"Did you tell him?"
Bierly looked away and his face darkened. "No, I never did. When we separated at the end of last year, it was supposedly temporary—till Paul quit drinking permanently. But I guess I never really believed he'd stay sober. And one day I was sitting across from him at Queequeg's during Sunday brunch and he was talking about something unimportant—I have no idea what it was—and I looked over at him and I knew he would always be my friend but that we would never be lovers again."
"That happens to every couple," I said. "But it's usually just an attack of existential uncertainty, and it passes. Though this sounds different."
"It was," Bierly said. "I don't know about 'existential uncertainty,' but I know that with Paul, even though I still loved him, I'd lost confidence in him. And I didn't believe in us as lovers anymore."
"That feeling is always plain enough when it comes."
Now he looked sheepish. "I guess that's why when Paul died I didn't feel nearly as deep a loss as I would have a year earlier. I felt—I still feel—sad and hurt and confused. And I often miss
him. I just wish I could talk to him. Or touch him—God, we had such great sex together. That was a big part of the attraction and it's one reason I think I stayed with Paul as long as I did, even when he got to be impossible to live with. But mostly it's something else now that makes me miss him. I just want to sit down with Paul—I sometimes fantasize about doing it—and I want to ask him one question."
He looked at me steadily now, almost expectantly, as if I might ask the question myself—or somehow both ask it and answer it. I said, "What question would you like to ask him?"
He said, "Why did you die? How and why did you die?"
"Uh-huh."
"Who killed you? How did he do it?"
"You believe Paul was murdered."
"Yes."
"You seem so certain."
"I know Paul. Paul would not kill himself."
"Do you have any idea who might have done it? Who would have wanted to kill Paul?"
"I think I might know," Bierly said. "But first, let me ask you something."
"Okay."
"If you don't sign on with Phyllis Haig—and I don't think you will, because you seem too smart and too honest—will you let me hire you instead?"
"To do what?"
"To verify who killed Paul and have him charged and put out of business."
" 'Put out of business'—is that a euphemism?"
"Of course not. Just put in prison, which would get him out of the evil business he's in."
I said, "What if I investigated, and I succeeded, and it turned out Paul was murdered and the murderer was someone other than the man or woman you have in mind?"
He nodded. "I could live with that."
The pizza arrived. The waiter asked if we would like him to
serve the first slice. Bierly said no thanks. We served ourselves and went to it.
I said, "All other considerations aside, Larry, I'm not sure you can afford a private investigator." I told him my standard rate.
He grimaced. "That's a lot higher than I thought it would be."
"Phyllis Haig says you're rich. Your business was in trouble, but Paul left you his estate, and now you're flush with both his lucrative business and the rest of Paul's considerable assets. True?"
He chewed his pizza furiously. "What a load of Phyllis Haig bullshit crap," he said, bits of pizza flying from his mouth. His veins were pulsing again. "That woman. That woman."
"Which part is inaccurate?"
"All of it is inaccurate. It was Beautiful Thingies that was in trouble, not Whisk 'n' Apron. Last year when Paul was drunk for most of two months, he had an assistant manager who robbed him blind and then disappeared. Paul got behind with the bank and asked Phyllis to bail him out. I'm not sure what he told her. It's conceivable he told her it was me who needed the money. Or he could have told her the truth and she just imagined it was me. The Haigs all lied to each other all the time, so none of them could ever believe what the other ones were saying. And with Phyllis, her brain is so atrophied from alcohol she can believe anything she wants to believe that fits into her warped view of people."
I said, "I can check all that out, you understand, about the finances. It would take me less than a day."
"I wish you would. And take what you learn and shove it in Phyllis Haig's stupid face."
"And Paul's assets?"
