Cockeyed

Chapter Eight

“Well, at least Hunny’s not on Meet the Press,” Timmy said, indicating the kitchen television set. “Not yet.”

He had one eye on two Sunday morning health-care-debate talking heads, another eye on the Times Union spread out on the kitchen table, and a third eye — I was always amazed that he could do this — on his masala tea, a relic of his long-ago Peace Corps days, that was busy coagulating in a large mug that sat between us. I was having coffee and an English muffin, and I was fretting over Tom Friedman’s dark forecasts in the Times. Global warming, with its inundated cities and wars over vanishing natural resources, was a good momentary distraction from Hunny.

“These people are just bonkers,” Timmy said, as he read the TU page one story on the Family Preservation Association of Albany County. “They can’t actually believe that the Lottery Commission might take back Hunny’s billion dollars. But they are having a high old time making lottery officials squirm, and they’re getting all kinds of ink for their screwball organization while they’re at it.”

“Ink is who they are.”

“And of course Hunny is a godsend.”

“He is a bit of a right-wing gay caricature. If Hunny hadn’t existed, Rush Limbaugh would have had to invent him. It’s why I think I’m basically glad to be working for him. I mean, in addition to walking away with a tiny portion of his billion dollars.

In a world of gay folks like us who are busily turning queer life in America into a kind of insipid parody of our parents’ dull, stable existences, Hunny is this horrifying creature climbing out of the primordial homo ooze. I have to say that I find him alternately hair-raising and beguiling.”

“Insipid? Donald, do you think our life is insipid?”

“No, I like it. It’s nice. It’s comfortable. I wouldn’t have it any 56 Richard Stevenson other way.”

“Then what are you saying? Would our lives — and the lives of our gay friends who are like us — be improved if we were all more like Hunny and Art and that gay menagerie they surround themselves with?”

“No. But you know I like to quote Ogden Nash. ‘Home is heaven, and orgies are vile, but I like an orgy once in a while.’

You’ve even been known to quote him yourself in recent years.

If not in Albany, then certainly from time to time on vacation in Thailand.”

He pretended to bristle, then laughed. “Of course we all have a streak of Hunny in us, expressed or unexpressed. But it’s the flaunting — there, I said the right-wingers’ word — it’s the flaunting of this life of booze and boys and mayhem that just gets tiresome. And, yes, embarrassing. There, I said that, too. In the straight world, people like Hunny make me embarrassed to be gay.”

“Me too. Except I’m kind of embarrassed to be embarrassed.”

“Yes, you would be. I’d like to be. But I can’t. I’m just embarrassed.”

“The TU story doesn’t mention any gay groups in Albany or elsewhere coming to Hunny’s defense. That’s disappointing. I guess they’re embarrassed, too.”

“With his billion dollars,” Timmy said, “Hunny probably doesn’t need any help. He can hire all the help he needs. Like you.”

“Me, and he’s getting a lawyer to deal with the DeCarlo lawsuit. Plus, we agreed that after last night’s paintball episode he should hire some private security people for his house. I put him in touch with Gray Security, and they should have some people over there by now.”

“You said it was unclear who the paint shooter this morning was trying to hit. Only the TV people and the Marylou Whitney impersonator were on the front steps at the time. But isn’t it possible that somebody who hates Hunny just took some potshots at the house, and they didn’t care who they hit? They just wanted to frighten Hunny and complicate his life?”

“That’s what it looks like. And maybe with a little luck, humiliate a few fags. Not knowing that the Bill O’Malley people were in the line of fire.”

“I am guessing that we haven’t heard the last of Focks News.

I’m sure O’Malley will call for the death penalty.”

“This is a job for the Albany PD, and all the indications are they’ll take it seriously. They know that paint is only paint, but those war-game pellets can do real harm to people who aren’t wearing vests and goggles. What happened last night was assault, and the cops I met seem prepared to treat it that way.”

“Wouldn’t it be interesting,” Timmy said, “if the paintball attack could be traced back to one of the Family Preservation people.FPAAC is up to its eyebrows in local conservative wing-nuts — tea-baggers, birthers, deathers and other types of Obama haters.”

“Except, when Second Amendment crazies lose control, they tend not to just shoot paint. They go in with real Uzis and go down in a blaze of glory taking as many people with them as they can. This thing feels more like a homophobic out-of-control loony or drunk.”

“So, Donald, what exactly is your role at this point? The police will investigate the paint attack and the security people will protect Hunny. What will you be doing to earn your fee?”

“There are still a few of Hunny’s former occasional and short-term boyfriends I need to check out. Guys who have sent threatening notes or phone messages.”

“By short-term, I suppose you mean ranging from several hours down to ten minutes.”

“Yes, speed dating seems to be one of Hunny’s favorite pastimes.”

“And these Briening people. Surely you can be helpful dealing with them. You’ve dealt with extortionists before — though none 58 Richard Stevenson that I can recall who were quite as grandiose in their expectations as the Brienings.”

“I’m trying to figure out whether the Brienings’ delusional venality will be an advantage or a disadvantage. Lack of rationality is generally an obstacle in situations like this, but these people are so off the wall that I may mau-mau them and they’ll just go poof.

Anyway, I should soon get an inkling as to what I am dealing with. I’m going to drive out to Cobleskill this afternoon.”

Something somebody was saying on Meet the Press caught Timmy’s attention, and then my cell phone went off.

“Strachey.”

“Don, I need your help,” Hunny said, his voice shaky. “Can you drive over to East Greenbush? Art and I came out to Golden Gardens to see Mom. But she’s gone.”

Gone? “Hunny, do you mean that your mother has passed away?” This could solve certain problems.

