Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

  "Excellent."

  "Most are just numbers, but some are voice mails. I've got it on a disk. Can somebody drop it off somewhere?"

  I packed up my laptop, my weapon and my personal gear and drove out to Colonie, where I took a room at a Comfort Inn. Bud's cousin Ephram, who was even smaller and weirder looking than Bud, arrived ten minutes later with an envelope, the second of the day for me to open.

  Some of the numbers Louderbush called or had been called from had names attached to them, and some didn't. The only name I recognized was Deidre. I figured I'd contact Bud and ask him to obtain a list of Louderbush's office staff so that I could probably eliminate them as persons of interest.

  But that wasn't going to be necessary. I listened to a number of innocuous voice mail messages—meet for lunch, campaign meeting at four, don't forget Heather's birthday—

  before I landed on this one.

  A male voice choked out, between sobs, "I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! I have to see you, I have to see you, I have to see you!"

  The name of the caller was Trey, and I noted his number.

  Louderbush had returned Trey's call on the same day, but there was no recording of what was said. The date of the call 221

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  was June 19, the night Louderbush arranged to meet me at the Motel 6 but never showed.

  I called Bud back, and within an hour I had Trey Bigelow's address in New Baltimore, fifteen miles down the Hudson from Albany.

  * * * *

  I didn't know what Louderbush's car looked like, so I had no way of knowing if the twenty-year-old Ford Fiesta parked in the driveway of the house was his. It seemed unlikely that he would be visiting his boyfriend at five forty on a Tuesday afternoon. He was probably at the Capitol in Albany attending to important legislative business, like not passing the budget. The house, on a side street uphill from the river, was a single-story 1920s stucco cottage that was not in the best of repair. An old trellis was leaning off the right wall, and nothing was growing up it. Any flowering bushes that had once graced the area around the cavelike front porch—

  hydrangea? forsythia?—had long since been cut back to the roots.

  I pulled in behind the Ford and noted the Louderbush bumper sticker on the rear.

  Bigelow didn't answer the door right away. But he finally opened it using the one arm he had that wasn't in a sling.

  I said, "I don't know you at all, but whoever you are, you deserve better than Kenyon Louderbush."

  He started to close the door, but I got a foot and a shoulder between the door and the jamb. "Either you talk to 222

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  me or you talk to somebody who's going to be a lot less sympathetic and understanding than I am."

  "Well, fuck, I can see I certainly deserve better than you."

  Indicating the sling, I said, "Is this what you really want?"

  I pushed my way on into the foyer and shut the door behind me.

  He said, "Who are you, anyway? Are you, like, from the SPCA?" I could smell the beer on his breath.

  "You know," I said, "this time it's your arm. The next time it could be your neck."

  "He already did that. Collarbone anyways."

  He was tall and gawky, with a beaky nose, a nice set of cheekbones and huge green eyes. His big head of flaxen hair needed tending to, and his jeans and tank top were stained with what could have been Chef Boyardee or could have been blood. The living room, through an archway to the left, was a mess—beer cans, supermarket tabloids, an empty pizza box—

  and the TV was tuned to Judge Judy.

  I said, "What do you think the judge would have to say about the way Louderbush beats you?"

  He said, "She'd throw his ass in jail," and then he began to tear up. "Hey, look, I have to get ready for work. I don't know who you are, but I can't talk to you. I gotta pull my shit together, man."

  "Where do you work?"

  "Price Chopper. Checkout."

  "You're miserable. You're a mess. Don't you want out of this?"

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  "Yes. No. Yes and no. I mean, yes. Yes, I think I do. I've had e-fucking-nuff."

  "It's not as if you're dependent on him."

  "No, not financially. Though he helps me out. Beer money."

  I pushed a pizza box aside and sat on the couch. Judge Judy was giving a tongue lashing to a black woman with impressive decolletage and a hairdo that looked like a small Las Vegas casino.

  "What do you get out of it?"

  "Unconditional love." He looked at me with the big eyes and more tears ran down his cheeks.

  "What am I not understanding here? The conditions seem to be, he gets to seriously hurt you."

  He perched on the edge of a folding metal chair. "It's usually not serious. This thing"—the arm—"is unusual. I don't think he meant to break it."

  "What did you tell the hospital?"

  "That I fell off a ladder."

  "Do you have health insurance?"

  "No, I'm not full-time. But Kenyon takes care of it. He has state insurance, and he gave me some fake card that says I'm one of his kids. He says I can say I'm adopted."

  "How old are you, Trey?"

  "Nineteen."

  "Where did you meet Kenyon?"

  "Online. Silver Daddies. He looked so butch and so sexy and so dangerous. That appealed to me. I'd been in this type 224

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  of relationship before, but never with a dude who was so rough and important."

  "And you really want to keep this up? It's only a matter of time before you suffer brain damage or something else that can't be fixed. Do you want to end up in a wheelchair at your age?"

