It occurred to me that the first time I had heard this song could well have been in this very bar some decades earlier, perhaps on the same night I met Timothy Callahan under a bush over in Washington Park, and we had been together pretty much ever since. I raised my bottle of Saratoga Water with a chunk of lime jammed down into it. To Donna Summer.
To Hood, I said, “The church did shut down the compensation machinery at some point. Didn’t your friends urge you to file a claim before it was too late? Did Hunny know about this?”
“I didn’t tell anybody back then. In fact, I kind of forgot about it. A guy I was involved with for a while kept asking me why I didn’t like to get fucked, and then I remembered.”
“And that’s when you wrote to the pope?”
“Another guy I used to date who had a computer helped me send an e-mail to the Vatican. Maybe the pope only speaks Italian, but there must be other dudes who work in his office who speak English. I think the guy is just a geek, that’s all.”
“You said you’ve had counseling. When was that?”
“At the farm the judge sent me to. I was thirteen years of age.
Anyway, that wasn’t about sex, it was about fires.”
“Have you had any problems with the law since then? Hunny said he was unaware of any run-ins. But he said that when you drink you sometimes threaten to set people’s houses on fire, or CoCkeyed 21 their cars, and it is very frightening to people.”
“That’s just the Bud Lite talking,” Hood said. “I would never do it. Hunny doesn’t have to worry. Though I would appreciate a little compensation for Hunny turning me into a homo, since it looks like the friggin’ pope is gonna be of no use to me whatsoever.”
“Hunny told me about your parents,” I said. “And about the terrible way they died. That must weigh on you, too.”
“Hunny has a big mouth.”
“It’s why even though he is fond of you, he is somewhat afraid of you.”
“Yeah, well. Mom and Pop never replaced the battery in their smoke alarm. Does he know that part of it? Let that be a lesson to Hunny.”
“Stu, what you are saying to me isn’t all that reassuring.”
“What I’m saying to you, Strachey, is that I don’t set fires anymore. I’m all talk. Talk and beer, beer and talk. And if it’s reassurance you want on a Saturday afternoon, this homo bar is not the place to find it.”
Chapter Four
Hunny was back on the Channel 13 news Saturday evening at six. This time he was defending his lottery boodle not against blackmailers but against a coworker at BJ’s Warehouse who claimed that half of Hunny’s winnings were rightfully his. Dave DeCarlo said he had given Hunny ten dollars to buy twenty dollars’ worth of tickets for the two of them, and they had agreed to split the winnings from any of the tickets purchased.
DeCarlo, who was interviewed first, along with his attorney, Thurmont Fewster, said it was the deep pain of being betrayed by a man he had always thought of as a friend that was hurting him most of all. His lawyer focused on what he referred to as a “broken oral contract.”
When it was Hunny’s turn, he said that while he and DeCarlo had once purchased lottery tickets together, that had been back in the spring and had been for an entirely different drawing, not the August Instant Warren. Hunny added that while he had planned on giving all his coworkers what he called an “August bonus” from his lottery winnings, now that DeCarlo was trying to swindle him, “that bleep bleep ” wasn’t going to get a cent.
Timmy and I were watching the news in our bedroom at our house on Crow Street before heading out for a Saturday night Thai dinner with friends. After that, I planned on meeting another of the blackmailers when his cleaning-crew shift at a Corporate Woods office building ended at eleven.
Timmy said, “Hunny is quite the sleazoid-magnet. It looks as if he’s going to keep you hopping.”
“DeCarlo does appear to be an unscrupulous fellow. Most of the other skeletons tumbling out of Hunny’s voluminous closet, though, look like they’re just hapless shmoes. I phoned three of them this morning after Hunny left my office and warned them off, and none of the ones I talked to seemed to want any trouble. I’m more worried about two other guys who do sound a bit unhinged and maybe even dangerous. I saw one of them this afternoon at the Watering Hole. He’s a hustler named Stu Hood who has a history of arson.”
“Oh no.”