"He left me his '88 Honda, his household furnishings, his Abba tapes, and the three hundred twenty-two dollars in his checking account. He also left me his business, which was sixty thousand dollars late in payments on his business loan. When Paul died and I became executor and eventually beneficiary of his estate, the bank was about to foreclose on Beautiful Thingies. Paul
hadn't been worried about this-—he told me a week before he died he'd come up with a way to pay off the bank debt. But the debt was still there when I took over, and I had to borrow myself up to the hilt to hold off foreclosure. So the fact is, for the foreseeable future Beautiful Thingies will be nothing but one big financial headache for me. Paul's estate is no place for me to go for liquid assets. Have I cleared that up for you?"
"You have." I chewed at the pizza, which was not Irish but hardly Italian either. It was rubbery and vaguely medicinal-tasting—Aleutian maybe.
I said, "Who do you think killed Paul, Larry?"
With no hesitation, Bierly said, "Vernon Crockwell."
"I had a feeling that's who you were going to say."
"Do you know him?"
"Only by reputation."
Bierly blushed. "I'm so embarrassed to admit that I actually went to him. But I was so fucked up and lonely in my personal life, and I thought—the thing is, I wasn't thinking at all. I didn't know much about homosexuality. I didn't even come out until I was twenty-five, and I didn't start to read intelligent books about it until I started with Crockwell and saw how crazy and unbelievable his ideas were and I went out and did some reading on my own. It was the same for Paul. Of course, he was in Crockwell's program under duress. From you-know-who. It's probably one reason she despises me to this day. Phyllis sent Paul to Crockwell to be de-queered. Instead, he met me and was queered for life."
"How long were you in the program?"
He blushed again. "I'm embarrassed to tell you. Over eight months. The program is supposed to run a year, and I came within four months of actually finishing it. Paul and I left the program last September ninth."
"It took you that long to figure out that Crockwell is a quack, or a con artist, or whatever it is he is?"
"It didn't take me that long. I was on to him within a couple of months. Paul saw through Crockwell too, though for a while he clung to the idea he might actually be straightened out—even
though we were happily fucking up a storm almost every night. Basically, he stayed as long as he did because of his mother, and I stayed until Paul worked up the courage to leave."
"And when you left the program, you and Paul left together?"
"That's right."
"Just toodle-oo out the door and that was it?"
"Well, not exactly."
"Uh-huh."
I waited. He chewed at his pizza and I chewed at mine. Bierly downed the remaining beer in his glass and then said, "Crockwell was furious when we announced one day we were well-adjusted homosexuals, thanks indirectly to him, and we were lovers and we were leaving the program. He started screaming how we were deluding ourselves, and we were going against nature, and we would always be miserable, and that's what we deserved. He screamed that we were disrupting the group, and for that we were going to be very, very sorry. He told Paul—this was in front of the entire group of ten guys—he told Paul that his mother would despise him for choosing to be a sexual deviant. Can you imagine a professional psychologist telling a patient something like that?"
"On this subject, yes, I can. Then what happened?"
"Paul pretty much told Crockwell
—yes, Paul told Crockwell— to go to hell. Then we just got up and walked out. We were afraid we might feel a little guilty for a while, but we didn't. We rode the high for weeks that we got from walking out of Crockwell's office that day. We started going to gay rights events, even some political stuff, although I'm not really very political. I saw you at some of those political meetings, I'm pretty sure."
"I remember you too—and Paul."
"The high didn't last long, though. Paul went to see his mother and started drinking again. And everything went downhill fast. But that first month or so after we kissed Crockwell good-bye was the happiest time of my life, I think."
"You just said so-long and that was your last contact with Crockwell?"
"You got it."
"You or Paul never threatened him or attacked him? Or said anything that could be construed as a threat?"
"He threatened us," Bierly said, his color rising again. "He said we'd be very, very sorry for disrupting the group. But no, nobody threatened him that I can recall. We were just glad to be out of there."
"I'll bet."
"My real bitterness toward Crockwell—and Paul's too—was after we left, and we looked back on all the unnecessary pain he caused people. And is still causing. He's still in practice, if you can believe it."
