Back to that again. I said, "Larry Bierly tells a different story about Paul's finances from the one you told me. You said you thought Larry killed Paul for his lucrative business. Larry claims Beautiful Thingies is deeply in debt and, for the foreseeable future, more of a burden than a help. He said Paul was swindled by an assistant manager during a period when Paul was drinking too
much to notice and he nearly lost the business late last year."
"That is a lie!"
"It will be easy for me to check."
"Then do it, do it."
"And I'm sorry to have to remind you, Phyllis, that serious financial problems sometimes trigger suicide in people who are shaky otherwise. Isn't it possible that—"
She had begun to sob.
"Phyllis?"
Then a crash and a dial tone.
Now what had I said? I thought I'd described a possible suicide motive—financial desperation—that took Mrs. Haig more or less off the hook even if the murder theory somehow didn't pan out. But instead, something I said had pushed her over the edge. It was something I kept doing to people as I stumbled around in the darkness, and that darkness was one that the people I was hurting were choosing not to illuminate. Why?
15
You were right about one thing," I told Bierly. "It does look as if Paul did not commit suicide." I told him about the pill canister lid that could not have been put back on and tightened by someone who was already drunk.
"Oh, so I was right about one thing? Then what are the things I was wrong about?"
He had a big gauze packing taped to the side of his neck and a bulky wad of something under his hospital nightie that was covering up the chest wound. Luckily, he'd just told me, the neck injury was superficial, missing the carotid by a quarter of an inch, and the chest wound wasn't as serious as it could have been: a bullet had ricocheted off the car door, a la Ronald Reagan, and entered Bierly's left chest, shattering two ribs but missing vital organs. His recovery, his doctors had told him, would be slow but total.
"One thing you were wrong about," I said, "was your account of your and Paul's exit from Crockwell's therapy group. You told me Crockwell blew up and threatened you and threatened Paul—which he did. But what you didn't tell me was, Crockwell's threat was in response to Paul's vow to use any means to stop Crockwell from coming between Paul and his mother."
He gazed at me, red-eyed and sallow, but said nothing. He was propped up, his arms limp at his sides, an IV drip tube stuck in his thick right forearm. Even in repose Bierly's body looked powerful, and I was reminded anew of the destructive force of a metal
projectile shot from a cheap mechanism that any deranged twerp could pick up on a street corner.
Finally, he said, "How do you know what was said that day? Were you there? I don't remember seeing you there, Strachey."
"I've heard a tape of the session," I said.
Bierly squinted at me perplexedly. Then he suddenly croaked out, "That slimeball!"
"What slimeball?"
"Crockwell. Who else would have taped the session?"
"You're missing a point, Larry, that happens to be your own. The point is, whatever you said, or Paul said, at that session, it's Crockwell who comes off worst. He said if Paul interfered with him, he'd stop Paul dead in his tracks. Do you remember that?"
"I guess so," he said weakly, not looking me in the eye. What was with Bierly? He wanted more than anything, he kept telling me, to nail the wicked Crockwell, while at the same time there was a part of him that didn't want to have to confront Crockwell or even discuss him in any detail. Bierly loathed Crockwell, but for reasons I had yet to decipher he was afraid of him too, or at least reluctant to provoke him.
I said, "It wasn't Crockwell who made a tape. It must have been a member of the group. Somebody sent the tape to the cops anonymously with a note suggesting Crockwell murdered Paul. The implication was, Paul had somehow gone after Crockwell for trying to poison Paul's relationship with his mother and Crockwell killed him. That sounds farfetched to me—Crockwell has no history of violence—just as it sounded unlikely when you told me you thought Crockwell killed Paul just because Crockwell was a hater obsessed with homosexuality. I've met the guy, and he is that. But he seems to get his rocks off taking gay men's money and torturing them with his treatments. He doesn't need to be homicidal. Of course, the cops like the looks of him because he's got a sort of motive for shooting you and maybe killing Paul, and he's got no alibi for either. I know, Larry, that you didn't shoot yourself twice, but I'm wondering if it was you who made
the tape and sent it to the cops to set Crockwell up as a suspect in Paul's death. Was it?"
