Richard Stevenson - Shock to the system

"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

So which check do I cash?"

"Neer."

"What if Paul Haig was murdered?"

"Nnn."

"What if Crockwell did it?"

"Nnn."

"Axe you falling asleep?"

"Mmm."

Spring stars twinkled over the Hudson Valley. We lay under a cotton blanket, cool, reasonably clean air moving west to east across us. Ted Koppel was our nightlight.

I said, "I'm more inclined to take Phyllis Haig's money because she can afford it. And as much as I like Bierly and sympathize with him-his instincts seem pretty consistently decent-his selective evasions are glaring and unsettling. There were moments tonight when if Bierly had been wired to a polygraph, he'd have registered at about an 8.6 on a Richter scale of liars. Of course, polygraphs are notoriously unreliable. The anxiety they detect can result from the emotional significance of the question asked as well as from the emotional significance of the answer given, or just from the stress of being questioned at all. Anyway, I do think Bierly lied about some topics-this from the man disgusted by alleged chronic Haig-family dissimulation-and I don't know why. Why might he?"