“No, she’s just not here. And nobody knows where Mom went. ”

I said I’d be there in ten minutes.

“They say they’re going to have to notify the police,” Hunny said. “They’re searching the premises one more time, and if Mom doesn’t turn up they are going to have to call the sheriff ’s office.

I’m thinking maybe they shouldn’t wait. I mean, they found her wheelchair by the front door, for heaven’s sake. It sounds like she somehow just left. Got out the door and wandered away somewhere.”

“There’s a receptionist,” I pointed out. “Or isn’t she always at her desk?”

Art said, “We’ve come in here when she’s back out of sight in the office, catching some zees, or trimming her nose hairs, or whatever.”

“Mom rides around in that chair — she calls it her taxi to nowhere — but she can walk in her slow, rickety way. There was nothing to prevent her from strolling right out the door and -

CoCkeyed 59 what? Hitching a ride to almost anyplace.”

“The other doors are alarmed,” Art said, “but not the front.”

“What was she wearing when she was last seen?”

“Just her bathrobe and slippers. Mom has been meticulous about her appearance all her life. Or she was until recently. She might not have been aware that she was dressed somewhat inappropriately for appearing in public.”

I was standing and Hunny and Art were seated on a bench in the corridor outside the administrator’s office. Elderly men and women in various stages of inert disrepair were slumped in wheelchairs up and down the hallway. Some had looked up at me as I walked in, but most took no notice. The place was decorated with pretty-posy wall stencils, under the apparent assumption that none of the inmates would have found Motherwell interesting or gotten a charge out of a Munch or two. The hall we were in did not smell fetid, but the stench of disinfectant was not much of a substitute.

“I talked to Mom yesterday afternoon,” Hunny said, “and she told me how much she was looking forward to my visit. The staff here had told Mom about me winning the lottery even before I called her on Thursday, so I guess everybody here knew I was coming. And I told Mrs. Kerisiotis, the administrator, that I would donate new flat-screen TVs to all the rooms. That went over big, and I have to say, it went through my mind that Mom might get a little extra tLC as a result.”

Art said, “Hunny also offered to have the dietician sent on a long trip to Hawaii and replaced by somebody who could cook, but nobody here has said any more about that.”

“Was yesterday afternoon the last time you spoke to your mother?” I asked.

“Not long after I got home from your office.”

“And she sounded normal?”

“Normal? Well, normal for Mom in the past couple of years is not exactly what Dr. Joyce Brothers would call normal.

Sometimes she’s her good old self. Other times she forgets things and people. And she gets frustrated and mad. A couple of weeks ago one of the nurses told me that Mom had thrown her Depends at an aide and told people to stop treating her like a baby. I asked her about this, but she said she didn’t remember doing it, and we both had a good laugh over that one.”

Hunny and Art both stood up as a tiny middle-aged woman wearing a blue business suit, a pink ruffled collar and a huge brooch that looked like a sea urchin came striding up the corridor.

“That’s Mrs. Kerisiotis,” Hunny said. “When Mom went missing, she came in, even though it’s Sunday.”

I was introduced by name but not title or function, and Mrs.

Kerisiotis said to Hunny, “Did you telephone your mother early this morning, Huntington?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Your mother’s roommate, Nola Conklin, says your mom received a phone call at about a quarter of eight. Nola was half asleep and she couldn’t make out what was said. It wasn’t long after that that Rita left the room in her wheelchair. She was dressed only in her nightie and bathrobe, so of course any staff seeing her headed down the hall would have thought she was going in the direction of the lounge or the game room. Can you ask around among friends and relatives and try to find out who might have phoned her?”

“Yes, I will do that. Oh God.”

“Huntington, there is still no sign of your mother, and I think I will have to notify the sheriff ’s department. Some of our staff have even walked up and down the highway asking if any neighbors might have noticed your mum, but no one reported seeing her. I am so, so sorry this has happened. I think that Rita may have been determined to leave the building, and cleverly she took advantage of the front desk shift change at eight o’clock.

She has certainly never done such a thing before. Has she talked to you at all about wanting to leave Golden Gardens or of wanting to go to a particular place?”

CoCkeyed 61

“No,” Hunny said. “Mom has always said this place suits her. I mean, she says it’s boring and smells bad and the food is revolting and sometimes she feels like she would just as soon be rotting in a grave as rotting in a nursing home. But she says most of the staff are nice, and the heating system works fine in the winter.”

“Yes, she seems to like it here, and Rita is well-liked by both the staff and the other residents. Now, Mrs. Conklin told me your mom became agitated while watching the six o’clock news on TV yesterday evening. I know that you have been in the news, and I am wondering if she may have become upset over a report on you and your lottery prize and these Albany people who are trying to have your prize revoked. Did she not mention anything about this to you?”

Hunny looked stricken and reached for his cigarettes and then quickly put them back. “No, but she means to tell me things and then things slip her mind. She has mentioned that this happens.

So she might have seen me being maligned by those religious nut cases and she decided to give them a piece of her mind or something. That would be just like Mom.”

“Mother Rita is a cheerful lady who likes to have her bit of fun,” Art said. “But she doesn’t suffer fools, either.”

Hunny said, “I wonder if she went to find the fPAAC people and tell them off. But how would she even know who they were or where to find them? Now I’m really worried. Maybe the sheriff ’s people could look for her wherever the FPAAC idiots are.

Do they have an office, or a den, or a nest, or what? And Donald, girl, you could check out fPAAC, too, and maybe infiltrate them or keep an eye on them or something.”

“I’ll add them to my list. This afternoon I may visit the Brienings in Cobleskill. But if your Mom doesn’t turn up soon, she’ll be my first priority.”

