Arletta was aghast. “Do you mean shoot us or something?”
“There’s a shotgun missing from the office of Mrs. Kerisiotis, the administrator at Golden Gardens. There is no evidence that Mrs. Van Horn took it. In fact, she has no history of violence.
All I’m saying is, the two of you might want to kind of lay low for the time being. And don’t do anything more to provoke Rita Van Horn or her son.”
Clyde had gone pale below his A-1 hairdo, but now Arletta was looking suspicious. “It sounds to me, buster, as if you are threatening Clyde and I. Trying to spook us and make us back off. Well, if you are, you just might want to try some other tact.
We are both stubborn, and when we are in the right we stand our ground. We have our principles, and they matter to us more than life itself.”
It was all I could do to keep from wrenching Clyde’s glue gun out of his hand and gluing his wife’s mouth shut. But I knew that that wouldn’t help in the long run. I said, “I’ll report back to Hunny what your current position is — that you all will be CoCkeyed 129 in touch again later in the week to try to work something out.
Meanwhile, you’ll be giving Hunny some breathing room to deal with his missing mom, who we all hope hasn’t done violence to herself or is perhaps somewhere planning to bring grievous harm to others.”
Clyde still appeared shaky, but Arletta’s look hardened even more. She said, “Behind this curtain is a lockbox containing Rita Van Horn’s confession of a major felony. It is a confession that will put that dirty old embezzler behind bars where she belongs unless Hunny Van Horn makes good on his mother’s theft by noon on Wednesday. I said not Thursday, but Wednesday. Ya got that?”
Chapter Eighteen
Hunny and Art had driven across the Hudson to East Greenbush, where Hunny had gotten into a sniping match with Lawn over Hunny’s Bill O’Malley public psychodrama. I learned this during a phone call from Nelson as I was driving back from Cobleskill. I told Nelson the Brienings seemed not to have had any direct connection with Mrs. Van Horn’s disappearance but that they were going to be a continuing threat, and we needed to get Hunny’s mom back as soon as we could so that she wouldn’t still be missing if and when the Brienings went public with their wacky charges and demands. Nelson said there was still no sign of his grandma, and both the sheriff ’s department and the search volunteers were becoming increasingly frustrated.
I arrived back on Moth Street just as Art and Hunny were parking the Explorer, and now another vehicle pulled up in front of me and shuddered a few times before its driver shut the engine off. The driver’s door of a tiny gray Fiat opened, and a small man climbed out. The old car had a dinged and grainy finish, like the one on Hunny and Art’s Explorer, and the driver also looked as if he had some mileage on him.
“Yoo-hoo! Anybody home on Queer Street?”
The man waved at Hunny and Art, who peered back at him quizzically. Most of the TV crews had not yet arrived for their daily stake-out, but a lone cameraman peered over at the little man. The two bruisers from Gray Security, camped on the porch swing, also took in this strange new arrival, something else for them to think about.
The man was ectomorphic and gaunt. He was mostly hair from the neck up, frizzy and white. He wore sandals and knee-length cargo shorts, though oddly he also wore a button-down oxford-cloth dress shirt and a large necktie with an image on it that I was not yet able to make out.
The man crossed the street as the security guys watched him, 132 Richard Stevenson and Hunny and Art squinted at him warily. I caught up just as the man reached the sidewalk and cheerily introduced himself as Quentin Shoemaker and said, “And I’ll bet you boys are Hunny and Art, Albany’s richest cocksuckers. Am I right? I can spot one a mile away.” He beamed.
This is when Hunny noticed that the necktie Shoemaker was wearing was identical to the one Hunny had worn on the Bill O’Malley show, a hand-painted image of Jack Wrangler’s head and naked torso.
“Hey, girl,” Hunny said, “that’s my tie! You stole my Jack Wrangler necktie, you rapscallion you! You know, I saw His Royal Highness Missy Jack Wrangler in the back room at the Mine Shaft in 1978. Even got to touch it briefly, although there was an awful lot of pushing and shoving in that block-long queue.
Maybe you were there, Quentin, unless, of course, you hadn’t even been born yet, ha ha ha.”
