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

But I have the impression you make exceptions to your rule."

"On rare occasions, yes. If I believe a man to be both well-endowed and healthy, I have been known to follow my glands down whatever happy trail they may lead me."

"If you believe him to be healthy. That sounds unscientific, Grey."

He shrugged. "It might not pass muster at Oak Ridge, but of course this is Albany."

I said, "Does your boyfriend Stu also participate in high-risk unsafe-sex orgies at the Northway tearoom between Albany and Saratoga? Does your wife?"

Now he looked grim. "Have you seen me there? I've never seen you. And I'd remember you, Strachey."

"I've only stopped there once."

"And you saw me and I didn't see you? I hope I wasn't back in the woods bent over with my drawers down around my ankles."

"I didn't see you there," I said. "Paul Haig did."

He blinked, maybe because his heart jumped. "He did?"

"Yes."

"How do you know? What makes you think that?"

As the bartender passed us, Oliveira threw him a quick glance. Oliveira was aware now of all the people around us and that we were holding what he knew would be an exchange that could change his life, and it was happening in one of the most public of public places, a white-collar bar during happy hour. I wasn't crazy about the milieu either—it lacked dignity.

I said, "There are photos of you, Grey. Did you think that you got the only copies, that there weren't others?"

He blinked again, three times, and then studied my face. He said, "I'm not even recognizable in those pictures. They're dim and out of focus. Those pictures are shit."

"Then why am I here?"

He swigged from his beer. "Fucked if I know."

"Let me lay it out," I said. "Please correct me if I'm wrong in any of the details." He watched my lips form words. "Paul Haig desperately needed money," I said, "to save his business. After he

caught you in some wild scene in the Northway tearoom, he checked up on you to see how much you were worth. When he discovered that you had access to your wife's big bucks, Paul came back to the tearoom during the evening orgy hour, caught you again, and—presumably with a hidden camera—repeatedly took your picture committing lewd acts." I waited.

"There were five of us that night," Oliveira finally said conversationally. "Paul joined in part of the time. It was a hot scene and he was as big of an animal as anybody else there. The rest of the time, when he wasn't participating, he was acting as a lookout, he said. I remembered later he had a Beautiful Thingies box he was carrying, and the camera must have been mounted in that box somehow."

"That sounds plausible, Grey. Then Paul must have contacted you soon after the event—at work would be my guess—and he informed you that if you didn't cough up sixty thousand dollars, he would see to it that your wife received copies of the photos."

Wincing, Oliveira said, "He actually mailed copies of the pictures to me at my office at HCR. If my secretary hadn't been out sick on the day the envelope arrived—she probably had the rag on—she'd've opened the envelope herself probably. Luckily, I got to it first. After that, Paul called me and said it was another set of photos and the negatives that I was supposedly buying from him."

"Right. That's how a thoughtful blackmailer would handle it. So you made an appointment then to hand over the cash in return for the negatives and extra prints?"

"At Paul's apartment on Willet Street," Oliveira said casually, as if he were describing the site of a pleasant small dinner party. "Paul wanted me to deliver the money on a Wednesday night. But I said it would take me until Thursday to round up that much cash."

"Grey, I'm impressed. You were planning that far ahead— already setting Crockwell up as a suspect in case anybody saw through the 'suicide' scenario. You're quite the planner."

"That's the area of my training and expertise," he said,

nodding. "I'm not just a planner, I'm a professional planner, and a damned good one too." When I just stared at him, he added, "I know what you're thinking, Strachey. You're thinking, If only this bright young man with his darkly brooding good looks and his hypnotic gray eyes had applied his talents in the cause of good instead of evil, what a boon that would have been to him and to mankind. Isn't that what you're thinking?"

"Something like that."

"Well, 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.' John Greenleaf Whittier. It's the one thing I can remember from junior high. Don, are you ready for another Molson?"

"I'm fine."

Oliveira caught the bartender's eye and signaled for another draft.

I said, "How did you get Paul Haig drunk that night, Grey?"

"Easy," he said. "I brought a bottle and opened it. I suggested we toast the successful completion of our business transaction. Paul thought that was a wonderful idea. He was extremely nervous, and I suppose he figured a good stiff drink would calm him down. And it sure did. And his second drink, and third, et cetera, made him even more loosey-goosey."

"And then you—what? Discovered the Elavil in the bathroom?"

"On the bathroom sink when I went in to take a whiz. The container was nearly full, and I thought, 'Well, my my, such a stroke of fortune. Now I won't have to shoot him."

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."