Cockeyed - Stevenson Richard. Страница 41

Shoemaker went on in this vein for a couple of minutes, maybe trying to make the cop see that if he interfered with this sacred ritual he risked incurring the displeasure of a celebrity.

The Brienings were now yakking at the cop a mile a minute, CoCkeyed 189

Arletta waving her cell phone, Clyde aiming his glue gun. The cop then stepped aside and made a call of his own.

Five minutes later, with the strip mall still refusing to rise off the ground and the exorcists drumming and chanting and trying even harder to make the damn thing budge — at least an inch —

two more police vehicles drove in off the highway, one of them local, the other a State Police cruiser with four officers in it.

I figured it was a good time for me to melt away.

ChAPteR twenty-eight

“Donald, I do like the way we live our sedate lives,” Timmy said. “But I have to admit that when I look at these Radical Drama Queen guys and at Hunny Van Horn and his colorful entourage, I feel almost Mormon. Have I turned into Mitt Romney without even noticing it?”

“Yes.”

“After all these years, are you going to dump me for a man wearing farm produce?”

“No. Shh.”

We were in the bedroom on Crow Street watching the Channel 13 eleven o’clock news. The Cobleskill strip mall exorcism was the lead story. The theatrical ritual had pushed the holdups, house fires and state legislator scandals that generally dominate local news coverage back several minutes. This was because the Crafts-a-Palooza event was surprising and because some great visuals were available and because of the Hunny Van Horn connection.

Quentin Shoemaker’s blunderingly connecting Hunny to the exorcism made it all extra newsworthy. Shoemaker had told me by phone afterward that he was sure his mentioning Hunny would engender both public and spiritual support for Hunny. But the predictable downside was about to become evident.

After a couple of minutes of footage of chanting, drumming and unsuccessful attempts to levitate the strip mall, Shoemaker was interviewed briefly. He again accused the Brienings of trying to steal Hunny’s billion dollars, though without mentioning how they were hoping to pull off this dastardly feat.

Clyde and Arletta were interviewed next, and after some tea-bagger-style rhetoric about socialism and Obama’s satanic minions, Arletta said that yes, it was true, that Hunny Van Horn owed them half a billion dollars, but after today’s disruptions and insults they felt that the entire billion ought to be turned over to them to compensate for their pain and suffering.

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Arletta concluded, “And if we don’t have the money by noon tomorrow, we will be calling a press conference and making an announcement that Hunny Van Horn will not be pleased to hear the contents of.”

Timmy said, “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah. This is bad.”

A Cobleskill police official was interviewed, but only briefly.

He said that when the exorcists were threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace, they agreed to pack up and leave only if they were first allowed to stick daisies in the cops’ rifle barrels.

The police sergeant had explained to Shoemaker that they didn’t have any rifles with them, and anyway it wasn’t the ‘60s anymore and if the Rdqers knew what was good for them they would move along. Which they soon did.

Next came an even briefer live report from a reporter standing somewhat forlornly outside Hunny’s house on Moth Street. She said that Hunny was inside the house and had sent word out that he would have no comment on the Brienings or anything else that night.

Then the Channel 13 anchors moved on to a water main break in the town of North Bethlehem.

“Hunny is screwed,” I said. “I let him down.”

“Maybe his mother won’t even care all that much about the embezzlement revelation. If she’s even alive. Didn’t you say her mind was slipping?”

“Oh, she’s alive, I think. I’m confident her pal from Texas and a guy named Herero have her somewhere. They may be on their way back to Texas, for all I know. If they were around here, by now they’d likely have heard that Mrs. Van Horn is officially a missing person, and cops and volunteers are searching for her in fields and culverts up and down the Hudson Valley.

The chances are good the three of them are in a Motel 6 in Chattanooga on the way back to Houston, or maybe holed up in a casino in Connecticut. Would she care about the embezzlement revelation? That’s hard for me to say. Hunny says yes, the Van CoCkeyed 193

Horns are respectable Christian people who would be crushed by the charge. But I’m convinced that that’s the case only with Hunny’s sister and her husband and Nelson and Yawn.”

“Isn’t it Lawn?”

“Lawn, yes.”

“Surely the DA isn’t going to make a big deal of a charge coming so late in the game. How long has it been? Ten years?”

“Thirteen.”

“There might be statute of limitation problems for the prosecutors. It’s not murder we’re talking about here.”

“Murder might be better. It’s racy. It’s tragic. It’s deeply human.

Embezzlement is merely embarrassing. And except for Hunny

— who has made a career of being the exception that proves the rule — the Van Horns apparently loathe social embarrassment more profoundly than anything else on earth.”

“It’s almost refreshing to discover social shame in a family,”

Timmy said. “You don’t have to be a Muslim jihadi to regret that the near disappearance of shame in American life is a serious social loss. Puritanism is one thing, The Bachelor something else.”

My cell phone rang, and it was, as I thought it might be, Hunny.

“Did you see the news?” His voice was barely audible.

“I did. I’m sorry, Hunny.”

“Can you come over?”

“Sure.”

§ § § § §

On Moth Street, the security guys were still on the front porch and two TV crews were on the sidewalk dozing on collapsible chaises. Inside, Marylou and the twins were in the living room watching a true-crime channel. Hunny and Art were at the kitchen table.

“Where are the Green Mountain Boys?” I asked. “Have they returned to Mother Earth’s bosom up north?”

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“Those hippies sure did turn out to be royal pains in the neck,” Art said. “They went ahead and ticked off the Brienings, and now those ass wipes say they want the whole billion dollars.

And Hunny is seriously considering giving it to them.”

Hunny was chain smoking by the evidence of the overflowing ashtray as well as the deadly haze in the room, and he had a bottle of Jack Daniels and a half-empty glass on the table in front of him. “Quentin and the boys are good-hearted lads,” Hunny said,

“and they mean only to be helpful.”

“The road to hell,” Art said, “is paved with good intentions.

Those guys are jerks. All those drums and crap.”

“Be that as it may, their hippie habits didn’t stop you from helping yourself to a little of that boy Ethan. You had no complaints about drums along the Mohawk when you were chewing on that comely lad’s cute member last night.”

“I’m not saying they weren’t friendly. Just stupid.”

“Well, what’s done is done. Yes, Donald, Quentin and his drama queens have departed for Vermont. They had to go back and milk the chipmunks or something. And in a sense what they did tonight it is just as well. Perhaps it is all part of the Lord’s plan.”

“How so?”

Hunny sipped his whiskey and savored its return to his life.

“I am just sick to death of the whole Instant Warren so-called bonanza. Everything was just fine for Artie and myself until that so-called good luck fell on me like a ton of bricks. Yes, I needed to pay off the Brienings their sixty-one thousand dollars. But I still have to pay them, and now they want the whole kit and caboodle billion dollars. And all I’m left with is a lot of people mad at me and Mom missing and nothing to show for my so-called good fortune except a lot of sorrow and tears. Plus, of course, the billion dollars, for the moment, which is nothing to sneeze at. Anyway, Nelson called right after the news was over and they think I should offer the Brienings nine hundred million and see if they will take it. Miriam is adamant about it not getting CoCkeyed 195