Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

  Sanders held his cell phone away from his face and whispered to Hunny, “Arrange for the swap.”

  Hunny said into the phone, “Just so Mom is right there when I give you the money, and we can be reunited at last. That’s all I hope and pray for. To lay eyes on Mom. Then you can leave with the money.”

  Hunny listened again, and now he frowned. “Oh. But how do I know that you will do what you say after I drop off the 94 Richard Stevenson

  money at TGI Friday’s? Where will Mom be at that point in time?

  Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. Well, I guess I will just have to trust you.”

  Sanders was nodding again. “But is Mom still in her bathrobe and slippers? If you drop her off at a store, she’s going to be so embarrassed. Why not bring her to tgi Friday’s and I’ll get her right into my car and drive her over to Golden Gardens, and then we can all just forget this whole horrible episode?”

  Sanders gave thumbs up to this suggestion, but the kidnappers must not have gone for it. Hunny looked glum again and said,

  “Okay, Mister Kidnapper, whoever you are. It will take me fifteen minutes or so to get out to Stuyvesant Plaza, depending on traffic. And I’ll toss the black bag with the purple ribbon on the handle in the Dumpster behind tgi Friday’s. Then I will drive out onto Western Avenue and head back this way. Before I get home, Mom will call this number and tell whoever answers the phone where she has been let off. Did I get that straight? Everything is all right, then?”

  Antoine whispered, “Ask the asshole how you gonna get your suitcase back?”

  Hunny shook his head and said to the caller, “I am paying you in order to save my mother, but I have to say to you that I am not sending you any of my thoughts and prayers. You really should be ashamed of yourself for scaring an old lady like this who is a good Christian and has spread good cheer wherever she goes.” Sanders was energetically shaking his head at Hunny, who nonetheless added, “Don’t let the twenty thou burn a hole in your pocket, ya shit-head.”

  Hunny hung up. “Should I have said those things? Oh Lord, me and my big mouth.”

  “They had it coming,” Art said. “So, what’s the situation?

  You’re supposed to toss the money in a Dumpster at Stuyvesant Plaza?”

  “Yeah, right now. I’m supposed to come alone.”

  Now Sanders was on his cell with somebody. He said to Hunny, “Get your black bag. The twenty K is in an unmarked CoCkeyed 95

  car out in front. Lester, why don’t you bring that on in here?”

  Nechemias hurried out the door.

  “tgi Friday’s will be covered by APd undercover officers. Just take the money, Mr. Van Horn, and drive it out there and do like the caller said. Do you know your way out there?”

  “To Stuyvesant Plaza? Girl, of course I do.”

  “We still don’t know where the caller was located — it was a cell — but Verizon is working on that. We do know the number of the cell and who the subscriber is. Does the name Elton Steckenfinger mean anything to you?”

  “Steckenfinger?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I’d remember that one. ‘Ooo, I think my finger is stecken. Just try to relax.’”

  Sanders stared at Hunny. He must have been thinking that celebrities are a species unto themselves, but in America we have to love them no matter what.

  Officer Nechemias came back into the kitchen carrying a bulging paper sack.

  Art said, “I’ll fetch the suitcase, Hunny,” and headed out the door.

  Sanders asked Hunny for his cell phone number and added the number to his phone. He said, “I’ll follow you, about a block behind. Strachey, you ride along with me. Mr. Malanowski, you should stay here with Officer Nechemias in case the kidnappers call with the location of Mrs. Van Horn’s drop-off. We will not pick anybody up until Mrs. Van Horn has been rescued. But we will surveil the Dumpster and tail whoever leaves with the money bag.”

  Sanders suggested a particular route to the Stuyvesant Plaza shopping center, and Hunny said, “Doll-face, that is how I would go anyways. I grew up in Albany, sweetheart.”

  When Art arrived with the travel bag, Sanders stuffed the stacks of hundred-dollar bills into it. He also retrieved from his 96 Richard Stevenson

  jacket pocket a small metal object with a Velcro back and inserted it into one of the bag’s zippered side pockets.

  “What’s that?” Hunny said. “Some kind of explosive?”

