Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

  We told the Brienings, and they got mad and said all the money hadn’t been paid back yet and they might have to go to the police.

  That was last month. So I bought two hundred dollars’ worth of Instant Warren tickets, hoping I would win and could pay off the Brienings, and — praise de Lawd! — I did win.”

  “But now, apparently,” Art said, “the Brienings want half a billion dollars to shut them up, not just what Mother Rita still owes.”

  Lawn said, “This is just totally bizarre. It’s no wonder Nelson is so distraught that he missed a dinner engagement.”

  “The Brienings have been leaving phone messages since I won the lottery,” Hunny said, “but I’ve just been tossing them in the laundry basket with the other requests. I did mean to get to them, but I thought it wasn’t going to hurt if we all did a little partying first and got mellow and the friggin’ Brienings could just wait their turn. But they must have gotten antsy and called Nelson. The poor lad. First he has to put up with his rude, crude, proud-to-be-lewd Uncle Hunny, and now he has to deal with these shakedown artists from Cobleskill. The embarrassments for Nelson just keep a-rollin’ in, poor sweetie-pie.”

  The door to the living room opened again, and this time Nelson himself walked through it. He looked frazzled and bordering on the unkempt.

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  Nelson said, “Uncle Hunny, I don’t know if you want to go out there. Probably not. But there are some more TV people out front, and they say they want to interview you and it would be best if you agreed to talk to them.”

  Hunny looked uncharacteristically nonplussed. “At two in the morning? Who are they? Channel Ten? Channel Thirteen?

  Channel Six? What is this?”

  Nelson said, “They showed me their ID from Focks News in New York. There are two of them — a woman and a cameraman

  — and they say they’re from The Bill O’Malley Show.”

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  “This is a damned impertinence,” Hunny said. “Tell them I’ll only talk to Anderson Cooper.”

  “Bill O’Malley is doing a report,” Nelson said, “on some organization that wants the lottery commission to take back your winnings because they object to a state agency providing money for immoral purposes. Have you not heard about this? When they told me, my heart just sank.”

  “Oh, some PR woman from the lottery called this afternoon.

  She said not to worry, that as long as I was eighteen years old and didn’t have a relative who worked for the lottery commission, I was the legal winner. Some other reporters called, too, but they went into the laundry basket.”

  “These O’Malley people have just driven up from the city, they said. One of your neighbors is an O’Malley viewer and called them and said you were partying and driving everybody in the neighborhood crazy with the noise. I can only begin to imagine how accurate that description was.”

  “That was earlier. Anyway, what immoral purposes? There’s nothing immoral about playing some peppy dance music and throwing a party in your own home.”

  Lawn said, “I’d be willing to bet that there is a good deal more to it than that.”

  “It’s some religious group,” Nelson said. “The Family Preservation Association of Albany County. I told the Focks News people it was too late for an interview, but they said they could see that a party was still going on and they refused to leave.

  Donald, maybe you are the man to handle this. Would you mind?”

  “Normally I don’t do press relations.”

  Art said, “We could send the twins out to talk to them. They could tell about how Hunny is going to put them through medical school.”

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  Lawn shut his eyes, and Nelson said, “Art, I don’t believe that will help. Having those two tarts speak for Uncle Hunny is exactly what we do not need at this point.”

  Hunny leaped from his chair and shouted, “Tarts? Tyler and Schuyler are a couple of tarts? Why hasn’t anyone told me about this? It’s the shocker of the century. I think we should get them in here and all sing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’”

  “Well, we certainly have to get these O’Malley people out of here,” Nelson said, “so that we can discuss a far more difficult matter. Do you know where I have just come from, Uncle Hunny?”

  “Lawn told us Cobleskill.”

  “Yes, Cobleskill. And can you guess who it was I was meeting with out there?”

  “I was told it had to do with Mom,” Hunny said, and seated himself again and slugged down some more of whatever he was drinking.

  Art asked, “Was it the Brienings?”

  Nelson looked as if the weight of it all hit him all over again.

  He said somberly, “Yes. Clyde and Arletta Briening.”

  “Your parents decided a long time ago not to tell you about them — and about Grandma Rita,” Hunny said. “And rightly or wrongly, I went along. They all thought there was no need for you to be hurt. But Grandma Rita is only human, like Art and me, and like you, and like Lawn. And now you know the unfortunate truth.”

  Lawn looked as though he did not like the sound of some of this, but he kept his mouth shut.

  Nelson said, “I am sad for Grandma Rita, that’s all. She was devastated by the loss of Grandpa Carl, and in her grief she made a terrible mistake. Now she has paid for this lapse many times over, and other family members have paid also. If I had known, I would have found a way to deal with these wretched people. But now they are completely out of control. They are CoCkeyed 45

  demanding the insane sum of half a billion dollars. And if they don’t receive it, they say, they will make public the letter Grandma Rita signed confessing to stealing sixty-one thousand dollars.”

  Hunny said, “An incriminating letter. Just like in the Bette Davis movie. Wouldn’t you just know?”

