Cockeyed (11 page)

— and maybe even arrange for you to borrow the cash — and then track the kidnappers to wherever you mom is being held.

The twenty thousand figure suggests to me that these people are small-bore amateurs who aren’t likely to grasp what they’re really into. This doesn’t sound like the mob or some Mexican drug cartel or a major psychopath. What it sounds like is some opportunistic hapless dorks. These are the kinds of people cops run into all the time, and dealing with them is generally a piece CoCkeyed
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of cake.”

Hunny slugged back some of his whiskey and thought this over. “I guess you’re right, Donald. Let the pros take over. I just have such bad memories of the Albany cops. In the seventies and eighties I had some unfortunate run-ins. For girls like us, they were the Gestapo.”

“I remember. But nearly all of those goons are gone. I know somebody in the department I can call and get the ball rolling if you decide that’s the way you want to go, and it’s what I suggest.

But you really have to decide now.”

Hunny lit a fresh Marlboro from one that was half smoked.

He seemed about to speak when the phone rang again.

“Hunny speaking.” Now he looked irked. “Stu, I told you I would help you out, but I am too busy to take care of you just now. Yes, you will receive one thousand dollars, and yes it will be in cash. Detective Strachey will get the money to you this week.

But I can’t deal with that matter at this particular moment. Don’t you know that my mother is missing from Golden Gardens?”

Hunny listened and shook his head. “Are you calling from the Watering Hole? No wonder you’re out of the loop. Now, call me early in the week and we’ll make some arrangements. No, girl, I haven’t forgotten all the nice times we had, but right now I have more pressing matters to worry about, and I am going to hang up. Good-bye, Stu.”

“Stu Hood?” Art asked.

Hunny nodded.

Antoine said, “I have enjoyed Stu’s company on a few occasions. Stu can be fun. Just so he doesn’t ask you for a match.”

I had my cell phone out and was poised to dial the number of a young Albany police detective I knew who was smart and competent and would not likely be freaked out by Hunny’s entourage or his personal style.

But now Hunny’s phone rang yet again.

“Hunny speaking.” He stared hard at the receiver. “
What
?” He
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listened with big eyes. “Are you serious?” Now he was slumping over the table and shaking his head. “Did you call before? About ten minutes ago?” He looked exhausted, on the verge of collapse.

“Well, someone
else
claims to have my mom also. Why should I believe you? What is
going on
?”

I leaned down with my head next to Hunny’s so I could also hear the voice on the phone. Hunny was wearing some kind of heavy cologne, but his whiskey-and-cigarettes aura was even more potent, and he smelled like a figure from a long-ago era. I felt both revulsion and nostalgia.

I heard an unaccented man’s voice, a bit gravelly, say that Mrs. Van Horn could not come to the phone because she was in the bathroom “taking a tinkle,” but he could prove that he was holding her hostage. He said that she was wearing a bathrobe and slippers and she was a short, heavy-set lady with blue eyes and gray hair and her hair had recently been “done.”

Hunny said, “That was on TV. Everybody in Albany County knows what Mom was wearing and what she looks like.”

“If you want the old lady back in one piece,” the voice said,

“it’s going to cost you ten thousand dollars. Put the money in a paper bag with
Mom
written on it and leave it on the bench outside Price Chopper on Delaware Avenue at seven o’clock.

Then we will let her go. If you don’t do like I say, I might have to get rough with your mother. Punch her in the face or somethin’.”

Hunny looked at me, and I shook my head. He said, “I think you are full of it,” and slammed the phone down.

Again, I tried to retrieve the caller’s number, but this number was blocked, too.

“Was this another one?” Art said. “A second kidnapper?”

“He said I should leave ten thousand dollars on a bench outside the Delaware Avenue Price Chopper. He sounded like a complete doofus. Artie, girl, I think we’re going to have to get an unlisted number. I’ll call Verizon tomorrow. They’d be closed today, it being Sunday.”

“This kidnapper was cheaper than the last one,” Antoine said.

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“If your mom wasn’t in grave danger, you could almost shop around.”

I said, “This one did sound like a flake. If he’s somehow for real, he’ll call back. It’s possible the first call was also a hoax, but you shouldn’t take that chance. I’m going to call the police, Hunny.”

