Skunk Hunt (63 page)

"Inconceivable!" Uncle Vern bellowed. "I am
referring to the arrangement between Skunk and myself that put you
and your family in cakes and ale."

While the bellows subsided I reflected on
cakes and ale. Twinkies and Budweiser. Literally, it applied;
figuratively, it stank. On the other hand, compared to us on Oregon
Hill, Todd and my mother had been wallowing in the good life.

"A monetary arrangement is what I guess
you're talking about," I said, my circular wording coming as a
result of uncertainty. I was growing increasingly frustrated with
knowing so much and so little.

"Reverend Smith retired to Florida," Uncle
Vern continued, leaving me to infer that the answer to my question
would come later, if at all. "He asked me to continue the good work
with the Glass Heads. This was unusual. There are several of these
groups throughout the state prisons and they are all conducted by
ministers."

"You became the conductor?"

"And not even ordained. God works in
mysterious ways."

"True that."

"Reverend Cawfield was apoplectic. I believe
I already mentioned his group to you: the Crystal Angels. When he
came to Powhatan for Reverend Smith's retirement party, he was
honored with a concert and he spotted my bad eggs right away. But I
had built up a foundation of trust with the warden. We weren't
publicity hounds, mind you. We were only looking to secure our
income: mine through my business, his through his job. It was too
bad I couldn't put 'reverend' in front of my name, which added a
certain cachet to the programs. To make amends, the warden had the
print shop insert 'deacon'. I didn't complain.

"Skunk had a ready-made network of associates
outside the system. The first job—"

"Who was in charge?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You or Skunk?"

"I had the critical data."

"And he had the critical manpower." As I said
this, I tried to conjure up the 'network of associates' at Skunk's
disposal, a motley collection of drunks, dopeheads and all-round
losers who had almost enough collective sense to retract their
heads from their buttholes. As Vice-President of the Dominion
Jewelers Association, Vern could look properly officious snooping
around a jewelry store. But try as I might, I couldn't imagine one
of Skunk's associates wobbling into a schmancy ice palace, dropping
hunks of dirt and looking conspicuously inconspicuous.

"Without me, Skunk couldn't have..." Uncle
Vern let his overheated pride simmer for a few silent moments, then
said: "Let's just say we were equal partners. Whenever he was out
of jail, he took over field operations."

"I'll bet your insurance went up," Marvin
snorted from his cockpit. When his uncle bent his nose to the
darkness ahead, his nephew added: "Everyone's insurance went up,
right? All those robberies. You ended up screwing yourself."

"Not at all. A single job could cover my
premiums for ten years."

An admission that the Glass Heads was a
highly profitable enterprise, though the only dollar amount I had
heard so far was the highly speculative (in my mind) million
dollars. And, depending on the split, a million smackers wasn't
that many smacks.

"I was astonished at how smoothly things
went," Uncle Vern confessed, smoothing his own feathers as he
reminisced upon their success. "In his field, your father was
remarkably efficient. Neither he nor any of our accomplices was
ever caught."

"I beg to differ," I protested.

"He was scooped up by the law for stupid
violations. Robbing the 7/11, assault, that sort of thing. But
never for knocking over jewelry stores."

True. When Skunk was in his cups and those
cups went dry, mom and pops became natural targets. I don't think
he was ever armed for these drunken ventures, but a tendency to
lock Mom in the storage freezer and twist Pop into a pretzel was
not looked on lightly. How he managed to stay out of prison for
years at a stretch suggested undue influence with the parole board.
After all, Virginia implemented Three Strikes and You're Out back
in 1996. I assumed that influence came from Uncle Vern. You had to
admire the way he had finessed the system.

"But then came catastrophe," Uncle Vern
continued.

"The Brinks job," I suggested.

"That was later. I'm speaking of the arrival
of Archibald Penrose."

I blinked, and not just because, at that
moment, Uncle Vern nearly drove us off a cliff to avoid hitting a
raccoon in the road. "Mom mentioned him back at the house. Dr.
Whacko…" Yes, she had mentioned him—then dropped the subject. I had
not followed up, probably because of it's dire irrelevancy.

