Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

  “I wouldn’t pay them a red cent, Hunny. It’s not the money, it’s the principle. Anyway, I just thought of something. For a lot less than half a billion dollars you could probably bribe the Albany County DA. It’s not like the old days when you could buy a judge or DA around here for fifty thou. But I’ll bet a hundred million would get you all the deal you’d need. And the Brienings could just take a hike. And for goodness sakes, you can afford it.”

  Hunny brightened. “Oh, Artie, girl, you just might be right.

  I should run that by Nelson and Lawn. They know all those people. They are crooks just like the people they eat with at Jack’s.

  They’re all conniving peas in a pod.”

  “This is a bad idea,” I said. “It’s illegal, it’s immoral and it’s dangerous. In Albany, it’s not 1950 anymore. Hunny, you could end up with federal charges and then your mother would really be embarrassed.”

  “Oh. No, I don’t want to end up in Danbury as somebody’s white bitch.”

  CoCkeyed 173

  “Nuh-uh,” Art said. “Connecticut has gay marriage now, but in the federal pen you wouldn’t necessarily get to choose.”

  “Then I just think I have to pay them,” Hunny said.

  “Maybe you’re right, luv. And your tough-guy private eye here still refuses to have the Brienings offed. Is that still your position, Donald?”

  “Yes, homicide is out. The impulse is understandable, but the deed would have consequences.”

  “Anyway,” Art said, “Quentin Shoemaker said this morning that he and his hippies have a plan for the Brienings.”

  “They do?”

  “I heard them talking about it out in the hall when I was in the bathroom for my first BM.”

  “What plan?” I asked.

  “Some kind of exorcism.”

  “That should help.”

  “Donald,” Hunny said, “you don’t have any faith in the Rdq boys, I can tell. But their hearts are in the right place, you have to admit.”

  “I admit that. And I like them. I even admire them in a lot of ways. But they’re not going to help with the Brienings, and they’re not going to get your mother back. People with a firmer grip on reality are going to do both of those things, if anybody is.”

  “You don’t seem to have any better ideas,” Art said. “How much was your fee?”

  I ignored that — reasonable as the question was — and asked Hunny if he had a list of all the friends and family members who had been queried about Mrs. Van Horn’s disappearance.

  “Sure. I stuck it in the back of the phone book. Do you want to see it?”

  “Please.”

  Hunny was at the kitchen table sucking down his fifth 174 Richard Stevenson

  Marlboro of the day according to the evidence in the ashtray. He extracted a Domino’s Pizza take-out menu that had been stuffed in his Albany County phone book and flipped it over. Written in pen on the back was a long list of names. I scanned the list.

  I said, “Who is your mother’s friend who calls her once a week with a fresh supply of jokes?”

  “That would be Tex Clermont. But she is not on the list.”

  “Why not? She sounds like a close friend.”

  “She is, but Tex — Eileen is her actual name — lives in assisted living in Houston. She’s not around here.”

  “Who is she? What’s their relationship?”

  “When Tex was married to her fourth husband, Roberto, they lived in Albany. He was a state trooper. But when Cuatro croaked

  — that’s what Tex called him, Numero Cuatro — Tex moved back to Texas to be near her daughter down there.”

  “So Tex and your mom were pals?”

  “Oh, they did everything together. They met at the racetrack, so they did a lot of playing the ponies, and they went down to Foxwoods sometimes to hit the tables. Mom really missed Tex when she moved back to Houston.”

  “Does Tex ever visit up here?”

  “Not that I ever heard of,” Hunny said. “What are you thinking? That maybe Tex is the person who picked Mom up and took her somewhere? I would doubt that. Tex has bad hips and uses a walker. I know she doesn’t drive. Mom has told me how grateful she is that even if she is losing her mind, at least she isn’t in the kind of pain Tex is in. Mom doesn’t move so great either, but at least she is not in agony whenever she tries to move.”

