Red White and Black and Blue (4 page)

And a lot of people who disagree with you are going to act very hostile."

Jackman was cracking off portions of taco shell and gathering up little heaps of meat, lettuce, sauce, and sour cream, and shoveling it all into his large face. Through a mouthful of this stuff, he said, "I saw the suicide note."

"You did? How?"

"It was on the kitchen table. Mrs. Pensivy, the landlady, let us into Greg's apartment before the police came over.

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Somebody at SUNY called her. There was a note in Greg's handwriting on the table, and it said, 'I hurt too much.'"

"That's all it said?"

"Janie started to cry. Mrs. Pensivy, too."

"It didn't mention Kenyon Louderbush?"

"It didn't have to."

"What happened to the note?"

"The cops must have taken it."

"Did anyone else see it?"

"I wouldn't think so."

"Did Mrs. Pensivy know about the abuse?"

"Not as far as I know. She lived next door with her sister."

"Who else knew about the beatings?"

Jackman mulled this over. "Greg never said. But other people must have figured it out. At school, or his family. You could see the marks and what have you. He had a big shiner one time. Janie gave him a cube steak to press against it."

"Did Greg ever seek medical treatment that you know of?"

"Just from Janie and I. The cube steak."

"I thought people only treated black eyes with steak in the comics. Dagwood, or Nancy and Sluggo."

A puzzled look. "What are those? You mean like in newspapers?"

"Yes."

"My granddad still reads the
Times Union
most of the time.

Sports and what have you."

I supposed the couple in the next booth could have explained what the funny papers used to mean in American life, but the old man and the old woman were busy staring 33

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intently at each other's sagging midsections, and I didn't break their reverie and bring them into our discussion.

* * * *

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"And I was like, I
have
to say something, and Kev was like, no you
don't
have to say anything, just let Virgil do it, cuz nobody's going to give him any shit, cuz he's a guy. But it just didn't seem right that if I know about this guy, I should just let him get elected governor of New York, and anyway maybe he still beats up on people. He could, you know, go after some young guy who works in his office—put the moves on him and then beat on him the way he did with Greg. My conscience would bother me if I didn't speak out, although I don't want my name mentioned, and I think you can understand the reason why."

"Tom Dunphy said it was for family and professional reasons."

"That's right. My parents would shit burritos if I did anything to mess up Kenyon Louderbush's chance to win the election. They think he's Jesus Walks on Water, and they don't know about the gay stuff or any of that. Also, at work it would not be appreciated if I got into some political thing.

That is strictly, like, no way."

"Where do you work, Janie?"

"Walmart. I'm an assistant shift supervisor. I keep the associates happy and productive."

"I see."

We were seated in a booth at the bar at the Outback Steakhouse not far from the Wolf Road Denny's where I had my late lunch with Virgil Jackman. Insinger had gotten off 35

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work at four, and she was sipping some wacky concoction: half a tumbler of Red Bull, a shot of rum, and a cocktail onion bobbing in it. I was nursing a Sam Adams and eating too many peanuts coated with corn syrup shellac.

It was hard to imagine Insinger supervising the impoverished geezers and laid-off math teachers at Walmart who wandered the aisles hanging red sale tags of $7.99 on garments sewn on the outskirts of Kunming for twenty-five cents each. With her croaky voice and
cuzes
and
was likes
, Insinger seemed like an implausible boss lady at a company famed for both cracking the whip and inspiring near-religious awe in its employees. Her deficiencies may have been compensated for to some extent by her appearance. Insinger was a knockout, both svelte and sweetly busty, with a pert nose, large hazel eyes and a lower lip the size of a kielbasa.

She was done up in the tart-wear that the young routinely leave home in now, making little distinction between going to work and attending a backroom sex club. It had been a while since I had generated a physical response to a body of the opposite sex, but there was something about Insinger's appearance and her perfume—peony bloom?—that combined to have me shifting in my seat. Until, that is, she opened her mouth again.

"So I was like, hey, if I can't personally screw over this dickhead senator and keep my job, I can at least make sure somebody else does it. After all, the guy's practically a murderer. Don't you agree?"

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"In a sense, yes, if what you say is true. What is it exactly that you are saying? What did you see and hear that led you to make this accusation?"

She hesitated. "First, I have to ask you something."

"Okay."

"Are you, like, recording this conversation?"

"No, I'm not."

"I'm only asking because my boss says to be careful about that type of situation. You can never be sure, she says. You should always just figure that somebody might be wearing a wire."

"Your boss at Walmart told you this? Or do you also work for the Central Intelligence Agency?"

"No, of course not. But it could be the government or some lawyer who's gonna sue the company."

I said, "Even if I was recording our conversation, might that not actually be helpful to you? In case there's any confusion later on about what you said to me."

Insinger slurped up some of her scarlet refreshment and glanced around the room. No one was seated nearby, and the few people in other booths and at the bar seemed to be taking no notice of us.

"It's just that...this whole thing is making me kind of nervous. Oh, I know, I know. This was my idea. I was the one who called up. But, like, this guy is a senator. Those people do not appreciate getting screwed over."

"Assemblymen don't have their own militias or goon squads. I wouldn't worry about that."

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"No, I mean they can just pick up the phone. And then all of a sudden your income tax is overdue or your car insurance is no good. I know a girl who crossed this dude who works for the Albany water department, and now she gets speeding tickets all the time."

"It's up to you whether or not you want to go ahead with this, Janie. I've already got Virgil's version of events. It would be helpful, though, if you would just confirm or maybe add something to what I've already been told. I understand that you and Virgil were Greg Stiver's neighbors on Allen Street."

She nodded.