Hunny grabbed his cigarettes and in the same motion jammed them back in his shirt pocket. “I almost forgot about the putrid Brienings. Good grief, maybe they kidnapped Mom. Called her up and lured her outside and then whisked her away!”

Art said, “Why would they do that, luv?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because I’m rich and famous. Like when those people snatched Frank Sinatra Junior or the Getty kid.”

“But those were for the ransom. The Brienings don’t need Mother Rita to extort money from you. They’ve got that letter instead.”

Mrs. Kerisiotis said, “Who are the Brienings?”

I could all but see the wheels spinning inside Hunny’s head and the terror he felt over the possibility of his mother’s being revealed in Golden Gardens as a thief. He said, “They’re people Mom had some trouble with a long time ago. It was an argument over a breaded zucchini recipe.”

“It’s hard to imagine your mother having a long-standing disagreement with anyone, Huntington. She is generally such a cheery lady. She can be outspoken, of course, and she has her opinions. And she doesn’t like to be bothered with Depends.

But five minutes after she lets off steam, she is back to being as sweet as can be. The aides all love Rita. She tells them stories that I would consider off-color, but the staff all think she is just a hoot.”

Tears welled in Hunny’s eyes. “That’s my mom.”

Now the large-breasted black man with a heavy beard and glittering earring who Timmy and I had seen on television at Hunny’s winning-the-lottery party came down the corridor in a green nurse’s outfit. His cornucopia of rhinestones still dangled from his left ear.

Hunny shouted, “Antoine!” and the two embraced and Art soon joined in the hug.

“Hunny, honey, we can’t find your mom, but I’m sure she is somewhere okay. That Rita can take care of herself, girl. You better believe it!”

“Oh, Antoine, honey, where in the world would Mom go? It sounds like she knew what she was doing — snuck out during the front desk shift change. Or maybe it wasn’t premeditated, and CoCkeyed 63 it was just a moment of opportunity and she took it. But Mrs.

Kerisiotis says you all have looked high and low, and now she’s going to call the sheriff. Oh God, please don’t let the police find her dead in a drainage ditch being gnawed on by wild dogs!”

This image seemed to spur the administrator to action, and Mrs. Kerisiotis headed into her office making speaking-into-a-receiver gestures.

“Hunny, honey, your mom is just such a dear lady, and I’m sure she is going to be back here where she belongs in no time at all.”

“Oh, Antoine, honey, I am trying to believe that.”

“Rita told us a joke the other day that had us all rolling on the floor and screaming our heads off. Did she tell you the one about the lady who led a cute bag boy out to the supermarket parking lot? The lady says to the bag boy, ‘I’m glad you came outside with me. I have to tell you, I have an itchy pussy.’ The humpy kid says to the lady, ‘Well, you’re going to have to point it out to me. All those Japanese cars look alike.’”

Hunny and Art’s laughter was so rollicking that several of the old folks staring at the floor in the corridor looked up.

“I know Mom gets on the phone with her old friend Tex Clermont once a week to trade jokes.”

“Hunny, I sure do see where you get your sense of humor.”

“Antoine, Mom has had a nice time here overall. Minus the disgusting food and so on. So I can’t begin to imagine why she would just walk out the door. It’s true, her mind is going.”

“I’ve noticed that, Hunny. But she has two or three marbles left, and on a good day she’s one hundred percent. Well, eighty-two.”

“Maybe she just went for a stroll. It’s such a sunny day out. It’s kind of hot, but Mom has never minded the heat. Or she walked down to Dairy Queen for a treat.”

“We all checked down there. But don’t you fret, Hunny.

Those girls in the sheriff ’s department will have her back here 64 Richard Stevenson in no time at all. One time a lady made it out the door and three miles down Route 43, and the officers found her in the waiting room at Jiffy Lube reading the Troy Record. She said she liked it there because the coffee at Jiffy Lube was better than the coffee at Golden Gardens. That poor lady — her name was Turalura Butterworth — passed away a week after the sheriff brought her back here. But that was just a coincidence, I am certain.”

Now Mrs. Kerisiotis came back out from her office. She said two sheriff ’s deputies were on their way, and they would get word out to all patrol officers in the region about the missing Golden Gardens resident. When Mrs. Kerisiotis told the duty officer the name of the missing patient, he had said to her, “Van Horn? Why is that name sounding familiar?”

“Huntington,” Mrs. Kerisiotis said, “you are such a celebrity.

The next thing you know I’ll go into the Grand Union and your face will be on the cover of the National Inquirer. We’ll find out all about your hidden secrets and scandalous love life.”

Mrs. Kerisiotis grinned, but Hunny only smiled back feebly.

The noontime sun was brilliant and the air steamy, and I cranked the AC as I sped down the interstate toward Cobleskill.

It seemed unlikely that the Brienings were in any way connected to the disappearance of Rita Van Horn. She was most valuable to them settled comfortably among her unknowing and potentially judgmental fellow residents at Golden Gardens. But I needed to talk with them anyway about their crude extortion plot, so it wasn’t going to hurt to gauge their reaction to Mrs. Van Horn’s having gone AwoL.

Hunny, meanwhile, was phoning family members and his mother’s friends and acquaintances to find out if any of them knew of her whereabouts. And the East Greenbush Fire Department was preparing to launch a volunteer ground search if Mrs. Van Horn had not been found by mid-afternoon.

I had never been to Cobleskill. It was one of the small towns off I-88 heading west toward the southern tier counties, about forty-five minutes from Albany. It had a thriving agricultural college that was part of the State University of New York system, and as I headed into town from the interstate the place didn’t have that woebegone feeling of so many upstate burgs whose original industrial reasons for existing had long since migrated to Central America and Asia.

