"Sure. I'm scared, I have to admit. But I'm not gonna take any shit from somebody who did what Louderbush did to Greg. What about Janie? Is she cool?"
"It's a little bit murky as to her usefulness as a witness.
But she's accepted security from the campaign, and she's still talking to us. One thing I'm doing is trying to find other people who might have witnessed the abuse or who at least 60
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson had some direct knowledge of it. People Stiver confided in and who maybe saw the shiner and the split lip and the other physical damage from the beatings. There has to be somebody who knows something, even if not as much as you and Janie do."
"I got the idea," Jackman said, "that maybe Greg dropped some of his friends after he got involved with Louderbush. He was embarrassed or whatever. I know he dropped out of the gay Republicans and that other organization-upholding the Constitution and so forth. He told Janie and I he had to finish his thesis, and he didn't have time for all those people, but I'll bet it was that he didn't want anybody asking a lot of questions about his messed up appearance. I mean, how many times can you tell people you slipped in the shower or you were in a car wreck? Especially when your car wasn't banged up or anything."
"The story about his suicide in the Times Union said he had friends who were concerned about his being despondent. Who do you think the paper might have been referring to?"
"A reporter called Janie and I after she talked to Mrs.
Pensivy. So I guess maybe that means us?"
"What about Greg's parents and his brother and sister in Schenectady? Might he have confided in any of them?"
"He mentioned his sister, Jennifer, sometimes. She might've known something. But his mom and dad he had nothing to do with. His dad was a violent jerk and his mom was no help. I don't know about Greg's brother, Hugh. I think he moved out at some point and was no longer part of the family equation."
I made a note to track down Stiver's sister. As well as his thesis advisor.
I told Jackman that I was puzzled as to how anybody knew I was meeting him and Insinger on Wolf Road Tuesday afternoon. I asked him if he had mentioned to anyone that we planned on meeting.
"Not that I can think of," he said. "In fact, no. I was so busy at work…oh fuck! Shit! My break is over. I'm two minutes late. Shit. Gotta run, dude!"
He hung up.
I said to Timmy, "I still don't know how the Serbians knew they could find me in the Outback parking lot. Nobody involved recalls telling anybody I'd be there."
"The two Serbians and one Roma."
"Right."
"You never saw the driver of the Navigator?"
"No, just the three who jumped me."
"And you tend to believe Insinger and Jackman?"
"I tend to, yeah."
"And you trust Tom Dunphy?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"He's well thought of. Of course, the line of work he's in…well."
"You would know."
"You bet."
"No, it's not Dunphy or Jackman or Insinger who set me up, I don't think. There's something I'm missing here."
Timmy said, "Rebec."
"What?"
"The ancient stringed instrument is a rebec."
"Never heard of it."
"Now you have."
"I would think rebec meant to bec again."
He ignored this and moved on. I could see that he had about three quarters of the puzzle filled in, all of it in ink.
I said, "Would you hand me the phone book, please?"
I looked up Stiver listings in Schenectady and found two: Anson on Ridgemont Drive and J Stiver on Pond Street. J for Jennifer?
I dialed the J number.
"Yes, hello?" Female, firm, clear.
"Is this Jennifer Stiver?"
The expected pause. Was I a telemarketer? "Yes, I'm Jenny. And you?"
"I'm Donald Strachey, a private investigator, and I'm calling about a matter concerning your late brother Greg. I understand from friends of Greg's that you and Greg were close."
I made out what sounded like a muttered oh shit before the line went dead.
Chapter Seven
Thursday morning my joints and muscles were still telling me Don't move, just don't move at all, and I had an enormous bruise on the side of my neck that Timmy said looked like a kind of evil hickey. The pain from my ripped ear felt as if I'd been gone after with a cheese grater, and something bad seemed to be going on with the five stitches under the bandage. My hearing was in fact impaired to a degree, but not so much that I couldn't hear Timmy's electric toothbrush buzzing in the bathroom as well as his nose-hair trimmer, his early-morning carbon footprint surprisingly sizeable for such a diehard environmentalist.
Still flat on my back, I phoned a friend at APD and asked him to e-mail me the Greg Stiver suicide police report. He said those files were on paper and he would fax the report when he got a chance later in the day.
I tried to recall who all I knew out at SUNY, preferably anybody with access to Stiver's academic and other records.
No one came to mind who would have had that kind of access. Instead, I phoned a brilliantly clever IT guy I knew named Bud Giannopolous who I feared would one day end up in either the federal penitentiary or the CIA, depending on who came to appreciate his computer hacking abilities first.
"Can you get into the SUNY system?"
"Which one?"
"Student records."
"Piece of cake. But is this a grade change thing? I don't do that."
"Even for five hundred thousand dollars?"
"You jest, do you not?"
"I do. It's not that. I just want a look at the records of a guy named Gregory Stiver, a master's candidate, who killed himself in April five years ago."
"Jumped off a SUNY building, right?"
"You remember?"
"Sure. I'm acrophobic, so I always notice news stories about death by falling."
"It's not how anybody wants to go. Some of the people who jumped from the World Trade Center towers leaped in twos, holding hands. I guess that would somehow make it easier. But this Stiver jumped alone, and I can't think of anything lonelier."
"So you want his academic records?"
"Yes, including his master's thesis and who his advisor was. Plus the university's report on the suicide, as well as anything else that's in SUNY's records on Stiver. How long will this take?"
"I want to be thorough, so say an hour."
"You can e-mail me?"
"Well, yeah. Did you think I might bring it over by oxcart?"
When Timmy emerged from the bathroom, I told him I was driving over to Schenectady later in the morning to talk to any of Greg Stiver's relatives I could locate and who were willing to talk to me.
"Why don't you take a health and beauty day-both your health and your beauty have suffered-and go back to work tomorrow? The primary's not until September, and twenty-four hours won't make any serious difference."
"I'm okay. Just achy. It might be better if I keep moving."
He was getting into his perfectly laundered and pressed go-to-work duds, which had been meticulously laid out the night before. "Donald, somebody is obviously watching you, and they're going to know that you weren't scared off by the pounding they gave you on Tuesday. If the campaign is providing bodyguards for Insinger and Jackman, maybe they could also offer you a little help in that regard. Not somebody who would get in your way, but who could just tag along and serve as a deterrent. Or more than a deterrent if ever the need arose."
He waited for my response and looked as if he knew what was coming.
"Timothy, who are you talking to?"
"Yeah, I know."
"You're wasting your breath."
"Right. Macho-macho-maa-haan."
"No. It's not machismo. Alpha male strutting and posturing hold no interest for me. You know that by now, or should. I just work better alone. It's as simple as that. I need space and I need flexibility. Anyway, I'll be armed this time. I'll carry the Smith and Wesson."