  “It’s a small radio transmitter,” Sanders said. “In case these bozos somehow get away from us.”

  “Oh, this is just like The Bourne Supremacy. Too bad Missy Matt Damon isn’t here. Mom thinks Missy Matt is just fab- ulous, and what a thrill it would be for Mom if Matt Damon rescued her in person.”

  “Or even just his boyfriend,” Antoine said. “What’s-his-name.”

  “Is it Brad Pitt?” Art asked.

  “No, he’s straight,” Hunny said. “Or so we are expected to believe.”

  “Now I remember, it’s Ben Affleck,” Antoine said. “I’ve heard that there is a video of those two going at it that is hot.”

  “Matt and Ben, or Matt and Brad?”

  “Miss Matt and Miss Ben. But Lord, what a sandwich all three of those would make. Ooo-eee.”

  Sanders said, “You should be on your way, Mr. Van Horn.

  Do you feel up to doing this? Just keep in mind that I will not be far behind you. And I can also tell you that plain clothes officers are already positioning themselves out at Stuyvesant Plaza. We’re going to make this work.”

  “Oh, it’s only a matter of minutes then before Mom will be free. Praise de lawd! In fact, whoever picks her up, I think they should bring her over to the house here for a victory imbibulation.

  Artie, don’t we still have some champagne in the fridge from the other night? Of course, Mumsie might go for something a little stronger, and let me tell you, so might I.”

  Hunny, in fact, had been sipping from a glass of amber fluid, and as he stood up he wobbled just a bit.

  “Are you okay to drive?” Sanders asked, wondering perhaps if CoCkeyed 97

  he was about to enable a dui.

  But Hunny slapped himself twice on his own cheeks and strode confidently toward the living room and the front door.

  “Don’t forget the ransom,” Art said, handing Hunny the travel bag.

  “Oh, heavens to Betsy, my mind is a sieve!”

  We all followed Hunny through the living room and out the front door.

  “Where are you off to, darling?” Marylou asked.

  “I can’t say,” Hunny replied. “But our hugest problem is about to be solved. Then I guess I’ll get busy solving the other ones. Girl, there is just no rest for the weary!”

  “Will you be gone overnight?”

  “I shan’t think so, snookie-ookums. But if I don’t return,”

  Hunny added with a wink, “make sure the twins do their homework so they can get into Dartmouth and make Nelson and Lawn proud.”

  Marylou smiled agreeably, and we all moved down the front steps and toward the TV crews lined up on the sidewalk. They had their microphones poised, and Hunny turned and asked Schuyler and Tyler if he might borrow one of their T-shirts.

  Tyler whipped his off his well-formed frame and flung it to Hunny, who moved past the reporters and cameras with the shirt draped over his lowered head, as he cried out, “No pictures! No pictures!”

  Hunny got into his old Ford Explorer with its all-but-treadless tires — the suv‘s blue finish was grainy and dull but the tires were so shiny they looked waxed — and placed the travel bag with the money on the front seat next to him. Sanders’ newer Ford sedan had been double-parked nearby, and he and I climbed into it.

  As we followed Hunny down Moth Street, a couple of the TV people jumped into their vehicles and gave chase. But at the corner of Moth and Transformer, two APd patrol cars pulled into the intersection and cut off the press while Hunny sped up and 98 Richard Stevenson

  moved on
down the hill, with us not far behind.

  I said, “If the First Amendment is suspended for thirty seconds, the republic will survive.”

  “Yeah,” Sanders said, “Or thirty years wouldn’t hurt either.

  Just kidding.”

  Sanders got on his cell phone and told somebody that we were on the way, and we should get to Stuyvesant Plaza at about six-fifty-five if traffic didn’t bog down.

  I said, “So who is this Elton Steckenfinger? Any idea?”

  “Not yet. It’s his cell phone, and it hasn’t been reported stolen. Steckenfinger lives in Watervliet, and we’ve got officers on the way up there. They’ll be cool till we see what happens at Stuyvesant.”

  “Does your experience suggest that these people will pick up the bag and then release Mrs. Van Horn?”