  I said, “Hunny, what exactly is your mother’s mental state at this point? If the embezzlement was revealed, would she even know it?”

  “Most days, she would. Others, not so much.”

  “I have to tell you that I spoke with my parents by phone,”

  Nelson said, “and they think Hunny should pay the five hundred million. They think this would end the whole business with the Brienings and save them a lot of embarrassment in church. I don’t agree, and I think we have to find other ways to get rid of the Brienings. Don, you must have dealt with blackmailers before. What’s your advice?”

  Everyone looked at me. Hunny lit another cigarette.

  “Since this is plainly extortion at this point,” I said, “I could sit down with them and point out the serious legal consequences of what they are doing. Just laying it all out sometimes is sobering for people like this. There is also the possibility perhaps of negotiating with them. Offer them a hundred thousand or whatever relatively small amount you think you can part with in order to see the end of this. You’d need some kind of legal document signed by them, however, nullifying the agreement Hunny’s mother signed. What do they think they are going to do with half a billion dollars anyway? Build Cobleskill’s first aircraft carrier, or what?”

  “They want part of it to expand Crafts-a-Palooza and open a branch in Albany at the Crossgates Mall. The rest of it, they said, was for what they called their nest egg. They want to retire in a few years, and they want enough for an RV and a house in Tavernier, Florida, where their grandchildren can visit them.”

  Lawn said, “That sounds like maybe four hundred K. Five at most.”

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  “Maybe,” Art said, “we could convince them to take five hundred million worth of tranches.”

  Hunny couldn’t help but chuckle — as he did at nearly everything Art said — but then he remembered something and his face fell. “Tomorrow’s my day to visit Mom. The Brienings haven’t said anything to her, have they?”

  “Not yet,” Nelson said. “But part of their threat is simply disgusting. If you don’t give them what they’re asking for, Uncle Hunny, they
say they’ll send letters to all the residents at Golden Gardens warning them to be careful of Grandma Rita because she is a thief and people should watch their valuables when she is around.”

  Hunny clutched his head and shook it. “No, no! Oh, poor Mom! Poor, poor Mom!”

  “It’s too bad,” Art said, his jaw tight, “that these Brienings can’t just be…oh, I don’t know. Don, in your line of work do you ever play rough with bad guys? Or, if you don’t, do you know anybody who might?”

  Composing himself, Hunny said, “Art doesn’t mean that.

  Well, he means it, but he’s not really serious. Anyway, in The Letter, it’s not the blackmailer that gets killed in the end. It’s Bette Davis, who only did what she did out of passionate infatuation.

  And I don’t think any of us want to go down that road. No, this situation is different. More like I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

  No offense to Mom.”

  Nelson said, “The Van Horn family is not the Sopranos.

  We’re going to have to deal with these dreadful people, and we have to be firm with them, but of course we’re not going to hurt them physically or otherwise do anything unlawful.”

  I said, “How do the Brienings think they are going to explain to people their sudden vast wealth? To friends and family, not to mention the IRS?”

  “They said they talked to a lawyer in Schenectady, and they can have the money held in a bank in the Cayman Islands. They told me not to be concerned about that, and they would work it out.

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  They said they saw a report on ABC 20/20 about how people get away with this kind of thing all the time. They said they had worked hard all their lives, and other people were getting away with murder, and now it was their turn to make the system work for them, and it was time for them to clean up.”

  The wall phone next to Hunny rang, and he picked it up.

  “Good evening, Mr. Sands’ office. Susie MacNamara speaking.

  May I help you?”

  Hunny listened and said uh-huh several times, and then, “Just a minute.” He put his hand over the receiver. “It’s the Focks News people out front. They said they know I’m in here and if I don’t come out they will stay all night, and sooner or later I’ll have to talk to them. Maybe I should say something. They’ve already interviewed Marylou, and I doubt she told them anything helpful to our situation. Also, they may check and find out she isn’t the real Marylou Whitney, and this will only add to all our woes.”

  Lawn said, “Well, you certainly can’t allow them into the house. The place is a pig sty, and there are people in the living room in varying states of undress, and they’re looking at some obscene video. It will just be fodder for what this busybody antigay, pro-morality organization is trying to do.”

  Art said, “It’s a great video. Carnival in Costa Rica. But it’s not the one with Cesar Romero and Vera-Ellen.”

  Hunny said into the phone, “Give us just another minute, okay?” A few seconds later, he yelped, “Oh no!” and hung up the phone. “They said Marylou invited them into the house for some good weed, and they’re on their way in!”

  That’s when we all heard the sound of a woman’s high-pitched shriek.

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  The Focks cameraman lay on the porch moaning and clutching his chest, and the woman with him was prone behind the porch railing, yelling into her cell phone, “Send the police! Send the police!” The 911 operator must have asked her where she was, because she said, “It’s on my gPs! It’s in the car on my gPs!”

  I asked Hunny to remind us of what his house number on Moth Street was, and he said 126, and the woman yelled into her phone, “One twenty-six Moth Street, in Albany!”

