Red White and Black and Blue ds-12

by Richard Stevenson

  "Everything old is new again. Not all of Nixon's thugs found Jesus and repented."

  "So apparently you were being manipulated all along?

  Krupa wanted you to get the goods on Louderbush, so he had you roughed up, knowing how pigheaded you are and how you'd just keep at it?"

  "The question is, how did he know me so well? Some PIs would have said the hell with this, these people must not be messed with. He was sure I'd react the way I did. There's a reference to someone who claims to know me and who assures Krupa I could be danced around like a marionette."

  "I could have told them how you'd react to being pushed around. But I didn't."

  "What do you think Myron told Dunphy about me?"

  "Probably that you were stubborn and a pain in the ass but a decent human being and quite effective at what you do.

  And, yes, probably that you'd only be spurred on by a dangerous and challenging situation."

  "I'd ask Dunphy, but he's obviously not going to admit to anything."

  "I'm not sure he's that cynical. It could have been a lot of people. You're known around Albany."

  I climbed out of bed and had a slug of the motel's watery coffee. "Did you listen to the CD and my interview with Trey Bigelow about Louderbush? Speaking of cynical."

  "No, I fell asleep before I got to that."

  "It's sickening. And heartbreaking." I described Louderbush's brutal treatment of this sad case of a young man and Bigelow's story about at least one other boyfriend Louderbush had apparently put in the hospital. "And then there's Greg Stiver. Louderbush got drunk and violent one time when Bigelow threatened to lock him out and said he'd once killed a recalcitrant boyfriend, and if Bigelow didn't cooperate he'd do it again. He said he had pushed this guy off a building."

  Timmy sat down. "God. It's what the woman at SUNY almost saw happen."

  "Possibly. Or it might only have happened in Louderbush's head. I'll have to ask him."

  "Why would he admit anything to you? Anyway, he thinks he's got you defanged with all his blackmail crapola-the Bud stuff and so on that…who? Sam Krupa? — shoved through his mail slot."

  "Yes, but I've got my own Bud crapola, and Assemblyman Louderbush's mail slot is about to be the recipient of another eye-opening deposit."

  Timmy had called his office to say he'd be a little late, but now he was transitioning into his chief of staff mode, and he began climbing into his elegant costume. I said I wouldn't be back until late in the day and I'd be in touch. We kissed, and he was on his way.

  I phoned the air service that had flown me to Kurtzburg and asked if somebody could fly me out there again that morning. They said they'd have to get an okay from the McCloskey campaign, but I told them I'd use a credit card and get reimbursed, and they said they thought Walt was around somewhere with his Cessna.

  The day was breezy, and Walt did a couple of inadvertent loop-de-loops, but we arrived in Kurtzburg in one piece. There was no rental car waiting this time, but Walt suggested I call Dom's taxi.

  I told Dom, "Special courier delivery for Assemblyman Kenyon Louderbush."

  "Sure, I know where he lives. Everybody knows Kenyon.

  Good man. Make a good governor. No bullshit."

  I got out the envelope on which I had written Special Delivery to Kenyon Louderbush-from Don Strachey-Private and Confidential. I walked up the front steps to the handsome old Louderbush house on Church Street and shoved it through the mail slot in the big oak front door.

  Before I climbed back into Walt's little plane, I phoned Timmy. "Can you find out discreetly if Louderbush suddenly bolts out of his office later this afternoon and hightails it out to Kurtzburg?"

  "Sure, I'll let you know."

  Then I swooped back to Albany, checked out of the Comfort Inn, drove to our house on Crow Street, and waited for Sam Krupa to call.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  "It looks like we need to talk," Krupa said. He spoke in a low rumble bordering on a croak that sounded about right for a man of his age-mid-eighties, I guessed.

  "You bet."

  "Can you get into the city?"

  "Sure. What about the Serbians?"

  "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Look, if this call is being recorded by either of us, neither of us is going to be able to make any use of it. We're at that stage, I think."