“He has only one conviction, as a juvenile, but Hunny says the guy was a suspect in a number of later cases. When Hood was thirteen, he burned down his parents’ house with them in it. He was supposed to be out mowing the lawn, but instead he poured gasoline from the lawn mower can all around the downstairs and lit it and ran out. He told the police he didn’t know his mother and father were upstairs napping and that he thought they had gone out for the afternoon. But Hunny said the family car was in the driveway, so Hood’s story was widely doubted. On Thursday, Hood threatened Hunny and told him he would torch his and Art’s house if Hunny didn’t go fifty-fifty with Hood on the lottery winnings. He claims Hunny turned him into a homosexual after Hunny picked him up while Hood was cruising the park.”
“Why, Donald, it’s our story.”
“Exactly. I was a confused youth, and when you fondled me behind that bush, I thought, oh, wow, I could get used to this.”
“You were the mixed-up youth? I’m reasonably certain it was the other way around.”
“Then how come you were carrying that towel thing around with you at eleven o’clock at night? You even told me at the time that it was so you wouldn’t get moss on your knees.”
“I seem to have repressed any memory of that.”
“Anyway, Hood’s story is as ugly as it gets. He told me that he was repeatedly raped by a priest when he was eleven years old but that he didn’t recall these incidents until it was too late for any legal recourse.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I’m not sure. But it was two years later that he started setting fires. Or two years that anybody knows of.”
“Were there any church fires around that time?”
“Good question. But my role here is not to prosecute or to clear Stu Hood for any crimes he may have committed in years gone by. My job is to get him off Hunny Van Horn’s back.”
Timmy zapped off the TV — no more Hunny news for the moment — and started getting into his dinner togs, his nicely pressed slacks and a polo shirt he had ironed earlier in the day. He said, “I keep hearing that gay people in the Capitol really do wish somebody other than Hunny had won the Instant Warren. He is just such an excruciating public embarrassment.”
“I find him interesting and sometimes even entertaining,” I said. “Hunny is one of a vanishing species. Also, here is a client who, when I bill him at the end of the month, will be in a good position to pay it.”
“Vanishing species, I don’t think so. God, if only.”
“Hunny is gay man at his most primitive. He’s the untamed queer Neanderthal. He’s the rugged individualist on the old gay frontier. He’s a homo Huck before Aunt Polly tried to civilize him. Hunny is proudly out and proudly nelly. Hunny am what he am.”
“What Hunny am,” Timmy said, “is a loudmouth drunk and a hideous old letch. It wouldn’t surprise me if the greatest threat to Hunny at this point is not some juvenile delinquent arsonist he had sex with, but any of the thousands of decent, sober, well-behaved gay men and women across America who see Hunny on national television and are now looking for ways to make this grotesquely embarrassing creature just disappear.”
Timmy had at least a partial point. Maybe looking after Hunny was going to be even more complicated than I thought.
The first thing Mason Doebler said to me was, “I’m not taking any shit from Hunny and I’m not taking any shit from you. Don’t waste your time threatening me, and don’t waste your time pissing me off. Hunny has owed me three thousand dollars for four years, and now he can afford to pay his debt to me — with interest.”
“He told me that the other day you demanded fifty thousand dollars. That represents a lot of interest on three K. It’s even more than Citibank charges.”
“I’m charging him a lot because now that he’s won the lottery, fifty K means nothing to Hunny. And because his refusal to pay me anything at all has been a thorn in my side that I am sick of. I have it coming, and, believe me, I am going to get it.”
Doebler looked like a man who, when he made demands, generally had them met. A good six-three, two-forty, with a crew cut above a whiskery moon face, he had the heft and sartorial coloration of a gay bear but not one with a cuddly demeanor.
We were seated at a table in the upstairs restaurant in a noisy bar on Lark Street. The music was some type of heavy metal lite, though the band playing it did not appear on any of the eight large flat TV screens arrayed around the room. These were showing a variety of sporting events — baseball, pre-season football, NASCAR — and the overall feel of the place was that of a rest home for people with severe Add.
