Red White and Black and Blue

Chapter Five

I said, "What happened to my Blackberry?"

"Somebody picked it up. I have it."

Timmy was in the chair next to my bed, and at the foot of the bed Dunphy had planted himself in a wheelchair he had dragged in from the corridor on the sixth floor D-wing at Albany Med.

Dunphy said, "Don't worry about using your phone anytime soon. Just concentrate on healing. Even if you're out of here later today, take a day or three to regroup. Obviously the situation is urgent, but the most important thing you can do for all of us at this point is for you to be able to function at one hundred percent."

"Nothing's broken," I said. "No concussion either, apparently. I'm just scraped up and bruised all over and sore as shit, and my head hurts where they mangled my bad ear.

That ear has been through it: D-Day, the siege of Hue, Albany politics."

"You can't hear very well through that bandage," Timmy said. "Shouldn't you wait until the bandage comes off before you try to work again?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Exactly."

I said to Dunphy, "Timmy tells me that Jackman and Insinger are both okay. Nobody went after them. And they have protection now?"

"Some discreet security guys for when they leave work.

Jackman we had to talk into it, but Insinger was grateful.

Budgetwise the campaign can't legitimately pick this up at this point, but some friends of Shy have stepped up to the plate, no problem."

I pointed at the curtain behind Timmy. "Anybody in that other bed?"

"He died overnight," Timmy said. "And elderly man from Scotia."

"Oh."

"What did you tell the cops?" Dunphy asked. "They haven't been in touch with us, so I assume we're keeping them out of it at this point? And I do think it's preferable that they remain out of the loop for the time being."

"A police dick I know was in a while ago, Bill Hanratty. I told him I was working on something but preferred not to say what. He knows I consort with dubious types such as yourself, Tom, so he wasn't surprised to see me banged up, and he was okay with letting it ride for now. Anyhow, he's a humble cop who's busy with your garden-variety apolitical criminals, and he feels no deep need to involve himself in the glamorous world of democracy-at-work savagery."

"Hanratty did talk to a couple of witnesses," Timmy said,

"who Don plans to interview."

"Witnesses to the attack?"

"The tail end of it apparently. Three guys who work for an insurance office up Wolf Road. If they hadn't come out of the restaurant just then, the beaters might have gotten some more licks in. I was lucky. The attackers took off when these 51

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson insurance guys saw what was going on and one of them took out his cell, Hanratty said, and got 911."

"This could have been so much worse," Timmy said, squeezing my arm. "I'm the one who's still shaky when I think about that."

I said, "Ouch."

"Sorry."

"What's interesting was how they seemed to know exactly what they were doing in the sense of inflicting pain but minimal permanent damage. They hit the backs of my legs but not my kneecaps. They smacked me good on the upper back but not lower down where they could have messed up any number of organs. The head stuff was nasty. It knocked me out, and it bloodied my scalp and messed up my ear. But the hits were glancing. These guys were not trying to kill me or even wreck me for life. It was more of a violent warning."

"But they didn't say anything?" Dunphy asked.

"Not a word. It was as if they knew I knew why this was happening."

"Are you working on any other cases this could be related to?"

"No, just routine stuff. Missing ex-husbands and girlfriends, some insurance scams, a township pilfering thing involving probable theft of road department fuel supplies. This thing is related to the Louderbush situation, I'm pretty sure.

My question is, though, why did whoever it was go after me and not Jackman and Insinger? Why warn me off and not them? I'm replaceable in this equation. Any number of Manhattan PIs I know of could handle it, but the two witnesses to Louderbush's crimes are central. Yet nobody's laid a finger on them. There has to be a reason for that."

"Both of them were upset when we told them what had happened," Dunphy said. "Especially Insinger. She said Walmart doesn't like violence."

"Did the TU have anything? Or the TV stations?"

Timmy said, "Not so far. If it had been somebody's house pet who got mauled, TV would be all over it."

Dunphy asked me if I had gotten a good look at the attackers, and I said I hadn't. "I doubt if I could pick them out of a lineup. What I can say is, they were tall, beefy guys, thirtyish or thereabouts, and two looked kind of Slavic maybe.

