“No, it’s not like a bloodhound,” Shoemaker said. “But Ethan would need a photograph of the missing lady.”
140 Richard Stevenson
“There is one on top of the TV,” Hunny said. “It’s Mom in happier days. She’s fluffy and sassy and she’s got all her marbles.
It was taken while Dad was still alive and the cancer hadn’t been found.”
Art said, “Hunny’s father passed on at a relatively young age, sixty-four.”
There was a knock at the front screen door, and a voice I recognized as Card Sanders’ called, “Hello?”
Hunny whispered to Shoemaker, “It’s the police. They don’t know about the Brienings. Don’t say anything. We don’t want Mom to get arrested for embezzlement.”
Shoemaker said, “Gotcha.”
Art went out and led Sanders into the kitchen, and Hunny offered him some pizza. He said he’d had lunch, thanks, and he said he was sorry that there was still no word on Mrs. Van Horn’s whereabouts. Sanders and Shoemaker were introduced, and Shoemaker said, “Sagittarius.”
Sanders ignored this and said, “Right now, I’d like to speak with you, Mr. Van Horn, and Mr. Strachey privately, if there’s someplace we can go.”
“About Mom?” Hunny got shaky again and reached for a glass which wasn’t there.
“Yes, about your mother.”
“Anything you have to say about Mom you can say in front of Arthur, of course, and Mr. Shoemaker is my confidante.”
“Are you his attorney?” Sanders asked Shoemaker.
“No, his good fairy.”
Sanders said to Hunny, “I need to know about the Brienings.”
Silence. Nobody moved.
“Just let’s have it. What’s the story with the Brienings?”
Hunny said, “Huh? The O’Briens?”
“No, Clyde and Arletta Briening. Mrs. Van Horn’s former CoCkeyed
141
employers at Crafts-a-Palooza in Cobleskill. I looked at your mother’s work history, which is on file at Golden Gardens. For six years she was employed as a bookkeeper for the Brienings.
Recently, Mr. Van Horn, you’ve been talking about giving the Brienings half your billion-dollar lottery payout. And on Bill O’Malley last night you told your mother that if she was watching, and if the Brienings had anything to do with her disappearance, she shouldn’t worry, that you would deal with them. So, the question is, what’s the story here? What am I not being told?”
Sanders leaned against the door frame and waited.
Hunny said, “This is very painful to talk about.”
“Yes, but it could be helpful. All any of us in law enforcement want is to get your mom back in one piece. Just like you do, Mr.
Van Horn.”
“Believe me,” Hunny said, “the Brienings have nothing to do with Mom being missing.”
“That may well be. But in a missing persons case it is important for investigators to have a total profile of the subject. You never know when a piece of that profile that appears innocuous or irrelevant at first glance could turn out to be significant. Please just trust me on this, and if there’s nothing useful here, so be it. I’m just intrigued as to why you’re considering giving these Briening folks half a billion dollars. It’s a fortune. They must be pretty important to you and your mother.”
Hunny looked for his glass again and said, “They are.”
We all watched Hunny.
“Do you promise that what I tell you will never be repeated?
Not to anybody?”
“I can’t really promise that, Mr. Van Horn. I’m not in a position to make such a guarantee. But I can say that confidentiality is an important part of any police investigation, both for ethical and practical reasons. I’ll do everything within my power to guard whatever you tell me and make sure it will help, not hurt, you and your mother and this investigation.”
142 Richard Stevenson
Hunny looked down and mumbled something none of us could understand.
Sanders said, “Sorry?”
Hunny raised his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and said plainly, “Clyde Briening is my real father.”
“Oh. Really?”
Art, standing by the sink, began studying the refrigerator magnets. One had a Tom of Finland drawing of a man with a penis the size of Quentin Shoemaker’s left leg on it, and another had a picture of George W. Bush and the letters w-t-f.
Hunny said, “When my father was away at National Guard summer camp, my mother had one too many after dinner one night. She was a little too well lubricated for her own good.