Doebler was chowing down on two double chili burgers, and I was keeping my grip moist on a sweating bottle of Sam Adams.
I said, “Hunny told me that you think he was responsible for wrecking your car. But he says none of what happened four years ago was his fault, and he accepts no financial responsibility.
What’s your side of the story, Mason?”
Through a mouthful of dough and ground beef, Doebler said, “Hunny was sucking my dick while I was driving out Western Avenue near suny, and I ran off the road and smashed into some bushes. The air bags went off, and we didn’t get hurt much. But my Firebird was a mess and my collision insurance had a three thousand dollar deductible. I had told Hunny to wait till we got to his place. But Hunny’d had a few cocktails — as Hunny always does — and he was totally out of control, as usual.
He was smoking a cigarette, too, and we were just lucky we didn’t go up in flames. Getting the Firebird back on the road cost over five thousand, and three thousand of that was out of pocket. My pocket, even though Hunny was totally to blame.”
“Something doesn’t quite add up here, Mason. Are you claiming that while you were driving your car, Hunny raped you?”
“Of course not.”
“But you are saying, as I understand it, that your erect penis was out in the open air, and Hunny was bent over and sucking it.
Did you take your dick out of your pants, or did Hunny?”
“Well, he did. That’s what I’m saying.”
“It must have taken Hunny some minutes to get your pants open or down around your ankles. During that time, why did you not pull to the side of the road — taking proper care and utilizing your directional signals — and retrieve your dick from Hunny and place it back in your trousers where you claim you wanted it to remain?”
Doebler glared at me and said, “You know goddam well why I didn’t make him stop. If somebody is sucking your cock — and they’re as good as Hunny is at it — you’re not really thinking clearly. But I did tell Hunny to fucking cut it out.”
“If we were in a court of law, I doubt you could fall back on ambivalence as a justification for your behavior. Or temporary insanity, either.”
“Look, if Hunny had not been stinko and out of his mind, the whole thing would never have happened. That’s the point, and that is why Hunny owes me three thousand dollars. No, fifty.”
I said, “Hunny says that when you called him on Thursday, you threatened him. He has this on his voicemail.”
A rivulet of chili sauce ran down Doebler’s chin, and he wiped it off with a napkin. “Oh, Hunny told you that, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck, I was just making a point. And I guess I made it.
What with you all of a sudden ragging my ass.”
“I understand, Mason, that you have a couple of assault convictions on your record.”
“So?”
“This has Hunny concerned. If you choose to sue him for three K, that’s your right. But you have no right to hurt him, and I am strongly advising you not to do it.”
Doebler, who was having a Coke with his burgers, said,
“Those incidents were when I was drinking. I’m sober now, and this enables me to manage my anger. What I said to Hunny the other day was just to get his attention. What’s fifty thousand dollars to Hunny, anyway? Why doesn’t Hunny just fucking help me out? He could do it with no sweat. I have issues, and he knows it. The suspension on my Firebird is practically shot and the catalytic converter is shit, and the check-engine light is on, and I know that in October I’m not gonna pass inspection. Fuck, it’s no skin off Hunny’s nose if he helps me out in my time of need. Ah, shit.”
I said, “Hunny is willing to give you a thousand. Not as a settlement but as a gift. He said you two had some nice times together, and he is sorry that there are hard feelings. This present, if you took it, would not indicate that he accepts any financial responsibility for the accident. Hunny is sorry it happened, but he believes that it was your own inebriation at the time that was the main cause of your driving off the road. You were still drinking then, Hunny told me.”
Doebler shook his head. “Fuck.”
“The thousand should cover the catalytic converter and get you an oil change, too.”
“I saw Hunny and Art on TV the other night,” Doebler said.
“That looked like quite a party they were having.”
“If you quit pestering Hunny about the three thousand, my guess is he would be willing to let bygones be bygones and you two could be friends again.”
