"That was Dog as Divine in the stage version of Pink Flamingos," Carl informed us.
Todd and I turned toward the yard, where Joe Dog was thrashing about the tattered remains of the trampoline, bits of decayed canvas flying up and landing like massacred butterflies in the tall grass.
"Wasn't Divine on the big side?" I said.
"Maybe that's why he didn't get the role." Carl rolled his hand in Todd's direction. "Continue."
"How was I to know she was a bouncer?" Todd complained, then redressed the pronoun to salve his self-esteem. "He..."
"Heavens to Murgatroyd!" exclaimed Joe Dog, running in circles around the now-empty trampoline frame. I had always thought actors had a modicum of intelligence, if for no other reason than to remember their lines. Maybe Joe Dog specialized in non-speaking roles.
"So the girl who started all of this jumped in, but she wasn't after me. She was after the guy beating me up. And she said, 'Don't hurt him, he's my brother!' And that's when all this started."
"Barbara was already working there?" I said, my mind sorting through the various timelines I had pieced together.
"She was a re-hire," Carl nodded.
Todd looked abashed, and it was no stretch seeing why. Until seeing me that morning he had been able to logic his way out of the embarrassing scenario of having put moves on his biological sister. He had yet to acknowledge his part in the Skunk-monkey family tree. Everyone had someone who resembled them. Look how many Elvis lookalikes infest the country. But there were strong hints from both sides that the unlikely was crossing into plausibility, and that he had been playing catch the beaver with my sister, Jeremy's sister...his own sister. Not that such a thing had been unheard of on Oregon Hill in the old days, where DNA marched to a markedly different drummer.
"You should thank Dog for saving you from making a really disgusting mistake," Carl said, flapping a gracious hand in Joe Dog's direction. The Fifties geek had freed himself from the trampoline ring and was now twirling an invisible hoola hoop. The pernicious idiocy of method acting led me to wonder how Joe Dog would train for a role as a superhero. Would he begin jumping off skyscrapers?
I tried to imagine gooching Barbara and encountered the usual brotherly revulsion. A perfectly natural, and preferable, reaction—although it doesn't always work out that way. I only went to Sunday school once. After submitting some impertinent questions about Eve getting it on with Cain and Abel, I was escorted out the door. There are too many people in church, anyway.
"I would've left after being picked off the floor," Todd continued, "but Barbara offered me a drink..."
And he had been unwilling to turn it down. I marveled at the novelty of that moment. Not just the fact that he had met by chance his long lost sister, but that a pole dancer had offered a beer on the house to a patron. Maybe that was when Carl's hair went white.
Todd and Barbara had gone off to a cozy table, to the surprise of witnesses who had heard her complain about the creepy nerd grabbing at her. I felt squeamish on hearing my second self described in this way. Was I beginning to identify with him? Was I wounded by disparagement directed at him? How many times in the past had I experienced an unaccountable emotion that could be attributable to Todd's constipation? How far away would I have to move to escape his psychic influence?
I was saddened and unsurprised that Barbara did not have a picture of me to show Todd. Sisters are not known to carry snapshots of their brothers in their wallets or G-strings. Besides, the only recent picture of me was the one taken for my work ID. Todd had to take her word that he and I were dead ringers. Naturally cautious, Todd gave out few details of his life, but he slipped when he told her where he lived. Not the exact address, just the neighborhood. This triggered a memory in Barbara—something Jeremy had told her years ago about having lived in a castle before landing in doo-doo land. He didn't make a fuss, because he quickly discovered he preferred Oregon Hill to the starchy suburbs. He could torment his peers to his heart's content, without a single social worker or concerned parent butting their nose in his business. You could fire off a .22, pee in the street and (later, but not all that much later) fall dead drunk in a neighbor's yard. Yuppification finally triumphed against Doubletalk and his spiritual brethren, but it wasn't easy, and not really all that becoming.