My GPS led me to Crafts-a-Palooza in a strip mall in the west end of town. The Brienings had a place the width of two storefronts, and the vacant, former used bookstore next door looked like the spot where they might be planning their multi-million-dollar mega-expansion. I had a tuna sub at the Subway store at the other end of the mall, and when I walked outside and the sun pounded down on me I was sorry I had eaten the whole thing. I wasn’t going to be as alert with the Brienings as I wanted to be, not that I was under the impression that dealing with them was going to require subtlety.

The place was busy with Sunday afternoon young and old women perusing the paints, beads, sparkles, plastic water lilies the size of bed pans, and unpainted plaster dwarfs. There were front yard windmills whose vanes had the Ten Commandments printed on them and in the middle a picture of a smiling Sarah Palin. I had never set foot in an extruded-yard-novelty factory in Taipei, but I imagined that if I ever went there it would smell just like the Crafts-a-Palooza store in Cobleskill, New York.

A checkout clerk told me that Arletta and Clyde didn’t ordinarily come into the store on Sundays, but they happened to be nearby. They were next door in the former used bookstore taking measurements. I asked if that was because Crafts-a-Palooza was expanding, and the clerk said yes, probably in the early fall.

I hadn’t noticed the Brienings inside the defunct bookshop because the lights weren’t on, but I soon spotted them in the dim recesses at the rear. I shoved the front door open and walked in and they both looked my way, startled.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Briening?”

“Yes?”

They both gave me a sour-faced once-over.

“I’m Donald Strachey, a private investigator. My client, Huntington Van Horn, suggested that we talk.”

Four eyes narrowed at the mention of Hunny’s name.

“A private detective?” Clyde said. “My wife and I have nothing to say to you. If we talk to any detective, it will be a detective on the New York State Police.”

“Now, we’re busy,” Arletta said, “and, Mr. Detective, I think you need to just scoot on out of here.”

They were both tiny rail-thin people with tiny rail-thin faces and mean gray eyes. Both their complexions were the texture and color of zinc. She had on blue slacks and a white blouse with big orange polka dots on it, and he was wearing Nantucket red golf pants and a tan sport shirt and had colored his hair with what looked like steak sauce.

I said, “Extortion is a class-A felony in the state of New York. If you keep on scamming Hunny’s mother, instead of spending your golden years in the Florida Keys, you may wind up spending them in Sing Sing. That is what I have driven out here to emphasize to you. Maybe up until now you have not been obliged to think about what you have done in those terms. But now I hope you will think about it with care. I’ll bet you would much rather have your grandchildren running up to you and showing you the pretty seashells they found at the beach down in Tavernier than pressing their noses up against a filthy plexiglass shield in Ossining with the two of you on the other side of it sobbing.”

They both looked at me as if I were brainless, and she said,

“Rita Van Horn is an embezzler. She is lucky she isn’t in Sing Sing herself. It is only out of the goodness of our hearts that we didn’t have that woman sent straight to jail. As for any idea of extortion, as you call it, you are just full of it, fella. We possess a legal document, signed by Rita Van Horn, stipulating repayment of the money she stole from Clyde and myself. The agreement contains clauses for penalties and interest, and the only thing Clyde and I have done in recent days is invoke a few of those clauses. And if you think I am bluffing, well, then we will just see you in court! So, how do you like them apples, Mr. Albany Private Investigator?”

It occurred to me that I had never laid eyes on the infamous letter, and I wondered if Hunny or anyone else had. Or had they just taken the word of Hunny’s mother that she had signed such a document?

I said, “That letter is worthless, and I think you know it is. It’s an informal agreement with no force of law. You’re just a couple of con artists, and I am here to tell you that your con is over as of this minute. Mrs. Van Horn has repaid you many times over for the money she took. And the idea that you might extract some absurd additional sum from her or her newly wealthy son is just 68 Richard Stevenson plain nuts.”

“So,” Clyde said coolly, “do you think Rita doesn’t particularly care if the folks out at Golden Gardens find out that she is a criminal? And that woman is a thief. We’re doing them all a favor by keeping her from committing additional crimes. In fact, we told her straight out that as long as she doesn’t steal money from folks in the nursing home, or any of the staff — and as long as she keeps up with the make-good payments to Arletta and myself — we won’t notify the residents that they have a dangerous klepto lurking right there among them.”

“We just wrote to Rita on Thursday,” Arletta said. “And she must have received our letter by now. I’m not surprised she hasn’t shown it to you or probably to anybody else. She is up to her eyebrows in shame, shame, shame. As well she should be. Clyde and I sent her a Xerox of her agreement with us, and we let her know that we have other copies we will be compelled to send to the Albany County district attorney’s office if we are not repaid soon. And I mean compensated both for our financial losses and for the pain and suffering we endured when we lost not only sixty-one thousand dollars but also our sense of trust, which was betrayed so sickeningly. Clyde and I used to be trusting people, and now we have become more cynical. It is not just our money that Rita Van Horn stole, but our innocence.”

These people were both calculating and delusional, and it was becoming clear that the worst they were likely to do was shame and embarrass an old lady whose additional years of experiencing embarrassment and moral shame were limited. But they weren’t limited quite enough. Mother Rita was, according to Hunny’s friend Antoine, still eighty-two percent there on some days. And she apparently cared what people thought of her, as did her family — Hunny, his sister Miriam and her husband Lewis. Nelson, who had hooked up with a man who dealt in tranches and derivatives, seemed ready to forgive and forget and to be more philosophical about swindling the unwary. Not so, the more orthodox-Methodist Van Horns, and not so Hunny, who seemed willing to do almost anything to keep his adored and CoCkeyed 69 adoring mother from being humiliated, if not hauled into court.

