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Richard Stevenson

Shock to the system

1

"I'm not gonna bullshit around," Phyllis Haig said, a little louder than was necessary even amid the lunch-hour din at Le Briquet. "Bullshitting around is not my style, you can ask anybody who knows me. I'm telling you, Don, I'm telling you straight out, no bullshit, that I am convinced Larry Bierly killed my son, Paul, for his money and then covered up the dastardly deed by trying to make it look like suicide. Do you get what I'm saying? Am I making myself clear? Larry Bierly is a murderer, and the police are not doing beans about it, and I want to pay you whatever your rate is-if it's in reason, of course-to put that little pissant Larry Bierly in the caboose where he belongs. " She peered at me unsteadily across her uneaten arugula with Gorgonzola vinaigrette and corrected herself. "Calaboose. "

Mrs. Haig seemed to have six or eight drinks lined up in front of her and three or four cigarettes smoldering in each hand, but there couldn't have been more than a couple of each. She was well on her way to ruin-fifty-nine pushing ninety-but still turned out with care and expense in pale blue-eyes, linen skirt, jacket-and pale orange-hair, lipstick, tangelo sections among the arugula.

When she'd phoned the day before, I'd suggested we meet at my office on Central, but she didn't like the sound of the address ("Is it safe to park a car up there?") and proposed lunch instead at Le Briquet. Situated on a shady lane off State Street down the hill from the Capitol, Le Briquet catered to the comfortably well-off general public but existed mainly to provide highly enriched nutrients and hydration to New York State's elected representatives and their paid staffs. These meals were customarily compliments of the pols' fellow diners, officers of business and professional associations with an interest in the legislature's proceedings. It was a place where your car was safe, if not your soul or your wallet.

I said, "I knew your son and Larry Bierly slightly, Mrs.

She sniffed. "If that's what you want to call it, 'lovers,' " she said dejectedly. "It's not easy for a mother, Don. " She fired up another two or three more Camel Lights. "You know, Don, when my daughter, Paul's sister Deedee, went through the entire basketball team at Albany High before she was seventeen, I wasn't crazy about it, but I survived. I figured, What's a little fornication among the young? Am I right? This was before AIDS, naturally, and Condoms 101, so what the hoo. I knew Deborah would outgrow her throwing-it-around-for-nothing phase, and she did, years ago. But when Paul went through the boys' swim team, that was another matter. You can imagine your daughter with some guy's big, stupid hard-on jammed in her jaw, but not your son. Do you get what I mean? Am I right? Try to put yourself in my place. "