“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 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?”
194 Richard Stevenson
“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 out that Mom is a crook.”
I said, “Well, you would still have a hundred million, a fortune.
But you’re sure you don’t want to tell the Brienings to just shove it and let the chips fall where they may? The DA is unlikely to go after an old lady in a nursing home with a failing memory.”
“No, but it’s people’s opinions. All the other Van Horns besides myself have always been respectable. Respectability sucks as far as I am concerned. I’d rather not be — what did Quentin call it? — some boring old assimilationist. But people should get to choose for themselves. I got to choose who I got to be, and Miriam and Nelson and Lewis and even Yawn should also get to choose who they want to be. It’s only fair.”
“Hunny, you are a kind man,” Art said. “Even to your relatives.”
“So,” Hunny said, “here’s what I would like to do, Donald.
Please accompany me tomorrow morning out to Cobleskill. Let’s see if the evil Brienings will take nine hundred million. That would leave me with enough to give a million each to thirty or forty of the nice folks out at the warehouse — not including Dave DeCarlo — and also pay off Stu Hood his thousand and even Mason Doebler his thousand. Plus put the twins through medical school, and replace the tires on the Explorer, and a few other odds and ends. And if the Brienings won’t accept that deal, then fuck ‘em — they can have the whole billion. Just so they give back Mom’s confession and promise in writing never to bother her or me again. And I would go back to work at BJ’s, and I would see if I can get my pretty darn good life back the way it was before the skies opened up and started raining shit.”
Art said, “Instead of men.”
There was a long, sad silence.
“I’m so sorry, Hunny,” I said, “that I was so little help to you.”
“Oh, you’ve been a godsend, Donald, in so many ways.
Except for one little thing you don’t seem to be willing to go along with, even in return for your fat fee.”
“Well, I’m glad I haven’t been a total disappointment.”
“I think you need a drink.”
“I don’t care for the hard stuff. I just never developed a taste for it. But I wouldn’t mind a beer and sitting out on the front porch with the security guys for a while and relaxing. It’s such a nice night out.”
Art brought some cold beer up from the old fridge they kept in the cellar, and we went out with Marylou and the twins and sat on the porch steps and watched the bugs throw themselves maniacally against the streetlights.
I thought I heard drumming but soon realized it was someone banging on the door of Hunny and Art’s guest room. I had locked the door and gone to sleep instantly after two bottles of Sam Adams, but now it was six twenty Wednesday morning and Hunny was pounding on the door yelling, “Donald! Donald, girl, wake up!”
“Huh? Coming.”
