A Shock to the System - Stevenson Richard. Страница 6

"It was," Bierly said. "I don't know about 'existential uncertainty,' but I know that with Paul, even though I still loved him, I'd lost confidence in him. And I didn't believe in us as lovers anymore."

"That feeling is always plain enough when it comes."

Now he looked sheepish. "I guess that's why when Paul died I didn't feel nearly as deep a loss as I would have a year earlier. I felt—I still feel—sad and hurt and confused. And I often miss

him. I just wish I could talk to him. Or touch him—God, we had such great sex together. That was a big part of the attraction and it's one reason I think I stayed with Paul as long as I did, even when he got to be impossible to live with. But mostly it's something else now that makes me miss him. I just want to sit down with Paul—I sometimes fantasize about doing it—and I want to ask him one question."

He looked at me steadily now, almost expectantly, as if I might ask the question myself—or somehow both ask it and answer it. I said, "What question would you like to ask him?"

He said, "Why did you die? How and why did you die?"

"Uh-huh."

"Who killed you? How did he do it?"

"You believe Paul was murdered."

"Yes."

"You seem so certain."

"I know Paul. Paul would not kill himself."

"Do you have any idea who might have done it? Who would have wanted to kill Paul?"

"I think I might know," Bierly said. "But first, let me ask you something."

"Okay."

"If you don't sign on with Phyllis Haig—and I don't think you will, because you seem too smart and too honest—will you let me hire you instead?"

"To do what?"

"To verify who killed Paul and have him charged and put out of business."

" 'Put out of business'—is that a euphemism?"

"Of course not. Just put in prison, which would get him out of the evil business he's in."

I said, "What if I investigated, and I succeeded, and it turned out Paul was murdered and the murderer was someone other than the man or woman you have in mind?"

He nodded. "I could live with that."

The pizza arrived. The waiter asked if we would like him to

serve the first slice. Bierly said no thanks. We served ourselves and went to it.

I said, "All other considerations aside, Larry, I'm not sure you can afford a private investigator." I told him my standard rate.

He grimaced. "That's a lot higher than I thought it would be."

"Phyllis Haig says you're rich. Your business was in trouble, but Paul left you his estate, and now you're flush with both his lucrative business and the rest of Paul's considerable assets. True?"

He chewed his pizza furiously. "What a load of Phyllis Haig bullshit crap," he said, bits of pizza flying from his mouth. His veins were pulsing again. "That woman. That woman."

"Which part is inaccurate?"

"All of it is inaccurate. It was Beautiful Thingies that was in trouble, not Whisk 'n' Apron. Last year when Paul was drunk for most of two months, he had an assistant manager who robbed him blind and then disappeared. Paul got behind with the bank and asked Phyllis to bail him out. I'm not sure what he told her. It's conceivable he told her it was me who needed the money. Or he could have told her the truth and she just imagined it was me. The Haigs all lied to each other all the time, so none of them could ever believe what the other ones were saying. And with Phyllis, her brain is so atrophied from alcohol she can believe anything she wants to believe that fits into her warped view of people."

I said, "I can check all that out, you understand, about the finances. It would take me less than a day."

"I wish you would. And take what you learn and shove it in Phyllis Haig's stupid face."

"And Paul's assets?"

"He left me his '88 Honda, his household furnishings, his Abba tapes, and the three hundred twenty-two dollars in his checking account. He also left me his business, which was sixty thousand dollars late in payments on his business loan. When Paul died and I became executor and eventually beneficiary of his estate, the bank was about to foreclose on Beautiful Thingies. Paul

hadn't been worried about this-—he told me a week before he died he'd come up with a way to pay off the bank debt. But the debt was still there when I took over, and I had to borrow myself up to the hilt to hold off foreclosure. So the fact is, for the foreseeable future Beautiful Thingies will be nothing but one big financial headache for me. Paul's estate is no place for me to go for liquid assets. Have I cleared that up for you?"

"You have." I chewed at the pizza, which was not Irish but hardly Italian either. It was rubbery and vaguely medicinal-tasting—Aleutian maybe.

I said, "Who do you think killed Paul, Larry?"

With no hesitation, Bierly said, "Vernon Crockwell."

"I had a feeling that's who you were going to say."

"Do you know him?"

"Only by reputation."

Bierly blushed. "I'm so embarrassed to admit that I actually went to him. But I was so fucked up and lonely in my personal life, and I thought—the thing is, I wasn't thinking at all. I didn't know much about homosexuality. I didn't even come out until I was twenty-five, and I didn't start to read intelligent books about it until I started with Crockwell and saw how crazy and unbelievable his ideas were and I went out and did some reading on my own. It was the same for Paul. Of course, he was in Crockwell's program under duress. From you-know-who. It's probably one reason she despises me to this day. Phyllis sent Paul to Crockwell to be de-queered. Instead, he met me and was queered for life."

"How long were you in the program?"

He blushed again. "I'm embarrassed to tell you. Over eight months. The program is supposed to run a year, and I came within four months of actually finishing it. Paul and I left the program last September ninth."

"It took you that long to figure out that Crockwell is a quack, or a con artist, or whatever it is he is?"

"It didn't take me that long. I was on to him within a couple of months. Paul saw through Crockwell too, though for a while he clung to the idea he might actually be straightened out—even

though we were happily fucking up a storm almost every night. Basically, he stayed as long as he did because of his mother, and I stayed until Paul worked up the courage to leave."

"And when you left the program, you and Paul left together?"

"That's right."

"Just toodle-oo out the door and that was it?"

"Well, not exactly."

"Uh-huh."

I waited. He chewed at his pizza and I chewed at mine. Bierly downed the remaining beer in his glass and then said, "Crockwell was furious when we announced one day we were well-adjusted homosexuals, thanks indirectly to him, and we were lovers and we were leaving the program. He started screaming how we were deluding ourselves, and we were going against nature, and we would always be miserable, and that's what we deserved. He screamed that we were disrupting the group, and for that we were going to be very, very sorry. He told Paul—this was in front of the entire group of ten guys—he told Paul that his mother would despise him for choosing to be a sexual deviant. Can you imagine a professional psychologist telling a patient something like that?"

"On this subject, yes, I can. Then what happened?"