Richard Stevenson - Shock to the system

"That is a lie!"

"It will be easy for me to check."

"Then do it, do it."

"And I'm sorry to have to remind you, Phyllis, that serious financial problems sometimes trigger suicide in people who are shaky otherwise. Isn't it possible that-"

She had begun to sob.

"Phyllis?"

Then a crash and a dial tone.

Now what had I said? I thought I'd described a possible suicide motive-financial desperation-that took Mrs. Haig more or less off the hook even if the murder theory somehow didn't pan out. But instead, something I said had pushed her over the edge. It was something I kept doing to people as I stumbled around in the darkness, and that darkness was one that the people I was hurting were choosing not to illuminate. Why? end user

You were right about one thing," I told Bierly. "It does look as if Paul did not commit suicide." I told him about the pill canister lid that could not have been put back on and tightened by someone who was already drunk.

"Oh, so I was right about one thing? Then what are the things I was wrong about?"

He had a big gauze packing taped to the side of his neck and a bulky wad of something under his hospital nightie that was covering up the chest wound. Luckily, he'd just told me, the neck injury was superficial, missing the carotid by a quarter of an inch, and the chest wound wasn't as serious as it could have been: a bullet had ricocheted off the car door, a la Ronald Reagan, and entered Bierly's left chest, shattering two ribs but missing vital organs. His recovery, his doctors had told him, would be slow but total.

"One thing you were wrong about," I said, "was your account of your and Paul's exit from Crockwell's therapy group. You told me Crockwell blew up and threatened you and threatened Paul-which he did. But what you didn't tell me was, Crockwell's threat was in response to Paul's vow to use any means to stop Crockwell from coming between Paul and his mother."

He gazed at me, red-eyed and sallow, but said nothing. He was propped up, his arms limp at his sides, an IV drip tube stuck in his thick right forearm. Even in repose Bierly's body looked powerful, and I was reminded anew of the destructive force of a metal projectile shot from a cheap mechanism that any deranged twerp could pick up on a street corner.

Finally, he said, "How do you know what was said that day? Were you there? I don't remember seeing you there, Strachey."

"I've heard a tape of the session," I said.

Bierly squinted at me perplexedly. Then he suddenly croaked out, "That slimeball!"

"What slimeball?"

"Crockwell. Who else would have taped the session?"

"You're missing a point, Larry, that happens to be your own. The point is, whatever you said, or Paul said, at that session, it's Crockwell who comes off worst. He said if Paul interfered with him, he'd stop Paul dead in his tracks.

Do you remember that?"

"I guess so," he said weakly, not looking me in the eye. What was with Bierly? He wanted more than anything, he kept telling me, to nail the wicked Crockwell, while at the same time there was a part of him that didn't want to have to confront Crockwell or even discuss him in any detail. Bierly loathed Crockwell, but for reasons I had yet to decipher he was afraid of him too, or at least reluctant to provoke him.

I said, "It wasn't Crockwell who made a tape. It must have been a member of the group. Somebody sent the tape to the cops anonymously with a note suggesting Crockwell murdered Paul. The implication was, Paul had somehow gone after Crockwell for trying to poison Paul's relationship with his mother and Crockwell killed him. That sounds farfetched to me-Crockwell has no history of violence-just as it sounded unlikely when you told me you thought Crockwell killed Paul just because Crockwell was a hater obsessed with homosexuality. I've met the guy, and he is that. But he seems to get his rocks off taking gay men's money and torturing them with his treatments. He doesn't need to be homicidal. Of course, the cops like the looks of him because he's got a sort of motive for shooting you and maybe killing Paul, and he's got no alibi for either. I know, Larry, that you didn't shoot yourself twice, but I'm wondering if it was you who made the tape and sent it to the cops to set Crockwell up as a suspect in Paul's death. Was it?"

He'd been watching me and listening with effort-he was undoubtedly on heavy-duty painkillers-and after a moment he said simply, "No. I didn't even know a tape existed."

"Who might have recorded it?"

He shook his head. "Who knows. Everybody in that group was weird or fucked up in some way. And I always had a feeling they all had their secrets. I know some of them did. I'd see Gary Moe and Nelson Bowkar together at the mall sometimes, and once I saw LeVon Monroe and Walter Tidlow eating together late at night at the Denny's on Wolf Road. It came out later that Gary and Nelson were lovers, and it wouldn't surprise me if LeVon and Walter were getting it on too. Paul told me he even saw one of the group cruising a tearoom one time. Maybe somebody taped all the sessions and went home and played them back and jerked off. It's not your well-adjusted healthy homosexual who's drawn into a lunatic asylum like Crockwell's."

"Who did Paul catch in a tearoom?"

"He never said. This happened sometime last winter, I think. But it's hazy because Paul never brought it up again.

He went in to take a piss somewhere, he said, and there was some wild scene going on. This guy was in the thick of it. He was telling me this on the phone-saying guess who he saw violating both the canons of good taste and his therapy contract with Crockwell- when his call waiting went off and it was Phyllis, so that was that. Phyllis always took precedence with Paul. The next time I saw him, I asked him about the tearoom scene, but he didn't seem to want to talk about it. I got the idea that maybe his presence in this place wasn't entirely innocent either."

"You claim to value being honest and straightforward, Larry. And yet there is another area where you have not been entirely honest and straightforward with me."

"Oh, is that so?" He looked wary.

"You forgot or chose not to explain to me the connection between you and Paul and Crockwell and Steven St. James. You can correct that oversight starting as soon as I count to one. One."

Bierly was hooked up to some kind of electric monitor, and as he lay there looking over at me, a couple of his numbers started going up.

For a second time, I said, "One."

Then he shook his head and said, "That has nothing to do with anything."

"I don't believe it."

"So don't."

"Who is St. James?"

"An acquaintance."

"More than that, I think. He was here first thing yesterday morning. He drove up from Schuylers Landing as soon as he heard on the news that you had been shot. Who is he, Larry?"

Bierly shifted irritably and gave me a get-off-my-back look. "Damn it, he's just a friend. Why are you making such a big fucking deal out of Steven? You're going on and on about unimportant crap like that and you're not doing your job at all, which is to nail that psychotic madman Crockwell. You said you believe me now that Paul didn't kill himself. So does this mean that you are working for me and not that ridiculous old bag Phyllis Haig?"

I said, "I'm pretty much convinced that Paul was murdered, and privately the cops are convinced too-though getting the DA to act may take some doing, inasmuch as the coroner has ruled that Paul died by his own hand, and when an old boy of official Albany is apprised of the incompetence of another old boy of official Albany, he tends not to shout it from the tallest tree. But be assured I'm working on all that. As for working for you- maybe. I do want to avoid taking your money if there's a good chance I can take the money from somebody else who has more than you do and deserves it less."