Текст книги "Cockeyed "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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ChAPteR thiRteen
“Oh, God, just don’t hurt her,” Hunny told the caller. “You can torture me if you want to, but my mom never hurt a flea, and she is just the sweetest old gal you’d ever want to run into —
everybody says that about her – and I am begging you just to let her go as soon as I drop off the money.”
Sanders was listening on his cell phone and nodding at Nechemias. Art, Antoine and I stood straining to hear any sound that leaked out from the receiver next to Hunny’s sweating ear, but I could make out only an occasional hiss or low growl.
“Yes, yes,” Hunny said. “I understand. No, no, I have not notified the police. Why would I do that?” He reached up and showed us his crossed fingers. “Twenty thousand dollars is nothing to me, and I will certainly pay you anything at all to get my dear mother safely back in my arms.”
Sanders’ eyebrows went up. Hunny seemed to be telling the kidnappers that they could have extracted a much larger sum from him, and perhaps they still might. But they did not up the ante, apparently, for Sanders began to nod again, and Hunny said,
“I understand. I should put the twenty thousand…did you say in a gym bag? Oh God. I don’t have a gym bag. I haven’t set foot in a gym since seventh grade. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh. Okay, a small suitcase. I have a small suitcase that is black with a purple ribbon on the handle so I can always spot it when the driver takes it out from the luggage compartment under the bus.”
Sanders held his cell phone away from his face and whispered to Hunny, “Arrange for the swap.”
Hunny said into the phone, “Just so Mom is right there when I give you the money, and we can be reunited at last. That’s all I hope and pray for. To lay eyes on Mom. Then you can leave with the money.”
Hunny listened again, and now he frowned. “Oh. But how do I know that you will do what you say after I drop off the 94 Richard Stevenson
money at TGI Friday’s? Where will Mom be at that point in time?
Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. Well, I guess I will just have to trust you.”
Sanders was nodding again. “But is Mom still in her bathrobe and slippers? If you drop her off at a store, she’s going to be so embarrassed. Why not bring her to tgi Friday’s and I’ll get her right into my car and drive her over to Golden Gardens, and then we can all just forget this whole horrible episode?”
Sanders gave thumbs up to this suggestion, but the kidnappers must not have gone for it. Hunny looked glum again and said,
“Okay, Mister Kidnapper, whoever you are. It will take me fifteen minutes or so to get out to Stuyvesant Plaza, depending on traffic. And I’ll toss the black bag with the purple ribbon on the handle in the Dumpster behind tgi Friday’s. Then I will drive out onto Western Avenue and head back this way. Before I get home, Mom will call this number and tell whoever answers the phone where she has been let off. Did I get that straight? Everything is all right, then?”
Antoine whispered, “Ask the asshole how you gonna get your suitcase back?”
Hunny shook his head and said to the caller, “I am paying you in order to save my mother, but I have to say to you that I am not sending you any of my thoughts and prayers. You really should be ashamed of yourself for scaring an old lady like this who is a good Christian and has spread good cheer wherever she goes.” Sanders was energetically shaking his head at Hunny, who nonetheless added, “Don’t let the twenty thou burn a hole in your pocket, ya shit-head.”
Hunny hung up. “Should I have said those things? Oh Lord, me and my big mouth.”
“They had it coming,” Art said. “So, what’s the situation?
You’re supposed to toss the money in a Dumpster at Stuyvesant Plaza?”
“Yeah, right now. I’m supposed to come alone.”
Now Sanders was on his cell with somebody. He said to Hunny, “Get your black bag. The twenty K is in an unmarked CoCkeyed 95
car out in front. Lester, why don’t you bring that on in here?”
Nechemias hurried out the door.
“tgi Friday’s will be covered by APd undercover officers. Just take the money, Mr. Van Horn, and drive it out there and do like the caller said. Do you know your way out there?”
“To Stuyvesant Plaza? Girl, of course I do.”