The store room we were standing around arguing in was uncomfortably hot without air-conditioning. It occurred to me to invite the Brienings over to the nearby Subway outlet for a cool drink, and where I might shove both of these vicious little creeps into the cooler compartment, if Subway had one, and jam the door shut. But they might not die. They might wrap themselves in coats made of doughy sub buns and survive on American cheese. And I would be convicted of attempted murder.

So instead I said, “Rita Van Horn is missing from the nursing home. She left this morning around eight, and no one knows what has become of her. A search has been organized. If you wrote her a letter that precipitated some kind of emotional crisis in Rita, you will bear a heavy responsibility for whatever has happened to her.”

They gawked. “Nobody escapes from those places,” Clyde said. “Rita must be hiding on the premises.”

Arletta added, “Have they checked the bookkeeper’s office?

If the safe is in there, where they keep the residents’ valuables, that would be the first place I would look.”

I said, “Do you people seriously believe that Hunny Van Horn might actually turn over half a billion dollars to you?”

“We not only believe it,” Arletta said, “we are counting on it.

We are expanding our store here in the fall, and we have been in touch with Crossgates about leasing space at the mall. In addition, as we told Nelson, we are planning to build a lovely retirement home in Florida. And — not that it is any of business of yours — we plan to make a major contribution to an excellent organization in Albany that is protesting the lottery commission paying out all that taxpayer money to a man as immoral as Hunny Van Horn.”

“You’re talking about FPAAC?”

Looking smug, Arletta said, “You betcha.”

“But if the lottery commission revokes Hunny’s winnings, you won’t get a dime.”

Clyde stood looking serene, and Arletta smirked some more. “Well, of course they aren’t going to take Hunny’s billion dollars back. The lottery commission is run by a bunch of big-government liberals who support the radical homosexual agenda.

So I am confident that Hunny will keep his billion dollars, and I am just as confident that Clyde and I are going to end up with our fair share. That would be half.”

I said, “Of course, if something bad has happened to Rita Van Horn, you people are up the creek.”

“Has she really run off?” Clyde asked, looking nervous.

The two of them stood watching me with sudden apprehension, and that’s when I concluded that even if they hadn’t snatched her, the letter they had sent her renewing their threats had shoved Mrs. Van Horn into some awful tailspin that was likely to end up badly hurting her as well as everyone else involved.

Back at the house on Moth Street, Hunny sat by the kitchen table chain-smoking. He gazed up longingly at the wall phone as if he might will it to ring and someone on the other end of the line would happily announce that Rita Van Horn was safe and sound. In anticipation of such a call, Hunny had sent out for champagne and clam dip. Nelson and Lawn had come by briefly and then driven over to join Hunny’s sister Miriam and her husband Lewis at Golden Gardens, the epicenter of the search.

Friends had gathered at Hunny and Art’s house to offer comfort. Schuyler and Tyler were there, off in a corner where Marylou Whitney was helping them with their homework. They were students at Hudson Valley Community College, Art told me, and were planning to switch their major from corporate communications to pre-med since Hunny had offered to finance their educations.

Mrs. Whitney, whose real name, Art confided to me, was Guy Snyder and who was an accountant in the New York State Department of Taxation, was also serving as press liaison. For word had spread that the aged mother of the lottery billionaire had gone missing and reporters were gathering out front on the sidewalk. Among them was a crew from Focks News that included the field producer Jane Trinkus, as well as a new cameraman and two armed bruisers from the Focks security department in New York. They spent much of their time palavering with the two Gray Security guards Hunny had hired at my suggestion. The wounded cameraman was still under treatment at Albany Med and was said to be recovering from his back injury. Trinkus had told Hunny that Bill O’Malley himself might be coming up to Albany, and Hunny should consider having an attorney present for the interview.

Other media representatives had also been in touch, Hunny told me, including a man from the All-Too-Real Channel who 72 Richard Stevenson had seen Hunny on The Today Show and wanted to talk to him about doing a reality show. Cameras would be installed around the house, the man said, and Hunny and Art would live normally except for the addition of some “plot points,” such as screaming matches over who had left the shower curtain outside the tub and jealous fits over either Hunny or Art coming on to a uPs man.

Hunny had also been contacted by someone from a gay cable channel called Oh Look! TV about the channel’s doing a movie of Hunny’s life. A writer from the network had already called and said he planned on dramatizing Hunny’s experiences in the first Gulf War and his encounters with vampires.

I said, “Hunny, were you actually in the military?”

“Define in. ”

Art said, “When we lived in New York, a soldier who hung out at the Stonewall used to drive us over to Fort Dix and sneak us in to cheer up the troops. That’s how Fort Dix got its name.

Hunny and I named it.”

“We thought about calling it Fort Cox.”

“Or, if the Army found that too risque, Fort Erection.”

“I don’t see how they can say gays in the military would be bad for morale,” Hunny added. “From what we saw, having a few pecker lovers around can be excellent for morale. The fighters in the Taliban should be so lucky.”

“I’m surprised,” I said, “that none of your old Stonewall pals have turned up in recent days to lend support. Or maybe just looking for a handout like so many others.”

“A few have called with congratulations,” Hunny said. “But so many of the vets have passed on. Not many made it through the eighties and the plague. And of course there are the ones who are now major Ceos or archbishops or whatever who would never let on that in 1968 they liked getting fucked in the toilet at the Stonewall or blew the nyPd sergeants who came in for their weekly payoffs.”

Art said, “We haven’t heard either from the ten thousand people who said they were there that night but actually weren’t.

