Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

  Red White and Black and Blue

  by Richard Stevenson

  electronic snooping, plus beating people up and blowing up cars in Albany residential neighborhoods?"

  "Don't forget burning down night clubs in Hummerston."

  "I still don't know what you mean by that. Anyway, I'd rather it all didn't play out that way. If this stuff got into the papers, the US attorney for the New York district might feel obliged to start empaneling grand juries. I think I could survive that, but I'm afraid Bud Giannopolous wouldn't. So, let's not do any of that. Enterprising reporters might dig up some of this anyway, but we don't have to make it easy for them."

  "No, that particular scenario is out of the question from my perspective, also. Sweet Jesus."

  "On the other hand, there is this: Our side is vulnerable, but yours is at far, far greater risk. Some of us might go to jail, but if the e-mails and phone conversations between you and Weaver and Goshen and the other bank and brokerage CEOs came to light—occupying pages and pages in the Times for days on end, a kind of Pentagon Papers of American capitalism—the consequences would be even more dire. It would create mayhem with markets, stock prices, bottom lines, bonuses. Jail would be a piece of cake in comparison to the damage the exposure of the Giannopolous papers would wreak on Wall Street. Do you know what I'm saying? Am I right?"

  Krupa stared straight ahead for a long moment. Then he turned and peered at me. "You're in the wrong line of work."

  "You mean because I was an English major at Rutgers?"

  "On Wall Street, you could have gone far. You still could."

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  "No, I wouldn't last. Any more than I would working for Kim Jong Il. I'm too much of a pain in the ass."

  "I'd say you're just exactly enough of a pain in the ass.

  Shit."

  "So, what I'm proposing is this: Shy McCloskey stays in the race and Mrs. Ostwind drops out. She develops a case of the vapors or a hernia or something. The Republicans can then come up with another, presumably weaker candidate, and at least come out of all this with the markets secure and no major figures under indictment. Sure, McCloskey will win, and for four years he'll raise regulatory hell with Wall Street.

  But that'll pale next to what would have happened if the Giannopolous papers had ever gotten published and exposed the vast, appalling moral and social rot that you're promoting and that you represent."

  Krupa gave me the fiercest stare I'd ever seen. Eventually he said, "You're insane."

  I shrugged. "I don't think so."

  * * * *

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  Chapter Thirty-one

  "Holy shit, Strachey, I heard you were good, but this is incredible! You not only got rid of that disgusting degenerate Louderbush, but now Merle Ostwind will soon be gone, too.

  The New York electorate won't have to do much more than declare Shy governor by acclamation. I mean, yes, it was touch and go there for a while. But, man oh man, did you ever pull it out in the end! I can't begin to thank you enough.

  Have you ever thought of switching careers and going into politics? God, I'd be glad to help set you up."

  "No, not politics. But recently I did briefly consider working on Wall Street. I'd join up just long enough to salt away a billion or two. Then retire to Thailand and live on spicy green papaya salad and invite the pool boys to hop up on my lap."

  "Ha ha. Yeah, I can see you on Wall Street."

  "With the pizza stains on my pants and my ear hanging off?"

  "It'd be fun to watch from a distance, I'll say that."

  Dunphy and I were in the private dining room at Da Vinci waiting for Shy McCloskey to show up. Dunphy had filled in McCloskey by phone, and the campaign director told me the senator was just thrilled, thrilled, thrilled with the way it was all turning out.

  "I'm just glad," I said, "that I'm back in Senator McCloskey's good graces. For a while, his opinion of me was in the cellar, and that hurt. Did McCloskey mention to you, by the way, that it was he who was feeding somebody in Krupa's 261

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  operation information about my psychic makeup so that my behavior could be manipulated? Spurred on or warned off, depending on the day of the week?"

  The door opened and a waiter came in with an antipasti platter. Dunphy clammed up and waited.

  After the waiter closed the door behind him, Dunphy said,

  "I don't believe that. Krupa told you that?"

  "I know," I said, "that the guy is a major liar."

  "And let us not neglect to add, major troublemaker."

  "I just wondered if you'd heard anything about that."

  "No."

  "Okay."

  "Look, Shy doesn't tell me everything. Like you, I just work here. But it doesn't sound like the Shy McCloskey I know."

  "I'd hate to think that the next governor of New York was that cynical. I've also wondered at times, Tom, if you yourself weren't recording our conversations. There were times when you talked to me in language that seemed to be aimed over my head somewhere, perhaps at a grand jury. Was I just imaging that?"

  He looked less hurt than bemused. "God, this is what we've all come to, what with the technology routinely available today. A bunch of paranoiacs."

  "And it never occurred to Shy McCloskey to join the modern-day political throngs who spend so much time and energy on legally dubious electronic intel gathering?"

  "Well, he's going to have to deal with the Legislature. So any dark skills he may have developed along the way would 262

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  certainly come in handy. But tell me something, Don. How much does the Times Union know about what's going on with all this? A reporter named Vicki Jablonski called me today.