Lonely for some company, she committed adultery with Clyde, a neighbor at the time. Being a good Epworth League lady, Mom was not in the habit of doing this, and she never did it again, as far as any of us knows. I was born nine months later, and Dad was never good at math, so it never became an issue. Until, that is, I won the lottery. Then Clyde and Arletta got in touch and said they would spill the beans on Mom and on me unless I paid them half a billion dollars. Clyde says he has proof that I’m his son.
He got a sample of my sperm — through a young visitor he sent here, but you don’t want to hear about that — and he is having a dnA test done that will prove what he claims. He says it’s only fair that his own flesh and blood spread the wealth around. He and Arletta are horrible people, but rather than risk embarrassing Mom, I may just pay them what they want. I’d still have half a billion left, a nice piece of change, and then Clyde and Arletta could just go…they could just go take a flying fuck at a donut!”
Sanders studied Hunny for a long moment. He said, “Jesus.”
“Now you know. And now you know why I beg of you, Lieutenant, that none of this leaks out.”
“Well, it does sound as if it is in the Brienings’ interest that your mother returns safe and sound to the nursing home.”
“Yes.”
CoCkeyed
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“But this is a form of extortion. Do you understand that?”
“I know, I know, and I don’t
care
.”
“Jesus.”
“Sometimes families’ dark secrets that have been buried should not be dug up. Like in
Suddenly Last Summer
. Liz Taylor went poking around in Montgomery Clift’s past and was oh so sorry she ever took the trouble to be so curious.”
Sanders said, “Well, it’s your family, Mr. Van Horn. And your money.”
“Right on both counts.”
“But why did you say on Bill O’Malley that if the disappearance had anything to do with the Brienings, your Mom shouldn’t worry, you would deal with them?”
Hunny looked at his lap again.
Mumble, mumble.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look, I was drunk on O’Malley. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t have any kind of serious drinking problem, but I sometimes do toss a few back when I probably shouldn’t, and then I say things that are confused or inappropriate. Arthur and I were just having a heart-to-heart about that subject this morning. I am actually off the sauce until Mom is back with me, and then we are going to cele-
brate
. And you are certainly invited to join us, Lieutenant.”
Sanders looked over at me. I said, “Like Hunny says, now you know.”
He kept looking at me. “Do I?”
“You know as much as I do.”
Art said something about the day heating up again and asked us if anybody would like a root beer. We all accepted this nice offer, except for Detective Sanders, who left looking thoughtful.
Just after five in the afternoon, Nelson phoned with the news that the body of an elderly woman had been found in a wooded area in the town of Nassau. This was about six miles from East Greenbush. The dead woman was said to have been clad in a bathrobe and had no identification on her. She had not been dead long, and it was unclear whether the death had been from natural or other causes. The body was being kept temporarily in an ambulance near the site where it had been discovered, and Nelson said he was about to be driven over there to view the corpse and declare whether or not it was Rita Van Horn.
Hunny remained seated at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Art sat next to him, an arm over Hunny’s shoulders. No one had much to say. Occasionally, Hunny shook his head and cried quietly. “Oh, Mom, Mom.”
Quentin Shoemaker had already driven back to Vermont to consult with the Rdq psychic and the commune’s astrologer, but Marylou and the twins had arrived at the house. They stayed in the living room monitoring the local TV news. There had been a brief report about a woman’s body being found in Nassau, but no details were yet available.
Hunny’s sister Miriam phoned at one point, but she was hysterical and unable to speak for long.
Before the call from Nelson came, I had brought up the laundry basket from the basement and organized its contents on one end of the kitchen table. This was the heap of hundreds of letters, phone messages and e-mails that had arrived in the days following Hunny’s lottery win begging for money or — in some cases — demanding cash in return for silence about some indiscretion or supposedly illegal act on Hunny’s part. More letters had arrived that afternoon, a couple of them from national gay organizations pleading with Hunny not to make any more public appearances where he embarrassed the gay movement and
146 Richard Stevenson
“jeopardized the gains in public opinion and acceptance of gay men and women over recent decades,” as one organization put it.
I made three piles, one called Deal With, another called Not Urgent, and a third — which included the letters from national gay organizations — called Go Fuck Yourself.