Or from the ones who stood on the other side of Christopher Street in nicely dressed little groups going tsk-tsk-tsk, why are these tawdry queens misbehaving like this, why don’t these embarrassing lowlifes go home and write their congressman?”

I was not quite old enough to have been there, but I sometimes wondered where I would have stood on that June night that ignited the post ‘50s and ‘60s gay rights movement, had I been present. Would I have joined the drunken kick line that sang

“We are the Stonewall girls” and hurled bottles and debris at the rampaging cops? Fat chance. Or would I have been among the contemptuous better-heeled gay bystanders across the street muttering about how grossly impolite and impolitic the rebellion was? I’d like to think I would have been among the organizers who moved in, in the following days, to set up more focused and orderly protests, and who initiated the legal challenges that led to the police and other reforms of the seventies and eighties. But maybe I would not yet have been sufficiently clear-headed about myself and brave enough to do even that.

Hunny said, “We’re in touch with a couple of the old Stonewall gang, but that all feels like ancient history when what you’re basically thinking about is getting up every day and going to work and making the car payments and dealing with mom and maybe getting a little man-nookie once in a while.”

“Hourly,” Art said.

“You guys seem to have a really busy and varied sex life,” I said. “Or is a lot of that just talk? Or wishful thinking?”

“We try not to let it be,” Hunny said. “It does keep a girl on her toes making sure her tubes remain cleared. Artie and I manage, though, don’t we, girl?”

I asked, “And this way of life has not been problematical?”

Art looked puzzled. “In what way?”

“Oh, the usual. Disease. Legal difficulties. Getting involved with people who turn out to be crazy or dangerous.”

“Oh, girl! All of the above. Why else would you be sitting here, Donald?”

This reminded me that I still had to check out a few of the blackmailers and extortionists who had turned up late in the week. I had told Hunny and Art that I had not gotten far with the Brienings during my visit to Cobleskill, but that I had learned of a letter they had sent to Rita Van Horn. Hunny called his friend Antoine at Golden Acres and asked him to make a discreet search of Mrs. Van Horn’s room and to pocket the letter and bring it to Hunny after work. Antoine called back and said he had the letter and would deliver it around four-thirty.

The phone rang and Hunny snatched it up. After a moment, he said, “Well, thank you, dear. No, no word yet. Okay, you stay in touch, girl.”

He hung up and said, “That’s my cousin, Wesley Bump. He checked with Aunt Joycelyn, and Mom never called her. She doesn’t seem to have contacted anybody in the family about what she’s up to. Oh Lord, I just know that poor Mom has been having one of her days where she’s not all there, and she’s probably somewhere where people think she’s a local derelict. But what gets me is, why don’t people see this old lady going around in her bathrobe and call the police? Why can’t they see that she is in need of assistance?”

The phone rang several more times over the next half hour, and at one point Hunny had a Cnn producer on call-waiting while he talked to a reporter from Albany’s Channel Ten. He told all news people the same thing: Mrs. Van Horn was still missing and he begged anyone who knew of her whereabouts to contact the East Greenbush sheriff ’s office. He described his mother as “the sweetest old gal you’d ever want to run across” and a “real live wire” who everybody thought the world of.

Just after four-thirty, Antoine arrived and Hunny and Art both leaped up to hug him.

Hunny began to weep, and said, “Oh Antoine, girl, I am trying to hold out hope, but I’m afraid I might be losing it. I don’t know how much more of this suspense I can take. I feel like Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much. I keep wanting to sing ‘Que Sera, Sera’ and then wait for Mom to join in from upstairs somewhere, CoCkeyed 75 where she’s being held captive. But we already looked in all the rooms on the second floor and up in the attic, and we’re certain that Mom isn’t here in the house.”

“Oh, Hunny, honey, you can’t lose it, girl! You have to be a tower of strength. Now, not to worry. The fire department, they’ve got about thirty folks out combing the woods and fields, and they have two church groups coming over in a little bit, Baptists and your sister Miriam’s Methodist ladies. The Presbyterians all went home to start supper, but some of them who got word will be praying for your mom. I am sure that dear lady is going to turn up any minute now, and we’re all going to just howl at the stories she has to tell.”

“I want to believe that. I want so badly to believe that.”

Art said, “Did you bring the letter?”

“I hope this is the right one. Hunny, you said it was from Cobleskill, and the one I brought is the only one with a Cobleskill return address. I didn’t look inside, as you said you preferred that I don’t. Anyway, how come? Is it blackmail or something?”

“Why would you ask that?” Hunny said.

“I don’t know. You’ve got all sorts of shady stuff in your past.

Maybe your mom does, too. Like mother, like son.”

“Where would you get that idea?”

“Hunny, honey, I’m not saying it’s the same thing. That your mom has sucked half the dicks in Albany County, plus Schenectady and Rensselaer, too, or like that. It could be something else.”

Hunny looked stunned, and Art said, “Antoine, the way you talk!”

Then suddenly they all burst out laughing, and this led to another group hug and some more cackling.

“Girl, just hand me that letter. As a matter of fact, it is blackmail. Mom embezzled some money many years ago. She paid it back, but these puke-heads from Cobleskill, this skanky bitch and her annoying husband, they’re trying to get more money out of her since I got rich, and this letter has something 76 Richard Stevenson to do with all that long-ago crapola. But don’t tell anybody at Golden Gardens. Mom is over being a criminal — it was after Dad died and she was distraught — and nobody at the home has to worry about her filching anything.”

Antoine shook his head and grinned. “Well, that Rita! Who would’ve thought. Did she do time?”

“No, the police don’t know. That’s how she got blackmailed.”

Antoine produced an envelope from his back pocket. “I sat on it, so it’s squished.”