“We still don’t know where the caller was located – it was a cell – but Verizon is working on that. We do know the number of the cell and who the subscriber is. Does the name Elton Steckenfinger mean anything to you?”
“Steckenfinger?”
“Yes.”
“No. I’d remember that one. ‘Ooo, I think my finger is stecken. Just try to relax.’”
Sanders stared at Hunny. He must have been thinking that celebrities are a species unto themselves, but in America we have to love them no matter what.
Officer Nechemias came back into the kitchen carrying a bulging paper sack.
Art said, “I’ll fetch the suitcase, Hunny,” and headed out the door.
Sanders asked Hunny for his cell phone number and added the number to his phone. He said, “I’ll follow you, about a block behind. Strachey, you ride along with me. Mr. Malanowski, you should stay here with Officer Nechemias in case the kidnappers call with the location of Mrs. Van Horn’s drop-off. We will not pick anybody up until Mrs. Van Horn has been rescued. But we will surveil the Dumpster and tail whoever leaves with the money bag.”
Sanders suggested a particular route to the Stuyvesant Plaza shopping center, and Hunny said, “Doll-face, that is how I would go anyways. I grew up in Albany, sweetheart.”
When Art arrived with the travel bag, Sanders stuffed the stacks of hundred-dollar bills into it. He also retrieved from his 96 Richard Stevenson
jacket pocket a small metal object with a Velcro back and inserted it into one of the bag’s zippered side pockets.
“What’s that?” Hunny said. “Some kind of explosive?”
“It’s a small radio transmitter,” Sanders said. “In case these bozos somehow get away from us.”
“Oh, this is just like The Bourne Supremacy. Too bad Missy Matt Damon isn’t here. Mom thinks Missy Matt is just fab- ulous, and what a thrill it would be for Mom if Matt Damon rescued her in person.”
“Or even just his boyfriend,” Antoine said. “What’s-his-name.”
“Is it Brad Pitt?” Art asked.
“No, he’s straight,” Hunny said. “Or so we are expected to believe.”
“Now I remember, it’s Ben Affleck,” Antoine said. “I’ve heard that there is a video of those two going at it that is hot.”
“Matt and Ben, or Matt and Brad?”
“Miss Matt and Miss Ben. But Lord, what a sandwich all three of those would make. Ooo-eee.”
Sanders said, “You should be on your way, Mr. Van Horn.
Do you feel up to doing this? Just keep in mind that I will not be far behind you. And I can also tell you that plain clothes officers are already positioning themselves out at Stuyvesant Plaza. We’re going to make this work.”
“Oh, it’s only a matter of minutes then before Mom will be free. Praise de lawd! In fact, whoever picks her up, I think they should bring her over to the house here for a victory imbibulation.
Artie, don’t we still have some champagne in the fridge from the other night? Of course, Mumsie might go for something a little stronger, and let me tell you, so might I.”
Hunny, in fact, had been sipping from a glass of amber fluid, and as he stood up he wobbled just a bit.
“Are you okay to drive?” Sanders asked, wondering perhaps if CoCkeyed 97
he was about to enable a dui.
But Hunny slapped himself twice on his own cheeks and strode confidently toward the living room and the front door.
“Don’t forget the ransom,” Art said, handing Hunny the travel bag.
“Oh, heavens to Betsy, my mind is a sieve!”
We all followed Hunny through the living room and out the front door.
“Where are you off to, darling?” Marylou asked.
“I can’t say,” Hunny replied. “But our hugest problem is about to be solved. Then I guess I’ll get busy solving the other ones. Girl, there is just no rest for the weary!”
“Will you be gone overnight?”
“I shan’t think so, snookie-ookums. But if I don’t return,”
Hunny added with a wink, “make sure the twins do their homework so they can get into Dartmouth and make Nelson and Lawn proud.”
Marylou smiled agreeably, and we all moved down the front steps and toward the TV crews lined up on the sidewalk. They had their microphones poised, and Hunny turned and asked Schuyler and Tyler if he might borrow one of their T-shirts.