  "The Serbians have been taken care of. They'll leave you alone. You know, you really didn't have to burn down their night club."

  "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Now they're mad at me."

  "Swell."

  "I live on Sutton Place. Do you know the small park at the end of East Fifty-seventh overlooking the river?"

  "I can find it."

  "Tomorrow morning at eleven?"

  "That works. And we'll both show up alone?"

  "Oh sure."

  I didn't give him my new cell number-I didn't want Todd monitoring my calls-but I gave him my e-mail address and said I'd check my Blackberry for any updates from him. Krupa recited his e-mail address, though of course I already had it 244

  Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson at this point, everybody knew everything about everybody else.

  At my request, Trey Bigelow had given me the Albany Med receipt from his last visit there. He'd also shown me the state employee's insurance card Louderbush had arranged for him to use, and I had made a note of the policy number. I called the Times Union, hit zero, and was put through to Vicki Jablonski, the investigative reporter I'd been told was the smartest and most aggressive in town.

  "Don Strachey. I'm a private investigator. Rhonda Saltzman suggested I call. I've got a good story for you."

  "Okay."

  "I've got the goods on Kenyon Louderbush. The guy's not fit to hold public office."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Do you want to hear what he's guilty of?"

  "Sure."

  "Insurance fraud."

  "All righty."

  "Here's the thing. Louderbush arranged for an acquaintance with no health insurance to get onto his state employee family plan. This acquaintance is supposedly Louderbush's quote-unquote adopted child. But it's not true."

  "It sounds as if you're saying Assemblyman Louderbush might be more of a humanitarian than some people give him credit for."

  "Au contraire."

  "Okay, au contraire."

  "I'm not going to get into motives. You can if you want to.

  I'm just sticking to the facts."

  "What's your evidence, Don?"

  "Could I fax you a couple of things?"

  "Sure." She gave me the number.

  "They'll arrive in two minutes."

  "Let me just ask you something. Are you by any chance associated with the McCloskey campaign?"

  "You bet. But that in no way alters the facts of the situation."

  "Uh-huh. Send me what you've got, and maybe we'll go from there."

  "What I can also tell you, Ms. Jablonski, is that there's a lot more to this story. It's going to finish off Louderbush's gubernatorial candidacy. Just follow the insurance card."

  "What are you, some kind of Deep Throat wannabe?

  Exactly what are you trying to tell me, Don?"

  "Just follow the health insurance."

  I gave her my new cell number, rang off and faxed her Bigelow's receipt and the number of his insurance policy.

  Hospital records were confidential, but I assumed Jablonski had her sources, just as I did.

  Timmy called at ten till four and said, "I called Louderbush's office and asked if he was available for a short budget committee meeting later today. I was told no, he'd been called back to Kurtzburg on some family matter, and he wouldn't be back in Albany until sometime tomorrow."

  "Good. I'm headed back out there, then to the city. I'll be in the car a lot, but that's okay. I'll listen to some Mendelssohn and some Monk. It'll be good for my ear and for my soul to think about anything besides this disgusting case for several hours.
"

  "Do you want me to come along? I'll be out of the office in an hour."

  "No, I won't be back till tomorrow afternoon, so you might as well hold down the legislative fort and do everything you can to keep the state budget from getting passed for another day."

  "I'll do my level best."

  "But it's safe to go back to the house now. The Serbians are off the case. I talked to Sam Krupa."

  "You actually talked with him? Was it like talking to Richard Nixon himself?"

  "Krupa is less verbose than Nixon and, so far, less obscene. But we'll see how long that lasts. I'm meeting him tomorrow in New York, and he's not going to be happy with my proposal."

  Timmy went back to work, and before I climbed into the rental car again, I phoned my friend at APD. I told him it would be a good idea to get out the files on the Greg Stiver suicide, because I thought the department would soon be reopening the case.

  "Where's your wife?" I asked Louderbush. "She might want to be recording this."

