Shock to the system

11

I arrived back at the house on Crow Street just as Timmy ambled around the corner after a hard day at the Assembly.

I said, "Think up some new ways to tax 'n' spend?"

"I tried, I tried."

We went inside and smooched behind closed doors, so as not to frighten the Morses, the elderly Presbyterians who lived in the townhouse next to ours and who often came out to polish the little Historical Albany Foundation plaque next to their front door. Our plaque was tarnished-fittingly Maude Morse had once told another neighbor.

"How is Larry Bierly doing?" Timmy asked, removing his jacket and placing it carefully on a wooden hanger he kept on the foyer hatrack specifically for this purpose. His necktie went over the banister by the newel post.

"He was improving, the last I heard. But I've got to check again with the hospital and the cops."

"Are you still conniving to ruin Vernon Crockwell?" Timmy's glistening shoes came off and were placed side by side on the far right of the fourth step.

"I'm still conniving to find out how and why Paul Haig died, and who shot Bierly and why. If Crockwell is mixed up in either situation, his evil mission will be destroyed. I'll be glad and so will you."

"What does 'mixed up in' mean? That's the part I'm nervous about." I followed him to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a tall, cool glass of Price Chopper seltzer. I found a Popsicle in the freezer.

"If it takes a load off your mind, Timothy, rest assured I don't plan on planting evidence in Crockwell’s office-a smoking revolver or-in Paul Haig's case, what? That's the problem with Haig's death. Even if he was somehow forced or conned into ingesting the lethal combination of Scotch and Elavil, what evidence of it can anybody come up with at this late date? He's been dead and buried for two months. And Haig's apartment, where he died, has been cleaned out and rented to someone else. So physical evidence is going to be nil."

"That does leave you in the lurch. Who's your client? Got one yet?"

"I haven't decided. But the queue still winds around the block. That won't be a problem." He gave me his look that said, I'm not rolling my eyes theatrically but I would if I were the type who did that.

I said, "I'm talking to the members of the therapy group-I've met three so far-trying to get a clearer picture of the Crockwell-Haig-Bierly constellation and any potential violence in it, and how anybody else might have fit into it in a violent way. None of the three I talked to comes down especially hard on Crockwell- not as a murder or attempted-murder suspect anyway. Their opinion of him as a therapist is poor, but that's separate. Except, I heard the tape this morning that somebody sent to the cops, and Crockwell did threaten Haig. Each threatened the other, in fact. When Haig said he was quitting the group, Crockwell threatened to bring Phyllis Haig into it, and Haig said Crockwell would be sorry if he did, and Haig would stop him, and Crockwell said if Haig interfered Crockwell would stop him dead in his tracks."

" 'Dead in his tracks'? He used those words?"

"I heard it."

"Maybe the tape was edited to make it sound like he said that."

"No, I've got corroboration from three people who were there."

"Maybe they're the ones who edited the tape and sent it in."

"All three of them? That sounds overly conspiratorial for this particular situation."

"Maybe Mrs. Haig can shed some light on whether Crockwell contacted her and how Paul reacted."

"I plan on asking her," I said, "but shedding light is not her forte." I licked off the last of the Popsicle and placed the stick in the bin Timmy had set up by the sink labeled "Waste Wood Products." I knew where the paper, glass and plastic ended up, but I was never sure what he did with the wood.

I said, "Anyway, Crockwell is sounding more and more like a quack but less and less like a cold-blooded killer, and there are two members of the group I haven't met yet who sound much more problematical. I talked to two guys who survived Crockwell and are now a cozy couple themselves-sort of Fred Mertz married to Fred Mertz-and I met with a married man from Saratoga who is preoccupied with dick and who may be the most cynical man in North America. They're very different types, but all three of them mentioned two group members, Dean Moody and Roland Stover, who are violently antigay. They'll bear looking into."

Timmy said, "Gay homophobes. They're the worst."

"Maybe. The competition is keen. And then there's this: ever hear of a Steven St. James?"

"I don't think so. Any relation to Susan?"

"Not that I know of. I found him visiting Larry Bierly in the hospital this morning. He was cagey and evasive about his relationship with Bierly, and when I brought up Crockwell's group, he panicked and fled the premises. I went after him and pressed him on his connection to Bierly and Haig and Crockwell, and before he drove away, scared and shaken, he said, 'You don't want to know.' "

"Except you do. Who do you think he is?"

"No clue. I traced his car to Schuylers Landing. I'll track him down tomorrow."

"Maybe he's Bierly's boyfriend. Or he was Haig's or something. Or both. Or Crockwell's. Or-or all of theirs."

"I'd say your Irish Catholic imagination is running away with you on that one, Timothy."

"Yes, well, from the sounds of this curious and varied crew, your New Jersey Presbyterian imagination might not be up to the task."

"Funny, somebody else made a similar observation about an hour ago. Maybe I need to be open to more baroque explanations for whatever is going on here."

Timmy said, "Or even gothic."

I reached another of the therapy group by phone. Eugene Cebulka, in East Greenbush, agreed to meet me at seven-thirty at a Chinese restaurant we both knew out on Route 20.

