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."
255
Red White and Black and Blue
by Richard Stevenson
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."
256
Red White and Black and Blue
by Richard Stevenson
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."
257
Red White and Black and Blue
by Richard Stevenson
"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
Red White and Black and Blue
by Richard Stevenson
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."
259
Red White and Black and Blue
by Richard Stevenson
"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.