  Art said, “Being old is a load of crap.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “even if Mrs. Clermont hasn’t taken your mom somewhere, maybe she has been in touch with her or has some idea where your mother might have gone. It sounds as though they’re real chums.”

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  “We could check.”

  “Do you have a number or address?”

  “No, that information would be in Mom’s address book in her room.”

  “Could you call Mrs. Kerisiotis and ask her to have someone check?”

  Hunny said he would do that, and he made the call. Mrs.

  Kerisiotis’s secretary said the administrator wasn’t in her office but they would call Hunny back with the information he wanted.

  “Everyone at Golden Gardens is really upset about Mom,”

  Hunny said. “People think she might have been snatched, or drug gangs got her, or even vampires, Antoine told me. They watch all those vampire shows on TV. I don’t think old people should be allowed to watch that stuff. It’s too upsetting.”

  “If it was too upsetting, they wouldn’t look at it,” Art said.

  “They must like the immortality part of it.”

  “And the physical contact. People of all ages appreciate a little physical affection.”

  The phone rang and Hunny snatched it up. “Van Horn residence. Oh, Antoine, honey-doll! Any luck? Any trace of Mom? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, girl! Oh, you can’t be serious! Oh, God, hold on a sec. I have to tell Artie!”

  Hunny said to Art and me, “Antoine says they checked the Silvery Moon Motel and didn’t see Mom. And the clerk wouldn’t say who was staying there, saying it’s against the law to give out that information. But there’s a beach down behind the motel, and you’ll never guess who’s the lifeguard there!”

  Art asked who.

  “Sean Shea. He used to go out with Ellis Feebeaux, who works out at BJ’s. Sean is famous for the tattoo on his dick that’s a picture of Cardinal Egan.”

  “It’s not a perfect likeness,” Art said. “But if you think about it, you can see that’s who it is.”

  176 Richard Stevenson

  Hunny asked Antoine, “So did you show the Rdq boys Sean’s tat? I know the twins have seen it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, look around and maybe Ethan there, the one with the crystal ball, has some ideas. Right. Right. Okay, tood-lee-oo.”

  “No sign of Mother Van Horn?” Art asked.

  “No, but they are going over to the Super Eight where Ethan thinks Mom is staying. The thing is, the desk clerks can’t give out guest information.”

  “I’ll bet they would for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, that’s an idea. If I’m so rich, I suppose I should start acting like it.”

  “Did the Vermont boys enjoy Sean’s tattoo?”

  “They went into the men’s room, Antoine said, and had a quick look-see. But it was hard to make out. Sean had just been in the water, and that lake is cold.”

  Art said, “Sean is an excellent lifeguard, but he is not a very good Catholic.”

  The phone rang again and Hunny answered it. He had a brief exchange, wrote something down on his Domino’s menu and hung up.

  “That’s Mrs. Kerisiotis’s girl calling back. They got Mom’s address book and found Tex Clermont’s number.”

  I suggested to Hunny that he give his mom’s buddy a call and ask her if she had heard from Mrs. Van Horn or if she even knew that she was missing.

  Hunny said, “This is outside our calling area, but I guess I can afford to call anywhere I please.”

  He dialed and soon had an exchange with someone
who apparently was not Tex Clermont. Hunny exclaimed a number of times and told the person who answered Mrs. Clermont’s phone about his mother’s disappearance and why he was calling. Then he said he thought the police in both Texas and New York ought to be notified and hung up.

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  “Eileen Clermont has also disappeared,” Hunny said to Art and me. “This is just incredible. She’s been gone since last Thursday, and the police are looking for her, and everybody down there is just worried sick.”

  “I thought she was on a walker,” Art said, “and couldn’t get around.”

  “I talked to the nurse that answered Tex’s phone, and she said that one of the home’s aides is missing too. They think he might have taken Tex somewhere because they were always pals and joked about running off and getting married. The aide’s name is Herero Flores, and his family and friends are worried about him, too.”

  “It would be useful to know, “ I said, “if Herero Flores has a car and if so what kind.”

