"There's a Motel 6 on Route 7 just east of Troy. I'll get a room."
Another pause. "I suppose that would work."
"Seven o'clock?"
"No, it's better after dark. Ten is better. Ten o'clock."
"My car will be parked in front of my room. I'll tape a note to the door that says Don." I described my car and gave Louderbush the license number.
"I've got that. Thank you. Thank you so much."
"Will you be coming alone, Assemblyman?"
"Absolutely. That's the whole point."
"Right. See you at ten."
He rang off and I wondered how I was going to sit still for the next three and a half hours.
Chapter Fifteen
Louderbush didn't show. I sat waiting, my Smith amp; Wesson under a pillow-precautions wouldn't do any harm-and kept on waiting for over half an hour. At ten forty I dialed Louderbush's number and got his voicemail.
I said, "I understand this is no picnic for you. But your impulse in calling me was a decent one. You said you wanted to explain. I'm ready to listen. So please call again, and we'll do what we need to do to get this sorted out. I hope to speak with you soon."
What was Louderbush up to? He seemed to be presenting himself as the aggrieved party here, the fellow who was being misunderstood. But how could he possibly come up with a story that cast himself in any kind of positive light? I didn't get it, but I was immensely curious.
I took the Don sign down from my door and locked myself in. Through the motel's thin walls, I could hear a TV going in the next room, one of those hair-raising real housewives shows that leaves you convinced civilization is basically over and a kind of human devolution is well underway.
I phoned Janie Insinger and asked if she was safe and doing all right. She said she was, but she sounded tipsy and she asked if she could speak to me some other time because at that moment she and Kevin and Anthony were "like, having a party."
When I called Virgil Jackman, he said he was just getting off work, and he hadn't been bothered by any Serbians either.
He said he was going out with Kimberly and he would talk to me Monday if that was okay. I said sure.
It was Friday night, so maybe even the Serbians were out doing the club scene.
I reached Timmy at home, and all was well there. I told him where I was and what had happened with Kenyon Louderbush.
"Wow."
"You bet."
"Maybe he knows you're on his trail, and he's going to drop out of the race."
"I doubt it. He wouldn't do it through me. He'd just announce he had a brain tumor, or he wanted to spend more time with his family, or a voice had spoken to him in the night and told him to move to Salt Lake City."
"You're right. These guys never just spit it out."
"No, Louderbush seems to think of me as somebody who can somehow defuse the accusation. I want to hear his story, and I'm irked that he didn't show up at the motel. But this thing was plainly eating at him, and I'm guessing he'll call again."
"So, are you spending the night up there?"
"Yeah, and I think I've finally shaken the Serbians loose. I checked out of the Crowne Plaza. Maybe I'll be back home tomorrow night. It's possible Louderbush has called off the dogs while he tries to negotiate something. Not that there's anything to negotiate, really, if he admits to having had a physically abusive affair with Greg Stiver."
"Maybe Louderbush was the second person somebody saw on the roof with Stiver, and he shoved the kid off in a rage, and now he wants to confess."
"That's disgusting and tidy and not altogether implausible, but the confession part seems unlikely. What he said to me was that I didn't understand, and he wanted to explain what happened. That doesn't sound like a confession in the offing.
It sounds like a defense."
"Let's hope he calls back soon."
"Not tonight necessarily. I'm beat. And I still hurt all over.
I guess I should change the dressing on my ear again. Maybe even have it checked. It feels as if something is gnawing at the side of my head. Rats or ferrets."
"This is becoming too graphic for me. I may have to go watch the Oprah channel. Should I come up there? I could be in Troy in fifteen minutes. I hate it when you don't feel good.
It's so unlike you. Maybe I could cheer you up in some familiar way."
"Thanks, lover, but Tylenol will have to do. What I really need is to go right to sleep."
"Tomorrow then."
"It's a plan."
Except, when I turned the lights out, I couldn't sleep. The whole ugly mess kept sloshing around in my aching head. I could hear the housewives sniping and puling in the next room. Didn't anybody who stayed in motels ever watch the Hallmark Channel? I turned on the TV in my room while the eleven o'clock news was on but didn't see or hear a thing. I was aware enough to know there was no local political news on, just car wrecks, fires, cats with cancer stories, weather rain was on the way-and baseball. I shut off the TV when Jay Leno came on but still couldn't sleep.
At a quarter to twelve, I got up, fired up my laptop and went over my notes. They were blurry and indistinct. Had I developed an ear infection that had spread to my brain? I wasn't feverish but I still felt ill and impaired. I gave up on the notes, turned off the bedside light and opened the college wrestler download, Humpy Mat Humpers. That was good for about ten minutes, leaving me even more exhausted and still wide awake.
A cell phone whose ring tone was Queen's We Are the Champions went off in the room on the other side of me-the housewives on my right had called it a night-and a woman's voice cried out with delight, "Junior!" Then Junior got an earful. Mom had gotten her hair tinted and Midge had had her baby, and I got an earful, too.
I turned on Leno, switched to Letterman, then to TCM.
Casablanca was on, and I recited the lines along with the actors. I had read recently that Bogart and Ingrid Bergman hadn't liked each other. She considered him boorish, he found her haughty-and this sad thought left me even more anxious and depressed.
When the movie ended, I started channel surfing and was clicking by a couple of religious channels when a phrase snagged my attention and I stopped. A wizened preacher with tanning-booth skin and a gray pompadour was telling a blond lady with a painted smile about something he called the Eddie Fund. As I listened, it became clear that this was a ministry whose purpose was to turn gay people straight through counseling and prayer. When the phone number viewers could call in order to make a donation was shown, I made a note of it. Just twenty-five dollars would make Jesus smile, viewers were told. Old JC and his famous lopsided grin.
Soon the preacher changed the subject, and I turned off the set. As I drifted into a restless sleep, I wondered why, when out-and-proud Log Cabin Republican Greg Stiver had died, mourners were asked to donate to a religious crackpot cure-a-gay organization. This made no sense, unless of course the person in charge of funeral arrangements had been Anson Stiver, the evil stepfather. Him, I had to meet.
Chapter Sixteen
Rain pounded down in drops the size of boccie balls. I cupped a hand over my injured ear and made it out to the car with my laptop and overnight bag. I got in and slammed the door.
Then I saw the note on the windshield. I climbed back out, grabbed the piece of sopping paper, and got back inside. The ink had run, but the handwritten two-word message was still legible. I'm sorry.
So Louderbush had shown up sometime during the night and left this apology? Presumably the note was his. Only two people knew where I was staying: Louderbush and Timmy. It seemed as if Louderbush had called off the Serbians, and he was trying to somehow deal with the repulsive mess he'd made, but he kept losing his nerve. I tried to work up some sympathy for him, but it was hard to find any.