As a small boy, though, Jeremy had not harped much on his dislocation, which was probably why all I remembered was his venomous behavior towards me. I was a second Todd, a fresh punching bag. I'm amazed he didn't mention my lookalike to me, not even as a tool for psychological manipulation. Maybe Skunk threatened him with a fate worse than torture and death if he told me. It was also possible that Jeremy was dumb enough to think Todd and I were one and the same.
Carl, with his magnetic sense for unchained money, had joined Barbara and Todd, going so far as to offer more drinks on the house and voluntarily adding white hairs to his thinning crop. And soon enough, almost boastfully, Barbara brought up the Brink's job. This is one of those blots on the escutcheon that most families prefer to keep under wraps. But in what some might consider the lower depths, armed robbery is a sign of achievement, sometimes the only achievement, among an otherwise useless lot.
Todd was puzzled, until he was informed that the money had never been recovered.
"Oh...whoa...forget it. My father earned a ton in asbestos abatement. He had the premier state contract. Those government workers were dropping like flies from asbestoxicosis or whatever the hell gets in your lungs. That's what killed my father. He wore a mask on the job sites, but in the end it wasn't enough. Anyway, he didn't wear a mask all the time. He thought it was all a scam, which didn't matter seeing he was making all that dough. But I guess it's true, because he began coughing and coughing and next thing we knew he was in an oxygen tent and then he was croaker. OK, he wore a mask sometimes, most of the time, but he smoked like a fish, so maybe it was that."
"How can someone smoke like a fish?" Carl had asked, making guppy lips as he blew smoke Todd's way.
Todd must have seen Barbara had fallen in with some hard types, and it didn't take long for him to warm to them—even the ugly waitress who had mugged him, and who had seated her skanky self next to him at the table. I had a hard time picturing Joe Dog as a girl of any stripe.
But when Barbara raised the possibility of a family reunion, with me, Jeremy and herself in a rousing memorial to the departed Skunk, Todd backed off. It was obvious we were a bunch of moochers. Besides, he only had Barbara's word that they were related. He had yet to see me.
His reluctance goaded them into conspiracy. After he left the bar, Carl began working on Barbara. Was she sure about the resemblance? How accurate was her memory of Jeremy's comments? Above all...what's all this about Brinks?
Up to the day Todd walked through his door, Carl had never heard of Skunk, which surprised me. I had always thought the crook grapevine to be all-encompassing. We prefer our criminals to be smart, since that's the least painful method of explaining their way of outsmarting us. But the reality was that the vaunted criminal underground reflected the limitations of its users. Skunk's name was well known, but only in specific circles, like some renowned surgeon known as Dr. Death among his peers. Ask any former state roomy about Skunk and you were bound to receive a knowing roll of the eyes.
But it seemed Carl's experience with justice was mostly local, within the city jail, where his meals were outsourced to illegal immigrants instead of being served up by fellow desperados. He had been in temporary residence for various violations, such as: tax evasion, serving drinks to minors, pimping, loan sharking, failure to report a traffic accident, allowing tobacco smoking on the premises, bribery (successful and otherwise) of city inspectors, contributing to the delinquency of minors, disturbing the peace, distribution of pornography, holding illegal lotteries, creating a moral panic, various "inchoate" offenses (including conspiracy), criminal recklessness and negligence, masturbating in front of the elderly, the underaged, and the general public (which
might come under "deviancy", but you never know these days), providing a haven for pollution, bootlegging, defecating on city property (without benefit of the city facilities), defacement of a city vehicle (lining up his boogers while sitting in the back of a parole car), common assault and using profanity against public officials. He was what you might call an enormous personality, so enormous that he just couldn't keep his mens rea under wrap. Obviously there was fire under all that smoke, but the smoke itself was so thick that the man was obscured. The local news media thrived on his bad name without doing much more than the stir the murk. To the prurient-minded city councilmen, it all came down to the fact that Carl had unreasonable access to a lot of fine flesh.
Of course I was jealous.
Seeing as Todd had temporarily dropped out of the story, Carl took the baton.
