Shock to the system

3

The darling buds of May had popped out even on the genetically stunted arboreal species around the Millpond Mall parking lot, and the air was fresh after a spring shower. All but glacier-ridden from November to March-and hot and sopping as Bangladesh in summer-Albany during a brief spring and briefer fall was not only fit for human habitation but certifiably pleasant. Crossing the newly washed tarmac, I'd have felt downright jaunty if I'd driven out to Millpond for a movie or a pack of clean sweat socks instead of an interview with the object of a scurrilous accusation of homicide that was conceivably true.

Bierly had suggested we meet at the Irish-pub-style pizza-and-beer joint across from the cineplex (Timmy had once said, "The pizza here is definitely Irish"), and I spotted Bierly at a table in the back, away from the bar and the sports rowdies.

"So, what did Phyllis have to say about me?" he said, looking curious and mildly skeptical but with no apparent fear of what my answer might be. I had told him on the phone only that I was considering investigating Paul Haig's death for Mrs. Haig and that she had suggested I interview Bierly.

"Her opinion of you is poor," I said, pulling up a chair. "But I'll bet you already knew that."

He laughed, but without amusement. "When Paul and I lived together, she'd get lit and call the apartment about once a week. Whenever I answered the phone, she'd start off by saying, 'Well, if it isn't Buttfucker Bierly.' That says it all about what Phyllis Haig thought of me. It also tells you what she really thought of Paul… although she'd never admit what she actually thought of Paul-even to herself. To her little boy, who could do no wrong, she was nice as pie."

He said this less with bitterness than with bemused resignation. What I had taken to be shyness when I'd seen Bierly at gay political events now seemed another kind of reticence altogether, the holding back of a man with reduced expectations of how other people were going to regard him. I remembered him more clearly now, and he hadn't changed since I'd last seen him: about thirty, with curly black hair and big, wary dark eyes in one of those pleasing but not-quite-locatable, all-over-the-map American faces that suggest some of each of the auld sod and the Rhine and Calabria and maybe even pre-Columbian Vera Cruz. He looked muscular under the white dress shirt he had on, sleeves rolled up to mid-forearm, with a paisley necktie roller-coastering down a well-developed chest.

I said, "Mrs. Haig believes that Paul did not commit suicide. She told me he was not depressively suicidal and would never have taken his own life. Did you know that this was her belief?"

A curt nod. "Oh, I certainly knew that."

"She told you?"

A hard look. "The police are the ones who told me. Phyllis and I have not spoken since Paul's funeral in March." He watched me grimly, waiting for what-it now dawned on me-he had known was coming since I had sat down.

Dragging it out unnecessarily, I said, "And the police raised the possibility with you that Paul's death might not have been suicide?"

He grunted. "They did raise that possibility."

A waiter in a white shirt and black bow tie appeared and asked if we were ready to order or if we needed a few more minutes. I asked for a draft and said we needed a few more minutes. After the waiter went away, I said to Bierly,

"What evidence did the police have that pointed away from suicide toward accidental death? Or homicide, of course."

Bierly had been absently rotating a beer glass on the tabletop, but suddenly he stopped. "Now look. I know she thinks I killed Paul," he said tightly. "So let's just quit playing these fucking games. Can we just do that?" His face was red and the muscles in his forearms were taut, and he didn't look so philosophical anymore.

"That suits me," I said.

Bierly started rotating his glass again, faster this time. "One of the cops told me the line of crap she gave them-I was violent, and I was jealous, and I was a crazy queer who murdered Paul for his money, and I tried to cover it up by making it look as if her happy, well-adjusted little boy had committed suicide. Jesus, that woman!" Veins throbbed at the sides of his temples and on the big hairy hand that worked the beer glass.

I said, "You and Phyllis didn't hit it off too well, did you?"

This poor attempt to lighten Bierly's mood failed. He said, "She hired you to get me, didn't she?" Now the veins were bleeping faster. "The police checked me out and found out I had an alibi for the night Paul died-I drove my landlady to Utica, where her daughter had been in a car crash, and we didn't get back until four in the morning-but of course that wasn't enough for Phyllis. Phyllis knows what Phyllis knows. How much is she paying you to frame me, or just harass me, or whatever it is this is supposed to be?"

