Shock to the system

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 reunion 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."

"And it's a good thing too," Timmy said. "Four might have put a dent in your self-esteem."

"You never know."

Schuylers Landing was one of those old Hudson River villages whose existence grew precarious in the last century when bridges replaced ferries but which had somehow survived into the age of antique shops, upscale country-charm emporia, and bed-and-breakfasts for purposes of leisure instead of necessity.

According to the waitress in the breezy riverfront cafe where Timmy and I had a couple of nice Gruyere-and-guacamole panini for lunch, Steven St. James's address was inland, away from the river, and south of the center town on a road off Route 9G.

We found the place with no trouble. St. James lived-Mellors-like-in a converted outbuilding a hundred yards from the house that 175 years earlier would have been the centerpiece of a prosperous landowner's estate. The main house was a brick federal-style manse surrounded by clumps of lavender irises and a couple of immense oak trees that were as graceful as ferns.

St. James's much smaller white clapboard place looked as if it had once been a kind of barn or storage building. It had a board fence around it with wire cattle fencing tacked to the boards, probably to pen in the two dogs that, as Timmy and I stood at the gate, peered at us with interest. One was a big black lab, the other a collie. The gravel parking area outside the fence was empty except for my Mitsubishi. We saw no sign of St. James's VW Rabbit.

"Hello!" I yelled. "Anybody home?"

"These dogs look friendly enough," Timmy said. "Why don't we just walk up and knock at the door?"

"They're friendly, yes. But look-they're slobbering."

"That was a close call, Commando Don."

"Oh, okay, come on."

I unlatched the gate, and Timmy followed me in. I shut the gate and we walked up to St. James's house, the dogs snuffling obsequiously and salivating on our hands.

"We have to remember to get a couple of these," Timmy said.

"Uh-huh."

I knocked at the door.

After a moment Timmy said, "It's eerily quiet."

"Well, it's quiet."

I knocked again. When I got no response I walked across the shaggy lawn and peered through a window. I saw a living room-dining room with a couch, some chairs and tables, a desk with a PC on it, and shelves with a lot of books. I strained to make out the titles, but it was dim in the house and I had no success. The newspaper on the couch appeared to be the Catskill Daily Mail, the nearest daily paper.

Timmy tried to distract the dogs while I walked around behind the house, but they wanted to come along with me, so we all went, the dogs wetly licking any exposed human skin they could get at.

"These doggies are soon going to need a drink of water," Timmy said.

I peered into a back window and saw a kitchen that was unremarkable. A door leading into it was next to the window, and I turned the knob. Locked.

"I don't think this is legal," Timmy said. "A man's home is his castle. It's English common law, going way back."

A voice said, "Is there something I can help you with perhaps?" The voice was male and its tone unfriendly.

We turned to see a man who was not Steven St. James striding around the corner of the house. He was about seventy and distinguished-looking in a Windsor-ish, end-of-the-line kind of way, and was wearing-weirdly for a sunny afternoon in May-what once had been called, and maybe still was called in the better houses of the Hudson valley, a smoking jacket. His royal-blue display handkerchief matched his ascot.

"Hi, I'm looking for Steven St. James," I said. "I'm Don Strachey and this is Timothy Callahan, and we're old friends of Steven's. Any idea where he is?"

The debonair man had four fingers of his right hand thrust into the pocket of his jacket, like a J. Press model striking a pose in 1932, and he did not remove his hand to shake the one I extended.

"I don't believe Steven was expecting you," the man said coldly. "He never mentioned to me that he was expecting visitors." The dogs paced around restlessly but did not approach the man in the jacket.

"We just decided to pop in at the last minute," Timmy said. "But I guess Steve's not here."

"No, of course Steven is not here. The farm is open now."

The farm. When he didn't elaborate, I said, "You must be Steven's neighbor."

"Yes, I am. Steven is my tenant and my neighbor. And my friend."

"Oh, so you must be-"

"Going now. And so, may I suggest, should you."

"Okay. Love your cologne," I said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's the same cologne Steven uses. I got a good whiff of it the other day when I spent some time with Steven in Albany."

His perfect posture weakened a little. "Steven was in Albany?"

"On Friday. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Central Avenue?"

Timmy glowered at me and began to move around the man in the jacket. The snuffling dogs followed Timmy.

"Tell me your names again," the man said, with much less self-assurance than before, "and I'll let Steven know that you called."

I brought out one of my cards and handed it to him. "Ask him to get in touch with me some time this weekend.

Otherwise I can look him up at the farm. Thank you."

"You're welcome." He blushed- blushed -and said, "I knew Steven had other friends in Albany. That I understood.

I can't object to that. It's just that-I never met any of them before."

Timmy said, "Well, we aren't close friends of Steven or anything. Not that close."

"Oh. I see." But he looked unconvinced.

As we drove away, Timmy said, "You were awfully nasty with that guy."

"He was awfully nasty with us."

"Of course. We were trespassing on his property. Also, he felt threatened. He's probably buying himself directly or indirectly-a little comfort not otherwise available to someone so geographically and otherwise isolated."

I said, "There were two cars in his driveway, a Continental and a Caddy. I'll bet he's married."

"So?"

"So he's sucking a dick that's been God knows where and bringing who knows what in the way of viruses and bugs and bacteria into that house."

"That is wild, wild speculation, Don. You don't know if that man so much as enjoyed a glass of port with St. James.

And you certainly have no idea what St. James does or did in Albany with Bierly or Haig or Crockwell or anybody else."

"No, but on the latter point I do know that when I pressed St. James on the subject, he told me in a panic, 'You don't want to know,' and then he fled."

"You're right. There's that."

"St. James will get the word from Lord Chatterley that I know where he lives and he'll think I know where he works.

For those reasons, I think Steven will be ready to enlighten me as to what he says I don't want to know, even though I do, I do."

"I see what you mean when you put it that way. You're kind of pissed off, aren't you?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

"Yes, I understand that. But it's not pretty."

"Something even less pretty got Paul Haig murdered and Larry Bierly shot."

"I guess I should try to keep all that in perspective."

"Do. You can do something else too."

"What?" His tone was apprehensive.

"Write down the plate numbers of the Caddy and the Lincoln. I memorized them." I recited them and Timmy wrote the numbers and letters on the back of an oil-change receipt, which I stuffed in my jacket pocket. On the way back to Albany, neither of us had much to say. end user