"I told Barb she should keep the meeting with Todd to herself, so of course she goes straight to Jeremy and blabs her guts. I have a feeling he had been out to the River Road house before, maybe to drive by and gander the place, because he didn't have no problem finding it again. Only this time, now that he knew Todd was an orphan, he knocked at the door."
"To give his condolences?" I sniggered at Todd.
"Actually, he did," Todd said wryly.
"For about a minute," Carl said. "Then he started twisting the screws. 'Share the wealth or I'll tell the cops where it came from,' or something like that. Am I right?"
Todd gave him a surly look. "I tried to explain that my father paid for the house—"
"No mortgage," Carl interjected, his tubbiness quivering with deep meaning.
"Is that a crime?" Todd snotted.
"My house was paid for long ago," I pointed out. "It's been in the family for a hundred years."
"And looks it," said Carl.
I had fallen in with the vacuous sniping and deserved the comeback. I'm proud of my house, but while I might take steps against an arsonist, defending it against slander is just too much trouble. I subsided.
"So you were how old when your father died?" Carl inquired.
"You're talking about Ben Neerson, the man who stuck it to Mom and made me," Todd answered crudely, sucking every ounce of romance out of the moment. Not all twins think alike. In fact, there are some pairs where one is perfectly sane while the other is totally schizoid. My eyes narrowed. This sick bastard's been spying on me, I thought. Then I relaxed. The whole world was out to get me, so what was the difference?
"I suppose that’s the man," Carl nodded.
"Same age as I am now," Todd said lowly, catching me in a glance. I was the same age now as when Skunk died, but we were too wary to compare birthdays.
"There was never any talk about money that I remember," Todd continued. "I don’t understand why Mom moved out. I never heard her screaming about being broke."
"Precisely," Carl smarmed.
"There weren't any celebrations, either." Todd arched an eyebrow in Carl's direction. I wondered if I was capable of that expression, or even if it came naturally, without my knowledge of it. I found it peculiar and unsightly and blushed for both of us. Todd said: "You'd think there would've been some kind of celebration if they'd come into a lot of cash. Besides, Dad wouldn't have risked losing what he had by taking stolen money. He had more in ready cash than what those jokers took from Brinks. I told you, he was in asbestos—"
"SWAM," I said.
Todd and Carl looked at me bemusedly.
"Did your father always have the abatement contract?" I asked Todd. "Was there any time that you can remember when he said something about losing it?"
"Not really..." Todd said uncomfortably.
"There's probably a way to look it up on a computer," I said, without adding "If I only knew how to turn one on."
"Something came up last year," Todd admitted. "I just remember him saying something about losing the house."
"Sounds like money talk to me," Carl observed, then turned to the yard. "Will you stop making that racket, Dog? I know you're crazy, but there's no sense letting the neighbors in on the secret."
Joe Dog stopped rolling in the grass and weeds and blinked at Carl. Of course he was crazy, he seemed to be saying. It went with the profession. We all waited for him to bark, then returned to our lunatic conversation. I said:
"I was thinking about the state's SWAM program. That's Small, Women and Minorities."
"What, a program for midgets?" Carl said, having missed the comma. More proof that most crooks have the mental odds stacked against them.
"That's an acronym," Todd scowled, and turned to me. "Right?"
"When the state buys anything, it gives preferential treatment to small businesses, women and minorities."
"That's discrimination!" Carl protested, genuinely moved.
"When's the last time you hired a fat pole dancer?" Todd asked.
"Or a grandmother?" I added.
My brother and I exchanged glances, dismayed to find ourselves on the same wavelength, however briefly.
"That's different," Carl said. "That's art."
Todd and I sniggered in unison, then shut up just as quickly. How embarrassing. I put it on a par with seeing yourself pick your nose on a surveillance tape with Miss Manners in the audience.
"He was probably lying to me, because he died broke." Todd seemed to be inferring that some kind of ultimate price had been paid and that one should not speak ill of the dead.
"Broke, but still with the house," Carl persisted.
I was still yearning to see a picture of Todd's alleged family. When he put me off, I asked, "Did you see your father dead?"
"Hmmm?"