He regarded me as if I were a plague bacterium deserving of fear, scorn, and, if it could be arranged, extermination. I said, "I have no interest in persecuting you, Larry. I haven't agreed to actually work for Phyllis Haig. I wanted to talk to you first. That's why I'm here. I'm not sure I want to get mixed up in this at all. The situation would interest me only if I became convinced that Paul Haig had actually been murdered. But you seem to be telling me that that was not the case."

The rotating beer glass came to a halt. "Oh, is that what I seem to be telling you? I don't think so."

"You're not telling me that Paul wasn't murdered?"

The waiter came back with my draft and asked if we'd like to order or if we needed a little more time. I said we needed a little more time.

Bierly eyed me levelly and said with what looked like carefully controlled emotion, "Of course I didn't kill Paul.

Phyllis is-she's a serious, out-of-control alcoholic, and her brain is-she's a crazy, obnoxious old booze hound.

Even when she's sober she's a chronic liar. Probably all the Haigs are. Paul was. Based on what Paul told me about him, his father was a liar too. Unless Paul was lying about that."

He blinked away something he didn't seem to want to remember and went on. "But the fact is, I loved Paul. In spite of everything, Paul Haig was-you're gay, aren't you? I think I've heard about you."

"Yes."

"Have you ever loved a man? I mean, not just sex, but really had a deep love for that person?"

"Yes, I have. Most recently for the last nineteen years."

He looked at me sadly. "That's what I know now that I want. I thought I had it with Paul."

"His death must have been awful."

He shook his head. "Oh, I lost him before that, and that was awful. Paul was the love of my life, I thought-the first man I ever really gave myself over to. I had always been ashamed of being gay. I come from a family and a place where being gay is the most disgusting thing there is. That's why I could never accept my gayness and ended up with that asswipe Vernon Crockwell. But then I met Paul in Crockwell's group, and before long-I think the craziness of everything we were going through in Crockwell's program hit us at the same time and we started holding on to each other just to keep from going insane."

"That probably happens a lot in programs like Crockwell's."

"It happens a lot in Crockwell's own program," Bierly said.

"Dr. Crockwell's Inadvertent Dating Service. But for you and Paul things went awry after a while?"

"Paul was an alcoholic and couldn't control it," he said grimly.

"Like his mother is an alcoholic and his father was when he was living. That's basically what went wrong between us-Paul's drinking. He was sober at first, and going to AA. He'd been in the program off and on for a couple of years-much to Phyllis's consternation. She wanted him to drink, needed him to drink, and so sooner or later he did.

It nearly always started up again after one of his lunches with Phyllis. Paul had some other problems too-lying was the main one. But his other flaws all had to do with his drinking, and his being gay, and his parents, especially Phyllis, whose boozy, twisted love was the kiss of death for Paul."

Although I wasn't sure, Bierly didn't seem to mean this literally.

He went on. "How the Haigs functioned at all is a mystery. When Paul was sober and he was being honest about himself and his family, he admitted to me what a mess they were. Lew, his father, was a real-estate developer who almost went to jail once in some kind of bid-rigging scheme. Paul said another time Mr. Haig got himself out of a financial fix he was in by blackmailing a rich senator, and he got caught at that too. Paul's father died of cancer, but cirrhosis of the liver would have killed him even if the cancer hadn't. Phyllis is in total denial about her alcoholism, and I think Paul's sister, Deedee, is probably alcoholic too. Paul tried-he really tried so hard-to be strong and honest and realistic about himself. But he couldn't. Maybe eventually he would have. But I couldn't take it after a while-the lying, the hidden bottles, the binges-and I gave up on him."

"Because he was screwing up your life too?"

"It got to be a matter of emotional, or maybe even physical, survival. Paul sometimes did some pretty crazy stuff when he was drunk, and sometimes I'd go along with it and regret it the next day. But mostly, I just couldn't stand not knowing which person he'd be from one day to the next. Finally, just after Christmas, when he really went off the deep end with a bottle in his hand, I got my own place and moved out."