I was about to call the hospital and Al Finnerty when the phone rang and Vernon T. Crockwell, sounding stricken, said, "I need your help quite badly, Donald. I'll pay you whatever your highest rate is. Just please do everything you can to find out who shot Larry Bierly-and killed Paul Haig if he was murdered and that's part of whatever this horrible thing is that's happening to me."

"To you, Vernon?"

"The police have questioned me again, and now they say they've found the gun that was used to shoot Larry Bierly.

They say they found it in the dumpster behind my building!"

"Uh-oh."

"Can you imagine!"

"Yep."

"Someone is doing this to me!"

"That's what it looks like, Vernon."

"It's unjust. It's just terribly unjust. Now, Donald-Norris Jackacky tells me you are a fighter for justice."

"Me and the Green Hornet-and Al D'Amato too. Is he a hero of yours, Vernon?"

"Donald, are you going to help me or not? I must know! My wife must know! Doris is beside herself with fright and revulsion that this should be happening to our family, and the poor woman's near-hysteria is entirely justified."

I said, "I heard the tape."

"Oh. I see. So then you know that I never said anything illegal or unprofessional, strictly speaking."

"You threatened Haig. He threatened you and then you threatened to stop him dead in his tracks."

"I was speaking figuratively, as part of a therapeutic technique. I was merely trying to elicit a response. Although I do appreciate that the untrained lay observer might misunderstand."

"Vernon," I said, "you sure are full of it. You know, I'm starting to believe less and less of anything you tell me. I don't, for example, any longer consider plausible your reasons for trying to hire me. You say it's because I'm the best around. But I know and Norris Jackacky knows that there are other excellent investigators in Albany who are not homosexual, your particular bete noire. So please tell me the truth now. Why me?"

A long silence. I could hear him breathing hard. Then he said, "I'm ashamed to-what I mean to say is, I am simply unable to be as candid on some points as you might consider it appropriate for me to be. Let's just say, I have my reasons."

I said, "Are you gay yourself?"

"Of course not! That is perfectly absurd."

"Who is Steven St. James?" I said.

More shallow breathing. Then: "I have no idea. Steven who?"

"Vernon, for someone in your line of work, where sincerity- or at least the impression of sincerity-must count for a lot, you're a terrible liar." When this got no response except what sounded like a little mewing sound, I said, "I take it you have no alibi for last night when Bierly was shot, it being Thursday. Just like the night Paul Haig died."

"That's correct, unfortunately. No, I don't."

"One of three likely conclusions can be drawn from the fact, Vernon, that bad things happen to good people from one of your therapy groups on Thursday nights when you are, you say, alone in your office. One conclusion could be, it's a funny coincidence. A second, more interesting conclusion might be, you did it killed Paul Haig, shot Larry Bierly, and tossed the gun used to shoot Paul in the garbage bin behind your building."

"Oh, no. My Lord, how could I ever do such things! And how could I be so stupid that I'd throw the gun away in my own trash?"

"I don't know, Vernon. Psychology is your department. Maybe you were distraught and you panicked. Of course, a third obvious conclusion would be, somebody who knows your schedule is setting you up-committing a crime or crimes on Thursday night and then sending the letter and the tape to the police to implicate you, knowing you're alibiless, and throwing the gun in your dumpster for the police to find."

"Yes, yes, exactly. But who? Before he was shot, Donald, I thought it was probably Larry Bierly who was, as you term it, setting me up. But now it seems to be someone else entirely."

"Why did you think it was Bierly?"

"Well, Larry was-angry with me."

"Oh, that's a good reason."

"I mean," Crockwell said, "Larry was both so angry at himself for continuing treatment for as long as he did, and so angry at me for providing a therapy that he had lost faith in, that eventually he became totally consumed with hatred for me-unhinged, I must say, acting out uncontrollably."

"How do you know that? What did he say or do?"

Crockwell said nothing.

"Vernon?"

After a quarter-minute of labored breathing, he said, "Will you help me or won't you?"

"I don't know. I need to know more before I decide. What's the deal with you and Haig and Bierly? There's something you're not telling me."

No reply.

"You said that until yesterday you thought Bierly might be setting you up. Do you also think he killed Paul Haig?"

"I don't know."

"How does Steven St. James fit into this?"

"I don't know."

"Vernon, for a man on his knees begging for mercy, you're doing little of substance to gain my confidence."

"I'm offering you money," he whined, "and I'm not withholding any information that bears directly on the matter at hand. Can't you grasp that, Donald?"

"No, I can't. How do you know the information you're obviously withholding doesn't bear directly on the matter at hand? If you want me to work for you, I have to be the judge of that."

He let out a little moan of despair and hung up.

I sat for a minute waiting for the phone to ring again, but it didn't.

I called Al Finnerty at Division Two and caught him, he said, on the way out the door after a long but surprisingly productive day.

"Productive how?" I said.

"We think we've got the gun used to shoot Bierly, a mean little Raven MP-25, the weapon of choice for the playground criminals of America. Guess where we found it, Strachey?"