“Oh, I missed all that urban cuddling and cooing, Hunny. I’m a country boy. I was in Oregon rolling around in the mud with the other mountain fairies. As for not being born yet, I’ve been born so many times I’ve completely lost count.”
Art looked apprehensive. “So what are you? Born again?”
“Yes, again and again and again and again and again.”
“But not a born-again Christian, if I’m not mistaken,” Hunny said. “Most of them are not as enthusiastic about cocksucking as you seem to be. Unless I misunderstood your greeting and you actually disapprove of that ever-popular activity.”
“No, in fact if all those senators arguing about health care and the public option and the trigger and so on would just take off their clothes and give pleasure instead of pain to one another, we’d have a single-payer system like Canada’s in place in no time at all.”
“Hey, you should write your congressman.”
“I did. I got a nice note back, too, saying he would be considering all sides in the health care debate and he valued my input.”
Hunny and Art had a good laugh, and they introduced me, and we all walked into the house. The rain had let up, and patches of blue sky were breaking through, good news for the volunteer searchers across the river.
“You’re a private detective?” Shoemaker asked. “I never met a real one. I sense that you are not like many of the men in your line of work. You are freer.”
“Apparently. At any rate, today I am comfortably in the company of two men who own Jack Wrangler neckties. That must mean something.”
Hunny led us into the kitchen and said, “Art, just one. I would like just one itsy-bitsy snort.”
“No.”
“My mother is missing,” Hunny told Shoemaker. “So we are all very stressed. Oh, I suppose you know that. Mrs. Whitney told me you called. That was so nice of you to take an interest.”
“It sounded to me as if you could use a few queer friends.
Some of us at the RDQ commune saw you on TV, and we all just stood up and cheered. I said, ‘Boys, behold! Can our eyes be deceiving us? He’s on TV, and he is an unassimilated gay man!’ Generally the gay people who appear on television are so assimilationist they might as well be het.”
Hunny and Art stared at Shoemaker. Hunny reached for a cigarette, then changed his mind and just fiddled with the ashtray.
Hunny said, “I’m glad somebody thought I was fun. An awful lot of people sure didn’t. That’s all I aim to be, Quentin — friendly and fun. What’s the point taking everything so seriously? At least when you don’t have to.”
“Yes, grown-up activities are necessary to making the world go round — plowing the earth, harnessing the energy of the waters, milking the goats. But acting grown-up all the time is utterly soul-destroying, and I could see immediately that you were not a man who had anesthetized or even strangled his inner child.”
Art said, “Hunny wouldn’t do that.”
“Gay spirit is being crushed at every turn in our society equally by small-souled straight people who can only stand us if we act just like them, and by gay people who’ve lost their connections to the great spirits of the earth and the universe that made us large and free.”
“Hunny is definitely large and free,” Art said.
“Well, I am honored to know you. Both of you.”
“Thank you,” Hunny said, glowing. “Thank you so much.”
Again, Hunny reached for a cigarette but then thought better of it.
“So, your mom left the nursing home and she still hasn’t been found?” Shoemaker asked.
“No, and it’s been over
twenty-four hours. We think she went off with somebody, but for the life of us we can’t think who.”
“What is her birth date?”
“January twenty-eighth. Why do you ask?”
“One of our members, Savion Davenport, can do her chart and see if we can get a handle on what lies ahead. What time of day was she born on January twenty-eighth?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“She’s never had her chart done before?”
“Well, just Medicare.”
“Savion is highly intuitive, so he’ll figure it out.”
Art said, “So you live in Vermont? We were over there one time several years ago.”
“In Ferrisburg, near the lake. Most of the back-to-the-earth folks who moved to Vermont from New York in the ‘60s have semi-assimilated. A lot have regular jobs, and I can’t argue with that. Not everybody can afford to swim with the dolphins, or needs to. A lot are doing righteous work — teaching, medicine, traditional healing, energy work, what have you. However, Dennis Bower, who was one of the original radical faeries on the West Coast in ‘71 is now a deputy assistant secretary of defense.