Tyler whipped his off his well-formed frame and flung it to Hunny, who moved past the reporters and cameras with the shirt draped over his lowered head, as he cried out, “No pictures! No pictures!”
Hunny got into his old Ford Explorer with its all-but-treadless tires – the suv‘s blue finish was grainy and dull but the tires were so shiny they looked waxed – and placed the travel bag with the money on the front seat next to him. Sanders’ newer Ford sedan had been double-parked nearby, and he and I climbed into it.
As we followed Hunny down Moth Street, a couple of the TV people jumped into their vehicles and gave chase. But at the corner of Moth and Transformer, two APd patrol cars pulled into the intersection and cut off the press while Hunny sped up and 98 Richard Stevenson
moved on down the hill, with us not far behind.
I said, “If the First Amendment is suspended for thirty seconds, the republic will survive.”
“Yeah,” Sanders said, “Or thirty years wouldn’t hurt either.
Just kidding.”
Sanders got on his cell phone and told somebody that we were on the way, and we should get to Stuyvesant Plaza at about six-fifty-five if traffic didn’t bog down.
I said, “So who is this Elton Steckenfinger? Any idea?”
“Not yet. It’s his cell phone, and it hasn’t been reported stolen. Steckenfinger lives in Watervliet, and we’ve got officers on the way up there. They’ll be cool till we see what happens at Stuyvesant.”
“Does your experience suggest that these people will pick up the bag and then release Mrs. Van Horn?”
“I have very limited experience with abductions. But my training tells me that this thing has all the earmarks of dumb amateurs. The twenty thousand figure, for example. What’s that about, for cryin’ out loud? Why not a hundred thousand? Why not a million? These dickheads have to know that Mr. Van Horn won the Instant Warren. Half the people on the face of the earth have heard about Huntington Van Horn, the gay billionaire. And then there’s the thing that whoever did the snatch is so confident that Mr. Van Horn wouldn’t bring APd into it. Haven’t these people ever been to the movies? The cops nearly always get called in the movies, and this is also true in reality. So, all the signs are, these are not well-organized geniuses we’re dealing with here. They’re dummies, I think, and the thing with dumb amateurs is, they’re unpredictable. So, I really don’t know what to expect, and we’ll just have to see what we see.”
We swung onto the interstate and headed west. We could see Hunny’s Explorer two cars ahead of us. Hunny was doing fifty-five in the far right slow lane as the Sunday evening traffic roared by in the multiple lanes to our left. It was good that Hunny was dawdling, for he would need to exit I-90 at Route 85, and also CoCkeyed 99
in case one of his bald tires blew. The mid-August early evening sunlight was strong but shot through with the kind of tar-colored shadowyness that lets you know summer is not going to last forever and neither is anything else. Sanders had the windows up and the air conditioner on medium. Hunny had driven off with his car windows open – maybe because his Explorer’s AC was shot, or because his was a cheaper model that had never had any.
Sanders gave our location to somebody on his phone —
cops seemed to be exempt from the New York State prohibition against driving with a hand-held cell phone – and then he said to me, “Who are the Brienings?”
“Good friends of Hunny,” I told him.
“I’ll say.”
“I’m not really sure who they are. Some people Hunny has a history with.”
“He’s giving them half a billion dollars? I find that mind-boggling.”
“So do I. If I had half a billion dollars, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s unreal.”
“It just sounds weird.”
“If you had a billion dollars, detective, what would you do with it? Where would you start?”
“Well, I wouldn’t give half of it away the minute the check cleared, that’s for sure. I’d buy a few people a beer, and then I would give the matter a whole lot of thought.”
“Hunny Van Horn is impulsive. You must have picked that up.”
“Impulsive.” He laughed. “Well, he’s an effeminate gay.
They’re a mystery to me. So, who knows? Are the Brienings also homosexuals?”
“Not that I know of.”
“My supervisor’s daughter is a dyke. She’s hot, too. Two women. It’s a turn-on. I saw her with her girlfriend and I thought, 100 Richard Stevenson
Jesus, I wouldn’t mind watching those two going at it. Or even getting in there. I wonder if my wife wouldn’t consider that cheating.”
