My partially sleepless night and early-morning romp with T. Callahan had left me jet-lagged by late afternoon- sleeping until one hadn't helped-so I'd been pouring down extra-strength Jamaican Blue Mountain for over an hour when Timmy arrived home just after six. I didn't know then that my extra coffee consumption would turn out to be the key to an early resolution to the question of Paul Haig's murder. I just meant for it to get me through the evening without dozing off and toppling face-foreward in a public place.
I told Timmy about my meeting with Crockwell and the news of the therapist's onetime course in aversion therapy. Timmy stared at me in horror.
"Why, that's savage!"
"It is."
"You're making it up."
"No."
"But it's beastly!"
"Well, yes."
"But how could they do such a thing? Even to a man like Crockwell?"
"Two of them were enraged at him, they were under the influence of powerful drugs that break down inhibitions, and I guess they saw it as a kind of poetic justice."
"Oh, it's poetic, all right."
"Yes. Not Emily Dickinson, though. Robinson Jeffers maybe. Or Edgar Guest."
"It's poetic, but is it justice? I certainly don't think so. Crockwell's patients all went to him voluntarily, misguided as they were. But what those three did to Crockwell is assault, pure and simple. And he's not pressing charges?"
"No." I told Timmy the story of the Texan running for sheriff who wanted to accuse his opponent of fucking pigs.
Pouring himself a cup of the potent coffee, Timmy said, "That's a good joke about Texas politics, but it also illustrates why people who are victims of sex crimes often won't come forward and testify against the people who assaulted them."
"That's true, Timothy. But you also have to admit that (a) the joke is funny, and (b) it's a bit droll, too, when a man who cons people into administering electric jolts to themselves to combat their sexual natures gets a dose of his own medicine. Admit it. The image is priceless."
He poured one-percent low-fat milk into his coffee and stirred it. "But it's still assault."
"But the image is still priceless."
"But it's still assault."
"But the image is still priceless."
He conceded nothing. Though after a moment he did say, "Are there pictures?"
"No. Anyway, Crockwell maintains he never got it up for the sheep pictures. Or even for the Playboy bunny slides, would be my guess, given the circumstances."
"Well, there's that."
"Yes, think of the Polaroids showing up in the supermarket tabs. The horror."
Timmy shuddered, but I could see the images flipping along inside his head, and I suspected that they were not without entertainment value. He said, "So now you don't think Haig's blackmail scheme had anything to do with Crockwell and the sheep?"
"I'm pretty sure it didn't."
"But it's such a classic setup for blackmail."
"Not if there are no pictures or other evidence-which St. James and Crockwell both insist there couldn't have been
– and the blackmail target is ready to tell the blackmailer to go jump in the lake."
"I'm sorry, Don. I guess you're back to square one then."
"Not at all." I explained that with the Haig-Bierly-St. James (You-Don't-Want-to-Know)-Crockwell sheep incident now eliminated as the nexus of the blackmail situation, it was suddenly clear that the most likely blackmail target for Paul Haig would have been a member of the Crockwell psychotherapy group who was secretly involved in sexual escapades that would have been considered impermissible by both Crockwell and others in the man's life, and who moreover was in a position to come up with the sixty thousand dollars Haig needed to hang onto Beautiful Thingies.
I said Crockwell wouldn't tell me who in the group was well-heeled and that I would have to find out independently.
Meanwhile, I'd keep my appointment at eight that evening in Ballston Spa with Dr. Glen Snyder, who treated Paul Haig during the six weeks prior to Haig's death, and who I believed might have information or insights about Haig that would shed light on the blackmail or at least the circumstances surrounding it.
Timmy said, "If Snyder is a well-off shrink, maybe Haig was blackmailing him and he killed Haig. He would have known about the Elavil because he prescribed it."
I poured myself another cup of coffee and thought that over. "But what could Haig have had on Snyder?"
"I don't know. Pill pushing? Fishing out of season? Maybe Snyder put the moves on Haig, and Haig went along with it and got pictures secretly taken of whatever went on between them. It could be anything."
"I don't know, Timothy. That's pretty wild. But not totally off-the-wall, and while I'm talking to Snyder I'll keep your scenario in mind. And if I'm not home by midnight, maybe you'd better phone the Ballston Spa cops and have them take a look into Snyder's office. That's where I'm meeting him."
He said, "At midnight I'll be sound asleep. Do you want me to set the alarm and check to see if you're in bed?"
"No, I have a feeling I'll be home in plenty of time to tuck you in. Or to get tucked. Though I've drunk so much coffee I may be circling the house at six thousand feet for most of the night."
He said, "I'll dream of you up there."
I said I'd try to beam friendly messages down to him.
By seven-thirty the Northway commuter traffic had thinned out and I cruised unimpeded up through the spring evening. To the commuters in Clifton Park and the other northern suburbs of Albany, I-87 was something of a daily drag. But to Timmy and me, all of its associations were happy: It was the way to summer concerts at Saratoga, camping in the Adirondacks, weekends in Montreal for jazz and blanquette de lapin. I'd have been relaxed and eager driving north that evening if I hadn't been going to see a man about a murder, and if I hadn't drunk too much coffee and needed very badly all of a sudden to urinate.
I knew there was a Northway rest area above Clifton Park, and when I came to it I pulled in. The I-87 rest areas, in keeping with the intentionally woodsy, nature-friendly character of the highway, had no restaurants or gas stations, just restrooms, lawns, picnic tables and parking.
There were plenty of cars angled along the sidewalk leading to the restroom building, and I soon became aware of why some of them were there. My gaydar was rusty, but not so out of whack that I didn't instantly appreciate that this was a busy gay cruising area. After I peed, a number of pairs of eyes followed me outside, and I noted that men were coming and going behind the rest-room building. A hole had been ripped in the wire fence at the rear of the rest-area clearing, and a path led away into the woods. In fact, this rest area had been notorious in fast-lane gay Albany for years, I remembered. And that's when it all came together. end user