  I asked Hunny for the nursing home number he had used and then made a series of calls on my cell.

  Ten minutes later I said to Hunny, “I think we’re going to get your mom back.”

  “I have a feeling you’re right, Donald. I think all our thoughts and prayers are soon to be answered. But just in time, I’m afraid, for the Brienings to work their evil on Mom and on all the rest of the Van Horns. I have only twenty-four hours before the Brienings go after Mom, and I’m afraid I have no choice but to fork over half a billion dollars, tomorrow morning at the latest.”

  I told Hunny I had one more idea on how to deal with the Brienings, and it didn’t involve exorcism.

  ChAPteR twenty-six

  By six that evening I was set up in Cobleskill and ready to take possession of the original document in which Rita Van Horn had confessed to embezzling sixty-one thousand dollars from the Brienings. It was like the situation in The Letter, the Maugham story and Bette Davis movie, except I was not going to pay a lot of money for the letter and then get knifed in the gut anyway. I was going to create a distraction that would lure the Brienings out the front door of their store, and I was going to go in the back door and take away the lock box where they told me the letter had been secured.

  The crew I had assembled met me at the McDonald’s on the eastern edge of town. Marylou was there but not in drag.

  She was in a business suit and looked like the average middle-aged accountant you might expect to find at the New York State Department of Taxation.

  Accompanying her were several people I recognized from the two lottery-prize celebrations at Hunny’s house, the one broadcast on Channel 13 six days earlier and then the Saturday night bacchanal the neighbors had complained about. All of these people were in go-to-work professional or blue-collar gear.

  The only thing that might have distinguished them from typical commuters on the way home after a summer work day was this: close up some of the men looked as if they might have been women, and some of the women looked as if they might have been men.

  Marylou had on a name tag that read Buzz Beasley, Simon & Schuster. Others had name tags, too, that were whimsical — Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Senator Charles Grassley — and they were all gathered around a van with a big sign on the side that read Sarah Palin Book Tour — Going Rogue in Cobleskill! Climbing out of a Lincoln Town Car was the sensational best-selling author herself, former vice presidential candidate and political 180 Richard Stevenson

  phenomenon of the decade, Sarah Palin. Ms. Palin had on a red miniskirt and blue sleeveless top and was wearing shades with white frames to complete the patriotic color scheme. Her big hair was more orderly than it normally appears on television, and both her calves and Adam’s apple seemed to have grown.

  Otherwise, Ms. Palin was very much herself, chatty and vivacious.

  Some McDonald’s customers gawked and a few began to head our way, grinning and waving, but we had no time for public relations. Anyway, we had just ten copies of the Palin book that somebody had picked up at a discount at the Stuyvesant Plaza Book House, and we were saving those for the former mayor of Wasilla’s biggest fans in Cobleskill.

  Our motorcade made its way to the strip mall with Crafts-a-Palooza at one end and Subway at the other. I peeled away from the procession as it approached the Brienings’ storefront and cruised around the back of the building and parked by the Subway Dumpster. Marylou called my cell, and we kept our connection open so she could keep me informed as to everybody’s location in front of Crafts-a-Palooza.

  One of Marylou’s crew out in the parking lot had a bullhorn and I could hear it all the way in the back of the building when he began to announce: “Come and meet Governor Sarah Palin! Meet the woman who wants to help you take back your country! Read her great book full of good ideas and big words and mavericky attacks on liberals! Come and get your Sarah Palin tome, and meet the next president of the United States!”

  Marylou’s voice said into my ear, “People are starting to come out of the store. Some are walking down from Subway, too.”

  “Have your guy with the speaker keep saying Palin’s name until the Brienings appear.” I had explained to Marylou that the Brienings were a small ferret-like couple. I hoped that this wouldn’t be the day when six other small ferret-like couples happened to be shopping at Crafts-a-Palooza and they all raced out to meet Sarah Palin while the Brienings remained inside the store because they were hard of hearing and would miss their opportunity to meet their sociopolitical goddess.

