Mrs. Louderbush said levelly, "It's true. It's all over."

"You knew about it?"

"Of course not!"

"No, no," Louderbush said. "I was a sneak. I was a liar and a sneak."

Now she was nodding angrily.

"It wasn't the illicit relationships that Deidre found out about. I have to say I covered my tracks too well to get 192

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caught at any of that. No, it was the therapy twice a week in Rochester. I was so faithful about my appointments that I began making up stories about my unexplained absences from my district office and from home. After a while, Deidre confronted me. What she thought was, I was having an affair."

"With a woman," she said coldly. "I'm a nurse, and you wouldn't think I'd be quite so naive."

"When did you find out about your husband's physically abusive relationships with young men?" I asked her. I wanted to make certain we were all talking about the same thing here.

"In January. The first thing I did was tell Kenyon I still loved him and I was not going to break up our family. The second thing I did was go out and get an HIV test.

Fortunately, it was negative."

"This past January? Wasn't that when you announced you were running for governor, Assemblyman?"

"That was something of a coincidence and something of a not-exactly-a-coincidence. In any case, I planned on informing Deidre of my problematical past. I chose to tell her because she deserved to know—and just in case during the gubernatorial campaign certain types turned up."

"Gotcha. Certain types like me."

"Exactly."

"And by then you must have had your Serbians standing by to deal with any such crude interference with your plans, no?"

"Serbians?"

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"I call them that. The goons that you—or more likely low-lifes on your staff—employed to try to intimidate me. My health insurance covers my damaged ear. Otherwise I'd send your campaign the hospital bill."

He stiffened. "That's ridiculous."

Mrs. Louderbush looked even madder.

"Mr. Louderbush, if you don't know this, you should. Since I've been investigating your ugly past, I've been beaten and my car has been vandalized. My movements have been monitored as if I was a sex offender wearing an ankle bracelet. Which strikes me as hugely ironic, now that I think about it."

Louderbush winced. "No. None of that is any responsibility of mine. Not this time. I'm sure in your line of work you've made one hell of a lot of enemies. Maybe you should go over your professional digging-up-dirt-on-people files to see who else doesn't like you and what you're doing. As for me and any Serbians, so-called, I'm not that ruthless and I'm not that well-organized."

"You have a history of both."

"Can you show me any evidence you have connecting me to any such BS? I have a lot to atone for, but having my political opponents' henchmen attacked is not one of them.

You're just way off the mark on this one, my friend."

I knew it was possible he really had been told nothing of the ugly stuff being done on his behalf. Rogue staffers could be behind it, or even fringe Tea Partiers who wanted Louderbush elected and were operating independently. But with his record as an accomplished liar, it was impossible to 194

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know which. I was certain, though, that whoever had been all over me for days and was determined to scare me off had been operating at a level of sophistication beyond the normal means of Second Amendment loonies and anti-tax hysterics in Minute Man costumes.

I said, "Whatever you know or don't know about the way I've been roughed up, Mr. Louderbush, the basic facts here are indisputable. You did a lot of bad stuff that's cruel and illegal and disgusting, and if the electorate found out about it, they would say no to your candidacy. Some would congratulate you on getting a grip and halting your destructive practices, and they would wish you well in your future private life. But most would not want to take a chance on you as governor. I know I don't. What you did to Greg Stiver is unforgiveable. If the voters knew about it, most of them would not forgive you either."

Louderbush reddened and slumped in his chair. "I was trying to help him," he said.

Mrs. Louderbush looked away.

"What do you mean, help him?"

"I was there."

"Where?"

"It was an accident."

"Greg's fall from the roof at SUNY?"

"I had tried to end the relationship. I was so guilt-ridden. I helped Greg find a teaching job near Kurtzburg—he hadn't had any luck on his own—and then I was overcome with...guilt. It was so close to home, and to my family, who mean everything to me."

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"Were you overcome with guilt, or were you overcome with fear that you'd get caught?"

"All right, yes, both."

Mrs. Louderbush looked as if she wanted to get down on her hands and knees and crawl out of the room, but she sat there three feet from her husband, her angry gaze fixed on the gladiola.

"What happened?" I said.

"I called Greg and told him I needed to talk to him. He was at the SUNY library, and he agreed to meet me in an empty econ classroom on the eighth floor of Livingston Quad Four."

"Okay."

"We met, and we talked, and he was very, very angry with me. He said I was teasing him, setting him up a few miles from where I lived and then refusing to continue the relationship. He said I was torturing him."

"Funny choice of words."

Louderbush bristled. "Do you want to hear the truth or not?"

"Go ahead."

"Greg began to cry. I couldn't console him. I tried to hold him, but he shoved me away and grabbed his backpack and ran out of the room. I followed him, and when the elevator didn't arrive immediately, he ran into a stairwell. I think he heard voices down below, so instead of running down the stairs, he ran up. I followed him and suddenly we were somehow on the roof. He walked around and around weeping, and just to get him down off there I said I would reconsider ending the relationship. I admit I didn't mean it, but Greg was 196

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just so desperate and out of control. We were near the edge of the roof. There was no railing of any kind. And when I moved toward Greg to lead him by the hand away from the edge, he dropped his backpack and was turning toward me when he lost his balance somehow—he was sobbing and completely dazed and distraught—and he fell backward over the edge. Suddenly he just wasn't there anymore."

I thought, He's seen Vertigo. Does an old nun appear behind him at this point and make the sign of the cross?

"Mixed with my horror," Louderbush went on, "was my fear that someone might have seen Greg and me on the roof and would think that we were fighting and that I had pushed him to his death."

"Mm."

"I couldn't see anyone who might have observed us, so I took the elevator down and left the building and headed toward my car as fast as I could without being conspicuous."