put him on the Elavil, but that was only making him feel less anxious, not more normal. The main thing was, Paul said, he needed the sixty thousand right away, for business reasons."
"But not," I said, "Larry Bierly's business reasons. You told me on Wednesday that it was Larry Bierly's business that was in trouble. But you misspoke yourself, I take it."
She sprayed smoke my way, then shrugged. "Whatever. The point is, Donald—if you are the least bit interested in the point— the point is, Paul needed the money sooner than I was willing to give it to him. And when I begged off, he—he did something dumb. I saw Paul a week later and Paul said he no longer needed the sixty K and that he had come up with another source. But it wasn't a way of raising cash that Paul should ever have used."
This left her mute and looking a little queasy. I said, "I assume you mean blackmail."
She stiffened. "How did you know?"
"I was told blackmail had been used previously by a member of your family."
"Who told you that?"
"Paul told Larry Bierly, who told me, that your husband once tried to blackmail a public official and this became known."
She deflated, looking glum. "That's the way some people interpreted the situation at the time—people who had their own reasons for seeing my husband left out in the cold in a certain investment situation. Paul was young at the time, but Deedee told him about it, and Paul somehow got it into his head that this was a viable way of doing business that you can get away with. If he'd still been alive, my husband would have set Paul straight on that one, that's for goddamn sure. But Lew was gone and Paul had this idea. So when he came around for a handout in March and I said no dice, not until you're normal, he came back a week later and said not to worry, he was raising the cash another way, using 'an old Haig family tradition,' he called it. Knowing how kids' minds work, I knew exactly what that was supposed to mean."
"Did you ask him what it meant?"
"We discussed it. I told him he was asking for trouble."
"But Paul made plain to you that he was blackmailing someone to raise the sixty thousand dollars he said he needed to save his business? That was spelled out?"
"It was clear enough." She straightened up and lit another Camel Light with the butt end of the last one.
"Did he say who he was blackmailing and what information he was using to do it with?"
"No, but I knew. I knew."
"How did you know?"
"Well, who the hell else would it be except that conniving little sexual deviate that had ruined Paul's life and kept him from being the real man he could have been if that treacherous little cock-sucker hadn't waved his pretty dick under Paul's nose and gotten him all sexually confused again? That's who!"
Not this again. I said, "Phyllis, surely you aren't referring to Larry Bierly."
"Of course I am!"
"But why would Paul blackmail Bierly? First of all, he was his friend. Secondly, Bierly had no money. He was in debt himself."
She cocked an eyebrow and gave me her oh-you-poor-naive-kid look. "Donald, sometimes you do amaze me. To think I almost paid you good money to work for me for—a gazillion dollars or whatever it was you wanted to hold me up for. Now pay attention, Elmer Fudd, here's the deal. Those two weren't friends. They were two queers. It was all sex. Buttfucking and whatnot. This is not healthy, and that's why homosexuals are always having catfights and can't be trusted and will never get along. It's a sickness. People of this type are not capable of true, lasting friendships with other men."
She watched me, gauging my reaction. I said, "The empirical evidence shows that you are badly mistaken, Phyllis. But do go on."
She raised her drink, acknowledging what she seemed to interpret as my conceding a point. "And anyway," she said, "even if fag-boy Bierly had no cash, he had the equity in his business and
he could have raised the money. And he would have done it too, you can bet your bottom dollar on that."
I swigged from my glass of beer. I tried to imagine what it must have been like growing up with Phyllis Haig, and my heart went out anew for her lost son, his sanity squeezed and beaten out of him long before he knew it.
I said, "Why would Larry Bierly have sold his business and let Paul blackmail him, Phyllis?"
She said, "He had pictures."
"Paul did?"
"He told me he had photographs."
"Of what?"
She gave her head a firm shake. "Paul never told me and, believe me, I did not want to know."
"He said he had incriminating or damaging photos of Larry Bierly? He specifically mentioned Bierly's name?"
"He might not have mentioned Bierly's name. I forget. But to me it was as plain as the nose on your face."
"Did Paul say where he kept the photos?"
"Why would he tell me?"
"Did he say whether there were extra copies, or negatives?"
"We didn't go into it. I wasn't the least bit interested. I told Paul I thought the whole thing was dangerous and ridiculous and dumb, and he ought to have his head examined."
"Then why, Phyllis, if you tried to discourage Paul from blackmailing someone—someone who probably murdered Paul to get hold of the incriminating photos and to silence him—why, then, do you say you are partly responsible for his death?"
Looking desolate, she said, almost inaudibly, "Because the last time I saw Paul, he asked me for the money one last time. He didn't want to be a blackmailer like his father, he said."
"And?"
"I refused. I told him I would only give him the money if he went back to Crockwell."
"Oh."
She gazed over at me out of her ruined face. "If I had given Paul the money—he'd still be alive."
"This is possible."
"He'd still be queer, but at least he wouldn't be dead. There'd be hope for Paul."
I said, "Why didn't you tell me this before? On Wednesday, you left this crucial information, about the blackmail, out of your story of what happened, Phyllis."
She looked at me hopelessly. She said, "It was too touchy. I hate all this. I just hate it."
