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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.

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“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.”

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?”

ChAPteR tweLve

“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 86 Richard Stevenson

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 CoCkeyed 87

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.”