  "Maybe. I know I have low self-esteem. Maybe that's the only thing I'm good for. Being treated like shit."

  "Have you ever tried to get out of the relationship?"

  "A couple times. But it's just pretend. It's just so Kenyon can come down and get really liquored up and beat the crap out of me. He scares me though. One time I really meant it.

  He broke my fucking nose and it hurt like all get-out, and I told him that was it. I was serious this time, and he knew it.

  He went bananas. He was drunk as shit, and he started yelling about how if I tried to leave him he would kill me. He said he did it before—shoved some kid off a roof. Some SUNY

  student. I believed him too. He was so wild that night and crazy drunk."

  "Did he mention the SUNY student's name?"

  "I think it was one he mentioned before. Greg somebody.

  Kenyon had gotten this kid a job somewhere—Price Chopper maybe—and then the kid changed his mind about getting pounded by Kenyon all the time. He had some friends who talked him out of it. And when he told Kenyon he was breaking it off, Kenyon chased him up on a roof somewhere and pushed him off and killed him. He said every time I think about locking my door when he wants to come down here and 225

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  get a little and then kick the crap out of me, I should remember what happened to this other poor kid."

  "So you think it's true?"

  "Sure. Kenyon's a celebrity. They can get away with shit like that."

  "What if somebody offered to protect you from Kenyon?

  Get you into some kind of program?"

  "Like Judge Judy?"

  "I don't know about that."

  "What about The Price is Right?"

  "No, I meant some kind of program to help you deal with your need to get beaten up by your boyfriends."

  "Like shrinks?"

  "Sure, some kind of counseling. Have you ever been in a relationship with a man that was just pleasant and fun and nonviolent? Like friendship except w
ith sex, too?"

  "Yeah, in high school. With Jason Phipps. But my dad caught us one time and beat the holy bejesus out of me."

  "I'm sure I can get you into something. And if you have no health insurance, I know some people who will help out on that end."

  "So, what are you? Are you with the government? I'm not under arrest, am I?"

  "No, I'm not connected with the government. I'm private."

  "What happened to your ear?"

  "Somebody hit me. But I was an unwilling victim. If I run into the guy again—and I hope to—I'll try to put him behind bars."

  "In jail."

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  "You bet."

  "So, let me get this straight. You're not one of Kenyon's other boyfriends?"

  "No. There are others?"

  "Two, I think. But I only know the name of one, Scott Hemmerer. I met him at a bar on Central Avenue one time.

  He had a big shiner, and I'd had a few, and I asked him if Kenyon Louderbush had socked him, and he just about fell off his chair."

  "Do you know how I can get in touch with Scott? I'd like to talk to him."

  "Yeah, he works at Dunkin' Donuts on Lark. But he's not there now."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I heard he was in the hospital."

  * * * *

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  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I phoned Bud and made arrangements for his cousin to pick up the recording of my conversation with Trey Bigelow and get it onto a couple of disks that would be stored in two separate locations.

  I called Albany Med and learned that there was a Scott Hemmerer who was a patient in an orthopedic unit there, but I wasn't about to descend on him just yet.

  Timmy called to check up on me, and I said, "I'm at the Comfort Inn in Colony. Would you mind coming out here for a few days? It's better if we stay away from the house, because I'm closing in on what's actually going on in this thing, and I have a bad feeling the Serbians are going to turn up again.

  And this time they're going to really mean business."

  "Oh please. Worse than your car and your ear?"

  "You know how the Balkans are."

  "I'm having dinner with Myron and some big donor he's reeling in. I can get to the motel around nine. But how did everything change so fast? I thought Louderbush had brilliantly checkmated you and McCloskey."

  I described my visit with Trey Bigelow and his list of grotesque revelations.

  "Are you surprised?"

  "No. After Stiver died—or Louderbush killed him—the only thing that really changed with this guy was, he switched MOs.

  Instead of seducing young academics, he began trolling online for down and out, low-IQ kids who were going to be even 228

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  more malleable. He's got Bigelow now, and apparently there have been—and are—others. In one narrow but critical sense, it's Eliot Spitzer all over again. The compulsion, the hubris, the delusionary sense that he'll never get caught, and if he does he can somehow boogaloo his way out of it."

  "But it doesn't sound as if Louderbush is going to end up with his own show on CNN."

  "You never know. But this guy is not merely horny and hypocritical. He is deeply sick and deeply dangerous."

  "He'd've made an interesting governor."

  "Not gonna happen. I'm going to save the state of New York from Louderbush, and I'm going to save Louderbush from himself. Even in the unlikely event he ever got elected, he'd never last through the first year of his term. The guy is way, way out of control."

  "He's not going to go gentle into the good night you have in mind for him, I'll bet."

  "No, I'm counting on his staying in character, and I'll bet everything I've invested in this case that he will."