Hunny opened the envelope and laid the contents on the kitchen table. We all bent down and studied it. The letter itself was brief. It had been typed on a word processor, and it read: Hello Rita,

Congratulations to your homosexual son for winning the Instant Warren lottery. I suppose he will now be able to indulge in many types of illicit activities that would turn the stomach of the average taxpayer.

However, we must now invoke the clause in your contract with us that triggers a higher compensatory award based on your family’s ability to pay.

We have demanded half a billion dollars from your son Huntington. If this amount is not paid by next Wednesday, we will go to the police. Also we will notify Golden Gardens and the Mount Zion Methodist Church.

Maybe you had better talk Huntington into coming to his senses and pay up. In return for your cooperation in this matter, we will return the original agreement to you and we will consider this unfortunate business, which has been so painful to all of us, closed.

Yours truly,

Your Disappointed Former Employers, A and C B — —.

Along with the letter were three photocopied pages of single-spaced typing in the form of a document. There were numbered items, lettered clauses, and subclauses with Roman numerals.

The gist of it seemed to be, Rita Van Horn admitted stealing $61,000 from Crafts-a-Palooza, and her restitution included interest payments and assorted fees and add-ons. The additional amounts were to be determined by a complex formula that was impossible for any of us to decipher. It looked like a contract for one of the adjustable-rate mortgages cooked up by the type of shyster lenders who had sent millions of people plunging into bankruptcy over the past year.

I said, “So you have never seen this agreement before?”

“No, but Miriam has a copy,” Hunny said. “Lewis said it looked real, but they didn’t want to show it to anybody to have it checked out. Miriam said it would be too embarrassing.”

Antoine said, “To me, it looks like a pile of shit.”

“I think it could be exactly that,” I said. “Or semi-shit at best.

I know a lawyer who can look it over and give us an opinion and keep his mouth shut. May I take this along? I’ll have it copied.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t make any more copies,” Hunny said.

“What if it fell into the hands of FPAAC? Or Bill O’Malley?”

The phone rang again and Hunny sighed. “If this is another reporter, I’m turning them over to Marylou. She is my press representative, and she has been doing an excellent job.”

Hunny picked up the phone and identified himself. And then almost immediately he went white.

“Yes, yes. Oh. Oh no! Yes? Oh. How much? Oh, all right, all right! Six thirty. Yes. I’ll wait for you to call.”

He hung up and said in a quavering voice, “They’ve got Mom.

They want twenty thousand dollars for her. Oh God, oh God!”

Art said, “Twenty thousand dollars? Not twenty million?”

We all looked at Hunny. “That’s what the man said.”

“They’re calling back at six thirty,” Hunny said, his voice thin and wobbly. “When they call, they’ll give us instructions on where to leave the money. The guy said don’t go to the police or they will torture Mom and kill her.” Hunny buried his head in his hands and wept. “My God, my gawwdd!”

I tried to retrieve the caller’s number but it was blocked. I said,

“We don’t know who this person is, so we can’t deal with this on our own. Six thirty is under two hours. That’s enough time to get the police to monitor and trace the next call. I think you should do that, Hunny. The alternative is to make your own arrangements for a swap — the money for your mom — and hope that these people can be trusted to keep their word, and then track them down after your mother’s been returned. But that’s risky, since we have no idea what kind of people the kidnappers are.”

Art muttered, “Those bastards.”

“Your mom is an old lady who had a good life,” Antoine said.

“But her time hasn’t come yet. I just know it. I would just pay the twenty K. Girl, that’s pocket change for you.”

I said, “The caller was a man?”

“Yes. Or a serious dyke-a-rooney. But I think a man, yes.”

“But it was not a voice you recognized?”

“No, I’d have recognized a voice I recognized. Oh, Lord, what am I saying? I think I need a drink. Artie, dear, can you fetch me the Jack Daniels?”

“Of course, luv.”

Art retrieved a bottle from under the sink and said to Hunny,

“Anyway, you don’t have twenty thousand dollars in cash. How much do you think you have on hand?”

“Seventy or eighty dollars.”

“I might have a hundred.”

“I could come up with forty,” Antoine said.

“I have the billion dollars in my checking account,” Hunny said. “But my ATM limit is five hundred a day.”

“Even if you went to forty different AtMs,” Antoine said, “I don’t think it works that way. I’ve tried it.”

The phone rang again and Hunny grabbed the receiver.

“Huntington Van Horn speaking. No, no, I have not. Now, I am quite busy. Please speak to my press representative, Mrs.

Whitney. I’ll send her out in a few minutes, but right now she is helping the boys with their homework.”

Hunny hung up and said, “It’s that obnoxious woman from Focks News. She says Bill O’Malley wants to interview me tonight at the Focks studios in Albany, and do I have a lawyer yet, and when can I do a pre-interview? I told her to talk to Marylou.

In fact, I think Bill O’Malley should interview Marylou instead.

I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame, and do you know what? I am sick of it. If I hadn’t won the lottery, none of this with the Brienings and the blackmailers and the kidnappers would ever have happened! Oh, God, God, what should I do about Mom?

Oh, poor, poor Mom. Donald, do you really think they would hurt an old lady like that? Oh, she must be so frightened.”

“I don’t know if they would actually harm your mother, Hunny. But because we know nothing really about who we’re dealing with here, it’s probably best to notify the police. The Albany cops have some competent people working for them these days, and they and the state police have the resources to put an operation together fast. They could trace the call when it comes in at six thirty, and they could monitor the cash pickup

— and maybe even arrange for you to borrow the cash — and then track the kidnappers to wherever you mom is being held.