I said, "The pros all seem to agree that in these unhappy situations you have to save yourself first. How did Paul react?"

Bierly shrugged. "He got drunk."

"I'm sorry it turned out that way. I hope you'll do better with the next man in your life."

He looked around to make sure we weren't being overheard. Then he leaned toward me and said in a breaking voice,

"How could anyone think I killed Paul? Even that idiotic, deluded Phyllis-how could she say such a thing? I loved Paul. I couldn't live with him, and I couldn't be his lover anymore, but I still loved him. I could no sooner have killed Paul than-" Bierly looked nauseated at the thought-"than I could kill anybody. I'm just not a violent person. Oh, I have a temper. People will tell you. I can lose it, like a lot of people. But take another person's life? It's just not in me. I don't know if I could kill another person even in a war or in self-defense. So when Phyllis told the police I killed Paul and they called me in and questioned me-it just made me want to throw up."

I said, "But you don't think Paul killed himself."

"No."

"And you don't think his overdose was an accident either?"

"No, I don't think it was."

"Why not?"

"As for an accident, it wouldn't be like him. Paul was careful about pills. He never mixed drugs and alcohol. I was surprised when he told me he was on Elavil, just because any kind of drugs made him nervous. He didn't even like it when I'd smoke some weed or whatever once in a while. Alcohol was Paul's drug of choice."

I said, "And why not suicide?"

He shook his head emphatically. "Not a chance. Was Paul a nervous wreck? Oh, yes, poor Paul, he was one anxious son of a bitch-pun intended. He smoked too much, and he worked too hard, and the strain of trying unsuccessfully not to be the drunk his mother wanted him to be was brutal for Paul. But he coped. He found ways not only to survive but to function. He was a true Haig in that respect. And there's another thing: Paul had not only been on antidepressants and feeling relatively relaxed the week before he died, but he hadn't been drinking either. I either saw him or talked to him on the phone almost every day, and I'd gotten to the point where I could tell if Paul had been drinking. He hadn't. He'd even started going to AA meetings again, he said."

The waiter, probably under corporate orders, was hovering, so I signaled for him and ordered a pizza of his choice.

He said sausage and broccoli would be nice, and we said okay.

I asked Bierly, "With Paul's improved outlook, did you think there was a chance you and he might get together again?" More tentatively, I said, "Or did he think so?"

"Paul brought it up," he said, his voice going unsteady again. "As for us living together, I didn't want to. I told him I'd think it over, but I don't think I could have done it. At a certain point last winter-I can even remember the day I realized I just didn't love Paul anymore in that way."

"Did you tell him?"

Bierly looked away and his face darkened. "No, I never did. When we separated at the end of last year, it was supposedly temporary-till Paul quit drinking permanently. But I guess I never really believed he'd stay sober. And one day I was sitting across from him at Queequeg's during Sunday brunch and he was talking about something unimportant-I have no idea what it was-and I looked over at him and I knew he would always be my friend but that we would never be lovers again."

"That happens to every couple," I said. "But it's usually just an attack of existential uncertainty, and it passes.

Though this sounds different."

"It was," Bierly said. "I don't know about 'existential uncertainty,' but I know that with Paul, even though I still loved him, I'd lost confidence in him. And I didn't believe in us as lovers anymore."

"That feeling is always plain enough when it comes."

Now he looked sheepish. "I guess that's why when Paul died I didn't feel nearly as deep a loss as I would have a year earlier. I felt-I still feel-sad and hurt and confused. And I often miss him. I just wish I could talk to him. Or touch him-God, we had such great sex together. That was a big part of the attraction and it's one reason I think I stayed with Paul as long as I did, even when he got to be impossible to live with. But mostly it's something else now that makes me miss him. I just want to sit down with Paul-I sometimes fantasize about doing it-and I want to ask him one question."

He looked at me steadily now, almost expectantly, as if I might ask the question myself-or somehow both ask it and answer it. I said, "What question would you like to ask him?"

He said, "Why did you die? How and why did you die?"

"Uh-huh."