  “I have very limited experience with abductions. But my training tells me that this thing has all the earmarks of dumb amateurs. The twenty thousand figure, for example. What’s that about, for cryin’ out loud? Why not a hundred thousand? Why not a million? These dickheads have to know that Mr. Van Horn won the Instant Warren. Half the people on the face of the earth have heard about Huntington Van Horn, the gay billionaire. And then there’s the thing that whoever did the snatch is so confident that Mr. Van Horn wouldn’t bring APd into it. Haven’t these people ever been to the movies? The cops nearly always get called in the movies, and this is also true in reality. So, all the signs are, these are not well-organized geniuses we’re dealing with here. They’re dummies, I think, and the thing with dumb amateurs is, they’re unpredictable. So, I really don’t know what to expect, and we’ll just have to see what we see.”

  We swung onto the interstate and headed west. We could see Hunny’s Explorer two cars ahead of us. Hunny was doing fifty-five in the far right slow lane as the Sunday evening traffic roared by in the multiple lanes to our left. It was good that Hunny was dawdling, for he would need to exit I-90 at Route 85, and also CoCkeyed 99

  in case one of his bald tires blew. The mid-August early evening sunlight was strong but shot through with the kind of tar-colored shadowyness that lets you know summer is not going to last forever and neither is anything else. Sanders had the windows up and the air conditioner on medium. Hunny had driven off with his car windows open — maybe because his Explorer’s AC was shot, or because his was a cheaper model that had never had any.

  Sanders gave our location to somebody on his phone —

  cops seemed to be exempt from the New York State prohibition against driving with a hand-held cell phone — and then he said to me, “Who are the Brienings?”

  “Good friends of Hunny,” I told him.

  “I’ll say.”

  “I’m not really sure who they are. Some people Hunny has a history with.”

  “He’s giving them half a billion dollars? I find that mind-boggling.”

  “So do I. If I had half a billion dollars, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s unreal.”

  “It just sounds weird.”

  “If you had a billion dollars, detective, what would you do with it? Where would you start?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t give half of it away the minute the check cleared, that’s for sure. I’d buy a few people a beer, and then I would give the matter a whole lot of thought.”

  “Hunny Van Horn is impulsive. You must have picked that up.”

  “Impulsive.” He laughed. “Well, he’s an effeminate gay.

  They’re a mystery to me. So, who knows? Are the Brienings also homosexuals?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “My supervisor’s daughter is a dyke. She’s hot, too. Two women. It’s a turn-on. I saw her with her girlfriend and I thought, 100 Richard Stevenson

  Jesus, I wouldn’t mind watching those two going at it. Or even getting in there. I wonder if my wife wouldn’t consider that cheating.”

  “You could ask her.”

  Sanders followed Hunny down the exit ramp and onto Route 85 south.

  “There are still guys in the department who badmouth gays.

  But not so much as before. You never know who you might be talking to.”

  “No. For heterosexual America, it’s a minefield.”

  After a moment, Sanders said, “For example, I heard you were gay. So there you are. I wouldn’t have suspected.”

  “No, I don’t wear my bumper sticker on my forehead. But I do drive around with it on my car.”

  “Gays like Mr. Van Horn make a lot of people uncomfortable.”

  “This is true.”

  “If it wasn’t for fruity guys like that, gay people would have an easier time. People get turned off, is what happens.”

  I said, “Ever hear of Stonewall?”

  “Sure. The gays in the city revolted against the cops. Back in the sixties.”

  “Hunny Van Horn was there. Gore Vidal wasn’t. And neither was I.”

  “Vidal the hairdresser?”

  “No, he might have been there.”

  We were on Western Avenue now, Hunny about four cars ahead in the right lane. We passed the big State Office Campus, and we could see the entrance to the Stuyvesant Plaza shopping complex up ahead. Hunny signaled and turned into the access road, and then onto the sprawling tarmac, which was thick with the parked cars of Sunday shoppers and diners. tgi Friday’s was close by, on the left, at the near end of a long strip of shops.

