Skunk Hunt (64 page)

The self-evidence disappeared. "You mean
divorced?"

Uncle Vern shrugged. "Such a costly,
nonsensical procedure. Besides, Winny was perfectly satisfied with
the arrangement. And we would be giving him an additional
name."

Winny Marteen, with a face like chewed
gum, and Lizzie McPherson. It didn't bear thinking. On the other
hand, Skunk McPherson and Elizabeth McPherson
n
é
e
Whatever had left a lot to be desired in the aesthetics
department. My mother was a bigamist. Pretty catchy.

"My mother's maiden name wouldn't happen to
have been 'Neerson', would it?" I asked.

"Yes, it was."

"Gotcha," I said. "I'm a bit vague on the
timing. Mom didn't allegedly off herself until I was ten. Hell,
Jeremy didn't show up until I was five and Sweet Tooth
was...hell..."

"Lizzie would often come back to Oregon Hill
and stay a week or so, whenever they were certain the professor
wouldn't visit. That's how she ended up with Jeremy, at first. In
the meantime, Todd was cared for by a nanny."

"A nanny?" It sounded creepy, and I was
overwhelmed with jealousy. Nannies and silver spoons went
hand-in-hand. "And Michael?"

"Ah...the crux."

"Him and Jeremy...?"

"Perfectly identical...yes. It was a ghastly
coincidence. I didn't think proper researchers could cream in their
jeans..."

"So," I prompted. "Michael?"

"The stress and scrutiny was too much. He was
put up for adoption."

I leaned perilously close to the edge of the
gaping silence that followed this remark. Adopted out to who, or
whom? The Hatfields or the McCoys? I was about to fall into the
cavern and ask, when Marvin said:

"It's not time yet, Uncle Vern."

Vern's wince left me once again wondering who
was in charge here.

"What did Whacko have to say about all
this?," I said, veering away but not forgetting. "I mean, Todd and
Michael were half of his research, right?"

"He was beside himself, but not for long."
Another deep sigh from Uncle Vern. "He suspected the separation was
bogus. He wanted to know why your mother and father would go to so
much trouble and apparent expense. He also wanted his money's
worth. Greedy bastard."

I gave him my best cockeyed look, which was
wasted as he negotiated a sharp curve down a mountainside.

"But how could they afford the West End?"

"They couldn't, of course." Uncle Vern's
voice was strained by selective revelations. "I have a cousin in
the real estate business…"

"Ah."

"We cut a deal on a very nice piece of
property…you've seen."

"Yes."

When Uncle Vern seemed reluctant to continue,
Marvin made a threatening noise. To say he was enjoying his uncle's
discomfiture was to put it mildly. I had long-since made the
connection between his wound and Uncle Vern's shenanigans.

"In short, we arranged a mortgage."

"Don't tell me," I said, summoning my feeble
financial intellect. "The down payment was worth as much as the
house. You were laundering your jewelry heist money."

"Well, it was actually worth a bit more than
the house."

"And there was still the Brinks money to
come," said Marvin gleefully. So gleefully that I was sure he was
due a big inheritance.

"And my cousin paid not a cent in capital
gains tax," Uncle Vern added, deciding to take pride in his
family's larcenous exchange. "It was his house, after all—not that
he ever spent a day in it."

"And ever since then you've used the mortgage
payments to process the jewelry money. And since you were the
fence, the only middleman who had to be paid off was your cousin.
It's the purest kind of speculation."

Uncle Vern preened unseemingly in my
comment; and truth to tell, it
had
come out sounding like a compliment.

"It couldn't last forever," he said. "It was
a fifteen-year mortgage. My cousin was afraid the bank might stick
its head out of the mud if the payments continued beyond that. I
told him there was no need to worry. With the housing mess, who
would notice? The FHA was so busy sniffing around everyone's
financial gonads that the bank wouldn't have time to think about
any anomalies at Ferncrest. But…"

His cousin was a worthless ninny, by his
lights. Even after fifteen years of massaging his booty through the
financial body, Uncle Vern sent a choleric arrow through his
unappreciated relative. Personally, I was impressed. Not only by
the fancy fencing, but the fact that for over a decade and a half
Uncle Vern's Glass Head operation had run so smoothly. If Skunk
really was his best henchman—Skunk, who couldn't kick a can down
the road without serving time for it—then I could only credit Uncle
Vern with being a true mastermind. It must have been like teaching
rats to crack a maze again and again and again. And pretty stupid
rats, at that.