"Who killed you? How did he do it?"

"You believe Paul was murdered."

"Yes."

"You seem so certain."

"I know Paul. Paul would not kill himself."

"Do you have any idea who might have done it? Who would have wanted to kill Paul?"

"I think I might know," Bierly said. "But first, let me ask you something."

"Okay."

"If you don't sign on with Phyllis Haig-and I don't think you will, because you seem too smart and too honest will you let me hire you instead?"

"To do what?"

"To verify who killed Paul and have him charged and put out of business."

" 'Put out of business'-is that a euphemism?"

"Of course not. Just put in prison, which would get him out of the evil business he's in."

I said, "What if I investigated, and I succeeded, and it turned out Paul was murdered and the murderer was someone other than the man or woman you have in mind?"

He nodded. "I could live with that."

The pizza arrived. The waiter asked if we would like him to serve the first slice. Bierly said no thanks. We served ourselves and went to it.

I said, "All other considerations aside, Larry, I'm not sure you can afford a private investigator." I told him my standard rate.

He grimaced. "That's a lot higher than I thought it would be."

"Phyllis Haig says you're rich. Your business was in trouble, but Paul left you his estate, and now you're flush with both his lucrative business and the rest of Paul's considerable assets. True?"

He chewed his pizza furiously. "What a load of Phyllis Haig bullshit crap," he said, bits of pizza flying from his mouth. His veins were pulsing again. "That woman. That woman."

"Which part is inaccurate?"

"All of it is inaccurate. It was Beautiful Thingies that was in trouble, not Whisk 'n' Apron. Last year when Paul was drunk for most of two months, he had an assistant manager who robbed him blind and then disappeared. Paul got behind with the bank and asked Phyllis to bail him out. I'm not sure what he told her. It's conceivable he told her it was me who needed the money. Or he could have told her the truth and she just imagined it was me. The Haigs all lied to each other all the time, so none of them could ever believe what the other ones were saying. And with Phyllis, her brain is so atrophied from alcohol she can believe anything she wants to believe that fits into her warped view of people."

I said, "I can check all that out, you understand, about the finances. It would take me less than a day."

"I wish you would. And take what you learn and shove it in Phyllis Haig's stupid face."

"And Paul's assets?"

"He left me his '88 Honda, his household furnishings, his Abba tapes, and the three hundred twenty-two dollars in his checking account. He also left me his business, which was sixty thousand dollars late in payments on his business loan. When Paul died and I became executor and eventually beneficiary of his estate, the bank was about to foreclose on Beautiful Thingies. Paul hadn't been worried about this-he told me a week before he died he'd come up with a way to pay off the bank debt. But the debt was still there when I took over, and I had to borrow myself up to the hilt to hold off foreclosure.

So the fact is, for the foreseeable future Beautiful Thingies will be nothing but one big financial headache for me.

Paul's estate is no place for me to go for liquid assets. Have I cleared that up for you?"

"You have." I chewed at the pizza, which was not Irish but hardly Italian either. It was rubbery and vaguely medicinal-tasting-Aleutian maybe.

I said, "Who do you think killed Paul, Larry?"

With no hesitation, Bierly said, "Vernon Crockwell."

"I had a feeling that's who you were going to say."

"Do you know him?"

"Only by reputation."

Bierly blushed. "I'm so embarrassed to admit that I actually went to him. But I was so fucked up and lonely in my personal life, and I thought-the thing is, I wasn't thinking at all. I didn't know much about homosexuality. I didn't even come out until I was twenty-five, and I didn't start to read intelligent books about it until I started with Crockwell and saw how crazy and unbelievable his ideas were and I went out and did some reading on my own. It was the same for Paul. Of course, he was in Crockwell's program under duress. From you-know-who. It's probably one reason she despises me to this day. Phyllis sent Paul to Crockwell to be de-queered. Instead, he met me and was queered for life."

"How long were you in the program?"

He blushed again. "I'm embarrassed to tell you. Over eight months. The program is supposed to run a year, and I came within four months of actually finishing it. Paul and I left the program last September ninth."

