Текст книги "A Shock to the System "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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"I know I said some things that were harsh. But it was all tough love, you know? Am I right?"

"I know what you're saying."

"I even got Paul another doctor. To help Paul—goddamn get on with it. Whatever."

I said, "What doctor was this?"

"Glen Snyder in Ballston Spa. Deedee went to him for a while after her marriage broke up. He's not—I mean, he's just a regular head shrinker. Pills and whatnot. I was even going to foot the bill, but Paul only went five times before he died, so it only ended up costing me seven-fifty. So I was trying to do it Paul's way, wasn't I? Even if I opened my big yap once too often, maybe, right after Paul left Dr. Crockwell, later on I made it up to him by doing it his way. Am I right?"

"It sounds as if you were doing your best, Phyllis. Was it Dr. Snyder who prescribed the Elavil?"

"Yeah. And ain't that a kick in the head? It looks like indirectly I'm the one who supplied that treacherous homicidal maniac Larry Bierly with the murder weapon."

Back to that again. I said, "Larry Bierly tells a different story about Paul's finances from the one you told me. You said you thought Larry killed Paul for his lucrative business. Larry claims Beautiful Thingies is deeply in debt and, for the foreseeable future, more of a burden than a help. He said Paul was swindled by an assistant manager during a period when Paul was drinking too

much to notice and he nearly lost the business late last year."

"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?

15

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."

"Jesus, Strachey, you wouldn't last in business more than a week."

That hurt, though at least T. Callahan was not present for this affirmation of his own harsh view on the subject. I said, "So did

Crockwell shoot you? The cops said you were not able to identify who shot you."

Looking grave, he said, "I don't know exactly. I mean, it must have been Crockwell. Who else could it be? It all happened so fast—it's just blurry. The guy was wearing a ski mask, I think. He just rose up from the other side of the car, and the next thing I remember is, I was in the hospital. Did the cops question Crockwell? Are they going to arrest him? I didn't get a good look, but, God, it must have been him."

"They're talking to him. It's possible he'll be charged. There is some circumstantial evidence—a gun like the one used to shoot you has been found in Crockwell's office dumpster."

Bierly's eyes got big, and he said, "Christ!"

"Even if Crockwell's fingerprints aren't on the gun, Finnerty and his gang will probably pop Crockwell in their microwave and see if his ions start rearranging themselves. They're efficient down there on Arch Street."

Now Bierly looked truly frightened. "Is Crockwell being watched? I know the hospital has a guard outside my door, but Crockwell is ruthless. And if it was him, he could probably talk his way in here and come after me again."

"The cops may or may not have him under surveillance, but I was questioned and frisked before the guard let me in here, and I'd say not to worry. So, what is it that I don't want to know?"

"What?"

"Yesterday, Steven St. James got all spooked when I asked him questions about his connection to you and Paul and Vernon Crockwell. And before he went off in a tizzy, he said to me– when I asked him how you all were mixed up together—'You don't want to know.' Those were his words. 'You don't want to know.' My question to you, Larry, is, Why don't I?"

He stared at me hard, and he blushed. He had a forty-eight-hour growth of heavy black beard, and his color from the trauma and drugs and shock and exhaustion was a kind of baby-shit yellow, and yet through all that it was plain that Bierly was blushing—as he had three days earlier in the pizza parlor when I'd

brought up Phyllis Haig's accusation that he had threatened Crockwell with violence and Crockwell had it on tape.

Bierly said, "Look, it really doesn't have anything to do with anything, but Steven is somebody I was mixed up with for a while during the winter, after Paul and I split up. The relationship never went anywhere serious."

"What's Crockwell got to do with it?"

He stared at me. "Nothing."

"Not according to Steven."

"Oh, really? What did he say?"

"That I don't want to know what you and Paul and Steven were involved in together. But I do want to know. In fact, Larry, if I'm going to consider working for you at all, I'll have to insist on knowing. I'm sure you can understand why I need to avoid groping around in the dark."

