Shock to the system

19

Sunday afternoon I drove over to Albany Med. I talked my way past the guard and into Bierly's room, but when I got there he refused to speak with me. I told him, "I think Paul was killed by someone he was trying to blackmail. It had to do with whatever you and Paul and Crockwell and St. James and Emil Provost were mixed up in together. If you want Paul's killer brought to justice, you've got to open up about this."

But he had already buzzed for the nurse, and when she arrived Bierly was looking at me peculiarly and slowly shaking his head.

"Just leave me alone, will you, please?" he said, not at all Garbo-like-Victor Mature-like was closer to it. The nurse said I would have to go, so I did.

Back on Crow Street, I sat down by the phone. Crockwell's home number was unlisted, and his machine answered at his office. I got no answer at the St. James number; he was probably still at the game farm. I started to dial Phyllis Haig, but checked my watch-1:40-and figured I might make out better at that time of day if I met her face-to-face. Timmy had gone off with some friends to a lecture at SUNY on the evils of the Guatemalan military. I drove up to Latham for my own encounter with a kind of human-being-as-banana-republic.

"I don't want to talk to you, I said you are fired -F-I-R-E-R-E-D. Can't you understand English? Do I have to call a cop?" She was standing barricade-like in her front doorway, a low glass in her hand.

I said, "Look, Paul did not commit suicide. You were right when you called me the first time. I keep trying to tell you, Phyllis, that there is evidence pointing to the likelihood that Paul was murdered. I need to talk to you about it, and I need your help in identifying Paul's killer."

She looked more worn out than relieved by this assertion, as if the thing she was least able to cope with now was additional thought.

"Oh, Christ on a crutch," she finally said resignedly. "Come on in and let me fix you a drink."

I followed her through the foyer of a rambling split-level house full of horsey prints and Duncan Phyfe reproductions of unvarying constricted good taste, the sort of decor Joseph Stalin might have chosen for the Kremlin had he been from Connecticut. The one touch of modern-day-Haig authenticity in the place, and of life, was Phyllis Haig herself. She'd gotten her makeup to fit almost exactly over its intended place on her face, and she had on a pair of silky pale blue slacks that were casually hippy and an orange blouse with plenty of demurely rouged decolletage.

She said, "We better head for the den if we know what's good for us."

What was good for Phyllis was a cigarette and a refill, and I had a reactionary but well-chilled Coors.

"I don't know why you're still pestering me," she said, draping herself across a chintz couch. I chose the well-worn manly leather chair facing her that must have been her late husband's seat. "You keep missing the point, Donald, that I've had it up to here with you and with this whole goddamn stinking load of crap. I should never have called you in the first place. I should have gone to Arizona with Helen Small when she tried to get me to hop on a plane and blow this Popsicle stick. But no, I didn't listen to Helen. Just to get even with that stupid little pansy Larry Bierly, I had to start picking at scabs and opening up running sores and dredging up a lot of ugliness and heartbreak. Well, I learned my lesson on this one, Don, that's for goddamned certain. Never again, never again. Not ever, ever, ever."

What was she trying to say? "I'm a little hazy on that, Phyllis. Never again what?"

"Some people can get away with murder and there's nothing you can do about it. My husband told me a hundred times if he told me once, when you run into one of those people who can get away with anything they damn well please, don't screw around with them. It's just not worth it."

"Who do you think is getting away with murder?" I said, and as I said it, it suddenly sounded as wacky to me as it must have sounded to Phyllis Haig.

"Why, Larry Bierly! What the hell do you think I've been telling you for the last five days, for chrissakes?" She stared at me as if I were armed and dangerous.

I said, "I got the wrong impression from something you said over the phone, Phyllis. I'm sorry about the confusion. I misunderstood and got the idea from the way you reacted to some things I said about Paul's financial situation at Beautiful Thingies that you felt you were somehow responsible for his death."

She sagged. "Oh, that's what you thought?"

"I'm sorry."

She blew smoke over her left shoulder and then peered at me through narrowed eyes. After a moment she said,

"Well, it's the goddamned truth."

"What's the truth?"

She took in another lungful for strength. "It's true that I'm partly responsible for my son's death, goddamnit to hell."

When she just sat watching me with a look of defiance tinged with despair, I said, "In what way are you partly responsible?"

She shuddered and then shook her head. "Why am I telling you this?"

"Because you have to tell someone, Phyllis."

That got a snort. "What bullshit. I know verbal diarrhea is in style, but I've done without it for fifty-some years and I don't intend to take up the disgusting habit now. No, I'm spilling my guts to you, Don, because I think you are a pathetically naive man and I want to educate you. What you can learn from me will come in handy in your line of work. And I won't even charge you for it."

"Thank you, Phyllis."

She ingested and inhaled. The drinking was painful to watch, but she smoked with such fierce pleasure that it took me back to when I was young and easy under the apple boughs and constantly sucking on a Chesterfield or an Old Gold and finding happiness if not health in every drag.

Abruptly, she said tightly, "Paul came to me for money. I refused to give it to him."

She watched me for a reaction, but I offered none.

She went on. "After Paul left Vernon Crockwell's program, Crockwell called me. He advised me to shut Paul out disown him, is what Crockwell was saying, even though he never used the ugly word. He said if Paul wanted anything from me to make sure I gave it to him only if Paul first agreed to go back into Crockwell's program. He also said it would be best if Paul started fresh, without Larry Bierly, because Bierly was probably a hopeless case, a man who wanted to be a pervert. Crockwell said this approach might be a tough row to hoe for me, but it was in Paul's best interest in the long run."

Another gulp of whatever was in the glass.

"I'd already paid Crockwell over eight K," She said. "And I figured a man who can rake in that kind of money from zinging people with cattle prods, or whatever it is he does, and getting them to think normal smutty thoughts, must know what he's doing. So when Paul asked me for sixty thousand dollars in March, I said I'd give it to him only after he went back into Crockwell's program and finished it and Crockwell personally guaranteed me that Paul had come out normal. That's a lot of money for a warranty, but normalcy is worth money."

I said, "But Paul didn't accept the offer."

"No," she said grimly. "He said he might go back to Crockwell sometime-he'd have to think about that. Apparently he still had dick on his mind. He'd already started seeing Glen Snyder, who'd 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. end user