Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

  I had driven over to the house on Crow Street to pick up some clothes and toiletries so that I could spend the night at Hunny and Art’s, and Timmy and I settled in to watch the Bill O’Malley show together.

  Timmy said, “Poor Hunny. I suppose this television appearance will be a lot different from his Today Show fiasco. His mother’s going missing must be a sobering experience for him.”

  “Sobering? Not exactly that, no.”

  “Oh?”

  “I advised him against doing the O’Malley show. He’d had more than a few shots of what I think was undiluted Jack Daniels 104 Richard Stevenson

  and was semi-fuddled when he left the house for Channel 23.

  Anyway, the interview is sure to be unfriendly, and these promos we’ve seen can only begin to hint at just how hostile and unfair O’Malley is bound to be. But Hunny was determined to do it so that Mrs. Van Horn’s picture could be seen by Focks News’s millions of viewers. Hunny himself would prefer a cozy tête-à-

  tête with Anderson Cooper, but — media-savvy celeb that he’s become — Hunny knows where the ratings advantage lies.”

  “I have to say, I really do feel sorry for the guy. Obnoxious as he often acts, it’s apparent that Hunny is basically a good-hearted man who doesn’t deserve all this hideous trouble that’s come crashing down on him since he won the Instant Warren. And he must feel horribly guilty about his old mom being victimized, too. If, that is, her disappearance has anything to do with his own weird situation. Do you think it does?”

  “Probably. Her life at Golden Gardens was apparently calm and uneventful until the state dropped a billion big ones in Hunny’s lap. And the Brienings turning up, post-Instant Warren, might also have set something off with Mrs. Van Horn. Panicked her into doing — I don’t know what.”

  “The news at six said Hunny was a well-liked and generous worker out at BJ’s. Apparently he’s giving his former coworkers each a million dollars. The manager of BJ’s was interviewed and said he was concerned about a lot of associates — that new euphemism for retail wage slaves — giving notice first thing Monday morning.”

  “Yeah, something like thirty or forty people are going to receive a million each. Though Hunny is leaving out the guy who’s suing him for half a billion. Dave DeCarlo must be having second thoughts. Oops.”

  “Channel 10 said Hunny was also planning on putting two young people through Dartmouth Medical School. That’s pretty decent of him.”

  “Yes, Hunny is apparently concerned about a looming national shortage of podiatrists.”

  CoCkeyed 105

  “Good for him. Podiatrists?”

  It was ten o’clock, and I turned up the sound on the kitchen TV. Timmy was on a stool enjoying a late-evening snack of raisin bran with skim milk, and I had made a pot of strong coffee for myself.

  A lurid bReAking news graphic flashed on the screen, and then the trumpet-accompanied announcement of a Bill O’Malley sPeCiAL RePoRt. O’Malley soon appeared, American flags flapping electronically to his right and left.

  “Good evening, my fellow Americans…”

  Timmy said, “My fellow Americans? What is he, the president?

  Good grief.”

  “Welcome to my special investigative report on corruption at the New York State Lottery.” Staring gimlet-eyed into the camera, O’Malley fulminated for several minutes on the immorality and illegality of the Lottery Commission’s refusal to withhold winnings from a man O’Malley said was not eligible to win the billion-dollar Instant Warren because of the poor example he was setting for America’s youth. A state-run program, O’Malley said, should not be in the business of rewarding same-sex unions like that of Hunny Van Horn and his friend — O’Malley’s fingers waggled a set of quotation marks when he said friend — Art Malanowski. Looking especially sanctimonious now, O’Malley said he certainly endorsed “tolerance for homosexuals,” and he did not support crushing them with stone walls, “as is done in many Muslim countries.” Up came some blurry video of a bulldozer shoving a stone wall over on two men in Arab garb who were lying prone in the sand and tied up and blindfolded.

  “However,” O’Malley went on, “government tolerance is one thing and government participation in the radical homosexual agenda is not something any good American is willing to put up with.”

  “I wonder,” Timmy said, “if O’Malley thinks the dMv is advancing gay rights by issuing us driver’s licenses. God.”

  “Shh.”