"My cousin tried to convince me to put the
house on the market. Legitimately. He didn't say who exactly was
after him, only that he couldn't buy back the house himself. You
would have thought Al Qaeda and the Night Visitors were searching
for his carotid."

Hey, a classical music reference. A soft
pitch, true—but I caught it. The night visitors as auditors. I
liked it.

"When I told Skunk that Winny and his
wife—Mrs. Neerson—might have to vacate the premises, he went
ballistic as only Skunk McPherson could. He didn't live there, but
his wife and one of his sons did. Skunk decided he, or a party
acting on his behalf, would buy the house himself, and only a
massive influx of cash would answer."

"He asked Penrose for the cash."

"No…" Uncle Vern said slowly. "The professor
had vanished by then."

"Vanished?" I repeated, feeling a sickly
something in my gut. And that something had the shape and
non-flexibility of Skunk McPherson.

"He dropped out of the picture long before
the Brinks job. How old were you when you last saw him?"

"I don't know…six, maybe? Don't
you
know?"

"He got fed up with the whole business,"
Uncle Vern said. "I think your father showed him his fist one day,
and Penrose decided to keep his face."

It didn't jibe. Uncle Vern had gone out of
his way to describe the professor as an irresistible, catastrophic
force in our lives. I couldn't swallow his sudden
disappearance.

"It wasn't Penrose who gave him the money,
and it wasn't me—you don't just load a loose cannon like your
father with three quarters of a million dollars."

That was good, too…all those bucks, blown
away.

"That money was given to him—involuntarily—by
the Congreve brothers."

There is was, the fate of the Brinks money.
Between guesswork and confessions, I had known where it landed, but
not the contorted course. I was sure Uncle Vern had shown him the
ins and outs of laundering that money. Skunk sure as hell had no
idea where East Timor was, or that it even existed. My father
hadn't even been sure where Canada was, except that it was an
onerous weight on top of the United States, lingering somewhere
between the North Pole and the Artic Circle—wherever those
were.

"I understand now that Dad wasn't talking
about the Brinks money when he told me about West Virginia, okay?
But where do the jewels come in?"

"There's no honor among…" Uncle Vern began
grimly.

"Thieves," Marvin finished smugly."

"Your father hadn't gotten clean away with
the Brinks mega load. Sure, he spent some time in the state pen for
it, but then he was released. The authorities thought he would lead
them to a stash that was already long gone. The wisdom of the
bureaucratic mind is endlessly fascinating. And a good thing, too,
or the Glass Heads would have been smashed a long time ago."

"I'm getting the feeling that my father
turned on you," I said.

"I'm sure you do," Uncle Vern spat. "Criminal
minds think alike."

"Hey, I never—"

"You have the potential. You kept the secret
of Skunk's jewels through thick and thin. We did everything we
could think of to squeak it out of you. You must have known,
instinctively at least…"

"Maybe," I shrugged. "So how did Skunk
doublecross you?"

When Uncle Vern hesitated, Marvin threw out a
booger of scorn. "He robbed him!"

"Not quite," Uncle Vern amended, then
gathered his pride in a less tenuous voice. "He kept the proceeds
of the Bildass robbery."

"Never heard of it."

"They managed to keep it out of the news,"
Uncle Vern explained. "Bildass is located up north."

"Canada? Wait, you need a passport these
days—"

"Not quite that far. Not even out of state.
It's in one of those hideous satellite malls adjacent to Tyson's
Corner."

"Wasn't your shop in a hideous strip
mall?"

"The rent was cheap."

Hence hideous.

"For nearly seventeen years the Glass Heads
had won awards for their performances," said Uncle Vern a little
too dreamily. "In reality, we should have won awards for our superb
criminal craftsmanship. But it was time to retire the gang, and
Bildass was to be our swan song, a truly grand haul. And after all
that fine work, Skunk goes and ruins it."

"So that's why we're in West Virginia," I
said. We had crossed the border ten minutes ago.

