Richard Stevenson - Cockeyed

“No, I’d have recognized a voice I recognized. Oh, Lord, what am I saying? I think I need a drink. Artie, dear, can you fetch me the Jack Daniels?”

“Of course, luv.”

Art retrieved a bottle from under the sink and said to Hunny,

“Anyway, you don’t have twenty thousand dollars in cash. How much do you think you have on hand?”

“Seventy or eighty dollars.”

“I might have a hundred.”

“I could come up with forty,” Antoine said.

“I have the billion dollars in my checking account,” Hunny said. “But my ATM limit is five hundred a day.”

“Even if you went to forty different AtMs,” Antoine said, “I don’t think it works that way. I’ve tried it.”

The phone rang again and Hunny grabbed the receiver.

“Huntington Van Horn speaking. No, no, I have not. Now, I am quite busy. Please speak to my press representative, Mrs.

Whitney. I’ll send her out in a few minutes, but right now she is helping the boys with their homework.”

Hunny hung up and said, “It’s that obnoxious woman from Focks News. She says Bill O’Malley wants to interview me tonight at the Focks studios in Albany, and do I have a lawyer yet, and when can I do a pre-interview? I told her to talk to Marylou.

In fact, I think Bill O’Malley should interview Marylou instead.

I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame, and do you know what? I am sick of it. If I hadn’t won the lottery, none of this with the Brienings and the blackmailers and the kidnappers would ever have happened! Oh, God, God, what should I do about Mom?

Oh, poor, poor Mom. Donald, do you really think they would hurt an old lady like that? Oh, she must be so frightened.”

“I don’t know if they would actually harm your mother, Hunny. But because we know nothing really about who we’re dealing with here, it’s probably best to notify the police. The Albany cops have some competent people working for them these days, and they and the state police have the resources to put an operation together fast. They could trace the call when it comes in at six thirty, and they could monitor the cash pickup

— 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 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 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.

“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.”