Shock to the system

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 in 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."

"Along with what?"

"We did something that I knew was wrong."

"Uh-huh."

"We'd never have done it if we hadn't been flying high. I know that's no excuse."

"No, it never is."

"But there was nobody to say, Wait a minute, no, this is crazy, it's cruel, it's torture, it's-illegal. We were all under the influence-a terrible, terrible mistake."

"You and Paul and Larry and-?"

"The three of us."

"No Emil?"

He laughed once. "God, no. Emil? Where did you get an idea like that?"

I could no longer remember. I said, "I'm not sure. But aren't you-involved with him? Look, I'm gay and you don't have to hold back. I'm hip to these things."

"Oh, well, I'm glad you're hip," St. James said, with a Mellors-like sneer. "I knew you were gay-Larry told me but I didn't know you were hip too. That makes this whole thing so much easier."

I said, "So you and Emil aren't an occasional item?"

" 'An occasional item.' Such a sensitive way of putting it, Strachey. No, we're not. Emil happens to be in love with me. He sometimes imagines that I'm in love with him-which I'm not- and that I hold my passions in check because he's married and because of class differences. But it's all in his head. I haven't done a thing to either lead him on or to make him believe I'm abstaining from sex with him for any reason other than that I don't happen to be interested. I do like him-he's a sweet old guy from another age who's as gay as I am but who grew up differently and who's trying to find a way to be true to his sexual nature, but can't. Sometimes I wish I was attracted to him, because he's a decent man and deserves better. But I'm not attracted, and our relationship exists entirely within Emil's fantasy life-which is real enough to him that he's powerfully jealous of the other men in my life, real and imagined."

I said, "I misunderstood the situation. Sorry."

"Oh, no problem, no problem at all. God."

"So Emil wasn't involved in-'it.' Who was?"

"I told you. Larry and Paul and I. And of course Dr. Crockwell."

"Right." I waited. He looked at me and said nothing, his scent becoming Mellors-like again.

"Paul and Larry were very, very angry," he said tightly. "Especially Larry."

"At Crockwell."

He nodded.

"So?"

St. James started breathing hard. "I think-I think I could go to prison for this," he said.

"You all got high and you did something to Crockwell?"

He nodded.

"Which was?"

He said, "I-I can't tell you."

"Why?"

"We all swore we'd never tell."

"Even Crockwell?"

"Especially Crockwell. He said he'd never press charges if we all kept our mouths shut."

"Jesus, did you rape him?"

Now he grimaced. "God, no! What kind of people do you think we are?"

"The kind that could go to prison for whatever you did do. You just said so, Steven."

"Yes, but-no, I would never do a thing like that. And neither would Paul or Larry, even though they despised Crockwell. Especially Larry."

"Is Larry an old friend of yours?"

"Not old, but good. We met in a bar in Albany when Paul and Larry were having some hard times on account of Paul's drinking. We slept together once in a while, especially after Larry moved out and had his own apartment. We turned on together occasionally, and one time we ran into Paul when he was drunk and he joined us. And that's when it happened. One Thursday night in January when they knew Crockwell would be alone in his office. They started talking about Crockwell, and they got angrier and angrier about what he does to gay people and what he did to them, and that's when Larry got this idea about how to get even."

He sat there breathing hard again, the wet circles under his arms as big as grapefruits now. He started to speak several times, but each time nothing came out. For a minute, I thought he might faint.

After another minute, I said, "Am I going to have to ask Crockwell what happened?"

Still breathing erratically, St. James nodded. "You can ask him. But I don't think he'll tell you."

"You realize, Steven, that there may be blackmail involved, and murder. You may be obstructing justice, a felony in itself."

Looking bewildered again, he said, "You keep saying that, but I don't understand it at all. Who would blackmail any of us? The only people who know about the incident are me, Larry and Dr. Crockwell. Paul wouldn't have blackmailed Larry, I can't imagine. And he didn't try to blackmail me. And even if he had tried to blackmail Crockwell, Crockwell would have just said, 'Okay, tell the world. Then you'll go to prison for what you did.' So why would Paul do that?"

"Maybe," I said, "Crockwell’s reputation was at stake, and that meant more than anything to him, and so Paul knew he was vulnerable."

"That's possible," St. James said. "But Crockwell could have just said to Paul, 'Tell anybody you want. I'll just deny the whole thing. You're just a disgruntled former patient who went over the edge, and you're a drunken sexual pervert nobody will believe.' And anyway, Strachey, where did you get the idea that there are pictures? Nobody was taking pictures, I can tell you that for sure. I know, because I was there."

St. James seemed to be breathing more evenly and sweating a little less now, though his dogs were slobbering up a storm. I felt like getting down on the floor and slobbering too. It seemed as though I had systematically eliminated all useful knowledge pertaining to Paul Haig's death and that I was nearly all the way back to my state of useless innocence of five days earlier.

I said, "Steven, unless you can find it within yourself to be more forthcoming with me on exactly what happened in Crockwell's office that night, I do believe that I'll have no choice but to go to the Albany police and relay to them the admissions you have made to me here tonight."

St. James's fist came down on the end table next to him, causing the lamp on it to jump and the dogs to leap into the air and come down snarling. I left soon after. end user