage. I first learned about you from two friends of Greg Stiver who he confided in."

  Louderbush glanced at his wife and then looked at me evenly. "If any stories did begin to surface, it would help if the McCloskey campaign announced to the press that they had taken a close look at these ugly rumors, and Shy McCloskey has concluded that they are vicious slurs that have no basis in fact."

  "I'm not following you. How could we possibly say that?"

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  He looked at his wife again, and this time she reached over and picked up her handbag. She reached into it. Was she going to bring out a pistol? No. It was a fat envelope.

  * * * *

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  Chapter Twenty-three

  The first name that leaped out was Nicholas Giannopolous.

  Blabbedy-blah Nicholas Giannopolous this, blabbedy-blah Nicholas Giannopolous that. Nicholas Giannopolous illegal penetrations of computer systems at the State University of New York at Albany; Nicholas Giannopolous illegal hacking of confidential files at Shenango Life Insurance Company; Nicholas Giannopolous illegal privacy violations of personnel records at Burton Hendricks Elementary School, Rotterdam, New York. What an accomplished technician Bud was!

  Then my name started appearing. Donald Strachey impersonating a collector of funds for a scholarship in memory of deceased SUNY student Gregory Stiver; Donald Strachey impersonating a representative of the British Broadcasting Corporation in order to gain entree at SUNY and procure private university information under false pretenses; Donald Strachey impersonating a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in order to obtain confidential personnel information at Hall Creek Community College, Hall Creek, New York.

  Then fifty or sixty pages of transcripts of telephone conversations between me and Timmy, me and Bud Giannopolous, me and Jenny Stiver, me and my pal at APD, me and Millicent Blessing's secretary, me and Tom Dunphy, among others.

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  I flipped through the pages and now understood that my car had not been wired, and my computer had not been penetrated. It was my cell phone. My cell had been hacked.

  I said, "Where did you get this stuff, Mr. Louderbush?"

  "It was shoved through the mail slot at my home in Kurtzburg last night. There were two other copies besides this one. One is safely stowed away. The other I had sent by courier half an hour ago to Tom Dunphy."

  His wife watched me with contemptuous eyes.

  "Any idea who gathered this all up?"

  "None whatsoever. Do you?"

  "None offhand."

  "It's quite a bundle for an ambitious federal prosecutor to sink his teeth into," Louderbush said. "A federal prosecutor or a reporter from the Times or the Times Union who's interested in illegality and corruption over at the Shy McCloskey gubernatorial campaign. It looks to me as if there's Pulitzer Prize potential here."

  "It's all pretty innocuous, really."

  "Impersonating a federal agent?"

  "It's not treasonable in this case, although the law does frown on it."

  "And are you recording our conversation as we speak, Mr.

  Strachey?"

  "I might be."

  "Ah. I might be, too."

  I noted that the missus's handbag was aimed right at me.

  "So, is it safe to say," Louderbush went on, "that we have arrived at a point of stalemate?"

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  * * * *

  My impulse was to call Timmy, but when I felt for my phone the thing seemed toxic in my pocket and I let go of it. I couldn't call Dunphy either. As I walked up State Street, the phone sounded its fluty little tune. I saw that it was Dunphy calling me; he must have received a report from the Clean-Tech listeners, and he would be instructing me to fly to Brazil for an extended period. I tossed the phone in a trash barrel in front of City Hall, then thought better of that and reached in and retrieved it. Bud Giannopolous would want to have a look at it. I made it to Crow Street, not panicky but hyperalert, and picked up my car. I remembered vaguely where Giannopolous lived, in an attic in the Pine Hills section of Albany, ten minutes away. The big frame houses looked a lot alike on Giannopolous's street, but I was able to pick out his place from the wire antennas and satellite dishes on the roof. His building looked like a CIA safe house in Bethesda.

  I would have been followed, but I didn't care. Somebody already knew about Bud, and about me as a client of Bud's, so what were they going to do next, say boo?

  I parked the car on the street and buzzed Bud's intercom.

  "Yo."

  "Strachey."

  "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

  "You're telling me."

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  The door clicked open, and I climbed the two wheezing flights. Somebody on the second floor had been smoking pot for breakfast and I took a deep breath.

  Bud had a headset on when he opened his door, and I said, "Houston, we have a problem."

  He gave me a little oh-no-bother wave of the hand as I stepped into a room that was piled high with Bud's poli-sci and world affairs book collection on one wall and a long table heaped with computers and other electronic gear against another. A dormer window looked down on the backyard of the house next door, where a man had a motorbike upside down and was fiddling with its front wheel. A poster on the rear wall of Bud's room showed a picture of some pita bread and a bowl of dip and bore the words I am hummus, nothing is alien to me.

  "Can I speak freely in here?" I asked him.

  "If not here, where?"

  Bud was roughly five-feet-two and bore a striking resemblance to the one-time emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie: ginger-skinned, high forehead, noble brow. Both Bud's bearing and his costume were more casual. He wore no medals and bore no scepter, and his outfit was non-imperial: ripped jeans, flip-flops, a faded T-shirt with an image on it of a squid wearing a hat that looked like a satellite dish. Nor would a crown sit easily on Bud's spiky little dreads.

  "We may need lawyers," I said. "Or at the very least PR

  firms."

  "Nah. What's up?"

  "My cell phone was hacked."

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  He seated himself on his throne, an oversized wheeled office chair with cracked plastic armrests, and I perched on a bench. Stacked next to me were hundreds of techie magazines and computer catalogs, and the piles shifted ominously as I brushed against them.

  "Not a big deal getting into cell phones," he said. "I've done it. All you need is an asset at whichever phone company i
t is who will give you the PIN code for anybody's phone."

  "I guess this is against the law?"

  He chuckled. "I would certainly hope so. What are we here, freakin' Hamas?"

  "Well, in this instance there may be consequences—have been already." I retrieved the envelope from the Price Chopper supermarket bag the Louderbushes had provided for me and watched while Bud read through the transcripts and other documents.

  "Holy Moly."

  "Yeah."

  "This is the product of a consummate professional."

  "Do you recognize a professional colleague's work signature?"

  "Well, no. It's not that easy. I'd need more samples, and I'd need to study them over time."

  "I'll have to have a new phone, I guess. And number."

  "I can fix you up."

  "Are you and I going to go to prison, Bud?"

  "Ha ha ha!"

  Why was I not reassured? "I guess you can see from the transcripts what I've been working on. The Shy McCloskey 206

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  campaign hired me to prove that Kenyon Louderbush has had abusive sexual relationships with young men. This information—it's true, by the way—is supposed to drive him out of the gubernatorial race. I just met with Louderbush and his wife, and they handed me this bundle. They now consider me—and the McCloskey campaign—neutralized."

  "Wow."

  "So I'm in a bit of a pickle. I haven't talked to the McCloskey people about it yet."

  "Kenyon Louderbush. My respect for that sorry old right-wing hack just went up."

  "Not for his mixing sex with violence."

  "No, that's creepy and disgusting. But I'm impressed as shit with his technical abilities—or somebody's. Any idea who did this stuff for him? It's ballsy and it's state of the art."

  "I thought you said anybody could do it with inside technical data from a phone company. Verizon in my case."

  "That's the easy part. It's doing it without the account holder becoming suspicious that's tougher. You haven't had any dropped calls or heard any weird beeps or clicks lately?"