“Oh, Donald, you have come to my rescue!” Hunny crooned, as he hung up the wall phone. “I hope you’re armed, ‘cause Lawn just called again and he is on his way over here to kill me. Nelson is on his way, too, and I think you should shoot them both as soon as they walk in the front door. It’s Bette Davis in The Letter.
Blam, blam, blam, blam! You can plead self-defense, and Artie and I will back you up. So, Donnie, are you carrying a pistol, or are you just glad to see me?”
“Neither, really. What’s going on now, Hunny?”
32 Richard Stevenson
Hunny was seated at the kitchen table with a glass of something amber in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Art was bent over the sink rinsing out some glasses.
Art said, “We have apparently interfered with Nelson and Lawn’s dinner at Jack’s Oyster House with some local felons.
Dinner at Jack’s is a sacred ritual and I guess we have somehow blasphemed. Nelson went off to see some people about Hunny and his money, and he didn’t show up for dinner, and now Lawn is all higglety-pigglety-pooglety-swooglety.”
Hunny flung some cigarette ash my way. “Nelson supposedly is going to explain it when he gets here, but Lawn said Nelson said some people have demanded half of my billion dollars and we might have to give it to them. I mean, what’s half a billion to me, but I have to say, this does sound nervous-making, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. It does.”
“Now, Donald, girl, I don’t like the looks of your dour expression. I think you might need a drink. Are you a Cutty Sark drinker with a Dos Equis chaser? Or how about some weed?
What can I get for you, sweetie? What about some dick? The twins are hung like Jeff Stryker, plus they’re more interesting.
Donald, take a load off and let us entertain you. It bothers me that you’re not having any fun. What can we do to cheer you up?
You look morose.”
“I’m all set, thanks.”
Art said, “Nelson and Yawn hang out with these horrible people — the city and county officials and state senators the banks and insurance companies are all paying off to get city and county business. You go into Jack’s Oyster house and it looks like a scene from Warner Brothers in 1932. You expect to see Edward G. Robinson at a front table cuddling with his moll and his tommy gun.”
“Though it’s a miracle those crooks will even be seen at Jack’s or anywhere else in public with Lawn nowadays,” Hunny said.
“Everybody who invested money with Lawn is flat-ass broke.
CoCkeyed 33
Lawn specialized in tranches. Derivatives and tranches. Donald, do you know what a tranche is?”
Art said, “It sounds like one of Sarah Palin’s kids.”
“Nobody knows what a tranche is,” Hunny said, “because it’s just a bunch of dumb, worthless pieces of paper. Yawn made millions on this phony-baloney crapola and then he got out, and then everybody else went straight down the toilet.”
Art waved a sponge at me and said, “Now Lawn is all mopey because the SEC is breathing down everybody’s neck and he can’t commit highway robbery and get away with it anymore. The poor dear has been forced to operate on a somewhat reduced level of criminal behavior, like income tax evasion or shoplifting.”
“Poor, tragic Lawn. We call him Tranche DuBois.”
Art hung a freshly washed shot glass on a fork protruding from the drying rack and said, “All these Albany mucky-mucks he no doubt swindled just like he did everybody else put up with Lawn because I’m sure he’s sucking their dicks. They’re all married closet queens, that crowd.”
Hunny picked up on this theme. “It’s just like the ‘70s. You’d go into the back room at the Mineshaft, and all the pols would be there crawling around naked on their hands and knees. Today it’s no different — Cuomo, Schumer, the Supreme Court. They’re all taking it up the butt and they’re all just such disgusting phonies.”
The shot glass fell off the drying rack and back into the sink, and Hunny said, “Artie, dear, why don’t you come set for a spell and have another mai tai? At least until Nelson gets here, I’ll be the darky and you be the lady.”
“Oh, pshaw,” Art said, waving Hunny down into his seat, where he poured more of what appeared to be whiskey from a plastic pitcher with a spout shaped like a daisy.
I said, “Did Lawn give you any idea who might be in a position to insist on being paid half a billion dollars?”
“No,” Hunny said. “Stu Hood wanted half a billion, but he’s only getting a thou, and that sorry little fire setter will have to be grateful for that.”
34 Richard Stevenson
“He’s an arsonist,” Art said, “but, Lord, is that boy hung.”
Now there was some commotion in the other room, and soon a tall, austere-looking man wearing an Armani jacket and ten thousand dollars’ worth of pectorals strode into the room.
“Congratulations, Hunny,” the man said, not smiling, “for doing the absolutely most idiotic thing you have done so far. You are going to hear all about it when Nelson gets here. He left Cobleskill forty-five minutes ago, and he is on his way here, and Nelson is so upset I had to talk him down and tell him to pull off the road if he felt he couldn’t drive safely.” Taking note of me, he said, “Are you the private investigator? I’m Lawn Brookman.”
“Don Strachey.”
“I am Nelson’s partner. He said you seemed to be on top of things, which I was quite relieved to hear, and that I could go ahead and brief you.”
“Yes, I’d like to hear about this one.”
“Nelson used to faint,” Hunny said. “When he was thirteen, he passed out in church and had to be carried out. It was a salt deficiency or something.”
Art said, “Lawn, did you tell Nelson to put his head down between his legs?”
Hunny laughed and said, “Ooo, that should help. For those who can do it.”
“The twins almost can,” Art said, rinsing out an olive jar.
“And we have that one video,” Hunny added.
Lawn glared at Hunny. “Do you two ever think about anything besides sexual activity? When Nelson arrives you’ll have a whole new topic of conversation, I can guarantee you that.”
Hunny lit another cigarette from one that was smoked down to the filter and about to go out. “If you say so, Aunt Eller.”
“You know, it was tremendously awkward, Hunny, meeting people for dinner and Nelson not showing up without calling.
He was so upset and distracted that he neglected to phone or CoCkeyed 35
text and inform me he would be unable to meet us. And when I was unable to explain his absence I was both concerned and irritated, and I’m sure people noticed. They probably thought it was something I did or said. It was incredibly embarrassing. Then when Nelson phoned midway through the meal, he said I should not actually tell people where he was and what he was involved with, and I had to make something up. Instead of saying it was about Hunny’s mother, I said he was dealing with a cousin who had been in a boating accident. But now my dinner companions will look in the paper about a boating accident, and there won’t be any, and I will look like such a fool.”
Hunny looked up. “This has something to do with Mom?”
“With some people she used to work for,” Lawn said. “He didn’t say what it was, just that it was serious and it might involve a large part of Hunny’s lottery winnings. Half of the winnings, in fact.”
Art put down his sponge and turned to face us, and Hunny lit a second cigarette. One was now smoldering in his filthy ashtray and the second he held in a hand that was trembling slightly.
Hunny said, “Were these people the Brienings?”
“Nelson didn’t mention their names.”
I asked, “Who are the Brienings?”
“They own a crafts store out in Cobleskill,” Art said. “It’s where Rita worked until she retired thirteen years ago.”