Still, I wondered if there was any way I could have kept Hunny from looking spectacularly foolish once again. Now I was even more determined to help keep Hunny from acting like his own worst enemy and — although I hadn’t gone to Dartmouth and was not so much revolted by Hunny as fascinated by him —
help keep him from becoming the cultural right’s poster boy for abominable homosexual depravity.
Bill O’Malley had not gotten an answer to his question about who the Brienings were, and as I drove I tried to formulate a story for Hunny to use in case the question came up again. Hunny had been seriously drunk on the O’Malley show, so maybe he could get away with saying he had misspoken. And instead of the Brienings he had meant to say the Grindings or the Rhinestones or the Bite-sizes, not that those made any sense to anybody, either. But Hunny had a knack for brazening things out, so I supposed he could redeploy his broad range of improvisational talents.
While I had Nelson on the line, I told him I had met the Brienings, and it was my belief that they were not directly responsible for the disappearance, but that the threatening letter they had sent Mrs. Van Horn might somehow have caused Mother Van Horn to panic and bolt. Meanwhile, I suggested, we ought to respond with vague evasions to any questions from the press or the police about the mysterious Brienings.
114 Richard Stevenson
The Mason Doebler threat was going to be harder to finesse.
Doebler had apparently contacted O’Malley’s people and lied about having been molested by Hunny, borrowing and whimsically altering Stu Hood’s story, in a desperate attempt to extract more than the thousand dollars Hunny had promised Mason for his new catalytic converter. Three hundred seventy-five million dollars could put a real dent in Hunny’s bank account. Hood was sure to get wind of this development, and perhaps he would then sue Doebler for either invasion of privacy or plagiarism. Either way, I knew of lawyers the aging arsonist could hire who would gleefully take this on.
I arrived at Hunny’s house and parked across the street just as Art drove up and eased their dingy Explorer into the driveway, which was so tiny the suv stuck out about a foot onto the cracked sidewalk. Several TV crews were still on the scene, but instead of pouncing in their normal way they approached the vehicle tentatively. As I approached, Art told them, “Mr. Van Horn is under the weather and will have nothing more to say to the media until further notice.” The reporters all seemed to accept this.
Some looked chastened, others bordering on queasy. They had either seen or heard about the O’Malley fiasco. The two Gray Security guards also stood off to the side looking pensive.
Hunny climbed out of the back seat with a Budweiser beach towel over his head and face, and Art led him as quickly as Hunny’s unsteady gait would allow up the front steps and into the house. I followed close behind.
Antoine and the twins had left for the night, but Marylou was in the living room stretched out on the couch, her ball gown up around her knees. As we came in, Marylou switched off the TV, stood up and straightened her skirts. “Huntington, you naughty boy!” she said gaily. “Am I going to have to send you to the woodshed? Oh, my word, when they showed that female impersonator pretending to be me, and you said, no, that’s not Marylou Whitney, that’s Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, the war criminal, I just thought I was going to wet my pants!”
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Hunny flopped into a chair and lit a Marlboro from a pack on the coffee table. “Well, they can insult me, Marylou. I am just one of Sarah Palin’s reg-ler Amur-kins. But when they start in on the elite such as yourself, then they have gone too far. I have the deepest respect for the elite, especially an elegant society lady like yourself. Oh, Artie, dearest, I think I need a pick-me-up. Would you be so kind as to indulge your favorite old tosspot?”
Marylou tsk-tsked Hunny. “Is that wise, Huntington?”
Art’s thinking was similar. “Hunny, honey, I’m shutting you off, and you are going right straight to bed. You have to be up bright and early when they resume the search for your mom. Or maybe she’ll turn up while you’re dreaming, and you ought to be bright and perky to welcome her back at the crack of dawn.”
Hunny was suddenly alert. “The crack of who? The crack of Don Johnson?”
“How about Donnie Osmand?”
“Yecchh.”
“Or Don Giovanni,” Marylou said, and then trilled something Timmy would have recognized.
“How about Don Strachey’s adorable crack?” Hunny cooed in my direction. “Donald, you aren’t saying much. I think you have turned morose again. I can’t imagine why. I don’t suppose you caught me on the Bill O’Malley show, did you, by chance?”
