the point, and that is why Hunny owes me three thousand dollars. No, fifty.”
I said, “Hunny says that when you called him on Thursday, you threatened him. He has this on his voicemail.”
A rivulet of chili sauce ran down Doebler’s chin, and he wiped it off with a napkin. “Oh, Hunny told you that, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck, I was just making a point. And I guess I made it.
What with you all of a sudden ragging my ass.”
“I understand, Mason, that you have a couple of assault convictions on your record.”
“So?”
“This has Hunny concerned. If you choose to sue him for three K, that’s your right. But you have no right to hurt him, and I am strongly advising you not to do it.”
Doebler, who was having a Coke with his burgers, said,
“Those incidents were when I was drinking. I’m sober now, and this enables me to manage my anger. What I said to Hunny the other day was just to get his attention. What’s fifty thousand dollars to Hunny, anyway? Why doesn’t Hunny just fucking help me out? He could do it with no sweat. I have issues, and he knows it. The suspension on my Firebird is practically shot and the catalytic converter is shit, and the check-engine light is on, and I know that in October I’m not gonna pass inspection. Fuck, it’s no skin off Hunny’s nose if he helps me out in my time of need. Ah, shit.”
I said, “Hunny is willing to give you a thousand. Not as a settlement but as a gift. He said you two had some nice times together, and he is sorry that there are hard feelings. This present, if you took it, would not indicate that he accepts any financial responsibility for the accident. Hunny is sorry it happened, but he believes that it was your own inebriation at the time that was the main cause of your driving off the road. You were still drinking then, Hunny told me.”
Doebler shook his head. “Fuck.”
“The thousand should cover the catalytic converter and get you an oil change, too.”
“I saw Hunny and Art on TV the other night,” Doebler said.
“That looked like quite a party they were having.”
“If you quit pestering Hunny about the three thousand, my guess is he would be willing to let bygones be bygones and you two could be friends again.”
Doebler had finished off the first chili burger and now he started in on the second. “Well, I could use the thou. I can’t deny that.”
“It’s up to you, Mason.”
Before Doebler could reply, my cell phone went off. I excused CoCkeyed 29 myself and walked back toward the men’s room, partly for the privacy but also so I could hear anything over the barroom din.
Hunny said, “Donald, girl, I’m sooo sorry to be phoning you at this late hour. You’re such a good boy and it’s probably past your bedtime. But Lawn just called me, and he is extremely upset.
He says Nelson has gone off somewhere to deal with a situation I am supposedly the cause of, and he said Nelson told him that I have really done it this time, and Lawn is coming over here to wring my neck.”
An Albany police cruiser was just pulling away from Hunny and Art’s brightly lighted house as I drove up, and I wondered if Hunny’s new “situation” had already escalated into a law-enforcement matter. It hadn’t, I soon learned, from a group of men ambling down the front steps. They informed me that the cops had come by in response to noise complaints from neighbors. The officers had asked Hunny nicely — he was a celebrity now — to have some consideration. He had graciously agreed, and now the party was winding down and people were heading off to the bars and clubs. A soft-spoken young Hispanic man with enough metal rings in his lower lip to hang a shower curtain on pointed out that there was still plenty of liquor and drugs available inside, and he suggested that I go on inside and help myself to some of “Hunny’s good shit.”
Hunny’s living room looked like the debris field after an air disaster, with dazed survivors lying around on couches and easy chairs while they snacked on Doritos and chips and Price Chopper clam dip. The twins, clad only in red thongs, were very much a presence, one of them doing some perfunctory tidying up, the other chatting idly as he sat on the lap of a man who looked like Karl Rove but probably wasn’t. A man in a pink ball gown introduced himself as Marylou Whitney and told me that Hunny and Art were in the kitchen.
“Oh, Donald, you have come to my rescue!” Hunny crooned, as he hung up the wall phone. “I hope you’re armed, ‘cause Lawn just called again and he is on his way over here to kill me. Nelson is on his way, too, and I think you should shoot them both as soon as they walk in the front door. It’s Bette Davis in The Letter.
Blam, blam, blam, blam! You can plead self-defense, and Artie and I will back you up. So, Donnie, are you carrying a pistol, or are you just glad to see me?”
“Neither, really. What’s going on now, Hunny?”
Hunny was seated at the kitchen table with a glass of something amber in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Art was bent over the sink rinsing out some glasses.
Art said, “We have apparently interfered with Nelson and Lawn’s dinner at Jack’s Oyster House with some local felons.
Dinner at Jack’s is a sacred ritual and I guess we have somehow blasphemed. Nelson went off to see some people about Hunny and his money, and he didn’t show up for dinner, and now Lawn is all higglety-pigglety- pooglety-swooglety.”
Hunny flung some cigarette ash my way. “Nelson supposedly is going to explain it when he gets here, but Lawn said Nelson said some people have demanded half of my billion dollars and we might have to give it to them. I mean, what’s half a billion to me, but I have to say, this does sound nervous-making, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. It does.”
“Now, Donald, girl, I don’t like the looks of your dour expression. I think you might need a drink. Are you a Cutty Sark drinker with a Dos Equis chaser? Or how about some weed?
What can I get for you, sweetie? What about some dick? The twins are hung like Jeff Stryker, plus they’re more interesting.
Donald, take a load off and let us entertain you. It bothers me that you’re not having any fun. What can we do to cheer you up?
You look morose.”
“I’m all set, thanks.”
Art said, “Nelson and Yawn hang out with these horrible people — the city and county officials and state senators the banks and insurance companies are all paying off to get city and county business. You go into Jack’s Oyster house and it looks like a scene from Warner Brothers in 1932. You expect to see Edward G. Robinson at a front table cuddling with his moll and his tommy gun.”
“Though it’s a miracle those crooks will even be seen at Jack’s or anywhere else in public with Lawn nowadays,” Hunny said.
“Everybody who invested money with Lawn is flat-ass broke.
Lawn specialized in tranches. Derivatives and tranches. Donald, do you know what a tranche is?”
Art said, “It sounds like one of Sarah Palin’s kids.”
“Nobody knows what a tranche is,” Hunny said, “because it’s just a bunch of dumb, worthless pieces of paper. Yawn made millions on this phony-baloney crapola and then he got out, and then everybody else went straight down the toilet.”
Art waved a sponge at me and said, “Now Lawn is all mopey because the SEC is breathing down everybody’s neck and he can’t commit highway robbery and get away with it anymore. The poor dear has been forced to operate on a somewhat reduced level of criminal behavior, like income tax evasion or shoplifting.”
“Poor, tragic Lawn. We call him Tranche DuBois.”
Art hung a freshly washed shot glass on a fork protruding from the drying rack and said, “All these Albany mucky-mucks he no doubt swindled just like he did everybody else put up with Lawn because I’m sure he’s sucking