I said, "Phyllis Haig says you assaulted Crockwell and threatened to kill him and Paul bought him off so he wouldn't have you prosecuted. Any idea what she was referring to?"
"Paul told her that? Oh my God!"
"That's what she said."
Blushing deeply again, Bierly said, "That is totally off the wall. It's obviously another one of Phyllis's bizarre, alcohol-induced fantasies. Either that or it was one of Paul's. When those two drank together—who knew what one of them would come up with."
I said, "You're blushing."
Bierly said, "I am?" and got even redder. "Well, I have to admit I'm embarrassed about a lot of what I've told you tonight."
"Uh-huh."
"It's not only highly personal, it's—I have to admit that some of the things I've told you about myself make me look pretty damn stupid."
"The blunders you've described to me are the kind a lot of us made at some stage of our lives. Are there other relevant blunders that you're not telling me about?"
"None that are relevant," he said, still blushing.
I said, "What makes you think Crockwell killed Paul? If Paul had no contact with Crockwell after last September ninth, what
would suddenly prompt Crockwell to homicide in March? I don't get that."
"Crockwell is a hater," Bierly said. "He carried poisonous grudges. In the group, he talked about other people who left, and he ranted and raved about how wretched they must be and how they deserve to be unhappy. He seemed to be obsessed with those people."
"But if he got satisfaction from their misery," I said, "he certainly didn't have to kill them."
Bierly blushed some more. I figured he was lying about some or much or all of what he had told me about his and Paul's departure from Crockwell's program and its aftermath. Yet he didn't seem to care if I thought he was lying. He just lied and blushed, lied and blushed. I didn't get it.
Bierly said, "Look, something deep in my gut tells me that Vernon Crockwell killed Paul. All I ask is that you investigate Crockwell and see what you can come up with. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I don't think I am, Strachey." And then he brought out his checkbook.
4
So which check do I cash?"
"Neer."
"What if Paul Haig was murdered?"
"Nnn."
"What if Crockwell did it?"
"Nnn."
"Axe you falling asleep?"
"Mmm."
Spring stars twinkled over the Hudson Valley. We lay under a cotton blanket, cool, reasonably clean air moving west to east across us. Ted Koppel was our nightlight.
I said, "I'm more inclined to take Phyllis Haig's money because she can afford it. And as much as I like Bierly and sympathize with him—his instincts seem pretty consistently decent—his selective evasions are glaring and unsettling. There were moments tonight when if Bierly had been wired to a polygraph, he'd have registered at about an 8.6 on a Richter scale of liars. Of course, polygraphs are notoriously unreliable. The anxiety they detect can result from the emotional significance of the question asked as well as from the emotional significance of the answer given, or just from the stress of being questioned at all. Anyway, I do think Bierly lied about some topics—this from the man disgusted by alleged chronic Haig-family dissimulation—and I don't know why. Why might he?"
"Nnn."
"Phyllis Haig, on the other hand, is a serious drunk and a
deluded homophobe with hardly a rational thought in her head. Except one, maybe—that Paul was not suicidal. People can fool themselves about that, too, of course—parents, in particular, will sometimes deny their children's suicides in order to avoid facing what they fear is their own responsibility somehow. But the idea that Paul could have committed suicide was the one thing that seemed to generate an emotion in Phyllis Haig besides jealousy or outrage over deviations from the country-club norm. There was an emotional clarity to her assertions on this point that was lacking on others. On the other hand, even if she's right about Paul's not having killed himself, I could be risking my license and possibly my peace of mind—not to mention my shirt—simply by getting mixed up with this deranged heiress with friends in high places. I mean, not that my financial and mental survival should be the sole, or even chief, determinants in taking on a client, eh wot?"
"Zzzz." His breath, sweet with chicken tikka masala and Crest, was regular now against my chest, his arm limp across my midsection. I groped for the remote, found it, and zapped a murmuring Ted Koppel and a couple of nervous Clinton apologists into blackness.