  She asked about you and your relationship with the campaign. I said you had worked for us in a consultant's capacity but that you were basically a volunteer at this point.

  Apparently you dropped the dime on Louderbush as to his putting his boyfriends on his family health insurance plan?"

  "Jablonski doesn't know any of the rest of it, just the Louderbush insurance fraud. She'll dig up the beaten boyfriend stuff—maybe even the Greg Stiver death after I go to the Albany DA—and she'll think she's on top of the political story of the decade. I'm a little concerned that Louderbush himself will take the transcripts I gave him and turn them over to law enforcement, but since they incriminate him as much as anybody, that's unlikely. It's all a strategy of mutually assured destruction at this point. Nobody can afford to fire the first nuke because the retaliation will be instantaneous and massive."

  "Wow. You could have been Secretary of State under...who? Johnson? Reagan?"

  "Yet another missed career opportunity."

  The door opened and Shy McCloskey shuffled in. He didn't look happy. He looked mad.

  "Senator," Dunphy blurted, "should I send out for champagne now or...what's wrong? You look...pissed?"

  "Shut up and sit down."

  McCloskey dropped into a chair.

  "I'm out of the race."

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  "What? No way. What?"

  "I'll say it's my prostate. You can get something ready."

  "But...but...."

  "Merle called me."

  "Mrs. Ostwind."

  "Strachey, you have fucked this up so badly. Don't bother with champagne. And please don't eat any more of my prosciutto or provolone. You're fired, you fucking moron!"

  My impulse was to start stuffing meat and cheese into my pockets. I hadn't been reimbursed for any of my expenses, including a charter flight to Kurtzburg and back, and suddenly this job was looking oh so much less lu
crative than it had a day earlier.

  "What happened?" I said.

  "Merle didn't know about any of this. You did your little deal with Sam Krupa, and he called her today and told her she'd have to withdraw from the race, and she went bananas.

  She claims— claims — she didn't know anything about Sam's operations: the e-mail and phone hacking, the Serbians, the rest of it. It is possible she didn't know. Plausible deniability and all that. Do what you have to do, and don't tell me. I don't like my people to operate that way, but some people do it. They think it keeps their virginity intact forever."

  Dunphy said, "Jesus."

  "So Merle says to me, she says, she doesn't give a flying fuck—not her words—about those Wall Street assholes. She says they should all be in jail. Merle is...what? The last Eisenhower Republican? She's nice. That's what Merle is, nice.

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  would run roughshod. She'd let them because Merle doesn't like to make waves. She hates a scene. It's rude. It's tasteless. It's not how people should comport themselves."

  Dunphy was gazing at the prosciutto, and I wondered if he might pocket some, too.

  "But the thing is," McCloskey went on, "Merle isn't dumb either. She heard what Krupa told her about the market taking a dive if all this hooey came out about the filthy secret campaign being waged on her behalf, and the Ostwinds no doubt have a portfolio of their own, as do their pals at the Mamaroneck Beach and Tennis Club. So she was able to grasp that she would have to leave the race to keep all this crap under wraps and the markets secure. Her only condition for dropping out was, that I drop out, too. Otherwise, she was staying in, and fuck Wall Street—again, not her words. So that's it. It's over. I'm going to have to go back and live among those half-wits in the Senate. My political life is finished, finished."

  For a long moment, we all sat staring at nothing, each of us lost in his own thoughts.

  It was Dunphy who finally spoke.

  He said, "What about Andrew Cuomo? They say he's tired of being AG and eager to follow in his semi-beloved father's footsteps. And he'd be a terrific governor. I know I'd work to get him elected."

  "Tom," McCloskey said, "I want you to stand up, walk through that door, and get out of my sight!"

  Me, I wasn't even worth noticing anymore.

  * * * *

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  Epilogue

  Timmy was able to wangle extra tickets to the Cuomo inaugural celebration, a modest event owing to the state budget crisis. Bud Giannopolous came along, and also his cousin Ephram.

  Afterward, we all went down for dinner at Da Vinci. The place was packed with Democrats, all whooping it up and getting their political victory jollies. Tom Dunphy came over to our table and told us how ecstatic he was to finally be part of a winning gubernatorial campaign in New York State. When I introduced him to Bud, he turned pale, mumbled a terse greeting, and fled.

  The papers that day were also full of news of Kenyon Louderbush's having been charged with assault by seven young men. One of them was Trey Bigelow. He had asked the DA if the presiding judge in the trial might be Judge Judy, but an assistant DA told Bigelow she was sorry that her office could make no promises in that regard.

  Janie Insinger had the satisfaction of seeing Louderbush brought to justice without having to trouble her employer.