“Oh, yes, Donald, I suppose you must. Do whatever you think is best.”

I made the call on my cell phone and luckily was able to reach my friend in the Albany PD. I explained the situation, and he said he would (a) notify the Rensselaer sheriff of this new development and (b) explain to the detectives on duty in Albany that they needed to set up a trap on Hunny’s phone line, and then be prepared to surveil the ransom drop-off and follow the kidnappers to wherever Mrs. Van Horn was being held. I said I couldn’t guarantee that this wasn’t a hoax, but my contact agreed that we couldn’t risk that the threat wasn’t real. He said that kidnapping claims directed at the very wealthy always had to be taken seriously. He said two Albany PD detectives would arrive at Hunny’s house within ten minutes.

Just as I was finishing up with the cop, there was a ruckus in the living room, and the kitchen door flew open. An excited Marylou Whitney came crashing into the room bathed in white light, which we soon saw was from the television lights mounted atop a video camera. She was trying unsuccessfully to keep a pinch-faced, scowling middle-aged man in a jacket and tie from entering the kitchen with her. The man looked at Hunny and barked, “Huntington Van Horn? I think you need to answer a few questions. This hoax has gone on long enough, and so has your refusal to return the billion dollars that came out of the pockets of hard-working Americans who do not support the radical homosexual agenda.”

Antoine said, “Who is this Froot Loop?”

“Girl, I guess you don’t watch Focks News,” Hunny said. “I don’t either, but I recognize Mr. Bill O’Malley from seeing his picture on
Inside Edition
. Come on in, girl, sit your skinny ass
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down here and I’ll pour you a drink. Or would you prefer some weed?”

“Hunny, I don’t think this is the right time for a television interview,” I said. “The police will be here any minute now, and we have to deal with the urgent situation concerning your mom.”

Beady-eyed and blotchy, O’Malley thrust a microphone at Hunny and barked, “We know this missing mom business is a hoax! We have our sources at All-Too-Real TV, and we know that you have been in touch with them about getting your own reality show. Do you deny it?”

Hunny blinked into the lights mounted on the camera that was aiming at him. “You know, Bill,” he said, “you are a wee bit cuter in person than you are on TV. But I have to say, in the cutie-pie department you are a long, long way from competing with Missy Matt Lauer.”

“Careful what you say, luv,” Art said. “You know what happened last time. Nelson and Lawn might be tuning in.”

“Anyway,” Hunny said, “my people told your people in no uncertain terms that I would only talk to Anderson Cooper. Did your assistants not inform you?”

“That’s right, Hunny,” Marylou said, “I did make that abundantly clear to that Focks gorgon.”

“Anderson Cooper’s ratings are a tenth of what mine are,”

O’Malley snorted. “Now, you have not answered my question. I am going to ask it one more time. Have you or have you not been talking to All-Too-Real TV about a reality show deal? Just answer the question. Is your answer yes, or is it no?”

“I don’t think you should talk to this liar,” Antoine said. “Bill O’Malley called President Obama a communist.”

“I never said any such thing. But he
is
a socialist, and he is destroying our country and robbing us of our precious freedoms.

But right now taking my country back is beside the point. You still have not answered my question, Huntington. Are you in
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negotiations for a reality show on All-Too-Real? Keep in mind before you answer that anything you say can be held against you in the Focks News court of public opinion.”

Marylou said, “Hunny, should I call security?”

Hunny looked at me, and I nodded, and Marylou turned in her ball gown and left the room.

I said, “O’Malley, go fuck yourself.”

“Who are you, mister? Maybe you need to have your mouth washed out with soap.”

Jane Trinkus said, “Should I leave that in? I can bleep it just enough to get it by the fCC, but viewers will know that you have been disrespected, Bill. It makes you look small, but it’s great television.”

Now another cameraman appeared in the doorway, and the young woman from Channel 13 who Timmy and I saw Wednesday night on TV at Hunny’s won-the-lottery party edged into the kitchen in front of the videographer and said, “It seems unjust to the local media that out-of-town people should get an exclusive at this tragic time, Hunny. We really think out of fairness we need to be included.”