  "My wife is at Pizza Hut with my daughter Heather's soccer team following their game, which is where I should be and 247

  Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson where I would certainly prefer to be. I'll be talking things over with Deidre later this evening. Even though the packet you or one of your agents dropped off was addressed to me, she went ahead and opened it and examined its contents before I arrived home."

  "I'll bet you're in Dutch now."

  "In what?"

  "You don't know that colloquialism? She gets the picture that your years of savagery are now known far and wide, and she's ripshit."

  We were seated in Louderbush's district office, a room on the second floor of an old business block on Kurtzburg's Main Street. He was behind his desk, and I was in the constituent's chair facing him. There were the obligatory photos on the wall, framed and signed, with Louderbush and George Pataki, Louderbush and Pat Boone, Louderbush and Sarah Palin. On his desk was a framed family photographic group portrait, tinted.

  "Yes, Deidre is going to need reassurance," he said.

  "Although surely this Krupa character isn't going public with this tired old gossip about me pre-Greg Stiver. It looks as though you've got enough on Krupa and the way he operates-like some scumbag Mafioso-to shut him up."

  "I think so. Though the way we're headed here, it looks as though all three of the gubernatorial candidates are going to have to drop out of the race. Each of you has enough crud on the other two to force everybody out."

  "Well," Louderbush said with a funny look, "everybody or nobody. Since no one of us can put his or her opposition 248

  Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson research to use without being exposed as one thing or another by both other camps, in a sense we're all back to square one. And that's good. No one will be waging a campaign of personal destruction. The campaign can just be about the issues."

  I sighed and said, "Well, in your case, Mr. Louderbush, it isn't as simple as that."

  He saw it coming and reddened. "Not simple? How so?"

  "I've met Trey Bigelow, and I know about Scott Hemmerer."

  He had the humanity to look cornered. "I… I…"

  "How many others have there been?"

  He thought about that. "No others," he mouthed barely audibly with no conviction at all.

  "And it gets worse," I said.

  He waited.

  "Insurance fraud. Bigelow's health insurance."

  His liar's instincts kicked in. "Well, I'll have to look into that. I hope Trey didn't misunderstand something I said and come up with some fake insurance card or anything like that."

  "He said you gave it to him."

  "Oh no. That kid is so, so troubled. Troubled and treacherous, I now see."

  "How about Hemmerer? I understand he's in the hospital with broken bones."

  He slumped. "Bone. Just one. His ulna, I believe. Scott doesn't look all that fragile. He's actually kind of a rough little bugger. He and Trey must have concocted some insurance 249

  Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson scam using my name and my state policy. You really have to wonder who's victimizing whom here, wouldn't you say?"

  "Trey Bigelow told me that you got drunk one night and told him you had pushed Greg Stiver off the roof at SUNY.

  You were enraged because Greg told you he'd had enough of you and the beatings, and he was going to break off the relationship. You killed Greg, and you told Trey if he left you, you'd kill him, too."

  Louderbush stood up. He shook his head. He sat down again with a thud. After a moment, he opened a desk drawer, and I pulled my Smith amp; Wesson out of the shoulder bag and raised it, barrel in the air. But what Louderbush lifted out of the drawer was not a weapon, just a bottle of Cutty Sark.

  "I wasn't able to quit drinking, either," he muttered. He retrieved a plastic cup from a nearby shelf and poured himself a generous half cup. "Care for a shot, Donald?"

  "No."

  He had a healthy snort and then ruminated for a minute or so.

  "You have no proof," he said finally. "Just the word of that fucked up little fairy."

  "Of the murder, no, there's no smoking gun. But the insurance fraud is going to sink your political career. I've already passed that part of it to an investigative reporter. And she'll undoubtedly dredge up most of the rest-the young men, the beatings, the hypocrisy."

  He smirked. "Oh, do you think I've been hypocritical? I've supported civil unions, hate crime laws, equal rights for gays in every case except gay marriage. The marriage thing is simply not politically tenable in this district. As far as I'm personally concerned, if homosexuals want to attempt to set up housekeeping and mate like real men and real women, that's up to them."