Bierly shut his eyes tight and said nothing. The silence lengthened and I let it. He was thinking hard about something, and his numbers were dancing around wackily again. When after a minute or two he opened his eyes, he looked at me exhaustedly and he said, "I've changed my mind."

"Uh-huh."

"I mean about hiring you."

"Oh?"

"It's really better if you leave this whole situation alone, Strachey. The cops will find out who shot me—and as for Paul, he's dead, so what difference does anything make? It sounds like the cops are going to drag Crockwell through the slime, he'll be ruined. And that's all I care about. So I think you'd just better skip it. Okay?" His medical condition—or something—seemed to overtake him and his eyes fluttered shut.

I said, "What made you change your mind so suddenly?"

Bierly didn't open his eyes, but his face tightened and he said, "I'm too tired for this."

"You'll regain your strength."

"That's my decision. You better go, Strachey. Please. Just go. Please."

"If you say so."

"Thanks for your help."

I said, "I may sign on with Phyllis, or even Crockwell if I think he's innocent and he's being railroaded. So I may see you soon again, Larry."

"No, please don't. I want you to let me alone."

"For now, sure."

"No, this isn't working. Please don't come back. You have to go now. Right now. Go." His eyes opened and they were full of pain.

"Okay. That's plain enough. So long, Larry."

He turned away.

I went out, nodded to the security guard, made my way down to the main floor and outside onto New Scotland Avenue, where the lilacs, some of which weren't lilac at all but creamy white, swayed heavily in the breeze. Why were creamy white lilacs still called lilacs? Why weren't they called creamy whites? Of course, not all roses were rose. Or grapes grape. Or petunias petunia.

I'd done it again. What had I said?

Back on Crow Street, I phoned my machine, on which two messages had been left. Vernon Crockwell's said, "I will not be needing your services after all. I have retained other professional help. Please do not contact me." Phyllis Haig's said, "I never want to speak to you again. You're fired!"

Timmy came downstairs and said, "What's up? Any news? Have you decided who you're going to work for?"

I said, "I'm thinking of a career change. Can you think of any other work I might be suited for?"

He said no.

16

Don't be despondent," Timmy said. "It's ten days till the first of the month. You'll get work And if you don't—so, you'll dip into capital."

"That's not funny." He knew that my "capital" consisted mainly of the six-year-old Mitsubishi I was driving south from Albany down the thruway, Timmy next to me in the tattered front passenger seat. "Anyway, I've got several accounts due. Chances are, somebody will pay me before June first."

"You mean like Alston Appleton?"

"I guess I'd better not count on that one." Appleton was a local venture capitalist whose operations were murky. I'd spent a month successfully tracking down his ex-wife and her coke-addict mother after they'd made off with a safe-deposit box full of Appleton's cash, only to present my bill for $7,100 to Appleton on the morning of the March day the SEC caught up with him and froze his assets. I was informed a month later by an ostentatiously unsympathetic federal official that with luck I might collect three or four cents on the dollar some time in the first quarter of the next century.

"Tell me again," Timmy said, "why Phyllis Haig got mad at you."

"I don't think I know. I thought I was allaying what I perceived to be her guilt over the way she had treated Paul, and over his possible suicide, by connecting his death to his financial problems, which she in no way had caused. Not that she was actually guiltless in Paul's troubles—far from it. But in that one respect,

finances, she wasn't guilty, as far as I know. So I was trying to take some of the onus off her."

"Maybe," Timmy said, "Paul went to his mother for money when he was desperate and she turned him down."

"Mmm."

"So when you told her that financial pressure might have triggered Paul's suicide, or his getting himself murdered, it reminded her of her secret fear: that if she had bailed him out when his assistant manager absconded, he might be alive today. You made her rationalization crumble too—that Larry Bierly had actually killed Paul somehow. In your Chekhovian manner, you destroyed Mrs. Haig's illusions, and she sank into the doldrums and banished you from her estate."