"Skunk had handed over the entire proceeds of
Brinks to his Elizabeth. He claimed that between taxes and the cost
of living in the West End, they could spend decades there without
financial worry."

"'They' meaning her and Todd," I said grimly,
thinking of the cushy life my twin had inherited. "And Jeremy got
nothing? And what about this Michael Schwinn creature?"

"We had to be discreet. It all goes back to
Professor Penrose."

"I thought he was long gone."

"His legacy lived on," said Uncle Vern.
"We're talking about someone with way too much time and assets on
his hands. He had hired a detective agency to track down his
precious twins. He found the house in the West End. He was
ejaculating wonders over the prospect of going back to his perfect
sets raised in radically different environments. In a panic, your
mother put Michael up for adoption and sent Jeremy himself packing.
That didn't make much sense, except that Jeremy was torturing Todd
daily. From what she said, he would—"

"No need for details," I said. I was sitting
and thinking, the hygienic equivalent of shitting and stinking.

"And after all that trouble, Penrose drops
out. In spite of the risks, your parents decided to let things
stand the way they were."

"Risks?"

"We didn't know who he had told about us.
Another researcher could show up any moment. But your Skunk and
Elizabeth were already committed to their circumstances. I don't
think they were mentally able to complicate things even
further."

To my infinite detriment.

"Jeremy had settled in nicely on Oregon Hill,
and retrieving his twin brother from the adoptive family was
problematic in that it might draw more attention to the
family."

"So the story up to now is that my father
gave the Brinks money to Mom and his wormy son, and then I guess
robbed you because like all thieves he had a problem with recurring
revenue. And he was a skunk."

"He knew he was asking for trouble. This was
just too much to keep for himself, and he knew it. There were other
Glass Heads involved, after all, some of them every bit as violent
as the Congreve brothers."

"And without you, he couldn't fence the
jewels."

"Right." He hesitated. I even heard Marvin
hold his breath. I had the definite sense of a lie being inserted
into a lie. "We came to an arrangement. He asked for one more job.
It would be modest compared to Bildass, but enough to keep him in
six-packs for years to come."

"You arranged your own robbery," I said. "You
wouldn't lose anything because of your insurance. But weren't you
taking a chance, having Skunk stand in front of you with a loaded
shotgun?"

Uncle Vern pondered this as he slowed to
squint at a road sign. Bartow was a mere five miles ahead.

"In fact, I did realized the risk--more than
you know. I don't think he would have shot me. He knew which side
his butter was breaded on."

Realizing he was more rattled than he was
letting on, I let the inversion slide. I was surprised Marvin let
it go, though. Twisting around, I saw the improbable killer of my
father peering at the overhead monitor as he played the zoom lens
rearwards. Did he really see headlights beyond Yvonne‘s van, or the
reflection of a paranoid delusion?

"I was counting on Skunk's redemption," Uncle
Vern continued.

Not believing my ears, I turned to face him.
"You're telling me my dad was born again?"

"God forbid!" Uncle Vern barked, sounding
remarkably like Marvin. "We had worked together many years. I know
Skunk didn't tell me everything he was up to—the Brinks job came as
a tremendous shock. But when it came to our own working
relationship, I felt there was absolute trust."

Marvin's outrage-radar couldn't miss this
huge blip and he reacted appropriately. Uncle Vern ducked the rude
comment while maintaining steering wheel etiquette.

"Many of my Glass Heads have gone on to live
useful, productive lives in the conventional sense. I taught them a
trade, after all."

"You can make money playing glasses?" I
asked.

"Not really. But they learned certain
skills—"

""They became security alarm specialists,"
Marvin laughed.

"Shhhh!"

And then the reason for the Glass Heads'
phenomenal success rate struck me. Uncle Vern had skimped on most
of the details of his heists, leading me to infer a superhuman
virtuosity. But the cat was out of the bag. He had somehow bypassed
the vetting process and placed his graduates in key positions in
the alarm industry. There had been little in the way of balletic
skill and timing. His people had simply turned off their customers’
alarm systems and opened the doors. Uncle Vern's reaction told me
those upstanding citizens were still out there, earning paychecks,
paying taxes and occasionally playing doormen to Uncle Vern's
slackheads. It put me to thinking about truly gainful
employment.