“I did. Hunny, you might need to sober up until your multiplicity of problems have been taken care of. It would be really helpful if you did that.”
“Artie, do get me one more shot, would you, please, doll face?”
“Nuh-uh. You’ve had more than enough. Donald is correct.”
Hunny snapped, “All right, then don’t! Anyhoo,” he went on, his head suddenly pitching forward, “maybe we should all call it a night. Don, will you be joining Arthur and me in our bed chamber? If you do, you’ll be glad you did. Ecstatic, in fact.
Thrilled to your receding hairline.”
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“No, thank you.”
“Oh, you must have attended the church up the street from the one I went to. Methodists sometimes allow a bit of leeway, but Presbyterians are generally stick-in-the-muds when it comes to sharing the masculine booty. Are you Presbyterian, Donald?”
“I once was. You nailed me, Hunny. Now I am more of an anarcho-vaguely Buddhist-secular humanist-worshiper of a good night’s sleep.”
Hunny arched an eyebrow and was about to say something else when his head suddenly toppled over again and his eyes blinked shut.
“Not to worry,” Art told me. “Hunny isn’t dead. He’s just through for the night.” Hunny’s Marlboro dangled from his fingers and Art bent down and took it away. “Anybody want the rest of this? I hate to waste cigarettes. Do you know how much these things cost nowadays? I’ve tried to get Hunny to quit, mostly because of the incredible expense. But he said he’d give up food first, or his blood pressure pills, which cost nine hundred fifty-eight dollars a month, and his co-pay is almost two fifty.
Of course, now that he’s richer than Prince Harry, Hunny won’t have to worry about co-pays and what have you. Still, where I grew up in Schenectady, you didn’t waste money and put out a perfectly good cigarette until it was smoked down to the filter. Or if it didn’t have a filter, my dad might get out the tweezers like it was a roach. Not that he ever knew what a doobie was. Anybody want this?”
“Just snip off the hot end and save the rest for later,” Marylou said. “I’ve seen people do that in Palm Beach since Madoff.”
I asked Marylou, “Were there any useful phone calls while Hunny was out? Nothing new from Golden Gardens, I take it.”
“No, darling, there was just a brief call from Detective Sanders.
He saw Hunny on Bill O’Malley, and he asked me if I knew who the Brienings were. Who are they, anyway? As Hunny’s media representative, I need to be kept in the loop and on top of the information flow. And don’t worry yourselves over what I might CoCkeyed
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have to say to anyone on the subject of the Brienings, whoever they are. Everybody who knows me knows that spin is my forte.”
Art said, “Hunny will brief you in the a.m., Marylou. The Brienings may actually be the biggest fly in the ointment we’re having to deal with.”
“No other calls?” I asked.
“No. Oh, there was one, actually. Do either of you know a Quentin Shoemaker?”
Art said no, but I said I thought the name sounded vaguely familiar.
“Mr. Shoemaker said he saw Hunny on Bill O’Malley and he wants to come down from Vermont where he lives and help Hunny out. He is one of the original Radical Fairies, he said. And now Mr. Shoemaker is part of a commune up in Ferrisburg called the Rdq, and he thinks Hunny is getting a raw deal both from horrid right wingers like Bill O’Malley and also from all the gay people in Albany and across the nation who are not coming to Hunny’s defense as he gets dragged through the slime.”
“That’s where I heard of Shoemaker,” I said. “I’ve read about the Rdq. It’s a kind of neo-hippie group, the Radical Drama Queens.”
“Oh, lovely, lovely! I think this is just the pick-me-up that Hunny needs at this point. I’m sure the RDQ will bring a breath of sanity and fresh air into all our lives. And at this dark moment, we certainly could use a ray of sunshine or six. Since Hunny won the Instant Warren, his life has just gotten so…
complicated.
Perhaps some people who have been placed on this earth to promote peace and love will simplify things and remind every one of us what is really important in life.”
Art said, “Marylou, honey, what you are saying sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking.”
That sounded right to me.
First thing in the morning, Hunny announced he was going to have “a shot of the twink that bit me,” but Art said, “No, pootykins, I am shutting you the hell off again.”