We may have to levitate the Pentagon again, ha ha, and reclaim Dennis’s spirit!”
“Are there porpoises in Lake Champlain?” Art asked.
Shoemaker chuckled. “Aren’t there porpoises everywhere?
The thing is, not everybody can see them. Or is willing to. The Native Americans near Ferrisburg tell stories of porpoise-like creatures filling the lake like carp in a farm pond before the coming of the white man.”
Hunny said, “There was an Indian on the Van Horn side of the family, a Mohawk. My sister Miriam claims that’s just a story, but my mom said Dad admitted that it was true. About a hundred years ago. Some kind of Song of the Loon type of situation, except the Indian must have been straight.”
“That may help account for your free spirit, Hunny. And don’t be too sure your ancestor was straight. He could well have been a berdache. ”
“What’s that?”
“Berdaches are Native Americans who are free of gender straitjackets.”
“We saw an Indian drag queen one time at Foxwoods Casino,”
Art said. “But I guess you’re talking about something historical.”
“Not necessarily. Drag queens are very much in the berdache spirit. Like your friend Marylou Whitney. I could tell even just talking to her on the telephone that she was deeply real and she was deeply special.”
Art said, “Yes, in Palm Beach Marylou is famous for being the most glamorous woman with a dick in South Florida.”
Hunny gave Art a look. “That is not funny, Arthur. Marylou would not be amused. She is somewhat self-conscious about her penis.”
“I didn’t mean it to be funny. I was just stating a fact. Anyway, on Bill O’Malley you defended Marylou’s right to have a dick if she wanted to. You practically said it was in the Bill of Rights. So don’t tell me, Hunny.”
Hunny went for his cigarettes again, and this time he got one out of the pack. “I don’t remember any of that O’Malley stuff at all. Oh Lord.”
Shoemaker eased his chair back a foot or so as Hunny lit his Marlboro. “Hunny, you were just wonderful on O’Malley. You were the truth-teller. You were the free spirit. You were the unassimilated queer restoring the Whitmanesque joy of being free and gay and alive and at one with nature in a setting where gay people generally act defensive and bitter and defeated by the soulless and puritanical strictures of the medium.”
Hunny shot smoke at Shoemaker and said, “Wow, if I was that good, I sure wish I could remember more of it.”
“At the Rdq commune, you made us proud all over again to be sissies.”
“I was a radical myself one time,” Hunny said. “I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I just thought of it as being pissed off and totally up to here with the New York Police Department.
Artie was one, too. We were at Stonewall when the cops raided the place and we got arrested. Except for a few disorderly conduct things in the ‘80s, it’s my only time to be arrested. It’s where Artie and I met.”
Shoemaker got down on the floor in front of Hunny. “Take your shoes off,” he said. “I want to kiss your feet.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
Art said, “You should meet the twins. They’ll probably drop by later.”
Climbing back onto his chair, Shoemaker said, “Instead of your being shunned by gay America, Hunny, the Human Rights Campaign and all those other assimophiles should be hoisting you on their shoulders. It makes me want to weep, the way you’re being treated by your own kind.”
“Well, Quentin, it is disappointing. Especially with Mom missing and with so many other situations I’m currently dealing with. You won’t believe what I’m putting up with. That’s why Donald is here. I needed a detective just to deal with this CoCkeyed 137 incredible amount of crap. Donald, tell Quentin what we all have been going through since I won the lottery on Wednesday. It’ll make your hair stand on end.”
“All of it? Including the Cobleskill situation?”
“Yes, maybe Quentin has some ideas on how to deal with people who are just out-and-out satanic.”
“Satanic! Let’s hear about that. The Radical Drama Queens have ways of dealing with Lucifer’s minions.”
I described to Shoemaker the events of the past five days. I told him about the blackmail and other threats, the pellet-gun attack, Rita Van Horn’s going missing, the kidnapping hoax, the laundry basket full of requests and demands for a share of Hunny’s billion dollars, the smears from Bill O’Malley and the Family Preservation Association of Albany County, the lawsuits by fPAAC, Dave DeCarlo and Mason Doebler, and finally about the Brienings and Mrs. Van Horn’s history with them and their loony extortion plot.