He'd been watching me and listening with effort—he was undoubtedly on heavy-duty painkillers—and after a moment he said simply, "No. I didn't even know a tape existed."
"Who might have recorded it?"
He shook his head. "Who knows. Everybody in that group was weird or fucked up in some way. And I always had a feeling they all had their secrets. I know some of them did. I'd see Gary Moe and Nelson Bowkar together at the mall sometimes, and once I saw LeVon Monroe and Walter Tidlow eating together late at night at the Denny's on Wolf Road. It came out later that Gary and Nelson were lovers, and it wouldn't surprise me if LeVon and Walter were getting it on too. Paul told me he even saw one of the group cruising a tearoom one time. Maybe somebody taped all the sessions and went home and played them back and jerked off. It's not your well-adjusted healthy homosexual who's drawn into a lunatic asylum like Crockwell's."
"Who did Paul catch in a tearoom?"
"He never said. This happened sometime last winter, I think. But it's hazy because Paul never brought it up again. He went in to take a piss somewhere, he said, and there was some wild scene going on. This guy was in the thick of it. He was telling me this on the phone—saying guess who he saw violating both the canons of good taste and his therapy contract with Crockwell— when his call waiting went off and it was Phyllis, so that was that. Phyllis always took precedence with Paul. The next time I saw him, I asked him about the tearoom scene, but he didn't seem to want to talk about it. I got the idea that maybe his presence in this place wasn't entirely innocent either."
"You claim to value being honest and straightforward, Larry. And yet there is another area where you have not been entirely honest and straightforward with me."
"Oh, is that so?" He looked wary.
"You forgot or chose not to explain to me the connection
between you and Paul and Crockwell and Steven St. James. You can correct that oversight starting as soon as I count to one. One."
Bierly was hooked up to some kind of electric monitor, and as he lay there looking over at me, a couple of his numbers started going up.
For a second time, I said, "One."
Then he shook his head and said, "That has nothing to do with anything."
"I don't believe it."
"So don't."
"Who is St. James?"
"An acquaintance."
"More than that, I think. He was here first thing yesterday morning. He drove up from Schuylers Landing as soon as he heard on the news that you had been shot. Who is he, Larry?"
Bierly shifted irritably and gave me a get-off-my-back look. "Damn it, he's just a friend. Why are you making such a big fucking deal out of Steven? You're going on and on about unimportant crap like that and you're not doing your job at all, which is to nail that psychotic madman Crockwell. You said you believe me now that Paul didn't kill himself. So does this mean that you are working for me and not that ridiculous old bag Phyllis Haig?"
I said, "I'm pretty much convinced that Paul was murdered, and privately the cops are convinced too—though getting the DA to act may take some doing, inasmuch as the coroner has ruled that Paul died by his own hand, and when an old boy of official Albany is apprised of the incompetence of another old boy of official Albany, he tends not to shout it from the tallest tree. But be assured I'm working
on all that. As for working for you— maybe. I do want to avoid taking your money if there's a good chance I can take the money from somebody else who has more than you do and deserves it less."
"Jesus, Strachey, you wouldn't last in business more than a week."
That hurt, though at least T. Callahan was not present for this affirmation of his own harsh view on the subject. I said, "So did
Crockwell shoot you? The cops said you were not able to identify who shot you."
Looking grave, he said, "I don't know exactly. I mean, it must have been Crockwell. Who else could it be? It all happened so fast—it's just blurry. The guy was wearing a ski mask, I think. He just rose up from the other side of the car, and the next thing I remember is, I was in the hospital. Did the cops question Crockwell? Are they going to arrest him? I didn't get a good look, but, God, it must have been him."
"They're talking to him. It's possible he'll be charged. There is some circumstantial evidence—a gun like the one used to shoot you has been found in Crockwell's office dumpster."
Bierly's eyes got big, and he said, "Christ!"
"Even if Crockwell's fingerprints aren't on the gun, Finnerty and his gang will probably pop Crockwell in their microwave and see if his ions start rearranging themselves. They're efficient down there on Arch Street."