“You could ask her.”
Sanders followed Hunny down the exit ramp and onto Route 85 south.
“There are still guys in the department who badmouth gays.
But not so much as before. You never know who you might be talking to.”
“No. For heterosexual America, it’s a minefield.”
After a moment, Sanders said, “For example, I heard you were gay. So there you are. I wouldn’t have suspected.”
“No, I don’t wear my bumper sticker on my forehead. But I do drive around with it on my car.”
“Gays like Mr. Van Horn make a lot of people uncomfortable.”
“This is true.”
“If it wasn’t for fruity guys like that, gay people would have an easier time. People get turned off, is what happens.”
I said, “Ever hear of Stonewall?”
“Sure. The gays in the city revolted against the cops. Back in the sixties.”
“Hunny Van Horn was there. Gore Vidal wasn’t. And neither was I.”
“Vidal the hairdresser?”
“No, he might have been there.”
We were on Western Avenue now, Hunny about four cars ahead in the right lane. We passed the big State Office Campus, and we could see the entrance to the Stuyvesant Plaza shopping complex up ahead. Hunny signaled and turned into the access road, and then onto the sprawling tarmac, which was thick with the parked cars of Sunday shoppers and diners. tgi Friday’s was close by, on the left, at the near end of a long strip of shops.
Sanders parked within sight of the rear of the restaurant, and we CoCkeyed 101
watched Hunny halt next to the Dumpster near the restaurant’s back door. Another Ford was parked about thirty feet from us, and I could make out a man and a woman seated in the front, their windows rolled up. I indicated this car, and Sanders said,
“Ours.”
Hunny got out of his suv, went around to the passenger side, and removed the travel bag from the front seat. He closed the car door, looked around until he spotted our car, then walked over to the Dumpster. The lid was closed on the Dumpster, and Hunny stood briefly taking in this apparently unexpected development.
Then he lifted the heavy plastic top with one hand and held it open while he heaved the travel bag over the lip and into the receptacle. He let the lid fall back, glanced around, and walked back to his vehicle. No one in the area seemed to notice Hunny do this, or if they did they didn’t react.
Hunny drove back out to Western Avenue and turned toward downtown Albany. We followed.
Sanders said to me, “We’ve got three teams of two monitoring the Dumpster. Now we wait for word from Sergeant Nechemias that the kidnappers have released Mrs. Van Horn and phoned the house with the drop-off information. But they’ll pick up the ransom first, and we’ll be told when that happens.”
We were nearly all the way back to Hunny’s house, heading up Moth Street, when Sanders received a call. He listened and said,
“Okay.”
“The bag has been picked up,” Sanders told me. “By a man and a woman in an old Buick LeSabre. We’re on them.”
Back at the house, Hunny parked and again ran the gauntlet of mikes and cameras. We followed him into the house.
“No call yet?” Sanders asked Nechemias.
“Nothing. Just a few calls from media.”
Hunny looked grim. “I did what they said. So, come on, you puke-heads, come on! Where is my mom?”
At eight o’clock, no call had been received from the 102 Richard Stevenson
kidnappers. Sanders learned that the old Buick had been followed back to Elton Steckenfinger’s second-floor apartment in a rundown section of Watervliet, and the man and woman who had taken the ransom bag had disappeared inside.
Hunny fretted – and drank – and nothing Art or Antoine said could console him. He refused to eat anything – the rest of us had some caviar and Ritz crackers left over from Wednesday’s celebration – and Hunny’s left hand developed a tremor.
Sanders talked to somebody on his phone just after eight fifteen, and a decision was made to confront and arrest the two people who had picked up Hunny’s bag from the tgi Friday’s Dumpster – presumably, though not necessarily, Elton Steckenfinger and a female accomplice.
Twenty minutes later, Sanders received a call. He listened and said, “Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sure. That’s all you can do. Okay.”