Shoemaker was especially interested in hearing about the Brienings. After I described them, he said, “Oh, yes, those two are agents of Satan, for sure.” But he didn’t seem worried about dealing with them, just amused and confident.
Chapter Nineteen
Art had some mini-pizzas in the freezer that he microwaved for lunch. Nelson and Lawn dropped by briefly, but they didn’t stick around and eat with us. Lawn plainly did not like the looks of Shoemaker, and it didn’t help when Shoemaker asked Nelson if he was “one of the het Van Horns or one of the cocksucking Van Horns.” Nelson replied that, yes, he and Lawn were
“partners.” Shoemaker waited until Nelson and Lawn had left the house before referring to them good-naturedly as “your average assimilationists.”
“Their butt holes do make squeaking noises when they walk,”
Hunny said. “But Nelson is a good human, and there is even hope for Lawn if the SEC ever gets its act together.”
“Is he a Wall Street crook?” Shoemaker asked.
“A total swindler.”
“Another example of carrying cultural adaptation way too far.”
Nelson had reported that Mrs. Van Horn was still missing from the nursing home, and Shoemaker said one of the Rdq people was a psychic and he would likely be willing to drive down and help find the old lady.
Hunny went pale again. “Isn’t that just for finding bodies? We are pretty sure Mom is alive. At least that is our fervent hope.”
“No, it wouldn’t matter which world the lady is inhabiting.
Ethan would probably be able to locate her spirit wherever it is.”
“Would your psychic need one of her possessions or something?” Art asked. “That couch in the living room was Mother Van Horn’s. Though we’ve had it for four or five years, and I suppose our scent is on it now. Antoine likes to stretch out on it. He’s a friend of ours.”
“No, it’s not like a bloodhound,” Shoemaker said. “But Ethan would need a photograph of the missing lady.”
“There is one on top of the TV,” Hunny said. “It’s Mom in happier days. She’s fluffy and sassy and she’s got all her marbles.
It was tak
en while Dad was still alive and the cancer hadn’t been found.”
Art said, “Hunny’s father passed on at a relatively young age, sixty-four.”
There was a knock at the front screen door, and a voice I recognized as Card Sanders’ called, “Hello?”
Hunny whispered to Shoemaker, “It’s the police. They don’t know about the Brienings. Don’t say anything. We don’t want Mom to get arrested for embezzlement.”
Shoemaker said, “Gotcha.”
Art went out and led Sanders into the kitchen, and Hunny offered him some pizza. He said he’d had lunch, thanks, and he said he was sorry that there was still no word on Mrs. Van Horn’s whereabouts. Sanders and Shoemaker were introduced, and Shoemaker said, “Sagittarius.”
Sanders ignored this and said, “Right now, I’d like to speak with you, Mr. Van Horn, and Mr. Strachey privately, if there’s someplace we can go.”
“About Mom?” Hunny got shaky again and reached for a glass which wasn’t there.
“Yes, about your mother.”
“Anything you have to say about Mom you can say in front of Arthur, of course, and Mr. Shoemaker is my confidante.”
“Are you his attorney?” Sanders asked Shoemaker.
“No, his good fairy.”
Sanders said to Hunny, “I need to know about the Brienings.”
Silence. Nobody moved.
“Just let’s have it. What’s the story with the Brienings?”
Hunny said, “Huh? The O’Briens?”
“No, Clyde and Arletta Briening. Mrs. Van Horn’s former employers at Crafts-a-Palooza in Cobleskill. I looked at your mother’s work history, which is on file at Golden Gardens. For six years she was employed as a bookkeeper for the Brienings.
Recently, Mr. Van Horn, you’ve been talking about giving the Brienings half your billion-dollar lottery payout. And on Bill O’Malley last night you told your mother that if she was watching, and if the Brienings had anything to do with her disappearance, she shouldn’t worry, that you would deal with them. So, the question is, what’s the story here? What am I not being told?”
Cockeyed ds-11 Page 13