Serbian? Or am I just reading that into it from news photos of Ratko Mladic? One was a bit darker. Not black. Brownish, though not Hispanic probably. Gypsy possibly."

Timmy said, "Roma."

"Okay."

"It's what they prefer to be called."

"Well, far be it for me. I hope I run into this guy again so I can apologize."

Timmy told Dunphy, "A writer friend once told me that I have the soul of a copy editor. I took it as a compliment."

Uncertain of what to make of this two-acerbic-gay-guys-in-love back-and-forth, Dunphy said, "So the insurance-guy witnesses must have gotten a look at the car the baddies were driving, no?"

"Hanratty says it was a black Lincoln Navigator with Jersey tags. The three witnesses disagreed on what the numbers were. If this was a higher priority case, the cops might fool 53

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson around with different number combinations and try to match them with New Jersey Navigators. But they don't have a lot of extra time on their hands, and of course the Albany Police Department is unaware that what I am working on is destined to alter the course of Empire State history."

Timmy said, "Lincoln Navigators aren't your usual Jersey goon style of vehicle. Or are they? They're usually the mode of transport of magnates, rock stars, the Secret Service."

"These guys could have been any of the above. Come to think of it, they were all nattily clad-upscale smart casual."

"Those blood stains will be hard to get out," Timmy said.

"Their slacks will probably need dry cleaning."

"And there I was writhing on the tarmac outside Outback in my togs from Marshalls. Maybe I was attacked for my questionable taste."

"It wouldn't have been the first time."

Dunphy said, "You guys sure are taking this a lot more lightly than I would have. I'd be shitting my pants and probably going into hiding. Anyway, I'm grateful you're willing to stick this out, Don. It shows you know how important this project is and that you're willing to do what's… I hate to sound sloppy, but the word that comes to mind is patriotic."

Timmy and I exchanged glances, and I said to Dunphy,

"It's true this is a job I don't think I need to be embarrassed about. Not so far. But you know, one thing you might be able to help me out with, Tom, is this: Who besides you and Shy McCloskey knew that I agreed just yesterday morning to take this Louderbush thing on? And who besides you knew I was meeting Jackman and Insinger yesterday afternoon? It seems 54

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson odd that anybody working for Louderbush-if that's who we're looking at here-would have learned so quickly of my plans and of my whereabouts. I keep trying to figure that out. It's puzzling."

Timmy and I both looked at Dunphy. He had been sitting with his elegantly shod feet on the metal footrests of his wheelchair, and now he shifted and placed both feet on the floor. "You're right. How did these guys know?"

"It's disturbing."

"Yeah."

"Either Jackman or Insinger could have let something slip.

Although, I set up my appointments with them only a few hours before I met them. There wasn't much time for either of them to mention me to anybody casually and innocently.

Either of them, of course, could have done it intentionally set me up for whatever weird unknown malign reason. But when I met them, both struck me as sincere in their strong disapproval of Kenyon Louderbush and his actions, and highly unlikely to be reporting secretly to him or his staff or his Serbian militia."

"You're right."

"It's baffling."

"All I can say, Don, is that I certainly have not discussed your working for us with anybody except Shy. And he was unaware of the specifics of your meetings yesterday until after they took place and you landed in here."

"What about your staff? Beryl and her crew out there?"

"They don't even know who the fuck you are. You're just some security guy."

"Right."

"What about Myron Lipschutz?" Dunphy asked. "Timothy, your boss."

"He knows Don is working for you, but not that it's about Louderbush. And Myron certainly didn't know Don was meeting yesterday with Jackman and Insinger."

I said, "And you're sure your phone lines are clean? And your office? What about your computers?"

"Absolutely. The computers are checked for hackers, and the rooms and phone lines are swept every morning just before Beryl gets in."

"By Clean-Tech?"

"Yes."

"And they're trustworthy? The company isn't owned by Diebold Incorporated. or Karl Rove's brother-in-law in Florida?"

Dunphy screwed up his pink face. "Jesus, you're making me nervous, Don. If you can't trust the firms you pay the big bucks to secure your information, who can you trust?"

"You don't by chance record telephone conversations yourself, do you, Tom?"

"Me? Why would I?"