Sanders rang off and said to Hunny, “I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Van Horn, that your mother was not in the home of the people who took your twenty thousand dollars. In fact, my officers believe their story that they never held her captive at all.
The Steckenfingers are a couple of crystal meth freaks who tried to exploit your situation. Everyone is extremely disappointed. As I’m sure you must be. At least we got the twenty K back.”
Hunny choked back a sob. “But then, where is Mom? What happened to Mom?”
Sanders had no answer for that.
ChAPteR fouRteen
Bill O’Malley rarely left his New York City studio, but he had been driven up to Albany for what the promos on Focks News were calling a special investigation into “bombshell developments at the New York State Lottery.” O’Malley had bumped Geraldo Rivera from his Sunday-night-at-ten spot so that he could score a scoop with his expose of “moral corruption involving underaged drinking, deviant sexuality, and impersonating a socialite” at the home of Huntington Van Horn, “the homosexual celebrity lottery billionaire.”
Hunny had agreed to appear on the show, hoping that he could spread the news of his mother’s disappearance to more people. Mrs. Van Horn still had not reappeared by nine thirty, and the East Greenbush sheriff had organized more volunteer groups to comb the area near Golden Gardens beginning at first light. An Amber Alert had been issued by the State Police.
While Rita Van Horn was not a missing child, Hunny’s celebrity afforded him the clout to bend the Amber Alert law to include the elderly. Meanwhile, Albany police had reported their arrest in the kidnapping hoax, and Elton and Marcie Steckenfinger had already been filmed doing a perp walk at Division Two headquarters.
I had driven over to the house on Crow Street to pick up some clothes and toiletries so that I could spend the night at Hunny and Art’s, and Timmy and I settled in to watch the Bill O’Malley show together.
Timmy said, “Poor Hunny. I suppose this television appearance will be a lot different from his Today Show fiasco. His mother’s going missing must be a sobering experience for him.”
“Sobering? Not exactly that, no.”
“Oh?”
“I advised him against doing the O’Malley show. He’d had more than a few shots of what I think was undiluted Jack Daniels 104 Richard Stevenson
and was semi-fuddled when he left the house for Channel 23.
Anyway, the interview is sure to be unfriendly, and these promos we’ve seen can only begin to hint at just how hostile and unfair O’Malley is bound to be. But Hunny was determined to do it so that Mrs. Van Horn’s picture could be seen by Focks News’s millions of viewers. Hunny himself would prefer a cozy tête-à-
tête with Anderson Cooper, but – media-savvy celeb that he’s become – Hunny knows where the ratings advantage lies.”
“I have to say, I really do feel sorry for the guy. Obnoxious as he often acts, it’s apparent that Hunny is basically a good-hearted man who doesn’t deserve all this hideous trouble that’s come crashing down on him since he won the Instant Warren. And he must feel horribly guilty about his old mom being victimized, too. If, that is, her disappearance has anything to do with his own weird situation. Do you think it does?”
“Probably. Her life at Golden Gardens was apparently calm and uneventful until the state dropped a billion big ones in Hunny’s lap. And the Brienings turning up, post-Instant Warren, might also have set something off with Mrs. Van Horn. Panicked her into doing – I don’t know what.”
“The news at six said Hunny was a well-liked and generous worker out at BJ’s. Apparently he’s giving his former coworkers each a million dollars. The manager of BJ’s was interviewed and said he was concerned about a lot of associates – that new euphemism for retail wage slaves – giving notice first thing Monday morning.”
“Yeah, something like thirty or forty people are going to receive a million each. Though Hunny is leaving out the guy who’s suing him for half a billion. Dave DeCarlo must be having second thoughts. Oops.”
“Channel 10 said Hunny was also planning on putting two young people through Dartmouth Medical School. That’s pretty decent of him.”
“Yes, Hunny is apparently concerned about a looming national shortage of podiatrists.”
CoCkeyed 105
“Good for him. Podiatrists?”
