Текст книги "A Shock to the System "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

Oliveira's beer arrived. He dug a couple of bills out of his pants pocket and laid them on the bar.

I said, "That was lucky, not having to make a loud bang on Willet Street, and a bloody mess in Paul's apartment."

"I bought the gun off a kid on the street in Brooklyn one time. So it could never have been traced back to me. But still, if Paul had, quote-unquote, 'shot himself,' the police might have wondered where he got the gun, and so forth. So the Elavil was definitely better. Paul was blotto by the time I found the pills, so

I helped myself to about fifteen. They were high-milligram, high-powered little fuckers, so I didn't have to feed him the whole bottle and risk him puking everything up all over the both of us. I mashed the pills up in the kitchen and stirred them into his next drink, and then I stayed around until he finished the bottle. While he was drifting off, I tapped out the goodbye-cruel-world suicide note on Paul's computer. By that time, I could have used a second drink myself. My own share of the fifth came to about a teaspoon-ful, and that was damn fine liquor that Paul got to drink. Paul went out with style, as only a Haig should. There's no need for Phyllis Haig ever to know about any of this. But if she did have to know, she'd find some solace in the fact that in providing the libations that eased Paul into his eternal rest, I did not stint. It was the finest Glenlivet."

I wanted to rip him to shreds, but instead I swigged from the beer bottle. I said, "So that was the gun you shot Bierly with? And then you tossed it in Crockwell's dumpster?"

"Yo, you got it."

"What if Bierly had died from the shooting? What had he done to deserve that?"

"Not a thing, really. But I ran into Larry at the mall, and he told me that you and the cops suspected Paul's death hadn't been a suicide. So it made sense to further fuel everybody's suspicion of Crockwell—I'd already sent the tape to the cops, understand– by popping Larry and trying to pin it on Crockwell. But I didn't shoot to kill, and I really am glad ol' Lar pulled through. He could use a sedative himself once in a while, but overall Larry's okay in my book, and I wish him all the best."

I said, "The tape you sent to the cops along with the anonymous note pointing to Crockwell in Paul's death—where did you get it?"

"I'm not sure. Radio Shack? Kmart? Now you're straining my powers of recall."

"My question is, Who recorded the therapy session? You?"

"Naturally. Who else would?"

"But how did you know to record that particular session? Did Larry tip you off that he and Paul were quitting the program that day?"

"And that I'd need the tape of that angry scene six months later to throw suspicion on Crockwell in Paul's death? Hey, what am I, the Psychic Friends Network? I taped that session, Don, my man, because I taped them all."

"Why did you do that?"

Now he looked at me with his big, lovely eyes much glassier than when I'd arrived, and with an odd little smile. He said, "I taped all the sessions because I figured that sooner or later Annette—that's my wife—would catch onto the fact that I'm totally, insanely, expialidociously man-crazy, and I'm getting fucked by half the men in eastern New York and western New England. Then she'd throw me out on my ass without a dime. And to maintain the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed, I thought I might blackmail other men—men in the therapy group, guys in the tearooms, you name it. I don't know whether I would actually have done it—or really thought I could ever get away with it—but I did fantasize about blackmail. The tapes were my security blanket. And then that wussie drunk Paul Haig showed up and he tried to blackmail me. Ironic, isn't it? I love it."

I sat and looked at him. Who was Oliveira? How did he get this way? He had told me at our first meeting that he had had an alcoholic, abusive father. But so do lots of people, and they are not psychopaths. I said, "Well, it's all over now, Grey. You're through. You're done. You'll be locked away for—in effect, the rest of your life. You can't get away with what you did to Paul Haig and to Larry Bierly."

"Yes, I can," he said.

"Nope. You can't."

"What's the evidence? Those blurry pictures? That's circumstantial. There's no way to connect them to Paul's death or me to Paul's death. If anybody asks me, I'll deny everything I told you. If the cops start bothering me, my wife's father will hire the best

criminal lawyer in New York State, and if all the prosecutor has to go on is some cheesy blackmailer's smear pictures and the word of some nancy private dick from Albany, I'll be sent back home with an apology. And then the Drehers will sue your queer-boy's ass for every nickel you own, which I would guess from the looks of those cheap scuffed shoes and that raggedy-ass jacket you've got on is about ten cents."

I took another swig of beer. Then I said, "Where'd you get the taping equipment to record the therapy sessions, Grey? Did you steal it from the taxpayers of the State of New York? Was it from your office?"

"Jeez, Strachey. Do you think you can get me on petty larceny? Do you think I'm a damn thief? Really, my friend. I bought all my own equipment."

"Well, that clears that up, Grey. You're right, you won't be charged with stealing taping equipment in addition to your other crimes. By the way, are you recording our conversation today? Are you wired right now?"

"No, Strachey, as a matter of fact I'm not wired."

I said, "I am."