  CoCkeyed 181

  The bullhorn kept blazing away, noisily hectoring people for half a mile around to gather by the Palin van and meet the famous political personage and now best-selling author. I was poised by the metal back door of Crafts-a-Palooza with my lock-picking tools and, if I had to use it, my crowbar.

  Marylou said, “Here come Clyde and Arletta. They look excited.”

  “I’m going in.”

  The lock was easy, and there was a bar inside the door that I used the crowbar on. I was inside the Brienings stockroom and office within a minute. The lights were on and I headed for their desk, an old wooden job with a dusty desktop computer on it and a couple of file cabinets next to it. I didn’t see anything that looked like a lockbox. I had asked Timmy what a lockbox was, and he said I would have to ask Al Gore.

  The Crafts-a-Palooza stock room smelled terrible, and my throat started getting scratchy. I guessed it was the potpourri.

  There were huge crates of it nearby, shredded dead vegetation treated with an assortment of chemicals, most of them toxic, I guessed, if not lethal. If I hadn’t had a more urgent task, I would have phoned the ePA.

  I saw no safe — my chief worry had been that the Brienings had a safe that was locked and too heavy for me to carry — and I didn’t see any “box” either. The file cabinets were unlocked, and I began flipping through the manila folders. There was nothing filed under Van Horn or Rita or confession or embezzler.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Marylou.

  “There are fifteen or twenty people. The Brienings are trying to elbow other folks out of the way.”

  “Slow them down if you can.”

  There was a wooden crate nearby with what looked like old financial records heaped atop it. I flipped through these, fruitlessly, and then set the records on the floor and lifted the lid off the crate. It was full of more reeking potpourri. I replaced the lid and set the bank records back where I had found them.

  182 Richard Stevenson

  My eyes were watering and I sneezed. I sneezed again. Then I sneezed a third time.

  Lockbox, lockbox. Where was the lockbox?

  I opened the drawers of the desk, but they were full of office tools — scissors, staples, rubber bands — and junk mail from the Republican National Committee. Hanging on the wall above the desk were various “awards” from the RnC for helping save America from socialism.

  I went back to the file cabinets to see if maybe a “box” of som
e kind had been secreted behind the rows of stuffed file folders. Nothing. I had a brainstorm and decided to check the crates of potpourri to find out if a box had been buried inside the many pounds of leaves and twigs.

  I opened one crate and sneezed again. Then again. Then I sneezed and sneezed and could not stop sneezing. The lavatory was nearby, its door ajar, and I went in still sneezing, and wadded up bits of toilet paper and stuffed them up my nostrils. But when I sneezed again one of the wads shot out my nose, and then the other one became dislodged and flew across the enclosure and bounced off the door.

  I kept on sneezing, and I could only think, Christ, I’ve got to get out into the open air.

  I managed to say to Marylou, “What’s happening out there?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sneezing. What’s going on with the Brienings?”

  “Oh, darling they wanted to buy a dozen books, but now they are acting…odd.”

  “Are they — atchooo — suspicious?”

  “I think they might be. Especially Arletta. Clyde is plainly in love with the governor, but even he is starting to look at her in a funny way.”

  I sneezed some more, and Marylou said, “What? What?”

  My eyes were watering so badly that I was having a hard time CoCkeyed 183

  seeing the Brienings’ desk or anything else. I wiped my eyes with my hankie, but then the sneezing started again and the eye watering got even worse.

  I said, “I have to get outside. I can’t see. Or breathe without sneezing.”

  “Somebody is talking about calling nine-one-one,” Marylou said. “Arletta said something about imposters. I’m afraid they’re onto our merry chicanery, Donald, luv.”

  “Then pack up and leave. I’m heading out. If I can find the door.”

  “Are you all right, darling? Oh my.”

  “Leave the books in the parking lot and go back to McDonald’s.

  I’ll meet you all there.”

  “We sold all the books. Clyde and Arletta bought six. Raphael autographed them.”