"I guess so."
"With the Haigs, blackmail is a touchy subject."
"It sounds that way," I said. "Phyllis, I think you owe it to your son's memory to do what you can to see that the killer is caught and convicted."
"I suppose so."
"I'm going to continue to investigate. You can either pay me or not pay me, that's up to you. But I'll need your help."
"All right. All right, all right. Shit."
"Paul may have confided in Glen Snyder while he was in therapy during the six weeks before he died," I said. "Snyder is probably still under the impression that Paul committed suicide. I want your permission to interview Snyder and lay out the evidence that Paul was murdered, and I want you to urge Snyder to tell me anything relevant that Paul confided to him during those six weeks. It's unlikely Paul would have discussed the actual blackmail with Dr. Snyder—that's a crime, after all. But he could well have talked about activities of his own that would have provided him with the information—and the photos—that he ended up using in the blackmail attempt. Will you do that?"
Suddenly exhausted, she put her drink aside and laid her cigarette in an ashtray full of butts, several smoldering. She was starting to nod off. She said, "I'll do what I can. But I don't think I can pay you. You charge an arm and a leg, you know, and I'm going to have to paint the house this summer."
"We can talk about that later, Phyllis." I meant when she was
sober, provided I could locate a window of opportunity.
Blinking and trying to remain conscious, she said, "How the hell did all this crazy shit happen?"
After a moment, I said it probably went way back. But by then she had begun to snore.
20
I managed to get Larry Bierly on the phone at Albany Med. He said, "There are no pictures."
"But Paul told his mother there are."
"But I'm telling you there are no pictures. And anyway, Strachey, you are completely off base."
I said, "Where are Paul's personal belongings?"
"I've got some, Phyllis has some, and a lot we gave away."
"I'd like to have a look at what you've got. If there's nothing there, there's nothing there. But humor me in this, Larry."
"No, I will not. I'm telling you, Strachey, it's all a waste of time, what you're doing. Just drop it. It's not worth it."
"After Paul died and you went into his apartment, was there any indication the place had been searched?"
A little silence. "I don't think so. But I do know this for sure: there are no pictures."
"Pictures of what?"
"I can't tell you. If I could, I would. But it has nothing to do with Paul's death—that I am one hundred percent certain of. Why the fuck can't you just take my word about this, Strachey?"
"But Larry, if you know exactly what I'm talking about that there are no pictures of, and if it's so sensitive a subject that you refuse to tell me about it, then why couldn't Paul have tried to blackmail someone with this information and that person killed him to shut him up?"
Bierly said nothing, but I could hear him breathing, and I thought I could almost, but not quite, hear him thinking.
I said, "Could Paul have been blackmailing Emil Provost?"
"Who?"
"Steven St. James's gentleman friend."
No response.
I said, "Did it have anything to do with drugs?"
Another silence.
"Two members of the therapy group told me you and Paul used to argue about his alcohol intake and your regular use of recreational street drugs, namely acid and Ecstasy. Were drugs involved in the blackmail situation or actions?"
"Shit!" he said, and his phone came crashing down.
With the dial tone I now had, I considered calling him again but decided instead to let him cool off. After all, he wasn't going anywhere.
Crockwell still wasn't answering his phone, and neither was Steven St. James. I did reach Phyllis Haig, who by late afternoon was up and around again. She remembered the gist of our conversation and said she'd call Dr. Glen Snyder in Ballston Spa and give her okay for him to talk to me about Paul and his brief course of therapy with Snyder in February and March. I told her to emphasize to Snyder that it now seemed likely Paul had not committed suicide—no therapist likes the idea of a patient in his or her care rejecting life and the world and the therapist—and that murder was more likely. An hour later, Snyder called me and said he could talk to me Monday evening at eight if I'd drive up to his Ballston Spa office. I said I would.
Timmy and I dined at the new Vietnamese place on Madison, and I told him about my visit with Phyllis Haig, her confirmation of my suspicions about blackmail and her revelation about incriminating photographs.
"This is getting pretty racy," he said.
"Why 'racy'? That's a term with sexual connotations."
"I don't know. It's just that blackmail photos are often sexual."
"But it's hard to imagine the parties involved in this—the ones St. James said I 'don't want to know' what they were up to together—combining for anything sexual. Not Crockwell, anyway.
The others conceivably, but not the cure-a-fag high priest of the Hudson Valley. Of course, Emil Provost still looks like an ideal candidate for sexual blackmail—old-crust family man and all that."
"So you still think that old guy who goes around in a smoking jacket in the middle of May, and who probably couldn't find his way around Albany without a chauffeur and a valet, drove up alone to Albany in March and somehow got Paul Haig alone in his apartment and forced him to drink a bottle of Scotch laced with enough Elavil to kill him? Don, it's farfetched."
I said, "Maybe St. James was in on it. He helped."
"That's a little more plausible."
"It's one of the possibilities I might ask St. James about. I'm going to take a chance and drive down there after dinner. St. James ought to be resting at home tonight after a long day at the animal farm. Do you want to come along?"
"I'll pass. But good luck. You'd better take some Mace along, in case those wild dogs are on the loose again."