"Originally, Professor Penrose was studying
the effects of poverty on the genome. I suspect he chose Oregon
Hill because he felt safer working in a white enclave."

"Ha!" I commented.

"He wasn't bothered by the locals. Not very
much. As I recall, his car was only stripped once. But when the
usual suspects realized Penrose was Skunk's acquaintance, they laid
off. Now, studies on twins are a dime a dozen. I suspect this was
merely a lark—or the university was using the study to case the
neighborhood. Even then, imminent destruction was in the air."

"I cry myself to sleep over it."

"Really?"

"Something wrong with that?" I demanded. And
it was almost true. For decades, the original inhabitants had lived
in dread of the university that lusted after their land. And then
the day had come.

Uncle Vern said: "The wholesale destruction
of homes, your friends forcibly removed. Yes, I might have shed a
tear, too, if that had happened in my neighborhood."

Marvin made a 'fat chance' sound.

"As I was saying, Penrose's study was
straightforward enough—until something more interesting came along.
You."

"Aren't twins a dime a dozen, too?"

"Fraternal twins are. But monozygotic male
twins are fairly rare."

"Mono…"

"Identical. When you have the chance, look up
'zygosity' in the dictionary."

"I will. How do you spell that?"

"I-d-i-o-t," said Marvin.

"But you were rarer still. Some years ago it
was discovered that most identical twins aren't genetically
identical. It has to do with something known as 'copy number
variants'. From what I can understand of the subject, some
chromosomes of one identical twin will lack genes the other one
has. This has proved quite a bonus to scientists researching
genetically transmitted diseases, with one twin showing a tendency
towards leukemia, for example, while the other twin shows no
predisposition at all. But it has proved disappointing to all those
scientists who based their studies on the premise that identical
twins were identical in every way, right down to their corpuscles.
Incidentally, it has also been shown that, over time, identical
twins diverge genetically, depending on environmental factors."

"Like?"

"If one is exposed to cigarette smoke or
other carcinogens, or exposed to ionizing radiation, while the
other has a healthy environment."

"And I thought you only knew about fake
jewelry," Marvin said.

"So which one of us has the lupus gene?" I
inquired, naturally enough. "Is Todd going to howl in the
moonlight—or will it be me?"

"I wouldn't know. And neither did Penrose, I
suspect. He staked his claim to fame on something else entirely.
There are more than eighty men in Virginia prisons alone who have
identical twins outside the walls. Defense lawyers love this. How
can the state prove which twin committed the crime? Eyewitnesses
can't tell them apart. And in the case of genetic evidence, only
some heroic science can tell the difference."

"I still don't understand. Why pick on
us?"

"Penrose told your father that you were
special because there were so few number variant studies on white
twins of deprived backgrounds. And he had to work fast, what with
Oregon Hill being right next to the university and being marked
for...is there a kinder word for 'destruction'?"

"Big loss," Marvin chortled. "And we're still
being followed."

"Be that as it may," Uncle Vern said,
punishing his nephew with a squeal-inducing swerve into the
oncoming lane. Back on the right side of the road, he went on:
"Skunk made it clear that he did not want Penrose hanging around
the house. He didn't mind him poking and prodding you boys—"

"Todd was there?"

"You were side by side with him for over two
years."

"Ha!" I said, pleased that my idiot brother
had been forced to share the filth, not that I ever recognized my
surroundings as anything other than normal.

"And your father had a phobia against
forms—and Penrose had a plethora of them for Skunk to fill
out."

"Plethora," I said, spitting on him. "He
never had a Social Security number that I knew of," I said. I only
saw an inmate identification number."

"I didn't think you could get a welfare check
without one," Uncle Vern mused.

"Must have been through Mom."

"Not after she left," he pointed out.

"Skunk didn't believe in living off state
handouts," I said.

"He preferred stealing to working?"