“Then bacon and eggs, it is!” Hunny declared heartily. “There will be plenty of time when I enjoy my customary elevenses to march into General Jack Daniels’ office and salute smartly.”
Hunny had phoned Nelson at the East Greenbush sheriff ’s office, where the search for Mrs. Van Horn had resumed, but no sign of her had yet been found.
Now the kitchen phone rang, and Hunny started and looked frightened. “Maybe this is about Mom. Oh Lord, oh Lord.”
He picked up the receiver. “Van Horn residence.” He listened for a minute or so with a look of consternation and finally said,
“Well, maybe
you
should be in rehab —
butting-in rehab
is what you really ought to sign up for!” He banged down the receiver.
“It was just one of my thousands of non-fans,” Hunny said glumly. “Somebody who saw me on Bill O’Malley. You know, boys, that entire portion of last evening is hazy. Tell me the truth.
Was I charming, and was I an effective spokesperson for the celebrity community? Or did I arrive at the studio snockered, and did I hop around on one foot and stick my other foot up my ass so that it was coming out of my throat and looked really weird on TV and grossed everybody out?”
“The latter,” I said.
“Donald,” Hunny said, fumbling with a fresh pack of Marlboros, “how did you sleep? Were you comfortable enough on the guest room fold-out?”
“The metal bar in the middle hit me in the back. But I folded up the bed and placed the mattress on the floor and slept there.
It was fine.”
“On the floor! Donald, you are such a primitive. It’s Jungle
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Jim. It’s Bomba the Jungle Boy. This is starting to turn me on.”
Busy getting breakfast together, Art looked over his shoulder and said, “How do you like your eggs, Donald?”
“Scrambled, thank you.”
The phone rang again. “Van Horn residence. Oh, Detective Sanders. I am so glad to hear your official-sounding voice. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, Detective Strachey is just to my port side. In fact, I was just about to offer him a glass of port. Here, let me put him on.” To me, Hunny said, “Colonel Sanders says there is no news on his end, but he wishes to speak with you.”
“I’ve been in touch with the East Greenbush sheriff,” Sanders told me, “and people over there have resumed the search for Mrs.
Van Horn. But they’re starting to run out of territory the old lady might have wandered into on her own. It’s looking more and more as if she got a ride somewhere, and yet nobody has reported picking up an elderly woman in her bathrobe and slippers. That pretty much leaves us with, she’s with somebody she knows. Her family and friends all deny taking her anywhere, but there may be somebody who’s been left out of that equation that you all are not thinking of. Would you please ask Mr. Van Horn about friends of his mother who maybe haven’t been contacted yet?”
“Sure. Mr. Van Horn’s mind is functioning more efficiently than it was yesterday, and I’ll see what I can find out.” Hunny looked at me cross-eyed and smacked himself on the forehead a couple of times.
“I take it,” Sanders said, “that there have been no more calls from supposed kidnappers.”
“No.”
“An abduction is unlikely then. Anybody doing it would likely have made their ransom demands by now. But I’m still intrigued by these people the Brienings. Mr. Van Horn mentioned them again last night on Bill O’Malley. He said that if his mom was watching she should not worry about the Brienings, that he would deal with them. These are the same Brienings, I take it, that Mr. Van Horn might give half a billion dollars to?”
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“Probably. Are you sure he said Brienings on O’Malley? Some of his speech was indistinct.”
“You heard it as clearly as I did, Strachey. I’ve replayed the video of the O’Malley show twice. Now, what gives here? Who are the Brienings, and where do they fit into the equation? Look, I am playing straight with you, and I expect you to play straight with me. Otherwise, well…I don’t know. You’ll find that I am not a policeman to be screwed around with.”
“Lieutenant, let me get back to you on that. I do appreciate your interest and concern.”
“I’ll be back over to Mr. Van Horn’s residence this afternoon.
I’ll expect to be clued in. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Fair enough.”
I hung up and said to Hunny, “Sanders is interested in the Brienings. You mentioned them on O’Malley last night.”
“I did? What in heaven’s name did I say?”
“That your mom should not worry about them. That if they had something to do with her disappearance, you would deal with them.”
“I said that on TV?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Blabbety-blabbety-blabbety. That must have been me.”