over with Deidre later this evening. Even though the packet you or one of your agents dropped off was addressed to me, she went ahead and opened it and examined its contents before I arrived home.'
'I'll bet you're in Dutch now.'
'In what?'
'You don't know that colloquialism? She gets the picture that your years of savagery are now known far and wide, and she's ripshit.'
We were seated in Louderbush's district office, a room on the second floor of an old business block on Kurtzburg's Main Street. He was behind his desk, and I was in the constituent's chair facing him. There were the obligatory photos on the wall, framed and signed, with Louderbush and George Pataki, Louderbush and Pat Boone, Louderbush and Sarah Palin. On his desk was a framed family photographic group portrait, tinted.
'Yes, Deidre is going to need reassurance,' he said.
'Although surely this Krupa character isn't going public with this tired old gossip about me pre-Greg Stiver. It looks as though you've got enough on Krupa and the way he operates-like some scumbag Mafioso-to shut him up.'
'I think so. Though the way we're headed here, it looks as though all three of the gubernatorial candidates are going to have to drop out of the race. Each of you has enough crud on the other two to force everybody out.'
'Well,' Louderbush said with a funny look, 'everybody or nobody. Since no one of us can put his or her opposition 248
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson research to use without being exposed as one thing or another by both other camps, in a sense we're all back to square one. And that's good. No one will be waging a campaign of personal destruction. The campaign can just be about the issues.'
I sighed and said, 'Well, in your case, Mr. Louderbush, it isn't as simple as that.'
He saw it coming and reddened. 'Not simple? How so?'
'I've met Trey Bigelow, and I know about Scott Hemmerer.'
He had the humanity to look cornered. 'I… I…'
'How many others have there been?'
He thought about that. 'No others,' he mouthed barely audibly with no conviction at all.
'And it gets worse,' I said.
He waited.
'Insurance fraud. Bigelow's health insurance.'
His liar's instincts kicked in. 'Well, I'll have to look into that. I hope Trey didn't misunderstand something I said and come up with some fake insurance card or anything like that.'
'He said you gave it to him.'
'Oh no. That kid is so, so troubled. Troubled and treacherous, I now see.'
'How about Hemmerer? I understand he's in the hospital with broken bones.'
He slumped. 'Bone. Just one. His ulna, I believe. Scott doesn't look all that fragile. He's actually kind of a rough little bugger. He and Trey must have concocted some insurance 249
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson scam using my name and my state policy. You really have to wonder who's victimizing whom here, wouldn't you say?'
'Trey Bigelow told me that you got drunk one night and told him you had pushed Greg Stiver off the roof at SUNY.
You were enraged because Greg told you he'd had enough of you and the beatings, and he was going to break off the relationship. You killed Greg, and you told Trey if he left you, you'd kill him, too.'
Louderbush stood up. He shook his head. He sat down again with a thud. After a moment, he opened a desk drawer, and I pulled my Smith amp; Wesson out of the shoulder bag and raised it, barrel in the air. But what Louderbush lifted out of the drawer was not a weapon, just a bottle of Cutty Sark.
'I wasn't able to quit drinking, either,' he muttered. He retrieved a plastic cup from a nearby shelf and poured himself a generous half cup. 'Care for a shot, Donald?'
'No.'
He had a healthy snort and then ruminated for a minute or so.
'You have no proof,' he said finally. 'Just the word of that fucked up little fairy.'
'Of the murder, no, there's no smoking gun. But the insurance fraud is going to sink your political career. I've already passed that part of it to an investigative reporter. And she'll undoubtedly dredge up most of the rest-the young men, the beatings, the hypocrisy.'
He smirked. 'Oh, do you think I've been hypocritical? I've supported civil unions, hate crime laws, equal rights for gays in every case except gay marriage. The marriage thing is simply not politically tenable in this district. As far as I'm personally concerned, if homosexuals want to attempt to set up housekeeping and mate like real men and real women, that's up to them.'
'You don't seem to include yourself in the category of homosexual.'
'Of course I don't. Homosexuals are weak. Homosexuals are sick. Homosexuals are people who like to have their teeth kicked out. Do I look like one of those people? Could anybody possibly mistake me for such pathetic scum?'
He finished off the Cutty Sark in the cup and poured himself another half cup.
'As I understand it, Mr. Louderbush, you had sex with your male partners before you beat them. You seem actually to be of two minds about homosexuality.'
'If any of these trash you've been talking to asserted that I myself have ever been anally penetrated, they are lying or delusional.'
'No one went into particulars. I didn't ask. I didn't really want to know.'
'So, leave me with just this one shred of self-respect, will you, please?'
He poured himself another drink, although this time he nearly missed the cup and splashed whiskey on some documents on his desk. He was getting as drunk as he could as fast as he could. Was he then going to kiss me? Punch me in the face?
I said, 'I'm going to go after you on the Stiver death.
There's a witness who saw two people on the Quad Four roof before Greg fell. And if you went into a drunken rage and admitted to Trey Bigelow that you shoved Greg over the edge, you might have admitted the same thing- bragged about it-to other men under similar circumstances. If so, I'm going to find these men and depose them and they are going to form a queue outside the Albany DA's office. You killed a decent, screwed up young gay man with his life ahead of him, and you're not going to get away with it.'
Louderbush stood up and shook his head again over and over. He looked down at the family photo on his desk, and he began to snuffle. Suddenly he croaked out, 'I'm sorry, Deidre, I'm so sorry!'
He sat down again with a thunk — seemed to collapse into his chair-but before I realized what he was up to, he was up again, fast, turned, and flung open a window behind him and dove into the cool evening air.
I raced out of the office and down the stairs to Main Street. Cars had stopped, and a few passers-by had already gathered to gawk and exclaim into their cell phones. Heaped on the sidewalk, Louderbush was breathing well enough, but he was still weeping, from physical and all kinds of other deeper pain. One arm was twisted weirdly, and one leg was ominously misshapen, too.
Chapter Thirty
Just after two in the morning, I checked into a motel off the Thruway, near Kingston. I was spent, and I was still mad.
Louderbush had tried to tell the cops I'd pushed him out the window, but three teenagers down on the street had seen him dive out on his own. Also, the cops could smell the whiskey on his breath, and the hospital he was hauled off to would undoubtedly verify that the assemblyman had been inebriated when he fell or jumped from his office window. I told the police I had been interviewing Louderbush for an article in Le Monde when he began acting strangely and then plunged out the window. One cop said, 'Some people can't hold their liquor.'