"The literary reference sounds inapt—try Inge, or maybe Bram Stoker. But otherwise what you say sounds plausible."

"That's what it sounds like to me," Timmy said.

We sped past the exit for Saugerties, where plans were under way for a big Woodstock reunion concert. That peculiar era was long gone, and I doubted more than a handful of people would show up.

I said, "I believe now that Paul Haig was murdered, but maybe Phyllis no longer really believes it—thanks to me—and that's why she can't stand the thought of me. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're understandably confused. Everybody in this thing seems to be carrying some guilty secret around that's connected to Paul Haig's death—or at least they think it's connected—and their guilt is making them hold back information you need to grasp the big picture. This is true of Phyllis Haig, and probably Larry Bierly too, and even Crockwell."

"Timothy, if I'm too confused to grasp the big picture, how come you aren't?"

"Probably because I was educated by Jesuits," he said with a chuckle.

His ties to the Mother Church had fallen to all but nil in recent decades, but he still loved to flutter his Georgetown diploma in my face as evidence of both moral and intellectual superiority. He

affected a kidding, sometimes even self-deprecatory, tone, but there was much more to it.

"Too bad you didn't marry a Jesuit priest," I said. "Think of the magnificent offspring from such a union as that."

"Oh, don't think I didn't try. Back in Poughkeepsie, it's the one thing the folks could have accepted and understood."

"So tell me this, then, Mr. Sees-All-Knows-All: Why did Vernon Crockwell fire me today?"

He pondered this. "I'm stuck on that one. Though a better question is, Why did Crockwell want to hire you in the first place?"

"Leave it to a Jesuit to unhelpfully answer a question with a question."

"No, really. It is a more useful question."

"You're right, I know. Crockwell kept telling me he'd chosen me on account of my famous super-competence. But he dropped that line after a while. My guess is, the reason he wanted to hire me and the reason he wants to fire me are similar or the same. Whatever they are or it is."

"He's an enigma. An enigma and a—reprehensible character."

"Bierly is easier, of course. He wants me to have Crockwell dragged through the mud for a crime he may have but probably did not commit. Bierly wants this awfully badly, but not so badly that he'll risk my exposing something that went on involving Bierly, Haig, Crockwell and Steven St. James. I'm still at a loss as to what that might be. But if I'm cleverer and luckier talking to Steven St. James than I was the last time I ran into him, maybe we'll soon find out. Anyway, St. James, not having hired me, can't fire me. At least there's that. I'll only have been fired by three people in one day, not four."

"And it's a good thing too," Timmy said. "Four might have put a dent in your self-esteem."

"You never know."

Schuylers Landing was one of those old Hudson River villages whose existence grew precarious in the last century when

bridges replaced ferries but which had somehow survived into the age of antique shops, upscale country-charm emporia, and bed-and-breakfasts for purposes of leisure instead of necessity.

According to the waitress in the breezy riverfront cafe where Timmy and I had a couple of nice Gruyere-and-guacamole panini for lunch, Steven St. James's address was inland, away from the river, and south of the center town on a road off Route 9G.

We found the place with no trouble. St. James lived—Mellors-like—in a converted outbuilding a hundred yards from the house that 175 years earlier would have been the centerpiece of a prosperous landowner's estate. The main house was a brick federal-style manse surrounded by clumps of lavender irises and a couple of immense oak trees that were as graceful as ferns.

St. James's much smaller white clapboard place looked as if it had once been a kind of barn or storage building. It had a board fence around it with wire cattle fencing tacked to the boards, probably to pen in the two dogs that, as Timmy and I stood at the gate, peered at us with interest. One was a big black lab, the other a collie. The gravel parking area outside the fence was empty except for my Mitsubishi. We saw no sign of St. James's VW Rabbit.