He looked at me, then at the bottles lined up on the shelf straight ahead of him. After a minute, he looked back at me. His hands were shaking. He said, "Too bad a beautiful hunk like you had to turn out to be such a flaming asshole, Strachey."

I shrugged.

He said, "Prison life. Yuck."

"It's undeniably a step down from Saratoga."

"How's the medical care in New York state prisons?"

"Variable, I suppose. Not the best, Grey."

"Jesus. I've got these lumps in my armpits and groin. I hope it's not what I think."

"You were fucking all those people and you've never even been tested?"

He only managed to shake his head twice before I got him by

the collar and dragged him off his stool and out the door to the waiting police cruiser, where I was threatened with arrest for assault if I didn't release Oliveira immediately, which I did after hoisting him to a height of about five feet.

25

Timmy said, "You seem to have been shortchanged by Phyllis Haig."

He had his calculator and her check made out to me in front of him on the kitchen table, and he had concluded that the daily rate she had paid me came to about forty dollars.

"Although," he said, "since you're triple-billing people on this case, you'll still come out ahead."

It was Friday evening and we were celebrating the end of Timmy's work week with Indian take-out and Danish beer.

"I'm not actually that far ahead," I said. "I'm cashing Phyllis's check and billing her for the unpaid balance of many hundreds of dollars. And I'm cashing Bierly's check too—but not Crockwell's. I'm returning his check. I don't want his money."

"Sure you do."

"Nope."

"Why? It's ill-gotten, but better you than he should get to spend it. Better it should go toward our mortgage than Crockwell's."

"He'll need every dollar he's got," I said. "Crockwell is closing his practice and he's going back to school for retraining in a different field. I spoke to him this afternoon."

Timmy said, "I'm flabbergasted," and he looked it. Then, suspicion setting in, he said, "Why did he happen to confide in you regarding this major career change?"

"Cuz we're buddies."

"No you're not. What have you done?"

"This morning," I said, "Dody, Larry's assistant manager at

Whisk 'n' Apron and Beautiful Thingies, called me and said she'd found an envelope stuffed in the back of a file at Beautiful Thingies. She opened it and it contained odd photographs."

"Uh-oh."

"Larry told her to show them to me, so I drove out and took a look. Some were copies of pictures of Oliveira on the loose in the Northway rest area. They were pretty murky, but collectively they did seem to be Oliveira, so my pretending to him that I had copies of the pictures, even when I didn't, wasn't quite as cheap a stunt as it seemed at the time."

"Not that it mattered," Timmy said in an uncharacteristic burst of moral relativism. "What were the other photos of?"

"Bierly, St. James and Crockwell all insisted to me that no one had photographed the aversion-therapy assault on Crockwell. But someone had taken pictures of the gross event, because that's what I found in the envelope. And when I asked him today, Bierly remembered that Paul did have a Beautiful Thingies box with him that night, and he could have had a camera concealed in it. Apparently he did, for I am now in possession of an envelope stuffed with inexpertly photographed but still decipherable images of Vernon Crockwell in alarming sexual proximity to the back end of a small—though presumably not underaged—ewe."

Timmy's jaw dropped, but not for long. "They brought an actual live sheep in there? Don, the poor sheep!"

"When I confronted him the other day, Bierly chose not to mention that particular aspect of the incident. And it's the one thing Crockwell couldn't bring himself to tell me until today. They didn't actually try to force the sheep on him—or him on it. It was just there for atmospherics—aroma therapy and so forth."

"No."

"Yes."

"And you went to Crockwell with the pictures of all this and you—"

I nodded.

"No. No, you can't."

"I did."

"You blackmailed him into shutting down his program? Forever?"

"I negotiated a settlement in lieu of cash for my services rendered in getting him clean off the hook in Paul Haig's murder and Larry Bierly's shooting."

"But—that's appalling!"

"No it's not. You're appalled, but it's not appalling. Think of the hundreds of gay men I'm saving from Crockwell's torture chambers and his lunacy. I should get the Nobel Prize for mental health."

"But people go to Crockwell voluntarily, Don. It's education, education—education about the nature of sexuality and about homophobia—that will save people, not—not some sleazy type of blackmail."

"Both have their places," I said, "with people as dangerous and unsalvageable as Crockwell. Timothy, I fear we're never going to agree on these things."

He said, "No, Don. We're not." Then he sat quietly for a few minutes while he finished off the fish vindaloo.

Breaking his sulky silence, Timmy finally said, "So what's Crockwell's new profession? Or didn't you have the nerve to hang around and ask?"

"Oh, Vernon and I had a real nice visit," I said. "He grew up in Chicago, but he said he'd always had a hankering to head out west to the wide open spaces. His wife's from Wyoming originally, and she's talked for a long time about resettling there. So Vernon sees this move as an opportunity. He said he thought he might try his hand at ranching."

Timmy looked at me carefully. "You're making this up."

"I am not."

"Okay then. What kind of ranching?" He was starting to brighten up again.

"Llama," I said, and I could tell he didn't know whether to believe me or not.