on what he referred to as a “broken oral contract.”
When it was Hunny’s turn, he said that while he and DeCarlo had once purchased lottery tickets together, that had been back in the spring and had been for an entirely different drawing, not the August Instant Warren. Hunny added that while he had planned on giving all his co-workers what he called an “August bonus” from his lottery winnings, now that DeCarlo was trying to swindle him, “that bleep bleep ” wasn’t going to get a cent.
Timmy and I were watching the news in our bedroom at our house on Crow Street before heading out for a Saturday night Thai dinner with friends. After that, I planned on meeting another of the blackmailers when his cleaning-crew shift at a Corporate Woods office building ended at eleven.
Timmy said, “Hunny is quite the sleazoid-magnet. It looks as if he’s going to keep you hopping.”
“DeCarlo does appear to be an unscrupulous fellow. Most of the other skeletons tumbling out of Hunny’s voluminous closet, though, look like they’re just hapless shmoes. I phoned three of them this morning after Hunny left my office and warned them off, and none of the ones I talked to seemed to want any trouble. I’m more worried about two other guys who do sound a bit unhinged and maybe even dangerous. I saw one of them this afternoon at the Watering Hole. He’s a hustler named Stu Hood who has a history of arson.”
“Oh no.”
“He has only one conviction, as a juvenile, but Hunny says the guy was a suspect in a number of later cases. When Hood was thirteen, he burned down his parents’ house with them in it. He was supposed to be out mowing the lawn, but instead he poured gasoline from the lawn mower can all around the downstairs and lit it and ran out. He told the police he didn’t know his mother and father were upstairs napping and that he thought they had gone out for the afternoon. But Hunny said the family car was in the driveway, so Hood’s story was widely doubted. On Thursday, Hood threatened Hunny and told him he would torch his and Art’s house if Hunny didn’t go fifty-fifty with Hood on the lottery winnings. He claims Hunny turned him into a homosexual after Hunny picked him up while Hood was cruising the park.”
“Why, Donald, it’s our story.”
“Exactly. I was a confused youth, and when you fondled me behind that bush, I thought, oh, wow, I could get used to this.”
“You were the mixed-up youth? I’m reasonably certain it was the other way around.”
“Then how come you were carrying that towel thing around with you at eleven o’clock at night? You even told me at the time that it was so you wouldn’t get moss on your knees.”
“I seem to have repressed any memory of that.”
“Anyway, Hood’s story is as ugly as it gets. He told me that he was repeatedly raped by a priest when he was eleven years old but that he didn’t recall these incidents until it was too late for any legal recourse.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I’m not sure. But it was two years later that he started setting fires. Or two years that anybody knows of.”
“Were there any church fires around that time?”
“Good question. But my role here is not to prosecute or to clear Stu Hood for any crimes he may have committed in years gone by. My job is to get him off Hunny Van Horn’s back.”
Timmy zapped off the TV — no more Hunny news for the moment — and started getting into his dinner togs, his nicely pressed slacks and a polo shirt he had ironed earlier in the day. He said, “I keep hearing that gay people in the Capitol really do wish somebody other than Hunny had won the Instant Warren. He is just such an excruciating public embarrassment.”
“I find him interesting and sometimes even entertaining,” I said. “Hunny is one of a vanishing species. Also, here is a client who, when I bill him at the end of the month, will be in a good position to pay it.”
“Vanishing species, I don’t think so. God, if only.”
“Hunny is gay man at his most primitive. He’s the untamed queer Neanderthal. He’s the rugged individualist on the old gay frontier. He’s a homo Huck before Aunt Polly tried to civilize him. Hunny is proudly out and proudly nelly. Hunny am what he am.”
“What Hunny am,” Timmy said, “is a loudmouth drunk and a hideous old letch. It wouldn’t surprise me if the greatest threat to Hunny at this point is not some juvenile delinquent arsonist he had sex with, but any of the thousands of decent, sober, well-behaved gay men and women across America who see Hunny on national television and are now looking for ways to make this grotesquely embarrassing creature just disappear.”
Timmy had at least a partial point. Maybe looking after Hunny was going to be even more complicated than I thought.
The first thing Mason Doebler said to me was, “I’m not taking any shit from Hunny and I’m not taking any shit from you. Don’t waste your time threatening me, and don’t waste your time pissing me off. Hunny has owed me three thousand dollars for four years, and now he can afford to pay his debt to me — with interest.”
“He told me that the other day you demanded fifty thousand dollars. That represents a lot of interest on three K. It’s even more than Citibank charges.”
“I’m charging him a lot because now that he’s won the lottery, fifty K means nothing to Hunny. And because his refusal to pay me anything at all has been a thorn in my side that I am sick of. I have it coming, and, believe me, I am going to get it.”
Doebler looked like a man who, when he made demands, generally had them met. A good six-three, two- forty, with a crew cut above a whiskery moon face, he had the heft and sartorial coloration of a gay bear but not one with a cuddly demeanor.
We were seated at a table in the upstairs restaurant in a noisy bar on Lark Street. The music was some type of heavy metal lite, though the band playing it did not appear on any of the eight large flat TV screens arrayed around the room. These were showing a variety of sporting events — baseball, pre-season football, NASCAR — and the overall feel of the place was that of a rest home for people with severe Add.
Doebler was chowing down on two double chili burgers, and I was keeping my grip moist on a sweating bottle of Sam Adams.
I said, “Hunny told me that you think he was responsible for wrecking your car. But he says none of what happened four years ago was his fault, and he accepts no financial responsibility.
What’s your side of the story, Mason?”
Through a mouthful of dough and ground beef, Doebler said, “Hunny was sucking my dick while I was driving out Western Avenue near suny, and I ran off the road and smashed into some bushes. The air bags went off, and we didn’t get hurt much. But my Firebird was a mess and my collision insurance had a three thousand dollar deductible. I had told Hunny to wait till we got to his place. But Hunny’d had a few cocktails — as Hunny always does — and he was totally out of control, as usual.
He was smoking a cigarette, too, and we were just lucky we didn’t go up in flames. Getting the Firebird back on the road cost over five thousand, and three thousand of that was out of pocket. My pocket, even though Hunny was totally to blame.”
“Something doesn’t quite add up here, Mason. Are you claiming that while you were driving your car, Hunny raped you?”
“Of course not.”
“But you are saying, as I understand it, that your erect penis was out in the open air, and Hunny was bent over and sucking it.
Did you take your dick out of your pants, or did Hunny?”
“Well, he did. That’s what I’m saying.”
“It must have taken Hunny some minutes to get your pants open or down around your ankles. During that time, why did you not pull to the side of the road — taking proper care and utilizing your directional signals — and retrieve your dick from Hunny and place it back in your trousers where you claim you wanted it to remain?”
Doebler glared at me and said, “You know goddam well why I didn’t make him stop. If somebody is sucking your cock — and they’re as good as Hunny is at it — you’re not really thinking clearly. But I did tell Hunny to fucking cut it out.”
“If we were in a court of law, I doubt you could fall back on ambivalence as a justification for your behavior. Or temporary insanity, either.”
“Look, if Hunny had not been stinko and out of his mind, the whole thing would never have happened. That’s