"Hey, stealing
is
work. Hard work." And I added: "You should
know."

"Point taken." Uncle Vern thought a moment.
"No, the first prison he went into would have insisted he have a
number."

"Why didn't my father brush Whacko off?" I
inquired. "This was all voluntary, right?"

"Skunk might have been adverse to state
handouts, but he was perfectly willing to take money from
individuals. Professor Penrose provided him—your family—with a
gratuity straight from his own pocket."

"What, the school wouldn't pay?"

"There was a research grant that provided a
stipend for subjects under study, but it was a pittance and Skunk
laughed it off. What Penrose offered couldn't be sneezed at."

It couldn't have been that much, or else
Skunk would have stopped being the terror of mom and pops within a
two-mile radius—approximately the distance he could drive in a
straight line after downing a couple of cases. Then again, maybe
robbing Fast Marts was more from habit than for profit. Skunk's
avocation might have been like an itch that just had to be
scratched. But what about all the dough he was raking in from the
Glass Head Gang? It was beginning to appear that my father had
multiple sources of income. Maybe he wasn't so dumb, after all. I
mean, all the best Wall Street goldbricks insist that their
investors should diversify.

"You're saying Dr. Whacko could afford to buy
out my family?" I said, making it sound like a corporate
takeover.

"He could have afforded any number of
families," Uncle Vern said. "Professor
Penrose
…"

I didn't have to think hard or long.
Archibald Penrose leaning down, a perfect square of half-unwrapped,
chocolate-covered ice cream held out to me….

"The family that makes The Square?"

"The ice-cream magnates, yes."

There were few things more important
than ice-cream when I was a kid, and I had been touched by the King
of the Ice-Cream Square—or one of its princelings. I'm not exactly
sure what scrofula is, but if I had had it, I would have been
cured. I felt the thrill one associates at contact with royalty,
the rich and famous, and people who possessed unique talents—like
contortionists. A member of the Kissmecanoe Ice-Cream Stupendaloza
family had taken a personal interest in
me
. I was one of the Chosen.

"Why are you grinning like that?"

Uncle Vern had taken his eyes off the road
long enough to study my face. This drew a protest from Marvin. I
wasn't too happy about it myself.

"Nothing," I said quickly. "Could you, uh…" I
nodded at the road beyond the windshield.

Uncle Vern turned his head forward. "Skunk
took the man's money, but balked when Penrose got too nosy."

"Nosy about what?"

"As soon as he learned you and Todd were the
real thing—perfectly matched twins, down to your circumcised—"

"Hey!"

"Penrose wouldn't let loose. He was in your
house every day—remorseless is the word your mother used. He
studied your behavior, your IQ, even the way your eyes followed
shiny objects. For all I knew, he studied your stools."

"Yech," said Marvin."

"'Yech' indeed. Of course, he studied your
blood. Skunk didn't care how much he drew out of you, or how
painful it might have been for the two of you. But over a period of
two years he picked up on other things…details of your environment.
This included strong hints of Skunk's ongoing criminal behavior.
This gave Penrose a thrill, apparently. It tied in so beautifully
with his research. Not only could he form a genome baseline of
perfectly identical twins, he could sit back and watch the results
of your genetic inheritance."

"You mean, if Todd and I both turned out to
be bank groupies."

"He could combine the new science with the
old. MZ polymorphism pasted to the old nature/nurture school. The
pair of you were ideal."

"I'm not an idealist."

Uncle Vern brushed off my pun with the
brusqueness it deserved.

"So Skunk or Mom or both of them decided to
split, taking one of us with them," I said. "But how about Jeremy?
And Michael? Doubletalk came out of the blue—"

Uncle Vern emitted a nervous cough. "It was
my idea, in fact. The professor was bound to stumble on the Glass
Heads one day, much to our detriment."

"Especially yours."

"Your parents didn't have an ideal
marriage…"

He let the self-evidence dangle a moment
before continuing.

"They were agreeable to the idea. So your
mother re-married…"