It was ten o’clock, and I turned up the sound on the kitchen TV. Timmy was on a stool enjoying a late-evening snack of raisin bran with skim milk, and I had made a pot of strong coffee for myself.
A lurid bReAking news graphic flashed on the screen, and then the trumpet-accompanied announcement of a Bill O’Malley sPeCiAL RePoRt. O’Malley soon appeared, American flags flapping electronically to his right and left.
“Good evening, my fellow Americans…”
Timmy said, “My fellow Americans? What is he, the president?
Good grief.”
“Welcome to my special investigative report on corruption at the New York State Lottery.” Staring gimlet-eyed into the camera, O’Malley fulminated for several minutes on the immorality and illegality of the Lottery Commission’s refusal to withhold winnings from a man O’Malley said was not eligible to win the billion-dollar Instant Warren because of the poor example he was setting for America’s youth. A state-run program, O’Malley said, should not be in the business of rewarding same-sex unions like that of Hunny Van Horn and his friend – O’Malley’s fingers waggled a set of quotation marks when he said friend – Art Malanowski. Looking especially sanctimonious now, O’Malley said he certainly endorsed “tolerance for homosexuals,” and he did not support crushing them with stone walls, “as is done in many Muslim countries.” Up came some blurry video of a bulldozer shoving a stone wall over on two men in Arab garb who were lying prone in the sand and tied up and blindfolded.
“However,” O’Malley went on, “government tolerance is one thing and government participation in the radical homosexual agenda is not something any good American is willing to put up with.”
“I wonder,” Timmy said, “if O’Malley thinks the dMv is advancing gay rights by issuing us driver’s licenses. God.”
“Shh.”
106 Richard Stevenson
It was hard to imagine Hunny sticking around the Focks News studio and participating in this looniness, and in fact when O’Malley introduced an interviewee it was not Hunny at all, but the head of the Family Preservation Association of Albany County. The Reverend Payton Kalafut was a bulbous middle-aged gentleman leaning so far back in his chair that he seemed almost to be reclining and being viewed from above, as in a Busby Berkeley from-the-rafters shot. Looking up, he endorsed O’Malley’s plea for tolerance by saying bulldozing homosexuals was “going too far.” The reverend then argued nonetheless that
“the dollars of tax-paying Christians must never be used to support immorality.”
Timmy said, “Taxes don’t support the lottery. Gamblers do.
Most of them Christians, I’d be willing to wager.”
“You should write O’Malley and demand a correction.”
“I might.”
Reverend Kalafut went on about suing the Lottery Commission, and gave a post office box where viewers could send donations to help cover fPAAC‘s legal expenses. Throughout the interview, O’Malley nodded sympathetically. He then thanked the reverend for “standing up for American family values” and wished him good luck with his lawsuit, which was
“the Lord’s own work.” O’Malley told viewers he would be back after a commercial break, and then an ad came on for erectile dysfunction pills.
“At least,” Timmy said, “by agreeing to participate in this horror show Hunny is going to come across as both brave and sympathetic. And maybe it will even help get his mom back.”
“Let’s hope that’s the way it goes.”
After a minute and a half, O’Malley reappeared, Old Glory waving next to each of his ears, and introduced Hunny, who was seated in the chair previously occupied by Reverend Kalafut.
Slouching in his seat in an ill-fitting jacket and some kind of hand-painted necktie, Hunny looked wan, bleary-eyed and jittery.
“Huntington Van Horn,” O’Malley intoned, “is the first winner CoCkeyed 107
of the New York State Lottery’s Instant Warren drawing. Mr. Van Horn took home a check for a staggering one billion dollars last Friday when he appeared on another network to collect his huge check. Not content to simply say how fortunate he was, however, Mr. Van Horn, an advocate for gay rights, so-called, accepted his winnings and then made a suggestive comment about the male host’s anatomy. That was an early tip-off that the New York Lottery Commission had made a tragic mistake, a mistake this taxpayer funded state agency has yet to rectify.”