Now Bierly looked truly frightened. "Is Crockwell being watched? I know the hospital has a guard outside my door, but Crockwell is ruthless. And if it was him, he could probably talk his way in here and come after me again."
"The cops may or may not have him under surveillance, but I was questioned and frisked before the guard let me in here, and I'd say not to worry. So, what is it that I don't want to know?"
"What?"
"Yesterday, Steven St. James got all spooked when I asked him questions about his connection to you and Paul and Vernon Crockwell. And before he went off in a tizzy, he said to me— when I asked him how you all were mixed up together—'You don't want to know.' Those were his words. 'You don't want to know.' My question to you, Larry, is, Why don't I?"
He stared at me hard, and he blushed. He had a forty-eight-hour growth of heavy black beard, and his color from the trauma and drugs and shock and exhaustion was a kind of baby-shit yellow, and yet through all that it was plain that Bierly was blushing—as he had three days earlier in the pizza parlor when I'd
brought up Phyllis Haig's accusation that he had threatened Crockwell with violence and Crockwell had it on tape.
Bierly said, "Look, it really doesn't have anything to do with anything, but Steven is somebody I was mixed up with for a while during the winter, after Paul and I split up. The relationship never went anywhere serious."
"What's Crockwell got to do with it?"
He stared at me. "Nothing."
"Not according to Steven."
"Oh, really? What did he say?"
"That I don't want to know what you and Paul and Steven were involved in together. But I do want to know. In fact, Larry, if I'm going to consider working for you at all, I'll have to insist on knowing. I'm sure you can understand why I need to avoid groping around in the dark."
Bierly shut his eyes tight and said nothing. The silence lengthened and I let it. He was thinking hard about something, and his numbers were dancing around wackily again. When after a minute or two he opened his eyes, he looked at me exhaustedly and he said, "I've changed my mind."
"Uh-huh."
"I mean about hiring you."
"Oh?"
"It's really better if you leave this whole situation alone, Strachey. The cops will find out who shot me—and as for Paul, he's dead, so what difference does anything make? It sounds like the cops are going to drag Crockwell through the slime, he'll be ruined. And that's all I care about. So I think you'd just better skip it. Okay?" His medical condition—or something—seemed to overtake him and his eyes fluttered shut.
I said, "What made you change your mind so suddenly?"
Bierly didn't open his eyes, but his face tightened and he said, "I'm too tired for this."
"You'll regain your strength."
"That's my decision. You better go, Strachey. Please. Just go. Please."
"If you say so."
"Thanks for your help."
I said, "I may sign on with Phyllis, or even Crockwell if I think he's innocent and he's being railroaded. So I may see you soon again, Larry."
"No, please don't. I want you to let me alone."
"For now, sure."
"No, this isn't working. Please don't come back. You have to go now. Right now. Go." His eyes opened and they were full of pain.
"Okay. That's plain enough. So long, Larry."
He turned away.
I went out, nodded to the security guard, made my way down to the main floor and outside onto New Scotland Avenue, where the lilacs, some of which weren't lilac at all but creamy white, swayed heavily in the breeze. Why were creamy white lilacs still called lilacs? Why weren't they called creamy whites? Of course, not all roses were rose. Or grapes grape. Or petunias petunia.
I'd done it again. What had I said?
Back on Crow Street, I phoned my machine, on which two messages had been left. Vernon Crockwell's said, "I will not be needing your services after all. I have retained other professional help. Please do not contact me." Phyllis Haig's said, "I never want to speak to you again. You're fired!"
Timmy came downstairs and said, "What's up? Any news? Have you decided who you're going to work for?"
I said, "I'm thinking of a career change. Can you think of any other work I might be suited for?"
He said no.
16
Don't be despondent," Timmy said. "It's ten days till the first of the month. You'll get work And if you don't—so, you'll dip into capital."
"That's not funny." He knew that my "capital" consisted mainly of the six-year-old Mitsubishi I was driving south from Albany down the thruway, Timmy next to me in the tattered front passenger seat. "Anyway, I've got several accounts due. Chances are, somebody will pay me before June first."