The Deal With pile contained a number of blackmail threats I had already defused. Or thought I had — Mason Doebler’s lawsuit came as a rude surprise, and I could only surmise that he had been conned by a scuzzy lawyer into believing that he had a case. But now Hunny had his own scuzzy lawyer, a man I had recommended. A year earlier Bob Chicarelli had gotten me mixed up with a couple of Albany psychos whose case almost got Timmy thrown off a high balcony in Bangkok, Thailand.
This guy owed me a favor.
While we waited to hear from Nelson, I sifted through the letters and notes looking for any possible connection, however remote, to Mrs. Van Horn’s disappearance. None of the writers or callers mentioned her at all. A few of the extortion attempts urged Hunny to avoid embarrassing his family. But this seemed like generic blackmail-note language. There was no indication that any of these people even knew Hunny had parents to embarrass.
Two of the Deal With messages did seem worrisome. One was from an Albany man who claimed Hunny had given him gonorrhea in 1998, and he was sure he had named Hunny as a contact when he went to the std clinic, and if he sued Hunny the clinic records would be subpoenaed. Plainly, this was just some jerk angling for an embarrassment-avoidance settlement
— his threat was legally moronic — but I noted his name and contact information so that we could have a talk. Also in need of attention was the phone message left by an Albany man who claimed Hunny had promised him ten dollars if Hunny could photograph the man’s genitalia with his cell phone. Hunny had not only reneged on the payment, the man said, but later a picture of the man’s erect penis turned up on the Internet. Now he was thinking of suing Hunny but said he would consider an out-of-court settlement. I figured I would meet this one and give him CoCkeyed
147
ten dollars and a wedgie.
The Not Urgent pile consisted mainly of pleas for financial aid for good causes, less good causes and individuals whose requests would have to be considered case by case. Hunny’s idea of setting up a foundation like Paul Newman and his wife Bea Arthur’s was looking like the way to go.
The Go Fuck Yourself pile of messages included the ones from the gay organizations that were politely begging Hunny to cease to exist, as well as entirely silly requests like the one from the Albany man who asked for fifty dollars reimbursement for damage done to a valued article of the man’s clothing. He said that in 1978 Hunny had spilled a glass of Jack Daniels on the man’s cashmere sweater at the Playhouse, a long-defunct Central Avenue piano bar, and Hunny had never paid the man’s dry-cleaning bill.
Sadly, the contents of the laundry basket were going to have to be dealt with in their various ways no matter how things went with Hunny’s missing mom. There was also the unnerving possibility that Mrs. Van Horn had met with foul play, in which case Hunny would be legally obliged to hand the letters and messages over to the police for them to paw through. That could get ugly both for Hunny and for many of the schmoes, schlemiels and schmegeggies bent on grabbing hold of a piece of Hunny’s unexpected bounty.
The phone rang four times while we waited to hear from Nelson. Two were press inquiries, and one was the Democratic Senate Campaign Fund calling again. Hunny was abrupt with all three callers and understandably harsh in his remarks to the Democrats.
The fourth call was from Stu Hood. Hunny was too upset to talk with Stu, who was told to call back on my cell phone so that Hunny’s land line could be kept open.
Out on Hunny’s back porch, I told Stu, “Look, you’ll get your thousand dollars. But you have to be patient. Hunny’s mother is still missing and that is the only thing he’s thinking about at the moment. Haven’t you heard about Mrs. Van Horn?”
148 Richard Stevenson
“I don’t think they get that channel at the Watering Hole.
They just get wrestling.”
“Well, it’s a serious situation. A woman’s body was discovered over in Nassau this afternoon, and it might be Mrs. Van Horn.
We’re waiting to hear from someone who went out to possibly identify the body. So you have to cool it, Stu. We’ll be in touch later in the week about your thousand, and I’m guessing that you can figure out a way to scare up forty or fifty to tide you over in the meantime.”
“Okay,” Hood said, “but anyway I am seriously thinking of backing out of that agreement. A thousand dollars is not gonna do me much good, and I deserve a whole lot more. I heard Mason Doebler is going for the big money and he has a good chance of getting it. Somebody I know saw Mason on TV saying Hunny fucked him when he was an altar boy and Mason wants three million dollars or something. And Hunny wasn’t even a priest, just some horny old troll in the park, so the fuckin’ pope can’t stop Mason from getting recompensed.”