A Shock to the System - Stevenson Richard - Страница 32

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But he had already buzzed for the nurse, and when she arrived Bierly was looking at me peculiarly and slowly shaking his head.

"Just leave me alone, will you, please?" he said, not at all Garbo-like—Victor Mature-like was closer to it. The nurse said I would have to go, so I did.

Back on Crow Street, I sat down by the phone. Crockwell's home number was unlisted, and his machine answered at his office. I got no answer at the St. James number; he was probably still at the game farm. I started to dial Phyllis Haig, but checked my watch—1:40—and figured I might make out better at that time of day if I met her face-to-face. Timmy had gone off with some friends to a lecture at SUNY on the evils of the Guatemalan military. I drove up to Latham for my own encounter with a kind of human-being-as-banana-republic.

"I don't want to talk to you, I said you are fired—F-I-R-E-R-E-D. Can't you understand English? Do I have to call a cop?" She was standing barricade-like in her front doorway, a low glass in her hand.

I said, "Look, Paul did not commit suicide. You were right

when you called me the first time. I keep trying to tell you, Phyllis, that there is evidence pointing to the likelihood that Paul was murdered. I need to talk to you about it, and I need your help in identifying Paul's killer."

She looked more worn out than relieved by this assertion, as if the thing she was least able to cope with now was additional thought.

"Oh, Christ on a crutch," she finally said resignedly. "Come on in and let me fix you a drink."

I followed her through the foyer of a rambling split-level house full of horsey prints and Duncan Phyfe reproductions of unvarying constricted good taste, the sort of decor Joseph Stalin might have chosen for the Kremlin had he been from Connecticut. The one touch of modern-day-Haig authenticity in the place, and of life, was Phyllis Haig herself. She'd gotten her makeup to fit almost exactly over its intended place on her face, and she had on a pair of silky pale blue slacks that were casually hippy and an orange blouse with plenty of demurely rouged decolletage.

She said, "We better head for the den if we know what's good for us."

What was good for Phyllis was a cigarette and a refill, and I had a reactionary but well-chilled Coors.

"I don't know why you're still pestering me," she said, draping herself across a chintz couch. I chose the well-worn manly leather chair facing her that must have been her late husband's seat. "You keep missing the point, Donald, that I've had it up to here with you and with this whole goddamn stinking load of crap. I should never have called you in the first place. I should have gone to Arizona with Helen Small when she tried to get me to hop on a plane and blow this Popsicle stick. But no, I didn't listen to Helen. Just to get even with that stupid little pansy Larry Bierly, I had to start picking at scabs and opening up running sores and dredging up a lot of ugliness and heartbreak. Well, I learned my lesson on this one, Don, that's for goddamned certain. Never again, never again. Not ever, ever, ever."

What was she trying to say? "I'm a little hazy on that, Phyllis. Never again what?"

"Some people can get away with murder and there's nothing you can do about it. My husband told me a hundred times if he told me once, when you run into one of those people who can get away with anything they damn well please, don't screw around with them. It's just not worth it."

"Who do you think is getting away with murder?" I said, and as I said it, it suddenly sounded as wacky to me as it must have sounded to Phyllis Haig.

"Why, Larry Bierly! What the hell do you think I've been telling you for the last five days, for chrissakes?" She stared at me as if I were armed and dangerous.

I said, "I got the wrong impression from something you said over the phone, Phyllis. I'm sorry about the confusion. I misunderstood and got the idea from the way you reacted to some things I said about Paul's financial situation at Beautiful Thingies that you felt you were somehow responsible for his death."

She sagged. "Oh, that's what you thought?"

"I'm sorry."

She blew smoke over her left shoulder and then peered at me through narrowed eyes. After a moment she said, "Well, it's the goddamned truth."

"What's the truth?"

She took in another lungful for strength. "It's true that I'm partly responsible for my son's death, goddamnit to hell."

When she just sat watching me with a look of defiance tinged with despair, I said, "In what way are you partly responsible?"

She shuddered and then shook her head. "Why am I telling you this?"

"Because you have to tell someone, Phyllis."

That got a snort. "What bullshit. I know verbal diarrhea is in style, but I've done without it for fifty-some years and I don't intend to take up the disgusting habit now. No, I'm spilling my guts to you, Don, because I think you are a pathetically naive

man and I want to educate you. What you can learn from me will come in handy in your line of work. And I won't even charge you for it."

"Thank you, Phyllis."

She ingested and inhaled. The drinking was painful to watch, but she smoked with such fierce pleasure that it took me back to when I was young and easy under the apple boughs and constantly sucking on a Chesterfield or an Old Gold and finding happiness if not health in every drag.

Abruptly, she said tightly, "Paul came to me for money. I refused to give it to him."

She watched me for a reaction, but I offered none.

She went on. "After Paul left Vernon Crockwell's program, Crockwell called me. He advised me to shut Paul out—disown him, is what Crockwell was saying, even though he never used the ugly word. He said if Paul wanted anything from me to make sure I gave it to him only if Paul first agreed to go back into Crockwell's program. He also said it would be best if Paul started fresh, without Larry Bierly, because Bierly was probably a hopeless case, a man who wanted to be a pervert. Crockwell said this approach might be a tough row to hoe for me, but it was in Paul's best interest in the long run."

Another gulp of whatever was in the glass.

"I'd already paid Crockwell over eight K," She said. "And I figured a man who can rake in that kind of money from zinging people with cattle prods, or whatever it is he does, and getting them to think normal smutty thoughts, must know what he's doing. So when Paul asked me for sixty thousand dollars in March, I said I'd give it to him only after he went back into Crockwell's program and finished it and Crockwell personally guaranteed me that Paul had come out normal. That's a lot of money for a warranty, but normalcy is worth money."

I said, "But Paul didn't accept the offer."

"No," she said grimly. "He said he might go back to Crockwell sometime—he'd have to think about that. Apparently he still had dick on his mind. He'd already started seeing Glen Snyder, who'd

put him on the Elavil, but that was only making him feel less anxious, not more normal. The main thing was, Paul said, he needed the sixty thousand right away, for business reasons."

"But not," I said, "Larry Bierly's business reasons. You told me on Wednesday that it was Larry Bierly's business that was in trouble. But you misspoke yourself, I take it."

She sprayed smoke my way, then shrugged. "Whatever. The point is, Donald—if you are the least bit interested in the point— the point is, Paul needed the money sooner than I was willing to give it to him. And when I begged off, he—he did something dumb. I saw Paul a week later and Paul said he no longer needed the sixty K and that he had come up with another source. But it wasn't a way of raising cash that Paul should ever have used."

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