  106 Richard Stevenson

  It was hard to imagine Hunny sticking around the Focks News studio and participating in this looniness, and in fact when O’Malley introduced an interviewee it was not Hunny at all, but the head of the Family Preservation Association of Albany County. The Reverend Payton Kalafut was a bulbous middle-aged gentleman leaning so far back in his chair that he seemed almost to be reclining and being viewed from above, as in a Busby Berkeley from-the-rafters shot. Looking up, he endorsed O’Malley’s plea for tolerance by saying bulldozing homosexuals was “going too far.” The reverend then argued nonetheless that

  “the dollars of tax-paying Christians must never be used to support immorality.”

  Timmy said, “Taxes don’t support the lottery. Gamblers do.

  Most of them Christians, I’d be willing to wager.”

  “You should write O’Malley and demand a correction.”

  “I might.”

  Reverend Kalafut went on about suing the Lottery Commission, and gave a post office box where viewers could send donations to help cover fPAAC‘s legal expenses. Throughout the interview, O’Malley nodded sympathetically. He then thanked the reverend for “standing up for American family values” and wished him good luck with his lawsuit, which was

  “the Lord’s own work.” O’Malley told viewers he would be back after a commercial break, and then an ad came on for erectile dysfunction pills.

  “At least,” Timmy said, “by agreeing to participate in this horror show Hunny is going to come across as both brave and sympathetic. And maybe it will even help get his mom back.”

  “Let’s hope that’s the way it goes.”

  After a minute and a half, O’Malley reappeared, Old Glory waving next to each of his ears, and introduced Hunny, who was seated in the chair previously occupied by Reverend Kalafut.

  Slouching in his seat in an ill-fitting jacket and some kind of hand-painted necktie, Hunny looked wan, bleary-eyed and jittery.

  “Huntington Van Horn,” O’Malley intoned, “is the first winner CoCkeyed 107

  of the New York State Lottery’s Instant Warren drawing. Mr. Van Horn took home a check for a staggering one billion dollars last Friday when he appeared on another network to collect his huge check. Not content to simply say how fortunate he was, however, Mr. Van Horn, an advocate for gay rights, so-called, accepted his winnings and then made a suggestive comment about the male host’s anatomy. That was an early tip-off that the New York Lottery Commission had made a tragic mistake, a mistake this taxpayer funded state agency has yet to rectify.”

  Hunny shot O’Malley a look that was both angry and injured and said, “This was supposed to be about getting my mom back.

  That…that Trinkus woman who works for you said…Trinkus said I could announce that Mom was missing from her nursing home and you’d put her picture on TV. So anyway, who cares about Matt Lauer’s basket?” Hunny’s diction was sloppy — the Jack Daniels had crept up on him — and as he spoke he squirmed in his chair like a child who needed to go to the lavatory.

  “Yes, we’ll get to the so-called disappearance,” O’Malley said, arching an eyebrow at the Matt Lauer reference but otherwise charging by it. “Mr. Van Horn’s mother has perhaps been misplaced by the Golden Gardens home for the elderly in East Greenbush, New York, an institution that state nursing home regulators need to take a close look at. I’ll be doing an investigation of state regulators and their failings at a later date.

  There is also a good possibility that your mother’
s disappearance, so-called, could be a hoax connected to your own desire to obtain a contract for your own reality show on All-Too-Real TV.

  But right now, Mr. Van Horn, I have another photograph that I’d like you and viewers to take a close look at. Just look over there at the monitor.”

  Hunny flared, squirmed some more and was about to speak, but something caught his attention off to the side, and on our home screen up came a photo of a woman I took to be the actual Marylou Whitney. “Do you recognize this woman?” O’Malley demanded to know.

  “Well, of course I do,” Hunny muttered. “That is Mary 108 Richard Stevenson

  Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the former vice president and notorious war criminal Dick Cheney.”

  “Absolutely incorrect,” we heard O’Malley say. Then the picture changed to the Marylou Whitney who was Hunny’s pal.

  “And do you recognize this person, Mr. Van Horn?”