"Hello!" I yelled. "Anybody home?"

"These dogs look friendly enough," Timmy said. "Why don't we just walk up and knock at the door?"

"They're friendly, yes. But look—they're slobbering."

"That was a close call, Commando Don."

"Oh, okay, come on."

I unlatched the gate, and Timmy followed me in. I shut the gate and we walked up to St. James's house, the dogs snuffling obsequiously and salivating on our hands.

"We have to remember to get a couple of these," Timmy said.

"Uh-huh."

I knocked at the door.

After a moment Timmy said, "It's eerily quiet."

"Well, it's quiet."

I knocked again. When I got no response I walked across the

shaggy lawn and peered through a window. I saw a living room-dining room with a couch, some chairs and tables, a desk with a PC on it, and shelves with a lot of books. I strained to make out the titles, but it was dim in the house and I had no success. The newspaper on the couch appeared to be the Catskill Daily Mail, the nearest daily paper. Timmy tried to distract the dogs while I walked around behind the house, but they wanted to come along with me, so we all went, the dogs wetly licking any exposed human skin they could get at.

"These doggies are soon going to need a drink of water," Timmy said.

I peered into a back window and saw a kitchen that was unremarkable. A door leading into it was next to the window, and I turned the knob. Locked.

"I don't think this is legal," Timmy said. "A man's home is his castle. It's English common law, going way back."

A voice said, "Is there something I can help you with perhaps?" The voice was male and its tone unfriendly.

We turned to see a man who was not Steven St. James striding around the corner of the house. He was about seventy and distinguished-looking in a Windsor-ish, end-of-the-line kind of way, and was wearing—weirdly for a sunny afternoon in May—what once had been called, and maybe still was called in the better houses of the Hudson valley, a smoking jacket. His royal-blue display handkerchief matched his ascot.

"Hi, I'm looking for Steven St. James," I said. "I'm Don Strachey and this is Timothy Callahan, and we're old friends of Steven's. Any idea where he is?"

The debonair man had four fingers of his right hand thrust into the pocket of his jacket, like a J. Press model striking a pose in 1932, and he did not remove his hand to shake the one I extended.

"I don't believe Steven was expecting you," the man said coldly. "He never mentioned to me that he was expecting visitors." The dogs paced around restlessly but did not approach the man in the jacket.

"We just decided to pop in at the last minute," Timmy said. "But I guess Steve's not here."

"No, of course Steven is not here. The farm is open now."

The farm. When he didn't elaborate, I said, "You must be Steven's neighbor."

"Yes, I am. Steven is my tenant and my neighbor. And my friend."

"Oh, so you must be—"

"Going now. And so, may I suggest, should you."

"Okay. Love your cologne," I said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's the same cologne Steven uses. I got a good whiff of it the other day when I spent some time with Steven in Albany."

His perfect posture weakened a little. "Steven was in Albany?"

"On Friday. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Central Avenue?"

Timmy glowered at me and began to move around the man in the jacket. The snuffling dogs followed Timmy.

"Tell me your names again," the man said, with much less self-assurance than before, "and I'll let Steven know that you called."

I brought out one of my cards and handed it to him. "Ask him to get in touch with me some time this weekend. Otherwise I can look him up at the farm. Thank you."

"You're welcome." He blushed—blushed—and said, "I knew Steven had other friends in Albany. That I understood. I can't object to that. It's just that—I never met any of them before."

Timmy said, "Well, we aren't close friends of Steven or anything. Not that close."

"Oh. I see." But he looked unconvinced.

As we drove away, Timmy said, "You were awfully nasty with that guy."

"He was awfully nasty with us."

"Of course. We were trespassing on his property. Also, he felt threatened. He's probably buying himself—directly or

indirectly—a little comfort not otherwise available to someone so geographically and otherwise isolated."

I said, "There were two cars in his driveway, a Continental and a Caddy. I'll bet he's married."

"So?"

