would have thought?'
'It's a compelling enough story,' I said, 'but it has something the Louderbush situation lacks so far, and that is direct participants in the misdeeds of the accused who are willing to offer first-hand testimony. Some of Spitzer's call girls and their employers talked in the end, but Greg Stiver is dead and unable to do that. So you'll need more to go on, and that's my job at this point.'
'It is indeed.'
'I'm going to work on this because (a) you are paying me, but also because (b) Louderbush's crime is far worse than Eliot Spitzer's. Hubris and a wayward dick are serious misdemeanors in a political context, but assault is just plain rotten and indefensible. Especially when it's an older person beating on a young and vulnerable person over a period of time. If Louderbush did what Jackman and Insinger claim he did, even if it didn't lead directly to Stiver's suicide, he should be run out of office and maybe, if it's not too late, into jail.'
Standing next to my Toyota near the sparsely utilized rear of the Outback parking lot, I was aware that a dark-colored SUV with tinted windows had pulled in next to me and three men had quickly gotten out of it. One immediately ripped the phone out of my hand as another whacked me in the back of both knees with something metallic.
As I was going down, a third man pounded my face with a leather-gloved fist. The pain that roared through me was so overwhelming that I was surprised there was still room for the intensity of the nausea that hit a millisecond later. The three were kicking me now on the back and shoulders, and at my midsection whenever it was exposed. I fought back through a fog of blood, but these three were as coordinated in their joint efforts as the New York Giants, except they seemed larger and meaner.
I rolled and tried to protect my head as more blows were struck, and I managed to get part of my lower body under a vehicle before I realized it was theirs and they might climb back into the thing and drive over me. I tried to wriggle free 48
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson again and was aided in this effort by grabbing an ankle and hanging onto it while its owner attempted to wrench himself free. The man was wearing finely made summer- weight dark wool slacks and his excellently crafted shoes had been nicely shined, if now scuffed.
Somebody else kicked me hard on the side of my head, and then I saw red and left all my cares behind.
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.'
