Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

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

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  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?”

  74 Richard Stevenson

  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&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.

  Th
e gist of it seemed to be, Rita Van Horn admitted stealing CoCkeyed 77

  $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.”

  ChAPteR eLeven

  “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.”

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  “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 CoCkeyed 81

  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 82 Richard Stevenson

  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.

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