Doebler had finished off the first chili burger and now he started in on the second. “Well, I could use the thou. I can’t deny that.”
“It’s up to you, Mason.”
Before Doebler could reply, my cell phone went off. I excused CoCkeyed 29 myself and walked back toward the men’s room, partly for the privacy but also so I could hear anything over the barroom din.
Hunny said, “Donald, girl, I’m sooo sorry to be phoning you at this late hour. You’re such a good boy and it’s probably past your bedtime. But Lawn just called me, and he is extremely upset.
He says Nelson has gone off somewhere to deal with a situation I am supposedly the cause of, and he said Nelson told him that I have really done it this time, and Lawn is coming over here to wring my neck.”
Chapter Five
An Albany police cruiser was just pulling away from Hunny and Art’s brightly lighted house as I drove up, and I wondered if Hunny’s new “situation” had already escalated into a law-enforcement matter. It hadn’t, I soon learned, from a group of men ambling down the front steps. They informed me that the cops had come by in response to noise complaints from neighbors. The officers had asked Hunny nicely — he was a celebrity now — to have some consideration. He had graciously agreed, and now the party was winding down and people were heading off to the bars and clubs. A soft-spoken young Hispanic man with enough metal rings in his lower lip to hang a shower curtain on pointed out that there was still plenty of liquor and drugs available inside, and he suggested that I go on inside and help myself to some of “Hunny’s good shit.”
Hunny’s living room looked like the debris field after an air disaster, with dazed survivors lying around on couches and easy chairs while they snacked on Doritos and chips and Price Chopper clam dip. The twins, clad only in red thongs, were very much a presence, one of them doing some perfunctory tidying up, the other chatting idly as he sat on the lap of a man who looked like Karl Rove but probably wasn’t. A man in a pink ball gown introduced himself as Marylou Whitney and told me that Hunny and Art were in the kitchen.
“Oh, Donald, you have come to my rescue!” Hunny crooned, as he hung up the wall phone. “I hope you’re armed, ‘cause Lawn just called again and he is on his way over here to kill me. Nelson is on his way, too, and I think you should shoot them both as soon as they walk in the front door. It’s Bette Davis in The Letter.
Blam, blam,
blam, blam! You can plead self-defense, and Artie and I will back you up. So, Donnie, are you carrying a pistol, or are you just glad to see me?”
“Neither, really. What’s going on now, Hunny?”
Hunny was seated at the kitchen table with a glass of something amber in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Art was bent over the sink rinsing out some glasses.
Art said, “We have apparently interfered with Nelson and Lawn’s dinner at Jack’s Oyster House with some local felons.
Dinner at Jack’s is a sacred ritual and I guess we have somehow blasphemed. Nelson went off to see some people about Hunny and his money, and he didn’t show up for dinner, and now Lawn is all higglety-pigglety-pooglety-swooglety.”
Hunny flung some cigarette ash my way. “Nelson supposedly is going to explain it when he gets here, but Lawn said Nelson said some people have demanded half of my billion dollars and we might have to give it to them. I mean, what’s half a billion to me, but I have to say, this does sound nervous-making, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. It does.”
“Now, Donald, girl, I don’t like the looks of your dour expression. I think you might need a drink. Are you a Cutty Sark drinker with a Dos Equis chaser? Or how about some weed?
What can I get for you, sweetie? What about some dick? The twins are hung like Jeff Stryker, plus they’re more interesting.
Donald, take a load off and let us entertain you. It bothers me that you’re not having any fun. What can we do to cheer you up?
You look morose.”
“I’m all set, thanks.”
Art said, “Nelson and Yawn hang out with these horrible people — the city and county officials and state senators the banks and insurance companies are all paying off to get city and county business. You go into Jack’s Oyster house and it looks like a scene from Warner Brothers in 1932. You expect to see Edward G. Robinson at a front table cuddling with his moll and his tommy gun.”
“Though it’s a miracle those crooks will even be seen at Jack’s or anywhere else in public with Lawn nowadays,” Hunny said.
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