Richard Stevenson - Red White and Black and Blue

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.

Timmy was able to wangle extra tickets to the Cuomo inaugural celebration, a modest event owing to the state budget crisis. Bud Giannopolous came along, and also his cousin Ephram.

Afterward, we all went down for dinner at Da Vinci. The place was packed with Democrats, all whooping it up and getting their political victory jollies. Tom Dunphy came over to our table and told us how ecstatic he was to finally be part of a winning gubernatorial campaign in New York State. When I introduced him to Bud, he turned pale, mumbled a terse greeting, and fled.

The papers that day were also full of news of Kenyon Louderbush's having been charged with assault by seven young men. One of them was Trey Bigelow. He had asked the DA if the presiding judge in the trial might be Judge Judy, but an assistant DA told Bigelow she was sorry that her office could make no promises in that regard.

Janie Insinger had the satisfaction of seeing Louderbush brought to justice without having to trouble her employer.

She would not be called to testify. Virgil Jackman, on the other hand, was a major source for Vicki Jablonski in her extensive explosive reporting, and he was helpful to APD when it reopened the Greg Stiver suicide case. Of the eighteen young men who were discovered to have been beaten by Louderbush-only seven wished to press charges three told prosecutors Louderbush had once gotten drunk and 266

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson bragged about having thrown a college student off a high building and killed him. None of that could be proved, of course, but the multiple assault convictions would undoubtedly land Louderbush in Attica for what would be in effect a life term. It looked as if it would be justice OJ-style.

Imperfect, but there you are.

Jennifer Stiver tried to get Shenango Life to reconsider its denial of her life insurance claim. But since a Louderbush murder conviction seemed unlikely, the company told her to take a hike. She later told me that as disappointed as she was, at least she didn't have to turn on her TV and watch Shy McCloskey sworn in as governor.

The Tea Party, left in the lurch by Louderbush's exposure as a sadistic criminal, famously came up with a gubernatorial candidate-a rich, obnoxious real estate mogul from Buffalo to run on the Republican instead of the Democratic ticket, but that turned out badly for them, too.

At the Da Vinci Democratic victory dinner, Timmy, ever the evangelical Jesuit I love, tried to talk Bud Giannopolous into going straight and avoiding ending up in the federal pen.

"Maybe," Timmy said, "you could do cybersecurity for some good outfit like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch."

Plainly, this did not get Bud's blood coursing. He sat slumped in his chair and nodded glumly.

"Or, what about working for some revolutionary movement in the Middle East? There's an American political theorist named Gene Sharp whose ideas on nonviolent resistance in right-wing police states are being studied by young people in Tunisia and Egypt. I'm sure these people will need technical help with the social networks they'll use when the time comes to try to overthrow evil regimes like Ben Ali's and Mubarak's.