make up its mind which political operation is the more revolting. Is it Shy and his seedy characters like myself and Bud Giannopoulis hacking people's phone calls and e-mails and impersonating federal agents? Or is it Todd and your Serbians and no doubt countless others doing the same type of 258
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson electronic snooping, plus beating people up and blowing up cars in Albany residential neighborhoods?'
'Don't forget burning down night clubs in Hummerston.'
'I still don't know what you mean by that. Anyway, I'd rather it all didn't play out that way. If this stuff got into the papers, the US attorney for the New York district might feel obliged to start empaneling grand juries. I think I could survive that, but I'm afraid Bud Giannopolous wouldn't. So, let's not do any of that. Enterprising reporters might dig up some of this anyway, but we don't have to make it easy for them.'
'No, that particular scenario is out of the question from my perspective, also. Sweet Jesus.'
'On the other hand, there is this: Our side is vulnerable, but yours is at far, far greater risk. Some of us might go to jail, but if the e-mails and phone conversations between you and Weaver and Goshen and the other bank and brokerage CEOs came to light-occupying pages and pages in the Times for days on end, a kind of Pentagon Papers of American capitalism-the consequences would be even more dire. It would create mayhem with markets, stock prices, bottom lines, bonuses. Jail would be a piece of cake in comparison to the damage the exposure of the Giannopolous papers would wreak on Wall Street. Do you know what I'm saying? Am I right?'
Krupa stared straight ahead for a long moment. Then he turned and peered at me. 'You're in the wrong line of work.'
'You mean because I was an English major at Rutgers?'
'On Wall Street, you could have gone far. You still could.'
'No, I wouldn't last. Any more than I would working for Kim Jong Il. I'm too much of a pain in the ass.'
'I'd say you're just exactly enough of a pain in the ass.
Shit.'
'So, what I'm proposing is this: Shy McCloskey stays in the race and Mrs. Ostwind drops out. She develops a case of the vapors or a hernia or something. The Republicans can then come up with another, presumably weaker candidate, and at least come out of all this with the markets secure and no major figures under indictment. Sure, McCloskey will win, and for four years he'll raise regulatory hell with Wall Street.
But that'll pale next to what would have happened if the Giannopolous papers had ever gotten published and exposed the vast, appalling moral and social rot that you're promoting and that you represent.'
Krupa gave me the fiercest stare I'd ever seen. Eventually he said, 'You're insane.'
I shrugged. 'I don't think so.'
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.'