Hunny shot O’Malley a look that was both angry and injured and said, “This was supposed to be about getting my mom back.
That…that Trinkus woman who works for you said…Trinkus said I could announce that Mom was missing from her nursing home and you’d put her picture on TV. So anyway, who cares about Matt Lauer’s basket?” Hunny’s diction was sloppy – the Jack Daniels had crept up on him – and as he spoke he squirmed in his chair like a child who needed to go to the lavatory.
“Yes, we’ll get to the so-called disappearance,” O’Malley said, arching an eyebrow at the Matt Lauer reference but otherwise charging by it. “Mr. Van Horn’s mother has perhaps been misplaced by the Golden Gardens home for the elderly in East Greenbush, New York, an institution that state nursing home regulators need to take a close look at. I’ll be doing an investigation of state regulators and their failings at a later date.
There is also a good possibility that your mother’s disappearance, so-called, could be a hoax connected to your own desire to obtain a contract for your own reality show on All-Too-Real TV.
But right now, Mr. Van Horn, I have another photograph that I’d like you and viewers to take a close look at. Just look over there at the monitor.”
Hunny flared, squirmed some more and was about to speak, but something caught his attention off to the side, and on our home screen up came a photo of a woman I took to be the actual Marylou Whitney. “Do you recognize this woman?” O’Malley demanded to know.
“Well, of course I do,” Hunny muttered. “That is Mary 108 Richard Stevenson
Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the former vice president and notorious war criminal Dick Cheney.”
“Absolutely incorrect,” we heard O’Malley say. Then the picture changed to the Marylou Whitney who was Hunny’s pal.
“And do you recognize this person, Mr. Van Horn?”
“That rectal vision,” Hunny said in a W.C. Fields voice, “oh, I mean regal vision, is Mrs. Marylou Whitney, the horse fancier and gracious lady of Saratoga and Palm Beach. I rectalize…realize…
reck-a-nize Mrs. Whitney because she is a very dear friend of mine. Marylou was telling me just this afternoon how happy she is that now I am even richer than she is. Isn’t that a hoot? How d’ya like them apples, Bill O’Malley?” Hunny held his hand up and burped into it.
“Our show has evidence,” O’Malley declared, “that the so-called lady shown on viewers’ screens is in fact a female impersonator – a drag queen, if you will, who is just one of the retinue of gay lowlifes regularly harbored by you at your Moth Street home here in New York’s state capital. These are people who will not only benefit directly or indirectly from the state’s billion-dollar payout but will also, through becoming celebrities, influence young people across America to adopt the homosexual lifestyle. What say you to that?”
The camera went in for a close-up on Hunny, and it was now apparent that the hand-painted necktie he was wearing displayed the from-the-waist-up shirtless image of late porn star Jack Wrangler. Hunny scowled back at O’Malley and stammered,
“What a…what a pack of bald-headed lies! I know that my friend is the real Marylou Whitney because I have seen the horse’s face tattoo on her upper thigh just to the right of her ample bush.
And if she did have a dick, I certainly didn’t notice it. Or, if I did take note, and since then it has slipped my mind, I probably figured if Marylou Whitney wanted to have a dick sticking down from between her legs, then that was her own freakin’ business, and it is certainly none of my business or yours!”
Now the camera cut to O’Malley’s ashen face, as he said, “I apologize for that. We’ll take a break and be right back.”
CoCkeyed 109
Timmy said, “Yuck.”
“I was a little afraid of this.”
“This is not going to help. Not Hunny, not his mother, not any of the rest of us. Oh, Jesus.”
Now another erectile dysfunction ad was running. The male in the couple was looking as if he himself had won the Instant Warren, and the woman we were supposed to assume was his wedded wife bore the expression of expectant awe you might find on a discount store greeting card rendering of the Annunciation.
I said, “I should not have let this happen. Hunny was set up.
O’Malley and his people used Hunny’s emotional state over his mother to lure him on and then provoke him and make him act in a way that confirms every Focks viewer’s ugliest stereotype of gay men.”
