She gave me an I-should-have-seen-this-coming look. "So, which side are you digging up dirt for? McCloskey, I'll bet."
"Does that matter? What counts is that Louderbush is forced out of the race and never gets to be governor."
"You know, after Greg died I almost went to the police about Kenyon. I truly believed that Greg's death was legally a form of manslaughter. That Kenyon had somehow driven Greg to take his own life. But I was so upset over the whole depressing mess that I was just paralyzed for a while. I stayed out of school for two terrible weeks and barely got out of bed. The only reason I eventually got my act together was, I was terrified I'd be fired. And with all my student loans I just couldn't afford to lose my job here. Also, I missed my kids. So I came back to school and just concentrated on saving my teaching career. And time went by, and I got distracted by one thing or another, and I never did turn Kenyon in. But I felt I had to do something. So instead I wrote Kenyon a letter."
"What did you say in the letter?"
"I told him he was cruel and heartless and psychologically disturbed, and that I blamed him for Greg's death, and I knew that someday his bad karma would catch up with him and he would pay for all the suffering and pain he had caused."
"You sent this letter to Louderbush's office?"
"Yes, I did. I didn't care who saw it."
"Did he reply?"
She shook her head and laughed once. "Well, I think he did."
"What do you mean?"
"It wasn't until about a month later that I received a plain envelope at my apartment mailbox with no return address.
Inside the envelope was a one-page letter that had been typed on a word processor and wasn't signed. The writer was careful not to reveal anything about his identity, but it was obviously from Kenyon. He said I didn't understand his relationship with Greg, and if I did I would not be so judgmental. He said he and Greg had loved and needed each other, and they had been planning to find a way to control their own worst impulses-that was the term he used-and make a life together. I thought, a life together? The man was delusional. He was married with children and was a family-values conservative in the Legislature. He might have convinced Greg that they had some kind of future, and he might even have believed it himself at some level. But I thought it was a sick joke."
"Did you tell him that?"
"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."