Red White and Black and Blue

Chapter Seventeen

Louderbush had not called back. I drove through the onrushing downpour back toward Albany, picking up my phone and putting it down more than twice, thinking maybe if I jiggled it, it would show a missed call from the assemblyman.

My visit with Anson Stiver had been brief and unhelpful in any important way. The retired engineer was slouched in his wheelchair, a portable oxygen unit at his side, his big frame a collapsed wreck. His speech, to the extent he had anything to say to me, wasn't just hard to understand; it was largely indecipherable. Was there a book? When Bad Things Happen to Bad People.

Stiver wasn't happy that I was not from Time Warner-a block of programming had gone out that included CNBC and the Fox Business channel-and he was even more put out when Mrs. Stiver introduced me, at my suggestion, as someone interested in establishing a kind of memorial for Greg. Stiver was immediately suspicious, and he seemed to be asking why it had taken five years for anyone to get around to this.

"His many friends have been so busy with their academic careers," I said. "But Greg's sad passing haunts us all."

He looked as if he wasn't going to buy that at all. He said something else I couldn't follow, but his hard gaze was on my bandaged ear, and I wasn't surprised when Mrs. Stiver said to him, "He hurt his ear playing rugby."

Stiver snorted at that and then made more noises that I couldn't make out and shook his head vehemently.

Mrs. Stiver translated this as, "If the memorial is some gay thing, no money. If it's not a gay thing, twenty-five dollars."

I told him it was a gay thing. I wanted to add Give me the twenty-five dollars anyway or I'll break your nose, but of course I didn't.

I left soon after.

I got Timmy on the phone. "Still no word from Louderbush.

But I've met Stiver's parents, and I can see how young Greg might have fallen into a self-destructive relationship with an older man." I described the unfortunate Margery Stiver and her hulking ruin of a bad-news husband.

"No surprises there, right? Did you learn anything at all?"

"No, but Stiver's mom is yet another character in this confused psychodrama who considered him a highly unlikely candidate for suicide. She said why would anybody tough enough to survive someone as awful as her husband then suddenly fall apart mentally in a situation where choices were available? She talked about how strong Greg had always been."

"Yes, but maybe that was the problem. Stiver knew he was a tough survivor, and yet here he was being worn down physically even-by yet another violent man. And he couldn't find the courage to put an end to a situation he saw as humiliatingly self-destructive. He couldn't face going on that way. It wasn't who he thought he was and who he wanted to be."

"That's an entirely plausible summary. But the way Insinger and Jackman described Stiver's last weeks seemed to suggest some particular deterioration in Stiver's circumstances that he was having a bad time coping with. The teaching job situation or maybe some new disturbing wrinkle that Louderbush had introduced into the equation."

"I guess only Assemblyman Louderbush would know the answer to that question."

The rain was easing off now, and I could make out misty sunlight up ahead over the western outskirts of Albany. "I'm assuming Louderbush will call back soon. He obviously knows what I'm working on, and now he knows I know he knows, so he has to believe I'll eventually track him down on my own terms. And he'd rather we met on his."

"He should hurry up."

"I think he will. He definitely does not want any of this to become an election issue. Though how he can avoid it at this point beats me. The circumstantial case against him keeps building. One thing I'd like to know is, how come Louderbush's staff was making official inquiries out at SUNY about Stiver's suicide? Was Louderbush trying to scope out whether or not Stiver had mentioned Louderbush in a suicide note or elsewhere in an incriminating way? You don't happen to know anybody on Louderbush's staff, do you? I asked Tom Dunphy if he had a mole there and he didn't."

"I only know Louderbush's people very casually. There's somebody I could ask though. Ann Holmes dated a Louderbush staffer for a while. I think the guy she dated no longer works there, but he might remember something."

"Isn't Ann Holmes a Howard Dean fanatic? What was she doing dating somebody working for a reactionary like Louderbush?"

Timmy chortled. "Well, if you really need to know…"

"Know what?"

"This guy, Frogman Ying, was famous for his incredibly long tongue. He was a Taiwanese Chinese-American who sort of got passed around among Ann and her gang for a year or so."

"Frogman?"

"His real name was Alex."

"You think he's still in Albany?"

"I've seen him around. He works for the taxation committee as I recall. He could work magic with numbers, Ann said. But not just numbers."

I said, "Do straight women confide these sorts of things to their straight male friends or just their gay male friends?"

"Oh, I think you know the answer to that one. It's one of the ten reasons we were invented."

"What are the other nine?"

Timmy said he'd have to consult Walter Scott's Personality Parade for the answer to that, and meanwhile he'd try to track down the gifted Mr. Ying.