  “That rectal vision,” Hunny said in a W.C. Fields voice, “oh, I mean regal vision, is Mrs. Marylou Whitney, the horse fancier and gracious lady of Saratoga and Palm Beach. I rectalize…realize…

  reck-a-nize Mrs. Whitney because she is a very dear friend of mine. Marylou was telling me just this afternoon how happy she is that now I am even richer than she is. Isn’t that a hoot? How d’ya like them apples, Bill O’Malley?” Hunny held his hand up and burped into it.

  “Our show has evidence,” O’Malley declared, “that the so-called lady shown on viewers’ screens is in fact a female impersonator — a drag queen, if you will, who is just one of the retinue of gay lowlifes regularly harbored by you at your Moth Street home here in New York’s state capital. These are people who will not only benefit directly or indirectly from the state’s billion-dollar payout but will also, through becoming celebrities, influence young people across America to adopt the homosexual lifestyle. What say you to that?”

  The camera went in for a close-up on Hunny, and it was now apparent that the hand-painted necktie he was wearing displayed the from-the-waist-up shirtless image of late porn star Jack Wrangler. Hunny scowled back at O’Malley and stammered,

  “What a…what a pack of bald-headed lies! I know that my friend is the real Marylou Whitney because I have seen the horse’s face tattoo on her upper thigh just to the right of her ample bush.

  And if she did have a dick, I certainly didn’t notice it. Or, if I did take note, and since then it has slipped my mind, I probably figured if Marylou Whitney wanted to have a dick sticking down from between her legs, then that was her own freakin’ business, and it is certainly none of my business or yours!”

  Now the camera cut to O’Malley’s ashen face, as he said, “I apologize for that. We’ll take a break and be right back.”

  CoCkeyed 109

  Timmy said, “Yuck.”

  “I was a little afraid of this.”

  “This is not going to help. Not Hunny, not his mother, not any of the rest of us. Oh, Jesus.”

  Now another erectile dysfunction ad was running. The male in the couple was looking as if he himself had won the Instant Warren, and the woman we were supposed to assume was his wedded wife bore the expression of expectant awe you might find on a discount store greeting card rendering of the Annunciation.

  I said, “I should not have let this happen. Hunny was set up.

  O’Malley and his people used Hunny’s emotional state over his mother to lure him on and then provoke him and make him act in a way that confirms every Focks viewer’s ugliest stereotype of gay men.”

  “Well, you said you advised him against going on. Maybe you should have hit him over the head with a chair.”

  “He was determined to do it. And he never even got to show the picture of his mother.”

  “O’Malley said her disappearance might be a hoax. Is that possible?”

  “No. Who would benefit?”

  “Maybe she staged it herself. Without Hunny’s knowledge.

  To throw the Brienings off track. She has a history of deception, after all.”

  “The embezzlement?”

  “Don, she’s a criminal, for God’s sake.”

  “Reformed. Mother Van Horn has been law-abiding in recent years. And sober.”

  The get-an-erection commercial ended, and O’Malley reappeared. His look was one of disgust mixed with triumph. The chair next to him was empty. He peered into the camera and said gravely, “As for the wisdom of the Lottery Commission awarding one billion dollars to a plainly unstable radical homosexual who 110 Richard Stevenson

  is going to utilize his celebrity to promote sexual deviance and poor taste, ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.”

  O’Malley glanced to his right as a noisy commotion broke out, and soon we could hear a plaintive cry. “Mom! Mmmmooooommm!”

  “We have plenty more evidence,” O’Malley went on, trying to ignore the ruckus, “that Mr. Van Horn is morally unfit to receive a large sum from a state agency. Focks News has learned that a former altar boy was served alcohol by Mr. Van Horn and sexually violated by him when the boy was a minor.”

  I said, “Oh no. Stu Hood!”

  “The arsonist?”

  But the picture that came on the screen was not Hood but that of Mason Doebler, the bearish owner of the Pontiac Firebird Hunny had been instrumental in wrecking.

  Timmy said, “That guy was an altar boy?”

  “Now a grown man,” O’Malley said ominously, “but haunted by the pain and humiliation he suffered at the hands of the predatory Huntington Van Horn, Mr. Mason Doebler has informed Focks News that he is suing Mr. Van Horn for three hundred and seventy-five million dollars —”

  More loud voices could be heard, and then suddenly Hunny appeared along with two women, one of them Jane Trinkus in her too-tight jeans. Trinkus had Hunny by the arm and the other woman was wrapped around his right leg, and they were trying to drag him away from O’Malley.