  We had all heard a car screech away, but there was no sign of the vehicle by now.

  Hunny switched on the porch light, and I looked down at the whimpering young man on the floor. I got on my cell and told 911 that in addition to the police we would need an ambulance.

  I said, “Hunny, is anybody in the house a doctor or nurse?”

  The remaining partygoers were crowded just inside the front door, chattering and peering out.

  “No.”

  The woman with the cell phone came over and said, “Bert!

  Bert! Don’t die on us. Bill needs you. We all need you.” She had a hard time bending down because the jeans she was wearing were so tight.

  As I got down on my knees to examine the cameraman’s soaked T-shirt, I saw with relief that the shooting was not what it first appeared to be. The mess on the man’s chest smelled not like blood but like paint. I touched it, and I said, “You’ve been hit with a paintball pellet. It exploded but it didn’t penetrate your body.”

  “But, hey, this fucking hurts,” the cameraman groaned. “I hurt my back. It hurts.”

  “They tried to kill us!” the woman said. “My God.”

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  “Who fired the paintball? What did you see?”

  “I think it was a car. We were just coming up the steps.”

  Then I remembered that the man dressed as Marylou Whitney had been ushering the newsies into the house, but where was the Saratoga and Palm Beach socialite?

  Art had come out now with a flashlight, and he was shining the beam around the porch and the wooden front steps. More red paintballs had struck the porch railing and some of the shingles on the front of the house. A border of marigolds ran along the concrete walkway from the steps down to the sidewalk, also paint-splattered, and it was when Art shone the light down there that we saw the bottom of Marylou’s pink gown. Her legs were sticking out from under the forsythia bush below the porch.

  Hunny raced down the steps, shouting, “Marylou! Marylou!”

  A muffled voice came out from under the bush. “Hunny, I’m stuck. I fell off the steps, and my necklace is caught on something.”

  “Oh, girl, you look like the Wicked Witch of the West and the house fell on you.”

  “Somebody shot a gun.”

  “But it was just paint, Donald says. Were you hit? Are you wounded?”

  “I don’t know, darling.”

  Now the woman in the tight jeans was on her cell phone again, and I heard her say something about “they tried to kill us”

  and “a transvestite may have set us up.”

  I asked Art for his flashlight and then crawled under the bush to find out what was holding onto Marylou. Her diamond necklace had become entangled on a forsythia branch, and while she aimed the flashlight I broke off bits of the branch and tried to free the Whitney jewels without damaging them further.

  Marylou said, “I know we have known each other for such a short, short time, but I have to tell you, whoever you are, that I think I am falling in love.”

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  “Okey-dokes.”

  She had scratches on her neck and jaw and her wig was seriously askew, but Marylou did not seem to have been hit with a paint pellet.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked.

  “I am feeling a bit moist, but that may be from the excitement.”

  I yelled, “She seems to be uninjured. We’ll be with you in a second.”

  Hunny said, “Maybe the attackers will be back. Oh, where are the Albany police when you need them!”

  There was a sudden brightness, and as Marylou and I wriggled free of the forsythia and I helped her to her feet, I saw the woman in the tight jeans wielding a video camera with a light atop it and recording our struggles. Apparently this would be Marylou’s debut on Focks News, and mine also.

  I said, “I heard you speculating on who the paint shooter was after. It’s a safe bet that they were not shooting at you but at Hunny or Art or their friends. No one even knew you were here.”

  “Who are you?” she snapped. “I need a name please. And your position here.”

  “Don Strachey. I’m a private investigator working for Hunny.

  Billionaires attract bad people occasionally, and that’s
why I am present. Based on your remarks on the phone just now, it sounds to me as if you are among the bad people Hunny needs to be protected from.”

  “I’m Jane Trinkus and I don’t need lectures from you on how to do my job. If Bill was here, he would make short work of a dickhead like you. As his representative, I am telling you to watch out or I will do the same.”

  “I’m making a note.”

  There were no sirens, but the cop car that turned off Transformer came up Moth Street fast, flashing like a meteor.

  Art said, “Finally, Alice Blue Gown.”

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  There were plenty of parking places along the street, but the patrol car double parked and two officers got out. “Who made the 911 call?” the older one asked.

  Trinkus identified herself as a producer for The Bill O’Malley Show and said, “We know that we are not liked in the homosexual community, but this is the first time anyone actually tried to kill us. My cameraman Bert Spatz is lying on the porch severely wounded, and I am just lucky to be alive.”

  The cop indicated to his junior officer to go up and check on the cameraman, while Hunny said, “Somebody shot paint pellets from a car and raced off. Very noir-ish, even without the fog and other cheesy effects. But I don’t think they were shooting at these Bill O’Malley lovelies. I won the lottery this week, and I’ve had nothing but trouble since then. I have a private detective, in fact, Don Strachey here, who is looking into a number of unfortunates who have shown up since Wednesday.”

  The cop acknowledged me with a nod but was more interested in Hunny. “So you’re Huntington Van Horn?”