I decided that Louderbush had concluded that he didn't need the Serbians harassing me anymore and I could safely return home. Crow Street did feel cozy and secure when I found a parking spot with inches to spare and maneuvered deftly into it. One of the few useful things I had learned in high school was parallel parking-algebra is overrated as a 156

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson key to the good life-and I never failed to whisper thanks to my old driver ed teacher, Mr. Galitsky, whenever I practiced this essential urban skill.

Timmy wasn't home. He phoned and said he was having brunch with his old friend Ann Holmes, and he had a call in to Alex Ying. Timmy was going to feel out Ying on his current opinions on Assemblyman Louderbush. If they were negative, he'd level with Ying about the physical abuse charges and ask about the Louderbush staff inquiries into the Stiver suicide. If Louderbush was one of Ying's political heroes, I said the story might be that Stiver's family was setting up a memorial scholarship in his name, and did Ying recall if Assemblyman Louderbush was acquainted with the late young conservative stalwart? If Ying said why not just call the office, Timmy would say it's Saturday and the office is closed and Ann Hoolmes suggested Timmy call Ying.

I checked my e-mails-nothing from Bud Giannopolous and ate a bowl of Bola granola and put some coffee on.

My cell phone went off, and there it was again, Louderbush's number.

"This is Strachey."

"Yes. Mr. Strachey."

"I missed you last night. That Motel 6 set me back fifty-nine ninety-five. But let's try it again. I know you think this is as important as I do."

"Yes, I apologize. Anyone can tell you, missing appointments is out of character for me. But I had to deal with a situation before I spoke with you. I dealt with that situation, and now I'm clear going forward."

"Okay."

"I want to sit down with you and with one other person who is deeply affected by all this."

"All right."

"That other person is my wife."

What was this? "That sounds awkward."

He breathed heavily. "You have no idea."

"So she knows? About you and Greg Stiver?"

Another long pause. "Is this call being recorded?"

"No. If it was, I would be legally required to inform you of that fact."

I could all but see him rolling his eyes. "Yes, and I'm sure you're a law-abiding investigator, Mr. Strachey. Just like the law-abiding investigators who followed Eliot Spitzer into post offices and hotels."

"Yes, and I'm sure you're a law-abiding public official. Oh, thanks, by the way, for calling off the Serbians. They nearly ripped my ear off the first time I ran into them."

"I have no idea what you're referring to, and I have no need to know what your private eye snooping-into-people's-privacy type of life must be like. What I'm telling you is, I'm willing to meet with you, and when I told my wife, Deidre, what I was planning to do, she insisted on being there, too. I find this all just excruciating, and so does she. But she says rightly, I think, that her being there might help convince you and the people you are working with that what you are embarked on is just terribly wrong and unfair. And if you have any sense of justice-and of Christian charity, if I may say what's in my heart-then you and Tom Dunphy and Shy McCloskey will drop this entire wrongheaded line of investigation, and find something better to do with your time and your bushels of money."

"Wrongheaded in what way?"

"You'll see. Can you meet Tuesday morning? I'm at home in Kurtzburg now and won't be back in Albany until Monday night. I have a friend who maintains a suite at the Crowne Plaza. Could you meet there?"

"I could drive out to where you are today or tomorrow.

You're what, just west of Rochester?"

"No, don't come here. If you come here, it's no deal. I can't have someone like you being seen with me in my district. I'm sure you get that."

"Someone like me? Mr. Louderbush, can you hear yourself talking? If you did, you'd have to wonder."

More breathing. "I know what you think of me. And I admit some of it's deserved. But you don't know the whole story.

Far from it. That's what you're going to hear on Tuesday, the whole story. And then you're going to think better of me. I promise you that you will think better of me."

It sounded like a con to me, and what I was mostly thinking about was the wire I'd wear and the additional evidence I'd end up with it that further revealed Louderbush's irredeemably rotten character.

We set the time and place for the Tuesday morning meeting, and I immediately called Timmy to update him on Louderbush's brazen gamesmanship. He was in the midst of his brunch with Ann Holmes and couldn't stay on the phone, but he said Frogman Ying had gotten back to him and was 159

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson willing to meet me later that afternoon. Ying had told Timmy that Kenyon Louderbush was a great man who would make a great governor, and Ying was happy to hear that the Stiver family was setting up a memorial scholarship in Greg's name.

He remembered Greg as one of a number of bright, promising young conservatives who had supported Assemblyman Louderbush and whose careers, academic and otherwise, had been boosted by the assemblyman. Greg was one of several college students who had been mentored by Louderbush.

Greg was a particular favorite, but there had been others.