A Shock to the System - Stevenson Richard (читать книги онлайн без регистрации TXT) 📗

This left her mute and looking a little queasy. I said, "I assume you mean blackmail."

She stiffened. "How did you know?"

"I was told blackmail had been used previously by a member of your family."

"Who told you that?"

"Paul told Larry Bierly, who told me, that your husband once tried to blackmail a public official and this became known."

She deflated, looking glum. "That's the way some people interpreted the situation at the time—people who had their own reasons for seeing my husband left out in the cold in a certain investment situation. Paul was young at the time, but Deedee told him about it, and Paul somehow got it into his head that this was a viable way of doing business that you can get away with. If he'd still been alive, my husband would have set Paul straight on that one, that's for goddamn sure. But Lew was gone and Paul had this idea. So when he came around for a handout in March and I said no dice, not until you're normal, he came back a week later and said not to worry, he was raising the cash another way, using 'an old Haig family tradition,' he called it. Knowing how kids' minds work, I knew exactly what that was supposed to mean."

"Did you ask him what it meant?"

"We discussed it. I told him he was asking for trouble."

"But Paul made plain to you that he was blackmailing someone to raise the sixty thousand dollars he said he needed to save his business? That was spelled out?"

"It was clear enough." She straightened up and lit another Camel Light with the butt end of the last one.

"Did he say who he was blackmailing and what information he was using to do it with?"

"No, but I knew. I knew."

"How did you know?"

"Well, who the hell else would it be except that conniving little sexual deviate that had ruined Paul's life and kept him from being the real man he could have been if that treacherous little cock-sucker hadn't waved his pretty dick under Paul's nose and gotten him all sexually confused again? That's who!"

Not this again. I said, "Phyllis, surely you aren't referring to Larry Bierly."

"Of course I am!"

"But why would Paul blackmail Bierly? First of all, he was his friend. Secondly, Bierly had no money. He was in debt himself."

She cocked an eyebrow and gave me her oh-you-poor-naive-kid look. "Donald, sometimes you do amaze me. To think I almost paid you good money to work for me for—a gazillion dollars or whatever it was you wanted to hold me up for. Now pay attention, Elmer Fudd, here's the deal. Those two weren't friends. They were two queers. It was all sex. Buttfucking and whatnot. This is not healthy, and that's why homosexuals are always having catfights and can't be trusted and will never get along. It's a sickness. People of this type are not capable of true, lasting friendships with other men."

She watched me, gauging my reaction. I said, "The empirical evidence shows that you are badly mistaken, Phyllis. But do go on."

She raised her drink, acknowledging what she seemed to interpret as my conceding a point. "And anyway," she said, "even if fag-boy Bierly had no cash, he had the equity in his business and

he could have raised the money. And he would have done it too, you can bet your bottom dollar on that."

I swigged from my glass of beer. I tried to imagine what it must have been like growing up with Phyllis Haig, and my heart went out anew for her lost son, his sanity squeezed and beaten out of him long before he knew it.

I said, "Why would Larry Bierly have sold his business and let Paul blackmail him, Phyllis?"

She said, "He had pictures."

"Paul did?"

"He told me he had photographs."

"Of what?"

She gave her head a firm shake. "Paul never told me and, believe me, I did not want to know."

"He said he had incriminating or damaging photos of Larry Bierly? He specifically mentioned Bierly's name?"

"He might not have mentioned Bierly's name. I forget. But to me it was as plain as the nose on your face."

"Did Paul say where he kept the photos?"

"Why would he tell me?"

"Did he say whether there were extra copies, or negatives?"

"We didn't go into it. I wasn't the least bit interested. I told Paul I thought the whole thing was dangerous and ridiculous and dumb, and he ought to have his head examined."

"Then why, Phyllis, if you tried to discourage Paul from blackmailing someone—someone who probably murdered Paul to get hold of the incriminating photos and to silence him—why, then, do you say you are partly responsible for his death?"

Looking desolate, she said, almost inaudibly, "Because the last time I saw Paul, he asked me for the money one last time. He didn't want to be a blackmailer like his father, he said."

"And?"

"I refused. I told him I would only give him the money if he went back to Crockwell."

"Oh."

She gazed over at me out of her ruined face. "If I had given Paul the money—he'd still be alive."

"This is possible."

"He'd still be queer, but at least he wouldn't be dead. There'd be hope for Paul."

I said, "Why didn't you tell me this before? On Wednesday, you left this crucial information, about the blackmail, out of your story of what happened, Phyllis."

She looked at me hopelessly. She said, "It was too touchy. I hate all this. I just hate it."

"I guess so."

"With the Haigs, blackmail is a touchy subject."

"It sounds that way," I said. "Phyllis, I think you owe it to your son's memory to do what you can to see that the killer is caught and convicted."

"I suppose so."

"I'm going to continue to investigate. You can either pay me or not pay me, that's up to you. But I'll need your help."

"All right. All right, all right. Shit."

"Paul may have confided in Glen Snyder while he was in therapy during the six weeks before he died," I said. "Snyder is probably still under the impression that Paul committed suicide. I want your permission to interview Snyder and lay out the evidence that Paul was murdered, and I want you to urge Snyder to tell me anything relevant that Paul confided to him during those six weeks. It's unlikely Paul would have discussed the actual blackmail with Dr. Snyder—that's a crime, after all. But he could well have talked about activities of his own that would have provided him with the information—and the photos—that he ended up using in the blackmail attempt. Will you do that?"

Suddenly exhausted, she put her drink aside and laid her cigarette in an ashtray full of butts, several smoldering. She was starting to nod off. She said, "I'll do what I can. But I don't think I can pay you. You charge an arm and a leg, you know, and I'm going to have to paint the house this summer."

"We can talk about that later, Phyllis." I meant when she was

sober, provided I could locate a window of opportunity.

Blinking and trying to remain conscious, she said, "How the hell did all this crazy shit happen?"

After a moment, I said it probably went way back. But by then she had begun to snore.

20

I managed to get Larry Bierly on the phone at Albany Med. He said, "There are no pictures."

"But Paul told his mother there are."

"But I'm telling you there are no pictures. And anyway, Strachey, you are completely off base."