"In Crockwell's dumpster."

"You talked to Crockwell?"

"Just now. He's freaked, Al."

"So, Crockwell is your client? There's no harm done in getting that on the record. It won't change a thing, as far as I'm concerned. I'm just glad to know somebody's paying you a fat fee, Strachey."

"I'm not saying Crockwell is or isn't my client. I'm not saying the Infant of Prague is or isn't my client. I'm not saying because, for now, for a variety of reasons, I can't say. Do the ballistics check out on the gun?"

"Don't know yet. I can't get test results till Monday at the earliest."

"What about prints?"

"The same."

"But you're not charging Crockwell with anything?"

"Not just yet."

"How is Bierly doing?"

"Better. He's conscious. He wants to see you, Strachey."

"Good. I'll drop by. I take it he didn't ID who shot him."

"Nah. The shooter was crouched beside Bierly's car in the dark and fired across the roof of the car as Bierly was opening the door. Bierly thinks he was wearing a ski mask, but it happened so fast, he said, he wasn't even sure of that."

"That's not helpful."

"Bierly asked if we'd check on Vernon Crockwell's whereabouts last night. He said Crockwell ought to be our prime suspect. This was before we searched the dumpster. Bierly didn't know about the gun. Interesting, isn't it?"

"Yeah, interesting. Why did Bierly think it might have been Crockwell? Did he say?"

"He said Crockwell hated him for leaving his therapy group and taking Paul Haig with him. But that sounds weak to me."

"Me too, Al."

"Shrinks must have people coming and going and mad at them all the time. I've never heard of that leading to homicide."

"Me either."

"But Crockwell's still our best bet here. We've got the letter and the tape of him threatening Paul Haig, and he's got no alibi. Even if his prints aren't on the gun, if it's the one that shot Bierly, we'll probably have to charge him. I suppose all you gays will be delighted to hear that."

My grasp tightened on the receiver. I said, "That's not the strongest evidence to present to a jury, Al-a vague threat against a friend of Bierly's, the lack of an alibi, and a gun anybody could have tossed in Crockwell's dumpster. It's awfully circumstantial. Won't the DA need a little more?"

"Oh, we'll put it together," he said. "Especially if the ballistics check out. If Crockwell is your client, Strachey, I hope you got paid up front."

"I hope you're not being overly optimistic, Al." Or overly anything else.

"I want to close this out by the end of the month if I can. The worst that can happen is the DA will charge Crockwell, and because he's a professional type with no previous record he'll want to deal-plead to aggravated assault instead of attempted murder. And if he didn't do it, that'll come out in the wash too, and the case will be thrown out or he'll be acquitted. I've got a lot of faith in our system, Strachey. However it shakes out, we'll all have done our best, and that's what counts."

I said, "But even if Crockwell is innocent and sooner or later he's cleared, the chances are, once you shove him into the sausage machine he'll come out sausage, in the sense that he'll be ruined professionally."

"Well, I've heard the psychology field is overcrowded," Finnerty said, and I shuddered.

Before I left for my dinner appointment in East Greenbush, I gave Timmy a quick rundown of my conversations with Crockwell and Finnerty.

He said, "So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Some choices you've got. You can work for Crockwell, who's probably being sandbagged unfairly but who's a social menace who should be put out of business, though not for all the wrong reasons. You can go with Bierly, who's been victimized in all kinds of ways and deserves support, except he's apparently pathologically fixated on Crockwell in a way that clouds rather than clears the air. Or you can sign on with Phyllis Haig and use her money to get to the bottom of this thing, even though Larry Bierly probably didn't kill Paul, and she'd be paying you to prove that he did. Or, of course, you could just back away from the whole thing and let the Albany cops handle it in their inimitable fashion-with lives smashed to pieces in a random and whimsical way, law enforcement as theater of the absurd."

"That nicely sums up the hopelessly paradoxical nature of the situation, Timothy. Thank you."

"So which is it? Not to be overly pushy, but I guess now you have to go one way or the other."

"Not yet," I said. "I don't know enough yet. There's been so much evasiveness and dissimulation by all the parties in this whole affair that I'm sure there's a larger picture I'm not seeing and that's critical to my understanding the little I do know- about Paul Haig's death, and Larry Bierly's shooting, and Crockwell's fear and his odd attempts to hire me, of all people, and Phyllis Haig's attempts to blame her son's death on Bierly, and- Steven St. James. How is St.

James connected to Bierly and Haig and, apparently, Crockwell? And what about Moody and Stover, the violent homophobes in the therapy group? There's just too much I need to know before I can be sure which way to head, and in whose employ."

"It sounds as if you should have a staff of fifty investigators working on this," Timmy said. "I hope it doesn't take you six months to sort it out."

"It could be time-consuming, I guess. But I'll take it one day at a time. I mustn't let myself become a slave to the temporal realm."

"True, true, but the mortgage is due on the first of June. Keep that in mind, will you?"

It was hell loving a man who got all his values from dead white European males, but to have done such was my complex destiny. end user