"And you knew Greg casually?"

"Yeah."

"You rode out to SUNY with him twice a week?"

"Yeah. But wait a minute. I have to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"Did Virgil badmouth me?"

"No, he spoke of you with tender affection."

She laughed. "You're a freakin' liar."

"Okay. He said you left him for a woman, and that you were a lot of trouble."

"I did
not
leave him for a woman. I left him because he was always trying to get another guy into bed with us. I did it one time, and then I got creeped out. I think Virgil has some issues he hasn't worked out. Anyway, Lori Wroble is my friend, not my girlfriend."

"Either would be okay in my book."

"I've tried gay sex, sure, but something was definitely missing. Not with Lori, I don't mean. I prefer guys, and I 38

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started to wonder if maybe Virgil does too. God, should I be mentioning this?"

"Up to you. But I'm mainly interested in Greg Stiver and his relationship with Kenyon Louderbush."

She rolled her eyes. "Now Greg, that poor guy was
totally
gay. What I didn't get was, a guy that attractive, why didn't he have a nice boyfriend his own age, somebody who treated him with respect? Greg was kind of straight—I don't mean sexually—but very sort of... serious. He was very political.

Very conservative. He had a lot to say about that stuff if you gave him half a chance. Sometimes in the car I would just, like, tune out. It was
blabbedy-blah
,
blabbedy-blah
. Bush was driving the country into an economic ditch.
Bush
was! And Bush was a Republican! I hate to think what Greg would say about Obama. Oh my God."

"Apparently it was Louderbush's and Greg's politics that were part of the attraction the two had for each other. Was that your impression?"

"I guess so. Why else would Greg get involved with an older man? Especially a guy who was married with kids? But it was also, like, low self-esteem. Greg told us about how his dad used to beat on him when he was a kid. And when Mr.

Louderbush pounded him around, this was just what he was used to and even had it coming. It was really sad. Greg was one mixed-up puppy."

I asked Insinger about the pattern of abuse as she had heard it through the walls of her adjoining apartment and as Greg had described it to her and Jackman.

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"It was always kind of late," she said. "Virgil and I would be studying or chilling out or whatever, and we'd hear them going at it. Yelling and banging around and breaking stuff.

Sometimes we talked about going over or even calling the cops. We waited, though—we decided to mind our own business—and then we asked Greg about it one day, and at first he said oh no, nothing was going on, don't get your thong in an uproar. Then later he finally did admit they were fighting, but he told us to never mind, he would be okay. He was afraid of getting Louderbush in trouble, I could tell."

"Afraid?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, Louderbush was this extremely successful big hotshot. If Greg ruined his life or told his wife or put it on Facebook or something, who knows what might happen?"

"Did he say Louderbush threatened him?"

Insinger picked up a shiny peanut and popped it into her mouth. "No. He never said that straight out." She glanced around the bar, and so did I. Nobody was within earshot of us, and nobody seemed to be paying us any attention.

"When the two men were yelling at each other, were you ever able to make out anything anyone said?"

"Hmm. One time somebody screamed, 'You can eat shit!' I think it was Louderbush. It was a lot of that kind of drunk yelling. They'd get liquored up and start in. I have to say, I'm a little surprised Greg didn't defend himself more. Senator Louderbush was big and strong, Greg said, but he was older, too. Virgil asked Greg one time if he ever hit Louderbush back, and Greg just said no, it was a sin to hit a Republican.

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He was being funny, but I think he really was, like, kind of scared to get in this guy's face. Maybe he'd get Greg kicked out of SUNY or his degree would be a blank sheet of paper or something."

"Did Greg ever talk about taking his own life?"

Insinger grew thoughtful. "I don't know."

"I mean to you or Virgil."

"Sometimes he said he was worn out."

"Uh-huh."

"He'd be really, really tired, and he'd have this kind of what's-the-use? attitude. But then a couple of days later he'd be, like, oh-fine. Right before he died, Greg was really down in one of his moods. A total mope-head. But that was mainly because he got turned down by two colleges for teaching jobs. One in Connecticut, one out near Rochester, which was his first choice. He didn't know what he was going to do after he got his master's, and he had these huge student loans. I was a senior then, and I knew how he felt, though this was before Obama fucked up the economy, and five years ago there were still jobs in retailing, thank God. Virgil and I both got jobs right after we graduated and got into management career tracks. Today we'd both be, like, out selling our butts on a street corner in Arbor Hill."

"Assemblyman Louderbush represents a district near Rochester. Was Greg hoping to live near him?"

"Oh. He didn't say. But he wouldn't have said anything.

Not to Virgil and me. He knew we disapproved and that we thought the relationship was self-destructive for Greg."

I said, "I understand you saw the suicide note."

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Red White and Black and Blue

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"Yeah. It was so sad. I cried. Even Virgil teared up. Mrs.

Pensivy cried her heart out."

"The landlady."

"She lived next door, but she let us in before the cops came. Somebody called her who she knew at SUNY."

"And the note said—what was it?"

"'I hurt too much.' So sad, so sad."

"And you recognized Greg's handwriting?"

"Yeah."

"Where had you seen his handwriting before?"

"Oh, hmm. I guess when he taped a note to our door about rides or whatever."

"What became of the suicide note?"

"The cops took it, I guess."

"How can you be sure that Greg's suicide was directly related to Kenyon Louderbush? It's plain that he was a source of stress and confusion and pain in Greg's life. But it also sounds as if Greg thought that the relationship had some kind of future. Greg's attempt to move to Louderbush's assembly district is an indication of that. You and Virgil told the McCloskey campaign that you thought Louderbush drove Greg to suicide. Wasn't that the term you both used?"