"I'll just use psychology. Like we did yesterday."
"In case he asks, who are you going to tell St. James your client is on this case?"
"Good question, Timothy. It will give me something to think about on the way down—and on the way back too, if I have to."
WAMC had pushed back the Sunday-night jazz shows yet another half-hour to make way for a program of Irish music—not Irish drama, mind you, or Irish literature, but Irish music. What was next, Irish cuisine? Heading down the thruway, I played an old Horace Silver tape. The road was still wet in spots, but the sky had cleared and stars were breaking out across the purple dusk. Traffic was heavy with weekenders heading back to the city. The flow slowed to a crawl in spots on account of bridge reconstruction. Bridge rebuilding had been popular in New York State since the collapse of a thruway span in the eighties killed several motorists—though when Senate Republicans complained of high construction costs, Timmy said maybe they could just put up
signs along certain stretches of the thruway that said "Falling Bridge Zone."
I pulled into St. James's parking area at nine-ten next to his old Rabbit. Lights were on in his little house. I walked up to his front door and knocked.
St. James opened the door in the company of the two snuffling dogs, who came at me sniffing and licking.
"Hi, Steven, I'm Don Strachey, and I'm a private investigator. We met on Friday at Albany Med."
"I remember you. My landlord said you came here yesterday. How did you even know where I lived?" He looked alarmed but not panic-stricken. Just out of the shower, apparently, he was barefoot in jeans and a white T-shirt. Auburn hair curled up out of the neck of his shirt in the front and down over his neck in the back. He looked nice and smelled good, the same cologne as the other day.
I said, "I'd like to talk to you about a case of blackmail involving Paul Haig, you, Emil Provost, Larry Bierly and Vernon Crockwell. Have you got a few minutes?"
He took this in with what looked like fear mixed with bewilderment. But there was no indication he felt cornered and might try to bolt.
"I can't believe this," was all he said, as he shook his head. "I just can't believe this."
"You can't believe what?"
"That I'm being dragged into—whatever I'm being dragged into. Did they find out who shot Larry?"
"Not yet."
"I called him at the hospital yesterday. I had to work and I couldn't get up to see him. I asked Larry about you, and he did say he knew you. But he said he didn't think you would bother me, and if you did I shouldn't give you the time of day. So—no. No, you can't come in. I'm sorry."
"Look," I said, "it's either me or the Albany cops. Take your pick. Believe me, I'm preferable. I could go to them and tell them all I know about you and Emil and Larry and Paul and all of it, and
let them apply their customary thumbscrews. From me, though, you might get a little understanding or even sympathy. Unless, of course, you don't deserve it."
St. James looked aghast, the desired effect, and the panic I saw in him in the hospital parking lot was staring to show up again in his eyes. Finally, he shook his head once, as if to make me disappear, and when he saw that I hadn't, he said, "I guess we'd better sit down."
I followed him inside, and when the dogs kept at me, St. James said, "Mike—Bob—lay down."
I said, "Your dogs aren't named after opera characters."
"Oh, no. No, they're not."
"Good for you."
"Mike is named after Michelangelo, and Bob is named for Robert Taylor, the actor and for many years Barbara Stanwyck's husband."
"Ah."
"A former roommate named them."
I sat on the couch and St. James sat across from me in an easy chair i
n front of the bookshelves I'd seen the day before through the window. The books were mostly on zoology and animal husbandry, but one section was devoted to Hollywood bios.
I said, "I guess you can change roommates, but you can't change your dogs' names."
"You can change dogs' names," St. James said, "if you do it gradually over time—there's no harm in it. But I really don't see any reason to." Mike and Bob lay on the rug on either side of St. James, peering over at me and emitting fluids in various states.
"Steven," I said, "it's time to fess up."
He stared at me. "You said something about Emil, and about blackmail. What on earth does that mean?"
"I think that's something you need to tell me."
He kept staring and was starting to sweat. He was going to need a fresh T-shirt. "I just don't get it, is all that I'm saying. What does Emil have to do with it?"
I said, "There are pictures—photographs."
"There are?"
"Paul Haig had them."
"But who took the pictures? And what does Emil have to do with it all?"
I said, "Are you telling me Emil wasn't involved?"
"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."
"This would be easier to sort out," I said, "and a lot less confusing for everybody concerned if I knew what the hell it is we are talking about, Steven. On Friday, I asked you what you and Crockwell and Bierly and Haig were mixed up in together, and you said, quote, 'You don't want to know.' But I do. Because it now appears that Paul was trying to blackmail one of the participants in the you-don't-want-to-know business, and he may well have been murdered in order to halt the blackmail and shut him up. Neither Bierly nor Crockwell has yet explained to me what was going on among you, so it's up to you to break the logjam. Either that or the lot of you are likely to be hauled in by the Albany Police Department, which will read you your Miranda rights and then start peeling your skin off in strips—figuratively speaking, of course, though you'll hardly notice the difference."
He was shaking his head again, not in denial but in apparent disbelief. "This is incredible. I never wanted to do it in the first place. It wasn't my idea. But I was high and I just—went along."
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