  "You don't seem to include yourself in the category of homosexual."

  "Of course I don't. Homosexuals are weak. Homosexuals are sick. Homosexuals are people who like to have their teeth kicked out. Do I look like one of those people? Could anybody possibly mistake me for such pathetic scum?"

  He finished off the Cutty Sark in the cup and poured himself another half cup.

  "As I understand it, Mr. Louderbush, you had sex with your male partners before you beat them. You seem actually to be of two minds about homosexuality."

  "If any of these trash you've been talking to asserted that I myself have ever been anally penetrated, they are lying or delusional."

  "No one went into particulars. I didn't ask. I didn't really want to know."

  "So, leave me with just this one shred of self-respect, will you, please?"

  He poured himself another drink, although this time he nearly missed the cup and splashed whiskey on some documents on his desk. He was getting as drunk as he could as fast as he could. Was he then going to kiss me? Punch me in the face?

  I said, "I'm going to go after you on the Stiver death.

  There's a witness who saw two people on the Quad Four roof before Greg fell. And if you went into a drunken rage and admitted to Trey Bigelow that you shoved Greg over the edge, you might have admitted the same thing-bragged about it-to other men under similar circumstances. If so, I'm going to find these men and depose them and they are going to form a queue outside the Albany DA's office. You killed a decent, screwed up young gay man with his life ahead of him, and you're not going to get away with it."

  Louderbush stood up and shook his head again over and over. He looked down at the family photo on his desk, and he began to snuffle. Suddenly he croaked out, "I'm sorry, Deidre, I'm so sorry!"

  He sat down again with a thunk — seemed to collapse into his chair-but before I realized what he was up to, he was up again, fast, turned, and flung open a window behind him and dove into the cool evening air.

  I raced out of the office and down the stairs to Main Street. Cars had stopped, and a few passers-by had already gathered to gawk and exclaim into their cell phones. Heaped on the sidewalk, Louderbush was breathing well enough, but he was still weeping, fr
om physical and all kinds of other deeper pain. One arm was twisted weirdly, and one leg was ominously misshapen, too.

  Chapter Thirty

  Just after two in the morning, I checked into a motel off the Thruway, near Kingston. I was spent, and I was still mad.

  Louderbush had tried to tell the cops I'd pushed him out the window, but three teenagers down on the street had seen him dive out on his own. Also, the cops could smell the whiskey on his breath, and the hospital he was hauled off to would undoubtedly verify that the assemblyman had been inebriated when he fell or jumped from his office window. I told the police I had been interviewing Louderbush for an article in Le Monde when he began acting strangely and then plunged out the window. One cop said, "Some people can't hold their liquor."

  I was back on the road by eight Thursday morning, and just after nine WCBS news radio reported that gubernatorial candidate Kenyon Louderbush was in an upstate hospital recovering from injuries suffered in a fall the night before. No details were yet available, WCBS said, but "unconfirmed reports" had the assemblyman tumbling from a second-story window.

  In another hour I was creeping down FDR Drive in the all-day, all-night rush-hour traffic. I swung off the FDR at ten past ten and found a parking garage on 58th. I told the attendant I'd just be a few hours.

  It was a perfectly lovely June morning in Manhattan. I arrived at the small leafy park at the end of well-appointed 57th Street early and sat on a bench enjoying the view over the East River and, beyond that, of ever up-and-coming Queens. I watched the traffic shoving itself across the waltzing tangle of girders of the 59th Street Bridge. Nearby, a couple of moms kept one eye on their Blackberries and another on their tots in the play area, and a woman with what might have been a small squash racket in her hair led around the park a dog that looked like a giraffe wearing a grass skirt.

  Sam Krupa ambled in right on time and sat down next to me.

  "You're the only person in the park seedy-looking enough to be a private detective. You're Strachey?"