  Sanders parked within sight of the rear of the restaurant, and we CoCkeyed 101

  watched Hunny halt next to the Dumpster near the restaurant’s back door. Another Ford was parked about thirty feet from us, and I could make out a man and a woman seated in the front, their windows rolled up. I indicated this car, and Sanders said,

  “Ours.”

  Hunny got out of his suv, went around to the passenger side, and removed the travel bag from the front seat. He closed the car door, looked around until he spotted our car, then walked over to the Dumpster. The lid was closed on the Dumpster, and Hunny stood briefly taking in this apparently unexpected development.

  Then he lifted the heavy plastic top with one hand and held it open while he heaved the travel bag over the lip and into the receptacle. He let the lid fall back, glanced around, and walked back to his vehicle. No one in the area seemed to notice Hunny do this, or if they did they didn’t react.

  Hunny drove back out to Western Avenue and turned toward downtown Albany. We followed.

  Sanders said to me, “We’ve got three teams of two monitoring the Dumpster. Now we wait for word from Sergeant Nechemias that the kidnappers have released Mrs. Van Horn and phoned the house with the drop-off information. But they’ll pick up the ransom first, and we’ll be told when that happens.”

  We were nearly all the way back to Hunny’s house, heading up Moth Street, when Sanders received a call. He listened and said,

  “Okay.”

  “The bag has been picked up,” Sanders told me. “By a man and a woman in an old Buick LeSabre. We’re on them.”

  Back at the house, Hunny parked and again ran the gauntlet of mikes and cameras. We followed him into the house.

  “No call yet?” Sanders asked Nechemias.

  “Nothing. Just a few calls from media.”

  Hunny looked grim. “I did what they said. So, come on, you puke-heads, come on! Where is my mom?”

  At eight o’clock, no call had been received from the 102 Richard Stevenson

  kidnappers. Sanders learned that the old Buick had been followed back to Elton Steckenfinger’s second-floor apartment in a rundown section of Watervliet, and the man and woman who had taken the ransom bag had disappeared inside.

  Hunny fretted — and drank — and nothing Art or Antoine said could console him. He refused to eat anything — the rest of us had some caviar and Ritz crackers left over from Wednesday’s celebration — and Hunny’s left hand developed a tremor.

  Sanders talked to somebody on his phone just after eight fifteen, and a decision was made to confront and arrest the t
wo people who had picked up Hunny’s bag from the tgi Friday’s Dumpster — presumably, though not necessarily, Elton Steckenfinger and a female accomplice.

  Twenty minutes later, Sanders received a call. He listened and said, “Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sure. That’s all you can do. Okay.”

  Sanders rang off and said to Hunny, “I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Van Horn, that your mother was not in the home of the people who took your twenty thousand dollars. In fact, my officers believe their story that they never held her captive at all.

  The Steckenfingers are a couple of crystal meth freaks who tried to exploit your situation. Everyone is extremely disappointed. As I’m sure you must be. At least we got the twenty K back.”

  Hunny choked back a sob. “But then, where is Mom? What happened to Mom?”

  Sanders had no answer for that.

  ChAPteR fouRteen

  Bill O’Malley rarely left his New York City studio, but he had been driven up to Albany for what the promos on Focks News were calling a special investigation into “bombshell developments at the New York State Lottery.” O’Malley had bumped Geraldo Rivera from his Sunday-night-at-ten spot so that he could score a scoop with his expose of “moral corruption involving underaged drinking, deviant sexuality, and impersonating a socialite” at the home of Huntington Van Horn, “the homosexual celebrity lottery billionaire.”

  Hunny had agreed to appear on the show, hoping that he could spread the news of his mother’s disappearance to more people. Mrs. Van Horn still had not reappeared by nine thirty, and the East Greenbush sheriff had organized more volunteer groups to comb the area near Golden Gardens beginning at first light. An Amber Alert had been issued by the State Police.

  While Rita Van Horn was not a missing child, Hunny’s celebrity afforded him the clout to bend the Amber Alert law to include the elderly. Meanwhile, Albany police had reported their arrest in the kidnapping hoax, and Elton and Marcie Steckenfinger had already been filmed doing a perp walk at Division Two headquarters.