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.”
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.”
“Well, you said you advised him against going on. Maybe you should have hit him over the head with a chair.”
“He was determined to do it. And he never even got to show the picture of his mother.”
“O’Malley said her disappearance might be a hoax. Is that possible?”
“No. Who would benefit?”
“Maybe she staged it herself. Without Hunny’s knowledge.
To throw the Brienings off track. She has a history of deception, after all.”
“The embezzlement?”
“Don, she’s a criminal, for God’s sake.”
“Reformed. Mother Van Horn has been law-abiding in recent years. And sober.”
The get-an-erection commercial ended, and O’Malley reappeared. His look was one of disgust mixed with triumph. The chair next to him was empty. He peered into the camera and said gravely, “As for the wisdom of the Lottery Commission awarding one billion dollars to a plainly unstable radical homosexual who is going to utilize his celebrity to promote sexual deviance and poor taste, ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.”
O’Malley glanced to his right as a noisy commotion broke out, and soon we could hear a plaintive cry. “Mom! Mmmmooooommm!”
“We have plenty more evidence,” O’Malley went on, trying to ignore the ruckus, “that Mr. Van Horn is morally unfit to receive a large sum from a state agency. Focks News has learned that a former altar boy was served alcohol by Mr. Van Horn and sexually violated by him when the boy was a minor.”
I said, “Oh no. Stu Hood!”
“The arsonist?”
But the picture that came on the screen was not Hood but that of Mason Doebler, the bearish owner of the Pontiac Firebird Hunny had been instrumental in wrecking.
Timmy said, “That guy was an altar boy?”
“Now a grown man,” O’Malley said ominously, “but haunted by the pain and humiliation he suffered at the hands of the predatory Huntington Van Horn, Mr. Mason Doebler has informed Focks News that he is suing Mr. Van Horn for three hundred and seventy-five million dollars — ”
More loud voices could be heard, and then suddenly Hunny appeared along with two women, one of them Jane Trinkus in her too-tight jeans. Trinkus had Hunny by the arm and the other woman was wrapped around his right leg, and they were trying to drag him away from O’Malley.
Trinkus screamed, “Stay live, stay live! America needs to see this! He’s a terrorist!”
“Violence follows Huntington Van Horn wherever he goes,”
O’Malley boomed. “Late last night, supporters of Mr. Van Horn shot a Focks News cameraman who presently lies wounded in an Albany hospital. I urge you to offer your thoughts and prayers for…this brave cameraman.”
The wrestling match proceeded a few feet from O’Malley, who leaned back in his seat and gawked.
“This is my mom!” Hunny moaned, and was trying to hold up to the camera a photo of a plump smiling old lady in a leisure suit and a fresh perm. “This woman is missing from Golden Gardens in East Greenbush, and she may be injured or abducted or lost and hungry!”
“None of that has been proven,” O’Malley said, “although of course our thoughts and prayers also go out to this elderly senior citizen, whatever she might be up to.”
“If you see her,” Hunny gasped out, “please notify your local police department. And Mom, Mom, if you are tuning in, and you are being held against your will, or if you are hurt, I just want you to know that I love you, Mom! I love you, I love you, I love you! And if this has anything to do with the Brienings, don’t worry, we will take care of everything. Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry, Mom! Just come home, Mommy! Mommy, just come home!” Hunny began to weep as the two women now dragged him out of camera range.
Bill O’Malley said, “Who are the Brienings?”
I drove over to Moth Street in time for Hunny’s return from the Focks studios, a homecoming that was bound to be sad and awkward. I had already had a call from Nelson, who blamed me for what happened on the O’Malley show. Nelson claimed erroneously that it had been my job to keep Hunny out of any kind of trouble. In fact, I had been hired to deal with local thugs who turned up to harass or injure Hunny in one way or another, but not right- wing media thugs from Focks News.
Still, I wondered if there was any way I could have kept Hunny from looking spectacularly foolish once again. Now I was even more determined to help keep Hunny from acting like his own worst enemy and — although I hadn’t gone to Dartmouth and was not so much revolted by Hunny as fascinated by him — help keep him from becoming the cultural right’s poster boy for abominable homosexual depravity.
Bill O’Malley had not gotten an answer to his question about who the Brienings were, and as I drove I tried to formulate a story for Hunny to use in case the question came up again. Hunny had been seriously drunk on the O’Malley show, so maybe he could get away with saying he had misspoken. And instead of the Brienings he had meant to say the Grindings or the Rhinestones or the Bite-sizes, not that those made any sense to anybody, either. But Hunny had a knack for brazening things out, so I supposed he could redeploy his broad range of improvisational talents.
While I had Nelson on the line, I told him I had met the Brienings, and it was my belief that they were not directly responsible for the disappearance, but that the threatening letter they had sent Mrs. Van Horn might somehow have caused Mother Van Horn to panic and bolt. Meanwhile, I suggested, we ought to respond with vague evasions to any questions from the press or the police about the mysterious Brienings.
The Mason Doebler threat was going to be harder to finesse.
Doebler had apparently contacted O’Malley’s people and lied about having been molested by Hunny, borrowing and whimsically altering Stu Hood’s story, in a desperate attempt to extract more than the thousand dollars Hunny had promised Mason for his new catalytic converter. Three hundred seventy-five million dollars could put a real dent in Hunny’s bank account. Hood was sure to get wind of this development, and perhaps he would then sue Doebler for either invasion of privacy or plagiarism. Either way, I knew of lawyers the aging arsonist could hire who would gleefully take this on.
I arrived at Hunny’s house and parked across the street just as Art drove up and eased their dingy Explorer into the driveway, which was so tiny the suv stuck out about a foot onto the cracked sidewalk. Several TV crews were still on the scene, but instead of pouncing in their normal way they approached the vehicle tentatively. As I approached, Art told them, “Mr. Van Horn is under the weather and will have nothing more to say to the media until further notice.” The reporters all seemed to accept this.
Some looked chastened, others bordering on queasy. They had either seen or heard about the O’Malley fiasco. The two Gray Security guards also stood off to the side looking pensive.
Hunny climbed out of the back seat with a Budweiser beach towel over his head and face, and Art led him as quickly as Hunny’s unsteady gait would allow up the front steps and into the house. I followed close behind.
Antoine and the twins had left for the night, but Marylou was in the living room stretched out on the couch, her ball gown up around her knees. As we came in, Marylou switched off the TV, stood up and straightened her skirts. “Huntington, you naughty boy!” she said gaily. “Am I going to have to send you to the woodshed? Oh, my
