Red White and Black and Blue

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 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 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."

"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 lucrative 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.

Though if she was elected governor, the Wall Street people 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.