“Tragic?” Hunny asked, going pale. “Has Mom’s body been discovered?”

“No, I mean to say, tragic that she is still missing. She is, isn’t she? Or have there been late-breaking developments?”

Waggling her fingers, Trinkus said, “Oh, there have been
developments
, all right. How do you spell h-o-A-x?”

O’Malley shook his head vehemently at Trinkus and mouthed
Our story
.

Now the two large Gray Security guys came in, and I said,

“These media folks need to be led out of here. They are trespassing.”

“Let’s go,” said the bigger of the two men.

“Who do you work for, Hugo Chavez?” O’Malley said to the CoCkeyed
87

security man, who looked Hispanic but had given no indication that he might be Venezuelan.

Now O’Malley turned and looked directly into the Focks camera and intoned, “Obama’s America. The America of Barack Hussein Obama is the America you are witnessing first-hand.
This
is what the United States of America has come to. The Founding Fathers must be weeping, and so, my friends, am I.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” said the security guy. “Mr. Van Horn don’t want you in here no more. Keep movin’ out the door.”

“Resist a little,” Trinkus whispered. “Make him cuff you.”

O’Malley shrugged that off and followed his crew and the Channel 13 team out of the kitchen, past a scowling Marylou Whitney and the twins, who had been hovering in the doorway holding their schoolbooks and passing a joint back and forth.

No sooner had the media departed than two burly guys in jackets and sport shirts strode into the kitchen. The older, larger, grayer of the two asked for Mr. Van Horn and introduced himself as Detective Lieutenant Card Sanders of the Albany Police Department. The smaller one was a Sergeant Lester Nechemias.

Glancing uninterestedly past Art and Antoine, Sanders asked me if I was PI Strachey, and when I said I was he asked Hunny and me to tell him why we believed Hunny’s mother had been kidnapped. Hunny described the first kidnapping claim that was phoned in. For the record, I added that there had been a second call from another claimant. I said the second call was almost certainly a hoax, but we couldn’t be sure about the first one, and we had decided not to take a chance that it wasn’t genuine.

Hunny said, “The first people said they would torture Mom and kill her, and the second ones said they would punch her in the face. She is so frail, and I’m afraid that even if they don’t hit her or anything she might have a heart attack. So we have to rescue her as fast as possible. Oh God. Mom must be so
wrecked
.”

“Does your mother have heart trouble? Is she on some kind of medication?” Sanders asked.

“Just Ativan once in a while. Mom would prefer bourbon, but
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Golden Gardens keeps her on the straight and narrow in that regard.”

“Mr. Van Horn, we’ll do everything we can to get your mother back unharmed,” Sanders said. “Verizon is set up, and when the kidnappers call back at six thirty we’ll know within a minute or two where the call is originating. If it’s a cell — and they may be smart enough to use one — the caller may be in motion and it will take longer to triangulate on the location. So what I’d recommend is that you make a plan to hand over the cash. What you want to do is, try to get the kidnappers to make a switch at a particular location, your mom for the money. But if they absolutely insist that the cash be dropped in one place and they say they’ll release your mom someplace else, you’ll just have to go along. APd is getting together a bag of twenty thousand dollars in marked bills and that bag should arrive here by six fifteen. You can repay APD the twenty K tomorrow at District Two after the banks open.”

“Get my mom back in one piece,” Hunny said, “and I’ll give every officer involved a bonus of one million dollars.”

Art screwed up his face and Antoine’s jaw dropped.

Sanders said, “That’s not at all necessary, Mr. Van Horn.”

Sergeant Nechemias added, “Police officers are not permitted to accept gratuities from citizens, sir.”

“I used to hate the Albany cops with a passion,” Hunny said.

“Back in the eighties, I got dragged into District Two seven times for giving blowjobs in the park, even though I wasn’t harming a living soul.”

The two detectives pursed their lips in apparent disapproval of the Albany police tactics of an earlier era but did not offer any present-day endorsement of public-park free love.

I said, “After Mr. Van Horn won the lottery, his being gay brought out a certain amount of right-wing hostility from individuals and from groups such as the Family Preservation Association of Albany. I take it you all are having a look at them, at least in connection with last night’s shooting.”