"You mean like Alston Appleton?"
"I guess I'd better not count on that one." Appleton was a local venture capitalist whose operations were murky. I'd spent a month successfully tracking down his ex-wife and her coke-addict mother after they'd made off with a safe-deposit box full of Appleton's cash, only to present my bill for $7,100 to Appleton on the morning of the March day the SEC caught up with him and froze his assets. I was informed a month later by an ostentatiously unsympathetic federal official that with luck I might collect three or four cents on the dollar some time in the first quarter of the next century.
"Tell me again," Timmy said, "why Phyllis Haig got mad at you."
"I don't think I know. I thought I was allaying what I perceived to be her guilt over the way she had treated Paul, and over his possible suicide, by connecting his death to his financial problems, which she in no way had caused. Not that she was actually guiltless in Paul's troubles—far from it. But in that one respect,
finances, she wasn't guilty, as far as I know. So I was trying to take some of the onus off her."
"Maybe," Timmy said, "Paul went to his mother for money when he was desperate and she turned him down."
"Mmm."
"So when you told her that financial pressure might have triggered Paul's suicide, or his getting himself murdered, it reminded her of her secret fear: that if she had bailed him out when his assistant manager absconded, he might be alive today. You made her rationalization crumble too—that Larry Bierly had actually killed Paul somehow. In your Chekhovian manner, you destroyed Mrs. Haig's illusions, and she sank into the doldrums and banished you from her estate."
"The literary reference sounds inapt—try Inge, or maybe Bram Stoker. But otherwise what you say sounds plausible."
"That's what it sounds like to me," Timmy said.
We sped past the exit for Saugerties, where plans were under way for a big Woodstock reu
nion concert. That peculiar era was long gone, and I doubted more than a handful of people would show up.
I said, "I believe now that Paul Haig was murdered, but maybe Phyllis no longer really believes it—thanks to me—and that's why she can't stand the thought of me. Why didn't I think of that?"
"Because you're understandably confused. Everybody in this thing seems to be carrying some guilty secret around that's connected to Paul Haig's death—or at least they think it's connected—and their guilt is making them hold back information you need to grasp the big picture. This is true of Phyllis Haig, and probably Larry Bierly too, and even Crockwell."
"Timothy, if I'm too confused to grasp the big picture, how come you aren't?"
"Probably because I was educated by Jesuits," he said with a chuckle.
His ties to the Mother Church had fallen to all but nil in recent decades, but he still loved to flutter his Georgetown diploma in my face as evidence of both moral and intellectual superiority. He
affected a kidding, sometimes even self-deprecatory, tone, but there was much more to it.
"Too bad you didn't marry a Jesuit priest," I said. "Think of the magnificent offspring from such a union as that."
"Oh, don't think I didn't try. Back in Poughkeepsie, it's the one thing the folks could have accepted and understood."
"So tell me this, then, Mr. Sees-All-Knows-All: Why did Vernon Crockwell fire me today?"
He pondered this. "I'm stuck on that one. Though a better question is, Why did Crockwell want to hire you in the first place?"
"Leave it to a Jesuit to unhelpfully answer a question with a question."
"No, really. It is a more useful question."
"You're right, I know. Crockwell kept telling me he'd chosen me on account of my famous super-competence. But he dropped that line after a while. My guess is, the reason he wanted to hire me and the reason he wants to fire me are similar or the same. Whatever they are or it is."
"He's an enigma. An enigma and a—reprehensible character."
"Bierly is easier, of course. He wants me to have Crockwell dragged through the mud for a crime he may have but probably did not commit. Bierly wants this awfully badly, but not so badly that he'll risk my exposing something that went on involving Bierly, Haig, Crockwell and Steven St. James. I'm still at a loss as to what that might be. But if I'm cleverer and luckier talking to Steven St. James than I was the last time I ran into him, maybe we'll soon find out. Anyway, St. James, not having hired me, can't fire me. At least there's that. I'll only have been fired by three people in one day, not four."
Shock To The System Page 11