Richard Stevenson - Cockeyed

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 84 Richard Stevenson 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 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 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 88 Richard Stevenson

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.