"It took you that long to figure out that Crockwell is a quack, or a con artist, or whatever it is he is?"

"It didn't take me that long. I was on to him within a couple of months. Paul saw through Crockwell too, though for a while he clung to the idea he might actually be straightened out-even though we were happily fucking up a storm almost every night. Basically, he stayed as long as he did because of his mother, and I stayed until Paul worked up the courage to leave."

"And when you left the program, you and Paul left together?"

"That's right."

"Just toodle-oo out the door and that was it?"

"Well, not exactly."

"Uh-huh."

I waited. He chewed at his pizza and I chewed at mine. Bierly downed the remaining beer in his glass and then said,

"Crockwell was furious when we announced one day we were well-adjusted homosexuals, thanks indirectly to him, and we were lovers and we were leaving the program. He started screaming how we were deluding ourselves, and we were going against nature, and we would always be miserable, and that's what we deserved. He screamed that we were disrupting the group, and for that we were going to be very, very sorry. He told Paul-this was in front of the entire group of ten guys-he told Paul that his mother would despise him for choosing to be a sexual deviant. Can you imagine a professional psychologist telling a patient something like that?"

"On this subject, yes, I can. Then what happened?"

"Paul pretty much told Crockwell-yes, Paul told Crockwell- to go to hell. Then we just got up and walked out.

We were afraid we might feel a little guilty for a while, but we didn't. We rode the high for weeks that we got from walking out of Crockwell's office that day. We started going to gay rights events, even some political stuff, although I'm not really very political. I saw you at some of those political meetings, I'm pretty sure."

"I remember you too-and Paul."

"The high didn't last long, though. Paul went to see his mother and started drinking again. And everything went downhill fast. But that first month or so after we kissed Crockwell good-bye was the happiest time of my life, I think."

"You just said so-long and that was your last contact with Crockwell?"

"You got it."

"You or Paul never threatened him or attacked him? Or said anything that could be construed as a threat?"

"He threatened us," Bierly said, his color rising again. "He said we'd be very, very sorry for disrupting the group.

But no, nobody threatened him that I can recall. We were just glad to be out of there."

"I'll bet."

"My real bitterness toward Crockwell-and Paul's too-was after we left, and we looked back on all the unnecessary pain he caused people. And is still causing. He's still in practice, if you can believe it."

I said, "Phyllis Haig says you assaulted Crockwell and threatened to kill him and Paul bought him off so he wouldn't have you prosecuted. Any idea what she was referring to?"

"Paul told her that? Oh my God!"

"That's what she said."

Blushing deeply again, Bierly said, "That is totally off the wall. It's obviously another one of Phyllis's bizarre, alcohol-induced fantasies. Either that or it was one of Paul's. When those two drank together-who knew what one of them would come up with."

I said, "You're blushing."

Bierly said, "I am?" and got even redder. "Well, I have to admit I'm embarrassed about a lot of what I've told you tonight."

"Uh-huh."

"It's not only highly personal, it's-I have to admit that some of the things I've told you about myself make me look pretty damn stupid."

"The blunders you've described to me are the kind a lot of us made at some stage of our lives. Are there other relevant blunders that you're not telling me about?"

"None that are relevant," he said, still blushing.

I said, "What makes you think Crockwell killed Paul? If Paul had no contact with Crockwell after last September ninth, what would suddenly prompt Crockwell to homicide in March? I don't get that."

"Crockwell is a hater," Bierly said. "He carried poisonous grudges. In the group, he talked about other people who left, and he ranted and raved about how wretched they must be and how they deserve to be unhappy. He seemed to be obsessed with those people."

"But if he got satisfaction from their misery," I said, "he certainly didn't have to kill them."

Bierly blushed some more. I figured he was lying about some or much or all of what he had told me about his and Paul's departure from Crockwell's program and its aftermath. Yet he didn't seem to care if I thought he was lying. He just lied and blushed, lied and blushed. I didn't get it.

Bierly said, "Look, something deep in my gut tells me that Vernon Crockwell killed Paul. All I ask is that you investigate Crockwell and see what you can come up with. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I don't think I am, Strachey." And then he brought out his checkbook. end user