A Shock to the System - Stevenson Richard - Страница 14

"Your father's heart would be broken if he knew," Crockwell went on. "Now that your mother needs a normal, whole man in the family more than ever, you plan to tell her your intention is to remain half a man. And that you're proud of it yet! You're going to rub her nose in it!"

"What are you saying?" Haig moaned. "Now that my father is dead, I'm supposed to marry my mother? What are you talking about?"

"Now, Paul, I never said—"

"Larry, you're right about him! You are so, so right about him!"

"Paul, this discussion involving your mother seems to arouse strong feelings on your part. Wouldn't you like to talk about those feelings?"

"Damn it, just you keep my mother out of this. My mother doesn't need a lot of ugly and depressing shit like this. My mother is a wonderful woman, full of life, who always does her damned-

est to look on the bright side of things. She's got joie de vivre. She's like Auntie Mame. To her, life is a banquet and she lives it to the hilt. Yes, she's set in her ways. But I'm used to that. She's not going to change, but why should she? Mother and I got along just fine before she sent me here, and we'll get along just fine after I leave. So, just—just don't bring Mother into this, Dr. Crockwell. Mother has absolutely nothing to do with this! Do you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying?" Haig had become shrill and sounded as if he was losing control.

"Your mother despises homosexuals," Crockwell said evenly. "That is the hard fact of the matter that you are leaving out."

"Crockwell, you are scum!" This was Bierly. "You are a dangerous, dangerous man—"

"Homosexuals are scum!" Crockwell shot back. "Homosexuals spit on nature and morality. Paul's mother understands that. In his heart, I believe, Paul does too. I'll have to speak with your mother, of course, Paul. I'll have to explain to her that the tough love she exhibited when she brought you to me will have to continue if you choose to leave the group. That it will have to take other forms, and I can advise her about that."

"Dr. Crockwell," Haig said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Do not bring my mother into this."

"Oh, it would be a matter of professional responsibility. I would be remiss if I failed to advise your mother, Paul."

"If you turned my mother against me," Haig said, very calmly now, "you would be very sorry you did."

"Oh, I don't see how."

"Don't do it."

"Are you threatening me, Paul?"

"I am telling you. Do not come between Mother and me."

"It's your sexual deviancy that's a barrier between you and your mother's love and approval, Paul. Not I."

"Just stay out of my family, Dr. Crockwell."

"Fortunately for you, in the long run, Paul, I can't do that."

"Well, I'll stop you. I'll just—stop you."

"You'll what?"

"I mean it, Dr. Crockwell. I'll do what I have to, to stop you from coming between Mother and myself."

Now came a long silence. Chairs shifted. Finally, in a voice strained as never before in the session, Crockwell said, "No, you won't stop me, Paul. If I have to, I'll stop you. If you get in the way of my carrying out my duty to uphold moral standards of normalcy, I'll stop you, Paul. I'll just stop you dead in your tracks."

There were gasps and ohs and ahs, and then the tape went silent. I listened to the silence for a minute, then fast-forwarded to the end of the sixty-minute cassette. The remainder was blank. I flipped the tape. The other side was blank in its entirety.

I pocketed the photocopy of the anonymous letter suggesting that Vernon Crockwell had killed Paul Haig, along with my notes on the contents of the tape. I left Al Finnerty's office and went down the stairway and out into the pale sunlight.

I'd left my car up near the house on Crow Street, and that was okay. I didn't need to examine my feelings about where I'd parked my car. Strolling over to Albany Med would give me a chance to air out my brain cells, which had been polluted by my visit of some minutes via the tape with Vernon Crockwell and his victims, or his collaborators, or some unhappy combination of the two. But victims in what? Collaborators in what? Except for the obvious—a quack operating abusively as a mental health professional—I did not yet understand what was happening here.

8

Bierly was still unconscious following his surgery, his condition serious but stable. I got just close enough to him to see that a hospital security guard was posted outside his door. When I asked the charge nurse whether Bierly had had visitors, she said a police detective had come and gone and a friend of Bierly's was out in the waiting area. A man named Steven, she said.

A family of Punjabis occupied the corner of the waiting room near the television monitor, peering with interest at Joan Lunden. Across the room from them, glowering out the window, was a sturdy, well-built man in faded jeans and a flannel shirt. His age, fortyish, suggested the flannel was not hip-kid mosh-wear but was a relic of the butch-gay seventies. He wore work shoes that looked as if they had actually been worked in, and he had a ruddy, angular Anglo or Saxon face and thick auburn hair that curled over his collar. He could have been Lady Chatterley's gamekeeper, Mellors, except for the sweetish cologne that became apparent as I approached him, and the look of hostile suspicion the man gave me as I introduced myself. Mellors, an enduring object of erotic fantasy of mine since the summer between my senior year in high school and freshman year in college, would have been delighted finally to meet me, I'd like to have thought, but this guy clearly wasn't.

"Donald Strachey? No, Larry never mentioned you." He gave my extended hand a brusque tug but didn't get up. I sat down beside him and he shifted uncomfortably.

"The nurse said your name is Steven."

"Yes, it is."

"And you're a friend of Larry's?"

"Yes, I am."

"I guess you're pretty shocked and upset, Steven."

"Of course I am."

"Are you two old friends?"

He stared at me.

I said, "I'm a private detective."

This got a look of mild alarm that was quickly replaced with something that looked calculatedly neutral. He said, "How do you know Larry?"

"On Wednesday he told me he wanted to hire me."

"Hire you? What for?"

"It has to do with the death of Paul Haig. Was Paul a friend of yours too?"

A sheen of perspiration was visible now on his upper lip. His scent was getting stronger too, less perfumy, more Mellors-like. He said, "I didn't know Paul. I mean, not all that well."

"His death was ruled a suicide, but Larry thought Paul was murdered. He never mentioned that to you?" He just stared at me, closemouthed. "It seems odd, Steven, that Larry wouldn't have mentioned it to someone who was close enough to him to visit him in the hospital first thing on the morning after he'd been shot."

This shook something loose. "Well, he did mention that he had some suspicions about Paul's death. But Larry never said anything about hiring a detective or anything like that."

"How long have you known Larry?"

"Not long."

"A year? Six months?"

"About six months."

"Where did you meet?"

He glared. "That's no concern of yours. What right do you have to ask me these questions?" Then he thought of something that made him wince. "Are the police going to question me too?"