Red White and Black and Blue (26 page)

It was a perfectly lovely June morning in Manhattan. I arrived at the small leafy park at the end of well-appointed 57th Street early and sat on a bench enjoying the view over 253

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by Richard Stevenson

the East River and, beyond that, of ever up-and-coming Queens. I watched the traffic shoving itself across the waltzing tangle of girders of the 59th Street Bridge. Nearby, a couple of moms kept one eye on their Blackberries and another on their tots in the play area, and a woman with what might have been a small squash racket in her hair led around the park a dog that looked like a giraffe wearing a grass skirt.

Sam Krupa ambled in right on time and sat down next to me.

"You're the only person in the park seedy-looking enough to be a private detective. You're Strachey?"

"Yep, I am. And you're the only person in the park sneaky-looking enough to have worked for Nixon's political operation.

You're Krupa."

"Sneaky-looking? Nobody except John Ehrlichman ever told me to my face that I looked the part. And that's when I was oh so much younger and oh so much meaner than I am now. I find it hard to believe that anybody would look at Sam Krupa today with Maalox stains on my tie and my cashmere Depends down below and consider me anything but a harmless old pisher, a fucking nobody."

"That's what I mean by sneaky. Mr. Krupa, you're still somebody. I mean, are you ever. Don't forget, I've seen the e-mails of your conversations with Stanley Weaver and Jay Goshen. And look at this ear of mine that's practically falling off. Hey, fella, you
did
that. You're...what? In your eighties?

And when the masters of the universe want the body politic rearranged to their liking, who do they turn to? Sam Krupa.

Maybe you pee in your pants nowadays—I'll take you at your 254

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word on that—but you still have the brass and the cojones and the cunning and the ruthlessness to get the filthiest of the filthy political jobs done. So, you aren't going to try to tell me you've mellowed now, are you?"

He had a surprisingly bland and inexpressive face, and the benign pale eyes gave away nothing. His epiglottis jumped around, though, even when he wasn't speaking, and it seem to be telegraphing something that might have been useful to understand for anybody knowledgeable enough to decode its machinations. I didn't know about his diapers, but otherwise he was dressed like a billion dollars, or at least like a client and probably social friend of a billion dollars, or ten.

He gargled out what might have been a chuckle. "No, I'm more worn out than I used to be, but I'm no mellower. I still like to kick the bad guys in the balls. Or the side of the head in your case. That's rare for me, though. Always has been, getting physical. I generally aim not for the solar plexus, but for the psyche, the emotional weak spot, the reputation."

"Like with Eliot Spitzer?"

He nodded, and the Adam's apple bobbed and weaved.

"Oh, yeah,
those
stories."

"Somebody had to orchestrate his downfall."

A quizzical look. "Eliot didn't orchestrate it himself? That's how I understood it to happen."

"He didn't request sleazy PIs like me to follow him around and examine hotel linen with microscopes, and then tip off prosecutors and reporters. Somebody—a particular individual—arranged for those lurid aspects of Spitzer's spectacular ruination."

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Krupa folded his pink hands over his beautifully tailored little belly. "Yeah, if only I still had the moxie for a move like that. Oh boy." He wasn't about to admit anything to some Albany pol's valet.

"This time it's not working," I said. "The Serbians were a bad mistake. You thought I was crude and you hired crude people to deal with me, and you got caught at it. And while you've got hacker Todd on your payroll, other people can play that game, too."

A tight smile. "I wrote the book on political hardball, and now other people have read it. Shouldn't I be collecting royalties?"

One of the moms had vacated her bench and led her little girl out onto Sutton Place. She was replaced by a middle-age black woman pushing a small white child in a stroller.

"Where," I asked, "did you get your information about me and how I could be expected to react to the rough stuff? A lot of people in Albany know that about me, I guess."

He seemed to take pleasure in looking me in the eye and telling me, "A PI here in the city who's much like yourself talked to people in Albany. I'm not sure who they were. But it did come back to me that Shy McCloskey knew what was going on, and he approved. He didn't want you wandering away or getting discouraged. Until, of course, he did. After you became more of a liability than a help, he had a couple of suggestions we gratefully accepted. Shy didn't want anybody to break your legs or what have you. Like a lot of liberals, he's a pacifist. But I'm told he said, why doesn't somebody just blow up Strachey's car? Then maybe you'd go away."

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How much of this garish scenario was true? I supposed some of it was. Would I ever know for sure how it really happened? Possibly. Did it matter if I knew the truth? With the way things were about to go, not much.

I said, "I suppose you've heard about Louderbush."

"That you pushed him out a second-story window last night? I gave you more credit than that. I pegged you for a true professional who'd send him over Niagara Falls with a bag of bricks. Metaphorically speaking, of course."

"That's in the works. Louderbush is effectively out of the race."

"There'll be a withdrawal announcement later today, I'm told. Off to Betty Ford to deal with his alcoholism, sorry to disappoint his admirers, full support of his loving family—the whole bag of shtick. Not that you don't have other plans for him, which I'm sure you do."

"You bet."

"Bye-bye, Kenyon."

"And that leaves McCloskey and Ostwind to duke it out."

"That seems to be the case. Except, of course, you've got all manner of goddamned crap on us, and we've got all manner of goddamned crap on you. I'm assuming you're here to offer terms for a ceasefire. Am I right? We won't deploy our crap if you don't deploy yours."

"That's one of the possibilities, but it's not my plan A."

"
Your
plan A?" The epiglottis did a merry dance. "Shy McCloskey has entrusted his political future to some shit-ass Albany PI with pizza stains on his jeans and one ear hanging off? I'm as amused as I am amazed."

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"Why would you be? Merle Ostwind has apparently entrusted her political future and the immediate future of the Republican Party in New York State to a partisan hack from the Nixon era whose only goal is to protect the assets of a class of billionaires with the morals of a pack of hyenas. Or are you not actually here to speak for the Ostwind campaign?"

"Partisan hack? I take myself far more seriously than that.

And you should, too, Mister PI Strachey."

"I'm aware of what the stakes are in all this."

"Oh, I don't think you do realize. Not at all. To you, it's just about issues or gay marriage or some other sideshow bunch of baloney. To me, it's about the power and the glory and the survival of the United States of America."

"Glorious banks. Glorious stockbrokers. Glorious hedge fund managers. Why do I have this nagging feeling that that's not what Jefferson and Madison had in mind?"

A dry chuckle. "Well, I can't argue with a sentimentalist.

So, what is your Plan A, may I ask? Where
do
we go from here?"

"Mr. Krupa, here's the deal," I said. "What I'd
like
to propose—but I'm not going to—is this: both sides dump all the garbage they've got on the other side in reporters' laps—

the newspapers would be ecstatic—and let the public 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

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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."

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"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."

* * * *

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"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 261

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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 262