A Shock to the System - Stevenson Richard - Страница 40

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He nodded and looked away morosely.

I said, "Larry, if you thought Crockwell had killed Paul and shot you, weren't you afraid that Crockwell would go after St. James too? You didn't even warn him."

"But Crockwell didn't know who Steven was."

"Surely he knew Steven's first name from the night he met him," I said. "And I knew a man named Steven St. James was involved, and you knew I knew it, and you knew I was talking to Crockwell."

Bierly sulked guiltily. "Who told you about the—incident? Did Steven tell you?"

"No, he refused. I extracted it from Crockwell."

"Oh. So now are you going to be able to nail Crockwell?" Bierly asked, brightening a little.

"He didn't do it," I said. "Crockwell didn't kill Paul, and he didn't shoot you."

"How do you know?" He looked badly disappointed.

"Because I believe I know who did do it. I want you to think about something, Larry. After Paul died, did you mention to anyone that you thought he had been murdered and that Vernon Crockwell had done it?"

He chewed this over. "A couple of people, I guess."

"Who?"

"Dody, my assistant manager."

"Uh-huh."

"Ed Chartrand, who I have running Beautiful Thingies."

"Right."

"Probably a few others."

"What about my involvement? Did you tell anybody that I was looking into Crockwell's possible involvement? Or that the police were?"

"Just Dody. I talk to her about a lot of things."

I said, "What about a member of the Crockwell therapy group you were in? Are you in touch with any of them that you might have mentioned any of this to? Or did you run into one of them?"

"Just Grey Oliveira."

"Uh-huh."

"Grey came into Whisk 'n' Apron one night recently—it was some time soon after I had dinner with you last week, I think— and I got to fuming about Crockwell. I told him a lot of people didn't think Paul had really committed suicide, and both you and the cops were investigating Crockwell. I might have exaggerated the situation a little. Do you think Grey had something to do with Paul's death?"

"Yes, I think Grey murdered Paul. And if he had killed Paul and had learned that the cops and I were investigating Paul's death and we suspected Crockwell, he could have buttressed those suspicions of Crockwell, first by sending the cops the therapy-

session tape that shows a nasty conflict between Crockwell and you and Paul, and second by shooting you on a Thursday night, when he knew Crockwell would have no alibi, and then by planting the gun in Crockwell's dumpster."

"Jesus!"

"You played into his hands with your hatred of Crockwell, which blinded you—and me."

"But, God, what would Paul have had on Grey to blackmail him with?"

"I plan to question Oliveira about just that. An excellent possibility is, he's the member of the therapy group who Paul caught in what he described to you as a wild scene in a tearoom. Paul never told you who that was, right?"

"No."

"Did he say where it was?"

"No."

"But it happened during the period Paul was traveling once a week up the Northway to his psychiatrist in Ballston Spa, if my chronology is accurate."

"That sounds right, yeah."

"That's the route Grey takes home to Saratoga every day after work. Did Oliveira have much money that you know of, Larry?"

"I have no idea," Bierly said. "I don't think he ever talked about money in the group. Grey was always just kind of polite and reasonable. He was rather sarcastic sometimes, and I got the idea once in a while he was putting us all on—especially Crockwell— and that he was just going through the motions of staying in the therapy program because for some reason he had to."

"I've spoken to Grey," I said, "and he admitted to me that that was the case. He went to and stayed with Crockwell because his wife asked him to, he told me, even though he had no hope for, or interest in, succeeding at being zapped straight. He struck me as being an extremely cynical man. In fact, I think he worked hard at portraying himself to me as a cynical and amoral man of a certain not-too-unusual type in order to keep me from suspecting him of being a hard and cynical man of another, rare type—

a man who kills people in cold blood in order to keep what he wants to have."

Bierly said, "That's absolutely horrible if it's true. Can you keep Grey from getting away with it?"

"I think so," I said. "But first I want you to get out your checkbook. Then I want you to call up Vernon Crockwell and apologize for trying to turn him on to farm animals, and tell him to get out his checkbook too. Then I want you to ring Phyllis Haig, taking care to catch her before noon, and tell her I said I want her to apologize to you for calling you a murderer and a buttfucker, and she had better get out her checkbook too."

Bierly stared at me open-mouthed for a long moment, and then he said, "If you say so."

At one-thirty my credit-check agent confirmed what I had suspected: that none of the former members of the Haig-Bierly-Crockwell psychotherapy group had any net worth to speak of, and that while Grey Oliveira's assets were proving harder to pin down, his cash flow was ample enough to suggest net worth well beyond what one might expect from a state employee who commutes to work every day.

I phoned a friend who grew up in Saratoga and still runs his family's restaurant there and asked if he knew Grey Oliveira. He said sure, Grey was a town fixture. Grey was not originally from Saratoga but had married into an old town family. Annette Dreher, Grey's wife, was a horsey-set Saratoga hostess and benefactress and an heiress of some means.

When I phoned him at his office at the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, Oliveira flirted with me in his dry, crude way and agreed to meet me for a drink at six at the Broadway bar where we'd met the week before.

Then I dropped by Al Finnerty's office to fill him in and to ask to borrow some police equipment.

24

So, it's Albany's numero-uno private dick. Land any big ones since I last saw you, Strachey?"

"Nah. How about yourself, Grey?"

"Me? I'm not the dick, that's you. Though from where you're standing you could probably spit and have it land on a few people who think I'm kind of a prick."

"I'll bet."

He gazed at me with those eyes. "Get you a beer?"

"I could force one down."

He signaled the bartender and I asked for a Molson. Oliveira shifted on his stool as I eased onto the one next to him. He seemed to sense that something was different, but he wasn't going to act as if he was in a hurry to find out what it was.

I let him pay for my beer, and then said, "Are you still sucking every dick you can stuff in your mouth up and down the Hudson Valley, Grey?"

He froze for about half a frame before going on. "That's not a very good come-on line, Strachey. I'm not particularly romantic, as you might recall. But if I had made the first move, I would have come up with something a hell of a lot sexier than that."

"I didn't mean it as a sexual icebreaker, Grey."

"Does this mean that you're going to break my heart, Strachey?"

"You told me on Friday that you've made it a rule to have sex only with two people, your wife and your married fuck buddy, Stu. You described this situation as an AIDS-safe closed circle.

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