  * * * *

  I was having a beer and a burger down the road from the motel around seven when Bud reached me on my—his cousin's—cell and said, "I have some interesting tidbits for you. The cyberwars are heating up. Can I bring these shiny nuggets to wherever you are?" He closed the door to my room behind him at seven thirty, and we both sat on the edge of the bed while Bud opened his laptop and showed me what a fellow hacker had sent him: 229

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  some hacked files from yet another hacker who had once stolen the "incredible babe" girlfriend of hacker number two and now was going to be made to pay for his treachery.

  I said, "I'm just glad all you cyberhackers are good Americans, and none of you are working for Muammar Qaddafi or the Syrians or anything."

  "No, we're all patriots at heart. What we do is as American as Hostess Fruit Pie."

  "So, these files are what? The e-mail correspondence between who and who?"

  "Between my hacked hacker colleague—let's call him Todd, since that's his name—who is known in the community for being totally bottom-line oriented—and a current client of his.

  Plus of course e-mails from his client to other parties which Todd made a point of hacking into and then saving for a rainy day. Todd is a man who is always available to the highest bidder, and on top of his amorality, he's good. One of the most talented in the field. His client this time is a name you may or may not know. His name is Sam, and right there is his e-mail address."

  "Sam."

  "Sam has regular correspondence with men in high places, as you'll see." Bud clicked and scrolled this way and that.

  "Now here's a note to Sam from Stanley Weaver, CEO at BravuraCorp, the—what?—third largest bank in the United States?"

  "Third or fourth."

  "Quote: If this nutcase Louderbush wins the Democratic primary, we are so so fucked. It'll be four years of McCloskey 230

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  making life all but impossible for free enterprise to function.

  Can't you do anything for Merle? We'll help out naturally. Jay Goshen says you're working on something for him."

  "There's a reply?"

  More scrolling. "Quote: Louderbush is a fag who beats up his boyfriends, and we're going to get this out. McCloskey has some clubfooted Albany PI working on it, and we're making sure his attention doesn't wander. This guy can't be bought, we've heard, but somebody who knows him told us how to keep him interested. i.e., push him around. I'm letting McCloskey's guy do the heavy lifting here, and then we'll sink McCloskey with some stories on how he's a dirty trickster unfit for office. Give me a week or two and Merle will be home free.'"

  "I'm trying to remember who Jay Goshen is. Is he the head of Herkimer House or Trevalian Brothers? I know it's one of the big brokerage firms."

  "Trevalian."

  "How many of these Sam-to-Wall-Street e-mails are there?"

  "Forty or fifty. Some of the other names that crop up—at least as copies-to—are CEOs and CFOs at just about every major Wall Street bank and brokerage and law firm."

  "Law firms. Well. I'm trying to zero in on which particular mischief Sam is creating here that's actually illegal. The campaign laws are so loose that candidates can get away with just about anything short of armed robbery. Even embarrassment doesn't count for a lot these days. The electorate is too cynical to care."

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  Bud raised a wait-a-minute finger and clicked and scrolled around some more.

  "How familiar are you with the town of Hummerston, New Jersey?"

  "I grew up in Jersey. But I've just barely heard of Hummerston."

  "It's off Interstate 80 about thirty miles west of the G-W

  bridge. In recent years the town has built up a sizeable Serb community. Mostly people fed up with the racist, right-wing government
in Serbia, but some, too, who are happy with the old Balkan ways of dealing with people with whom one disagrees. That is, rip their ears off, and so forth. Apparently these guys volunteered to help out the New Jersey state Republican organization, and Sam heard about them."

  "Wow. Actual Serbians. Who'd have guessed?"

  "You're lucky, Strachey. Those guys who went after you in the Outback parking lot didn't lop your ear off and make you eat it."

  "No, they were under instructions to spur me on, not frighten me off. Somebody who knows me told Sam this is how I would respond to harassment. I wonder who. Any indication in any of this as to who that might have been?"

  "No, but I'm still working on collecting voice mails. That particular morsel could be buried in there somewhere."

  "So Sam hired these bad Serbians to rough me up? There are e-mails to that effect?"

  "Just generalities. My guess is, Sam told them to do what they had to do to get the job done but what the limits were—

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  were just to set the operation in motion and confirm that such-and-such had been carried out. You'll see the oblique and possibly coded language. A lot of it's in broken English, but some borders on literate. There's one guy who seems to use an alias, John Jameson."

  "Do you have some other names and addresses in Hummerston?"

  "I do. There's a night club called Belgrade Grotto. Liquor and coke—and dancing, both folk and pole. These fellows appear to own it. It's their Bada Bing club."

  "I'd like to download all this and have it available to me as I continue to carry out my duties for the McCloskey campaign."

  "I brought you four disks, each identical, with this material on each one. I've also included two CDs of your interview with the unfortunate Trey Bigelow."

  "Thank you, Bud. There's lots of good reading here to keep me spellbound into the night."

  He smiled at me with quiet satisfaction, his dark eyes bright with pride.

  I said, "Most of what you do is against the law, isn't it?"