The twenty thousand figure suggests to me that these people are small-bore amateurs who aren’t likely to grasp what they’re really into. This doesn’t sound like the mob or some Mexican drug cartel or a major psychopath. What it sounds like is some opportunistic hapless dorks. These are the kinds of people cops run into all the time, and dealing with them is generally a piece of cake.”

Hunny slugged back some of his whiskey and thought this over. “I guess you’re right, Donald. Let the pros take over. I just have such bad memories of the Albany cops. In the seventies and eighties I had some unfortunate run-ins. For girls like us, they were the Gestapo.”

“I remember. But nearly all of those goons are gone. I know somebody in the department I can call and get the ball rolling if you decide that’s the way you want to go, and it’s what I suggest.

But you really have to decide now.”

Hunny lit a fresh Marlboro from one that was half smoked.

He seemed about to speak when the phone rang again.

“Hunny speaking.” Now he looked irked. “Stu, I told you I would help you out, but I am too busy to take care of you just now. Yes, you will receive one thousand dollars, and yes it will be in cash. Detective Strachey will get the money to you this week.

But I can’t deal with that matter at this particular moment. Don’t you know that my mother is missing from Golden Gardens?”

Hunny listened and shook his head. “Are you calling from the Watering Hole? No wonder you’re out of the loop. Now, call me early in the week and we’ll make some arrangements. No, girl, I haven’t forgotten all the nice times we had, but right now I have more pressing matters to worry about, and I am going to hang up. Good-bye, Stu.”

“Stu Hood?” Art asked.

Hunny nodded.

Antoine said, “I have enjoyed Stu’s company on a few occasions. Stu can be fun. Just so he doesn’t ask you for a match.”

I had my cell phone out and was poised to dial the number of a young Albany police detective I knew who was smart and competent and would not likely be freaked out by Hunny’s entourage or his personal style.

But now Hunny’s phone rang yet again.

“Hunny speaking.” He stared hard at the receiver. “ What?” He listened with big eyes. “Are you serious?” Now he was slumping over the table and shaking his head. “Did you call before? About ten minutes ago?” He looked exhausted, on the verge of collapse.

“Well, someone else claims to have my mom also. Why should I believe you? What is going on?”

I leaned down with my head next to Hunny’s so I could also hear the voice on the phone. Hunny was wearing some kind of heavy cologne, but his whiskey-and-cigarettes aura was even more potent, and he smelled like a figure from a long-ago era. I felt both revulsion and nostalgia.

I heard an unaccented man’s voice, a bit gravelly, say that Mrs. Van Horn could not come to the phone because she was in the bathroom “taking a tinkle,” but he could prove that he was holding her hostage. He said that she was wearing a bathrobe and slippers and she was a short, heavy-set lady with blue eyes and gray hair and her hair had recently been “done.”

Hunny said, “That was on TV. Everybody in Albany County knows what Mom was wearing and what she looks like.”

“If you want the old lady back in one piece,” the voice said,

“it’s going to cost you ten thousand dollars. Put the money in a paper bag with Mom written on it and leave it on the bench outside Price Chopper on Delaware Avenue at seven o’clock.

Then we will let her go. If you don’t do like I say, I might have to get rough with your mother. Punch her in the face or somethin’.”

Hunny looked at me, and I shook my head. He said, “I think you are full of it,” and slammed the phone down.

Again, I tried to retrieve the caller’s number, but this number was blocked, too.

“Was this another one?” Art said. “A second kidnapper?”

“He said I should leave ten thousand dollars on a bench outside the Delaware Avenue Price Chopper. He sounded like a complete doofus. Artie, girl, I think we’re going to have to get an unlisted number. I’ll call Verizon tomorrow. They’d be closed today, it being Sunday.”

“This kidnapper was cheaper than the last one,” Antoine said.

“If your mom wasn’t in grave danger, you could almost shop around.”

I said, “This one did sound like a flake. If he’s somehow for real, he’ll call back. It’s possible the first call was also a hoax, but you shouldn’t take that chance. I’m going to call the police, Hunny.”

“Oh, yes, Donald, I suppose you must. Do whatever you think is best.”

I made the call on my cell phone and luckily was able to reach my friend in the Albany PD. I explained the situation, and he said he would (a) notify the Rensselaer sheriff of this new development and (b) explain to the detectives on duty in Albany that they needed to set up a trap on Hunny’s phone line, and then be prepared to surveil the ransom drop-off and follow the kidnappers to wherever Mrs. Van Horn was being held. I said I couldn’t guarantee that this wasn’t a hoax, but my contact agreed that we couldn’t risk that the threat wasn’t real. He said that kidnapping claims directed at the very wealthy always had to be taken seriously. He said two Albany PD detectives would arrive at Hunny’s house within ten minutes.

Just as I was finishing up with the cop, there was a ruckus in the living room, and the kitchen door flew open. An excited Marylou Whitney came crashing into the room bathed in white light, which we soon saw was from the television lights mounted atop a video camera. She was trying unsuccessfully to keep a pinch-faced, scowling middle-aged man in a jacket and tie from entering the kitchen with her. The man looked at Hunny and barked, “Huntington Van Horn? I think you need to answer a few questions. This hoax has gone on long enough, and so has your refusal to return the billion dollars that came out of the pockets of hard-working Americans who do not support the radical homosexual agenda.”

Antoine said, “Who is this Froot Loop?”

“Girl, I guess you don’t watch Focks News,” Hunny said. “I don’t either, but I recognize Mr. Bill O’Malley from seeing his picture on Inside Edition. Come on in, girl, sit your skinny ass 84 Richard Stevenson down here and I’ll pour you a drink. Or would you prefer some weed?”