I said, "Of course, the most interesting figure in all of this is the one I haven't talked to yet. Maybe I should meet Vernon Crockwell before I decide what to do. I doubt he'll be forthcoming on the subject of a couple of former patients, or happy to see me at all. But I've been curious about him for years, in a macabre sort of way, and now's my chance to both satisfy that curiosity and gather information that might help me make an important decision. What do you think, Timothy? Should I talk to Crockwell?"
He said nothing, but his breathing rhythm altered perceptibly and his shriveled member, sticky against my leg, seemed to throb weakly once. I took this to be a reply in the affirmative.
How could this be? I phoned Crockwell at 9:00 a.m. and told his machine I was a private investigator looking into the death of Paul Haig and asked for a few minutes of Crockwell's time at his
convenience. At 9:55 Crockwell called back and, in a tone bordering on the cordial, informed me that he was extremely busy but that he could clear out a block of time at three that afternoon if that was convenient for me. I said it was and told him I would be happy to come to his office. I was eager for a peek inside Dracula's castle.
Why was Crockwell being so accommodating? When I phoned, I was fully prepared for a long wait before my call was returned, or for the call to be ignored, or for Crockwell to call back and explode with indignation. Instead, he was helpful and businesslike. Why? There had never been charges I knew of that Crockwell's treatment program was anything but voluntary, that he lured unsuspecting homosexuals into his lair and forced them at gunpoint to feign excitement over nude photos of Ole Miss sorority aquacade contestants. So when I drove out to Crockwell's office in mid-afternoon I felt reasonably safe but still mystified.
He had a suite in a sixties-suburban business block off Western Avenue near the Stuyvesant Plaza shopping center. His listing on the building's directory just read "Vernon T. Crockwell, Psychologist, Suite 508." I took the elevator up and found a door with a sign that gave Crockwell's name and said "Enter Here." The fluorescent-lit, windowless waiting room had a blue couch and two blue chairs with a shiny washable finish and a table stacked
with old copies of People. Crockwell apparently figured there would be plenty of opportunity in the rooms beyond this one for overstimulation.
On the wall opposite the couch, a mirror was mounted. I stood before it and carefully mouthed the words "You're pretty fucking intrusive, Vernon," and within seconds a door opened behind me.
"You are Donald Strachey?"
"Yes—Mr. Crockwell? Or is it Dr. Crockwell?"
"Please follow me, Donald."
He didn't look like Bela Lugosi, but he'd never have passed for John Denver either. He was tall and fiftyish and grave, with a
narrow, lined face, a beak of a proboscis, and what I sensed was a lot of muscle tension. He looked as if a good neck rub might have improved his outlook, but I didn't offer him one.
Crockwell led me on a brisk, wordless hike along a corridor past three closed doors and one that was open. I caught a glimpse of a big sunlit room with a dozen or so plastic chairs arranged in a circle. I followed him around a bend and noted that the nearly bald spot on the back of his straw-colored-turning-gray hair was bigger than mine but smaller than Timmy's. Crockwell's brown sport coat was wrinkled in the back, a sign of an important man who sat in a chair.
"Sit down, Donald," he said in his stern, avuncular way, indicating where I should do it. Behind a broad, uncluttered fake-mahogany desk, Crockwell manhandled a black leather swivel chair into position and lowered himself into it. The bookshelves on the wall behind him were crammed with clinical texts published by companies like Uplift House and the Yolanda Schnell Foundation for Sexual Normalcy. Leaning on one shelf was a framed degree, or diploma, with Crockwell's name on it from the North American Psychosexual Institute of Moline, Illinois.
To Crockwell's right was a window overlooking the shopping center. The window was shut, probably unopenable except with a wrecking ball, though the odor of deep-fried chicken nuggets had permeated the suite from somewhere below and hung in the still air. It seemed an unlikely atmosphere for considering people's sexual appetites, or any other kind. But that could have been the point.
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