"You went to the funeral?" I said.
Carl saw where I was headed. "You think Skunk split his time between families?"
"Half the time I was growing up...more than half...he was in jail." I eyed Todd closely. "But did he spend all that time in jail?"
I was waiting for Todd to confirm my growing suspicion that, in addition to his other crimes, Skunk had been a bigamist. All my alleged brother had to say was that his father had spent a great deal of time away from home. An excessive number of abatement conventions, out-of-state construction sites that had to be visited, late meetings, early appointments...the list of excuses was virtually endless for the modern man with multiple families. The problem being that, at my end, Skunk had never displayed the energy that kind of life demanded. In fact, I sometimes wondered if he spent so much time in the slammer because his escapes were so sluggish. "Hurry up, boys! The cops are on the way! Wait, here's a 7/11. Let's get a case of beer." That was Skunk's league. And to secretly maintain two families, you needed the gear of practicality: a daytimer, a digital watch, and a fair degree of organizational savvy, none of which my father had ever shown evidence of possessing. Well, that's not strictly true. I mean, he had had the sense to get a real gun instead of drawing down on some hapless clerk with nothing more than a loaded banana—which actually would have shown a sense of artistic inventfulness, sort of. He had been a bad ass, not a dumb ass. If Daddy Dearest had a trace of subtlety in his makeup, I hadn't seen it. Which opened up the unsettling possible that he had successfully played a con on his own flesh and blood.
Todd had also seen where I was headed, and was making mental tailspins to avoid the cliff. "Maybe we better get that DNA test, after all."
"I'm all for it," I said.
"Or maybe not. Shit." He gave me a glum look. "You're wasting your time. All of you. I don't have a cent."
"You say there aren't any liens on this house?" Carl kicked his heel against the deck, as though checking for a hidden mortgage.
I shared Todd's obvious dismay. Could this sleaze-meister really be suggesting Todd sell the house and give him the proceeds? Were racketeers ramping up a new scam? Forget credit cards, checkbooks and the odd wad of cash. And forget breaking and entering. These guys wanted the whole shebang, hearth and home and the toothpaste in the medicine cabinet. It wasn't exactly no-bid contracts for Iraq, but it was
n't petty cash, either.
Carl seemed pretty confident that Todd would not call the cops, even if the property had been acquired with time-honored, legal brow-sweat. Why was that?
"I'm meeting me," Todd glowered at me. "And it's not me."
"I know what you mean," I said. Well, I think I did.
"I'm meeting a couple of chumps," Carl grunted. "You want to know why Todd doesn't call the cops? Because if he complained about us shaking him down, I would turn him in for conspiracy. Don't bother with brotherly love. He wanted to sic us on you, make sure you didn't try to lay a claim."
"I have a claim?" It had crossed my mind, but the act of innocence is bliss.
"I don't know, but you could probably cause Todd here a heap of headache, either way. You can't take a piss without a lawyer. I should know. Whether there's a will or not, your ass will end up in court. As soon as the probate clerk asks Todd here if he has any relatives, he can't say 'no' without perjurizing all over himself and making a mess. Not anymore, now that he’s met his surviving relatives. Next thing you know, all the assets are handed over to a court-appointed administrator. By the time the accountants sort it all out, he'll be peeing in his Depens. He keeps the house...joint tenancy and all that...but he can kiss the rest goodbye—if there’s anything left."
Todd's scrotum was giving him trouble. He looked as though he had been kicked in a most discourteous manner. Not exactly something you'd want to kiss and make better.
"So I'm sitting in the bird dog seat," said Carl. "Only there's one big problem. Two, actually. Actually...a shitload."
"'Catbird'," I corrected. "What kind of problems?"
"Your brother and sister, for one."
"Jeremy?" I said. "He's no more a problem than I am. Oh...sorry. So far as you're concerned, I'm a problem."
"Maybe," said Carl, "but I'm more concerned that those two have gone renegade. If they're drawing attention to themselves, they're bound to draw attention to us."
"Meaning you," I said.
Skunk Hunt Page 33