"So he's sucking a dick that's been God knows where and bringing who knows what in the way of viruses and bugs and bacteria into that house."

"That is wild, wild speculation, Don. You don't know if that man so much as enjoyed a glass of port with St. James. And you certainly have no idea what St. James does or did in Albany with Bierly or Haig or Crockwell or anybody else."

"No, but on the latter point I do know that when I pressed St. James on the subject, he told me in a panic, 'You don't want to know,' and then he fled."

"You're right. There's that."

"St. James will get the word from Lord Chatterley that I know where he lives and he'll think I know where he works. For those reasons, I think Steven will be ready to enlighten me as to what he says I don't want to know, even though I do, I do."

"I see what you mean when you put it that way. You're kind of pissed off, aren't you?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

"Yes, I understand that. But it's not pretty."

"Something even less pretty got Paul Haig murdered and Larry Bierly shot."

"I guess I should try to keep all that in perspective."

"Do. You can do something else too."

"What?" His tone was apprehensive.

"Write down the plate numbers of the Caddy and the Lincoln. I memorized them." I recited them and Timmy wrote the numbers and letters on the back of an oil-change receipt, which I stuffed in my jacket pocket. On the way back to Albany, neither of us had much to say.

17

Roland Stover's apartment was in the basement of a frame house with flaking gray paint on one of the marginal blocks of Morton Avenue across from Lincoln Park. The entrance was from a narrow alleyway between his and the nearly identical house next door, and although the May afternoon was bright, by five-thirty darkness had all but set in down in Stover's depths.

"Oh, we can definitely tell you all there is to know about those two," Stover said with a sneer. "Paul Haig and Larry Bierly were a couple of unrepentant buttfuckers, and they both got what they had coming."

"You wouldn't believe what a disruptive influence those two were in Dr. Crockwell's program," Dean Moody put in. "Larry especially. All that time he was there pretending to want to be sexually repaired like the rest of us, and he was a secret deviant! That big buttfucker was just toooo much."

Stover was hulking and wild-eyed, with an erratic crewcut, bad skin, and a Wal-Mart name tag on his white dress shirt. Moody was slight and fluttery and full of manic intensity that must have struck terror in the hearts of the parents he had sued for turning him into a homosexual. After all Mr. and Mrs. Moody had been through, it must have been small compensation that they had gotten to go on Montel.

"Repentance is the way of the Lord," Stover said, jabbing his finger my way. "But never once did those two buttfuckers ask forgiveness for their transgressions. Even in the beginning, I had my suspicions about those two. They said they were unhappy,

and they said they were confused, and they were this, and they were that. But never once did those two admit that they were abominations in the eyes of the Lord, abominations to be cast out!"

I said, "Dr. Crockwell's treatment approach wasn't religious in nature, was it? I was under the impression it was more scientific. Secular, anyway."

"Well, yes, that is true," Moody said. "You see, Roland here is an extremely spiritual person, so he tends to see things that way. I'm trying hard to become more spiritual myself. He's helping me. I'd always wanted to get in closer touch with my Lord and Savior, but there were certain things in my life that stood in the way."

I said, "You mean like buttfucking."

They both nodded eagerly. They were seated together on a tattered old plaid couch, Stover's large arm stretched out along the back of the couch behind Moody's little permed hairdo but not, so far as I could see, touching it.

Stover said, "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.' Leviticus."

"I suppose it's a big theological question," I said, "as to who shall actually put the buttfuckers to death. I take it that in your view, Roland, it's a dirty theological job, but somebody has to do it. Or have I misunderstood your position?"

"That is an important question," Stover said, poking a thick finger my way again. "And if the liberals didn't control the media and the Supreme Court and the special interests, we'd have capital punishment in this country for sexual deviants. I've read that down in Washington there are buttfuckers under every rock who have Bill Clinton in their pocket and under their thumb. In fact, you might as well just paint the White House lavender."