'No. I was thoroughly disgusted, and I just decided to move on. I have to say, I rarely thought of Kenyon until I saw that he was running for governor. That's when it all came flooding back-Greg and Kenyon and the violence and the suicide-and I was sick in my soul all over again. I thought, I can't let this go. I have to do something. So I called the Republicans and told them about Greg and about Kenyon.'
'You called the Ostwind campaign? When was this?'
'Back in January, right after New Year's. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't take me seriously, but that's exactly what happened. A woman called me-Meg-something-and 90
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson she said it wasn't right for the campaign to be prying into their opponents' personal lives. She asked me what proof I had of an abusive relationship. I said I believed what Greg had told me, but on top of that I only had the typed letter from Kenyon that wasn't signed and could have been written by anybody. When I told her this, she said I had better forget the whole thing. She said it was hearsay. That was her word: hearsay.'
'Legally, that's true. But you weren't initiating a legal proceeding.'
'No, I was trying to stop a total asshole from becoming governor of New York.'
'That's exactly what I'm trying to do.'
'It really upset me that the Ostwind people didn't get what I was saying. I mean, I'm a Republican and I want Merle Ostwind to win. I was trying to help, for fuck's sake.'
'Yes, you were.'
'Well, anyway, I guess this proves that you aren't working for the Ostwind campaign. You don't represent some belated attempt to take my information seriously.'
'No, that's not what I'm doing here.'
Now she looked even more troubled. 'So I guess that means you are working for Shy McCloskey. You're trying to get the goods on Kenyon and hurt him politically.'
'You could draw that conclusion, Jennifer. By a process of elimination.'
She shook her head. 'Oh crap. This puts me in a real bind.
Of course I want to stop Kenyon from getting elected. But I don't really know how helpful I can be to you, because certainly don't want to see Shy McCloskey win the election.
He's way too liberal. McCloskey is in the pocket of the unions.
That includes the AFT, which protects lazy, ineffective teachers who should have been canned years ago but are still ruining children's lives because liberals like Shy McCloskey are too cowardly to face reality and are too beholden financially to the unions. Greg explained to me years ago how all that worked, and since then I've added to my knowledge of liberalism's failures with what I've seen with my own eyes.'
This was not what I had tracked Jennifer Stiver down to hear her say. 'But don't you think Greg would want Kenyon Louderbush stopped from being elected governor?'
She got teary-eyed again and sniffled. 'Yes. Yes and no.
No and yes. I know Greg was very, very hurt by his masochistic relationship with Kenyon. But would he have wanted Kenyon to become governor of New York? In all honesty, I'd have to say I'm not really sure he wouldn't have.'
Chapter Ten
All four tires on the Toyota had been slashed. There was no other damage to the car. What was done would have been carried out discreetly, what with teachers and other staff moving about in the school parking lot while I was inside being both helped and hindered by Jennifer Stiver.
I knew that the tire job had been done by the Serbians and not by sixth-graders who go around saying fuck- because a handwritten note had been stuck under my windshield wiper. It read This is your second and final warning.
Okay, so they had followed me? I was certainly unaware of any tail when I left the house in the morning and when I was cruising around the all-but-deserted SUNY parking lot next to Paul Podolski's office building. I'd stopped for lunch at the Gateway diner on Central Avenue, and I guessed they might have spotted me there and followed me to Rotterdam. But were they staking out all the upper Hudson Valley lunch spots in case I got hungry? Hardly. Who had I told that I was seeing Podolski and then Jennifer Stiver? Timmy and…Bud?
Bud was on the good guy's side, I was certain, or at least on the team that was paying his fat fee. Computer hackers operated outside the law, but they had their own rigid code of ethics, like Good Housekeeping and the Tupac Amaru.
I looked at the note again. This was my second and final warning, but my final warning before what?
I phoned a Triple A garage in Schenectady, explained that my tires had been vandalized and I would need a car carrier, not just a tow, and also a lift and a rental car. They said forty-five minutes.
One by one, two women and two men walked out of the school while I waited, took note of my flat tires, and asked me what had happened. I said, 'My ex-girlfriend is pissed off.
I suppose she has her reasons.' Each of these people peered at my car and at my bandaged ear and at my giant hickey, and then nodded, walked on and drove away.
Jennifer Stiver soon appeared, but she was busy talking on her cell phone and got into a red Dodge Neon parked nearer the school building and drove off without noticing me.
I phoned Timmy at work and explained my situation, leaving out the part about the final warning note.
'Oh, good grief. Do you want me to come out and pick you up?'
'No need. I'll get a rental car. Anyhow, it might be good to have an anonymous car for a day or two. I'm also thinking of staying in a hotel overnight. I can't figure out how these people seem to know where I am all the time.'
'Could they have hidden an electronic tracker somewhere in your car?'
'This is looming as a possibility. I've checked the car for explosives but not for a tracker. After I get the car back, I'll ask the campaign's security people to take a look. Dunphy uses Clean-Tech, and I know they're good. If there's anything to be found, they'll find it. Meanwhile, I should be as elusive as possible for a while.'
'You actually checked the car for explosives? I thought you said these people weren't trying to kill you, just to warn you off.'
'That's true. I'm just being overdramatic. Anyway, they somehow seem to know that I'm still working on getting the goods on Kenyon Louderbush, and they badly want me to stop. This only confirms that Louderbush is a despicable human being who must never be elected governor.'
'Any idea yet who they are? I assume it's the actual Louderbush campaign.'
'Maybe. Though it could be out-of-control Tea Partiers or other right-wing fringe types who are doing bad things on Louderbush's behalf without him or his campaign people knowing exactly what's going on. So if anything leaks out Louderbush will have plausible deniability.'
'It sounds like the Nixon White House.'
'You don't have to go that far back. Don't forget Cheney and Rove and the Valerie Plame CIA outing. I doubt Bush himself ever knew.'
'Was Jennifer Stiver helpful at all? What was she like?'
'She was helpful in the sense that she confirmed that her brother was a tortured soul who had been taken advantage of by a sadistic creep. And she doesn't seem to doubt that Greg took his own life. She was unhelpful in the sense that, like her brother, she's a conservative Republican and she wants Merle Ostwind to win the governor's race, and she's unwilling to do anything that might get Shy McCloskey elected. Ms. Stiver doesn't like liberals.'
'You didn't wave your ACLU card in her face, I take it.'
'I didn't need to. I'm working for the McCloskey campaign, and that's bad enough. I tried to leave the impression that I'm merely mercenary, figuring that as a good Republican she would approve of that. But now she apparently just thinks of me as unprincipled. So I don't know how much use Jennifer's going to be in exposing Louderbush.'
'What a rat's nest you've stepped in. Any second thoughts about getting involved in this?'