  Trinkus screamed, “Stay live, stay live! America needs to see this! He’s a terrorist!”

  “Violence follows Huntington Van Horn wherever he goes,”

  O’Malley boomed. “Late last night, supporters of Mr. Van Horn shot a Focks News cameraman who presently lies wounded in an Albany hospital. I urge you to offer your thoughts and prayers for…this brave cameraman.”

  The wrestling match proceeded a few feet from O’Malley, who leaned back in his seat and gawked.

  CoCkeyed 111

  “This is my mom!” Hunny moaned, and was trying to hold up to the camera a photo of a plump smiling old lady in a leisure suit and a fresh perm. “This woman is missing from Golden Gardens in East Greenbush, and she may be injured or abducted or lost and hungry!”

  “None of that has been proven,” O’Malley said, “although of course our thoughts and prayers also go out to this elderly senior citizen, whatever she might be up to.”

  “If you see her,” Hunny gasped out, “please notify your local police department. And Mom, Mom, if you are tuning in, and you are being held against your will, or if you are hurt, I just want you to know that I love you, Mom! I love you, I love you, I love you! And if this has anything to do with the Brienings, don’t worry, we will take care of everything. Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry, Mom! Just come home, Mommy! Mommy, just come home!” Hunny began to weep as the two women now dragged him out of camera range.

  Bill O’Malley said, “Who are the Brienings?”

  ChAPteR fifteen

  I drove over to Moth Street in time for Hunny’s return from the Focks studios, a homecoming that was bound to be sad and awkward. I had already had a call from Nelson, who blamed me for what happened on the O’Malley show. Nelson claimed erroneously that it had been my job to keep Hunny out of any kind of trouble. In fact, I had been hired to deal with local thugs who turned up to harass or injure Hunny in one way or another, but not right-wing media thugs from Focks News.

  Still, I wondered if there was any way I could have kept Hunny from looking spectacularly foolish once again. Now I
was even more determined to help keep Hunny from acting like his own worst enemy and — although I hadn’t gone to Dartmouth and was not so much revolted by Hunny as fascinated by him —

  help keep him from becoming the cultural right’s poster boy for abominable homosexual depravity.

  Bill O’Malley had not gotten an answer to his question about who the Brienings were, and as I drove I tried to formulate a story for Hunny to use in case the question came up again. Hunny had been seriously drunk on the O’Malley show, so maybe he could get away with saying he had misspoken. And instead of the Brienings he had meant to say the Grindings or the Rhinestones or the Bite-sizes, not that those made any sense to anybody, either. But Hunny had a knack for brazening things out, so I supposed he could redeploy his broad range of improvisational talents.

  While I had Nelson on the line, I told him I had met the Brienings, and it was my belief that they were not directly responsible for the disappearance, but that the threatening letter they had sent Mrs. Van Horn might somehow have caused Mother Van Horn to panic and bolt. Meanwhile, I suggested, we ought to respond with vague evasions to any questions from the press or the police about the mysterious Brienings.

  114 Richard Stevenson

  The Mason Doebler threat was going to be harder to finesse.

  Doebler had apparently contacted O’Malley’s people and lied about having been molested by Hunny, borrowing and whimsically altering Stu Hood’s story, in a desperate attempt to extract more than the thousand dollars Hunny had promised Mason for his new catalytic converter. Three hundred seventy-five million dollars could put a real dent in Hunny’s bank account. Hood was sure to get wind of this development, and perhaps he would then sue Doebler for either invasion of privacy or plagiarism. Either way, I knew of lawyers the aging arsonist could hire who would gleefully take this on.

  I arrived at Hunny’s house and parked across the street just as Art drove up and eased their dingy Explorer into the driveway, which was so tiny the suv stuck out about a foot onto the cracked sidewalk. Several TV crews were still on the scene, but instead of pouncing in their normal way they approached the vehicle tentatively. As I approached, Art told them, “Mr. Van Horn is under the weather and will have nothing more to say to the media until further notice.” The reporters all seemed to accept this.