Richard Stevenson - Shock to the system

Fifteen minutes after leaving a message, I got a callback from a psychotherapist friend in Westmere who specialized in actual sexual dysfunction. As I suspected, she was familiar with Crockwell's practice; she had even treated a few of his alumni. I learned that unlike open-ended groups whose members came and went at various times, Crockwell's was a set one-year program that included both group therapy and individualized aversion therapy. He always had three groups going, each meeting once a week at different times. One old group ended and one new group formed every four months. This way, men who had queued up to be de-queered would never have to wait too long to get started. (Lesbians wishing to be un-dyked were referred to a similar program run by a colleague of Crockwell's in Schenectady; my therapist friend, a lesbian, informed me that the Schenectady program included not only group and aversion therapy but also hairstyling and makeup tips.) Then I got out the list Bierly had provided me-and whose accuracy Crockwell had, in effect, confirmed-of the ten men in the previous calendar year's therapy group. The first two men on the list were Haig, now deceased, and Bierly, unconscious in the hospital. Two others were known to be dead, Bierly had told me: Gary Moe and Nelson Bowkar had fallen ill with AIDS-related infections soon after the group had concluded in December and both had died in early February, a double suicide. Bierly had heard later that the two had secretly been lovers while in the Crockwell therapy group-it's where they met-and they had remained in the group because nineteen-year-old Bowkar's family had begged him to stay, and twenty-year-old Moe's evangelical church had paid his $8,200 per annum nonrefundable fee to Crockwell, and Moe didn't want the congregation to think its money had been wasted.

Bierly said there had been nothing suspicious about the suicide; Bowkar and Moe left anguished, profusely apologetic notes to their families and jumped off the I-90 Hudson River bridge together.

That left six. Grey Oliveira was married, lived in Saratoga, and was described by Bierly as one of the more stable and rational members of the group, but hard to take on account of his sarcasm. Bierly called Roland Stover, of Albany, a guilt-ridden religious zealot and "fucked-up something awful." LeVon Monroe and Walter Tidlow, also of Albany, were best buddies, Bierly said, and he suspected that they were more than that. Eugene Cebulka, of East Greenbush, was a nice guy, Bierly said, and generally sensible and with a good grip on reality; Bierly wasn't sure why he had stayed in the group.

Bierly had described Dean Moody as "a lunatic." Moody had initiated a lawsuit against his parents, Hal and Loretta Moody of Cobleskill, alleging that through their recklessness-Loretta's emotional closeness to her son and Hal's emotional distracted-ness and uninvolvement-they had turned Dean into a wretched homosexual. This one I had read about in the Times Union earlier in the year, when the Moodys, all three of them, had been scheduled to appear on Montel. Now I was sorry I hadn't tuned in.

Bierly I didn't need to track down, and luckily the others from the therapy group were listed in area phone books.

Conveniently, and probably more than that, Monroe and Tidlow shared both a number and an address on Allen Street. Only one group alumnus was at home when I called; Walter Tidlow said his "roommate" LeVon would be home at lunchtime and they would be willing to discuss Crockwell vis a vis Haig vis a vis Bierly if I wanted to drop by. He also offered lunch; I hadn't yet accepted anybody else's offer to foot my expenses, and I happily took Tidlow up on his offer of free food.

I phoned Crockwell at his office and got his machine. Finnerty and Colson were probably going at him. If Crockwell had stuck to his schedule, he'd have been alone in his office Thursday night when Bierly was being shot, and therefore alibiless. Which meant Crockwell was in trouble whether he had shot Bierly or-as now seemed more and more likely to me-not. Crockwell's accustomed method of assassination was subtler. The tape someone in the group had made and sent to the cops showed that Crockwell could lose control. But losing control when provoked was one thing, and premeditated murder (Haig) and attempted murder (Bierly) was far more dire. It was easy, though, for me to keep an open mind on this point. I had next to nothing to close it around.

Not enough time had passed for Steven St. James to get back to Schuylers Landing, so I didn't phone him. Anyway, what else could I say to him? St. James was scared to death of something, and calling him up and making vague ominous noises would only spook him more. I figured I'd drive down there over the weekend. The Hudson Valley in May actually looked the way Church and Cole and the other local romantic painters of the last century had imagined it, dramatic and dreamy, with De Millean sunsets and enormous blue vistas that made people look tiny but lucky to be alive for a wistful little spell in the Empire State.

I almost returned Phyllis Haig's drunken call of the night before, but couldn't quite make myself dial the number.

She would put her foot down and give me a piece of her mind and tell me a thing or two about manners whenever she got hold of me, but that would have to wait.

Tidlow and Monroe shared the top floor of a tidy, well-kept two-family house on South Allen Street. The stairs up to it were carpeted in Astroturf and the inside of the apartment was stuffed with antimacassared Victorian-style reproductions and shelf upon shelf of carefully arranged and recently dusted glass bric-a-brac. It wouldn't have surprised me if Amanda Wingfield had sashayed into view.

Instead, I found two hospitable men in their mid-thirties who had laid a lovely table and served me Campbell's tomato soup, always a way to this man's heart, and a plate of Ritz crackers with butter. This was washed down with Price Chopper cola. It's easy to tut-tut at the cuisine of the lower middle classes, but I had a feeling Tidlow and Monroe could have eaten better if they hadn't each spent $8,200 the previous year on Vernon Crockwell's de-sodomization program. Or maybe they served this food because they liked it. I know I did.

"We saw about Larry getting shot on the TV this morning," Tidlow said, "and we just couldn't believe it. We never knew anybody who got shot, even though it's extremely common nowadays. American society has become so violent."

"What a tragic year it's been for Larry. First Paul commits suicide, and now this horrible incident. Our hearts go out to Larry."

"You don't think Larry shot himself, do you?" Tidlow said.

I said, "He was shot twice, once in the neck and once in the chest."

"Oh, that's right. I guess it would be hard to shoot yourself more than one time. I shouldn't have stumbled on that one. Me, who never misses Murder, She Wrote."

"Did Paul shoot himself?" Monroe asked.

"No," Tidlow said, "that was pills and liquor, like Marilyn."

I nearly asked if Marilyn was another acquaintance of theirs who had died, but caught myself. Tidlow was a balding, pleasant-faced, pale-skinned man who worked as a bookkeeper for the company that owned the Millpond Mall. He said he'd seen Bierly at the mall occasionally-as he had Paul Haig when he was alive-but hadn't spoken with him in recent weeks and had left the mall at eight P.M. on the previous night, three hours before Bierly had been shot.

Monroe was a balding, pleasant-faced black man who was a bookkeeper for the state tax department. He wore a tartan-plaid necktie and matching socks. He told me he was originally from Rome, New York, where he was named after his mother's favorite pop singer, Vaughn Monroe.

Tidlow was due at the mall at two and Monroe was on his lunch break, so I tried to move the conversation along.