  She would not be called to testify. Virgil Jackman, on the other hand, was a major source for Vicki Jablonski in her extensive explosive reporting, and he was helpful to APD

  when it reopened the Greg Stiver suicide case. Of the eighteen young men who were discovered to have been beaten by Louderbush—only seven wished to press charges—

  three told prosecutors Louderbush had once gotten drunk and 266

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  bragged about having thrown a college student off a high building and killed him. None of that could be proved, of course, but the multiple assault convictions would undoubtedly land Louderbush in Attica for what would be in effect a life term. It looked as if it would be justice OJ-style.

  Imperfect, but there you are.

  Jennifer Stiver tried to get Shenango Life to reconsider its denial of her life insurance claim. But since a Louderbush murder conviction seemed unlikely, the company told her to take a hike. She later told me that as disappointed as she was, at least she didn't have to turn on her TV and watch Shy McCloskey sworn in as governor.

  The Tea Party, left in the lurch by Louderbush's exposure as a sadistic criminal, famously came up with a gubernatorial candidate—a rich, obnoxious real estate mogul from Buffalo—

  to run on the Republican instead of the Democratic ticket, but that turned out badly for them, too.

  At the Da Vinci Democratic victory dinner, Timmy, ever the evangelical Jesuit I love, tried to talk Bud Giannopolous into going straight and avoiding ending up in the federal pen.

  "Maybe," Timmy said, "you could do cybersecurity for some good outfit like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch."

  Plainly, this did not get Bud's blood coursing. He sat slumped in his chair and nodded glumly.

  "Or, what about working for some revolutionary movement in the Middle East? There's an American political theorist named Gene Sharp whose ideas on nonviolent resistance in right-wing police states are being studied by young people in 267

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  Tunisia and Egypt. I'm sure these people will need technical help with the social networks they'll use when the time comes to try to overthrow evil regimes like Ben Ali's and Mubarak's.

  That all sounds like a natural for you, Bud."

  Bud sat up. He said he'd like to hear more.

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  About the Author

  Richard Stevenson is the pseudonym of Richard Lipez, author of thirteen books, including the Don Strachey private eye series. He also cowrote Grand Scam with Peter Stein, and contributed to Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Novel Guide for the International Traveler. He is a mystery reviewer for The Washington Post and a former editorial writer for The Berkshire Eagle. Lipez's reporting, reviews, and fiction have appeared in Newsday, the Boston Globe, The Progressive, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and many other publications. Four Don Strachey books have been filmed by here!TV. Lipez grew up in Pennsylvania, went to college there, and served in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia from 1962—64. He is married to sculptor Joe Wheaton and lives in Becket, Massachusetts.

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  Trademarks Acknowledgment

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  7-Eleven by 7-Eleven, Inc.

  ACLU by American Civil Liberties Union American Federation of Teachers by American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO

  Bank of America by Bank of America Corporation BBC America by British Broadcasting Corporation Blackberry by Research In Motion Limited Cadillac Escalade by General Motors LLC

  Cinnabon by Cinnabon, Inc.

  Cessna by Textron Innovations Inc.

  Colgate by Colgate-Palmolive Company Comfort Inn by Choice Hotels International, Inc.

  CNBC by by CNBC, Inc.

  CNN by Cable News Network, Inc.

  Crowne Plaza by Six Continents Hotels, Inc.

  Cutty Sark by Edrington Distillers Limited Dasani by Coca-Cola Company

  Denny's by DFO, LLC Limited Liability Company Diebold by Diebold Incorporated

  Facebook by Facebook Inc.

  The
Federalist Society by the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies

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  Fox Business by by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  Fox News by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation GE by General Electric Company

  Good Housekeeping by Hearst Communications, Inc.

  Hallmark Channel by Crown Media Holdings Heinz by H.J. Heinz Company

  The Home Depot by Homer TLC, Inc.

  Honda by Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

  Hyundai by Hyundai Corporation

  KFC by KFC Corporation

  Lincoln Navigator by the Ford Motor Company Log Cabin Republicans by Log Cabin Republicans Maalox by Aventis Pharmaceuticals Products Inc.

  Motel 6 by Societe de Participations et D'Investissements de Motels

  MSNBC by MSNBC

  National Review by National Review Inc.

  The New York Post by NYP Holdings, Inc.

  New York Giants by New York Football Giants, Inc.

  New York Yankees by New York Yankees Partnership NPR by National Public Radio, Inc.

  Outback Steakhouse by OS Asset, Inc.

  Phi Beta Kappa by Phi Beta Kappa Society Philadelphia Phillies by The Phillies Poland Springs by Great Spring Waters of America Inc Price Chopper by Golub Corporation

  The Price is Right by Fremantlemedia Operations B.V.

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  Rutgers by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Instrumentality

  Sam Adams by BBC Brands, LLC

  Smith & Wesson by Smith & Wesson Corp.

  SUNY by State University of New York Super 8 by Cendant Finance Holding Company LLC

  Time Warner by Time Warner Inc.

  TCM by Turner Classic Movies LP, LLLP