That sounded right to me.

ChAPteR sixteen

First thing in the morning, Hunny announced he was going to have “a shot of the twink that bit me,” but Art said, “No, pootykins, I am shutting you the hell off again.”

“Then bacon and eggs, it is!” Hunny declared heartily. “There will be plenty of time when I enjoy my customary elevenses to march into General Jack Daniels’ office and salute smartly.”

Hunny had phoned Nelson at the East Greenbush sheriff ’s office, where the search for Mrs. Van Horn had resumed, but no sign of her had yet been found.

Now the kitchen phone rang, and Hunny started and looked frightened. “Maybe this is about Mom. Oh Lord, oh Lord.”

He picked up the receiver. “Van Horn residence.” He listened for a minute or so with a look of consternation and finally said,

“Well, maybe you should be in rehab — butting-in rehab is what you really ought to sign up for!” He banged down the receiver.

“It was just one of my thousands of non-fans,” Hunny said glumly. “Somebody who saw me on Bill O’Malley. You know, boys, that entire portion of last evening is hazy. Tell me the truth.

Was I charming, and was I an effective spokesperson for the celebrity community? Or did I arrive at the studio snockered, and did I hop around on one foot and stick my other foot up my ass so that it was coming out of my throat and looked really weird on TV and grossed everybody out?”

“The latter,” I said.

“Donald,” Hunny said, fumbling with a fresh pack of Marlboros, “how did you sleep? Were you comfortable enough on the guest room fold-out?”

“The metal bar in the middle hit me in the back. But I folded up the bed and placed the mattress on the floor and slept there.

It was fine.”

“On the floor! Donald, you are such a primitive. It’s Jungle 120 Richard Stevenson

Jim. It’s Bomba the Jungle Boy. This is starting to turn me on.”

Busy getting breakfast together, Art looked over his shoulder and said, “How do you like your eggs, Donald?”

“Scrambled, thank you.”

The phone rang again. “Van Horn residence. Oh, Detective Sanders. I am so glad to hear your official-sounding voice. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, Detective Strachey is just to my port side. In fact, I was just about to offer him a glass of port. Here, let me put him on.” To me, Hunny said, “Colonel Sanders says there is no news on his end, but he wishes to speak with you.”

“I’ve been in touch with the East Greenbush sheriff,” Sanders told me, “and people over there have resumed the search for Mrs.

Van Horn. But they’re starting to run out of territory the old lady might have wandered into on her own. It’s looking more and more as if she got a ride somewhere, and yet nobody has reported picking up an elderly woman in her bathrobe and slippers. That pretty much leaves us with, she’s with somebody she knows. Her family and friends all deny taking her anywhere, but there may be somebody who’s been left out of that equation that you all are not thinking of. Would you please ask Mr. Van Horn about friends of his mother who maybe haven’t been contacted yet?”

“Sure. Mr. Van Horn’s mind is functioning more efficiently than it was yesterday, and I’ll see what I can find out.” Hunny looked at me cross-eyed and smacked himself on the forehead a couple of times.

“I take it,” Sanders said, “that there have been no more calls from supposed kidnappers.”

“No.”

“An abduction is unlikely then. Anybody doing it would likely have made their ransom demands by now. But I’m still intrigued by these people the Brienings. Mr. Van Horn mentioned them again last night on Bill O’Malley. He said that if his mom was watching she should not worry about the Brienings, that he would deal with them. These are the same Brienings, I take it, that Mr. Van Horn might give half a billion dollars to?”

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“Probably. Are you sure he said Brienings on O’Malley? Some of his speech was indistinct.”

“You heard it as clearly as I did, Strachey. I’ve replayed the video of the O’Malley show twice. Now, what gives here? Who are the Brienings, and where do they fit into the equation? Look, I am playing straight with you, and I expect you to play straight with me. Otherwise, well…I don’t know. You’ll find that I am not a policeman to be screwed around with.”

“Lieutenant, let me get back to you on that. I do appreciate your interest and concern.”

“I’ll be back over to Mr. Van Horn’s residence this afternoon.

I’ll expect to be clued in. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“Fair enough.”

I hung up and said to Hunny, “Sanders is interested in the Brienings. You mentioned them on O’Malley last night.”

“I did? What in heaven’s name did I say?”

“That your mom should not worry about them. That if they had something to do with her disappearance, you would deal with them.”

“I said that on TV?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Blabbety-blabbety-blabbety. That must have been me.”

“Yes, Hunny. Blabbety-blabbety-blabbety.”

He thought this over and then winced. “I may have to go on the wagon. I’ve done it before.”

“That would help a lot.”

“For Mom. Just until she is safely back.”

“Hunny, it would do you good,” Art said. “You could slim down, too, while you’re at it.” Art retrieved two slices of heavily browned Wonder Bread from the pop-up toaster and set them on a section of paper towel next to a jar of grape jelly.

“I was off the sauce for three days when Larry Tralongo 122 Richard Stevenson

died,” Hunny said. “Larry was our first friend to die of AIDS.

I thought everything was going to be different from then on, and I might as well get used to it. But I never did get used to it, even though there were many more opportunities — too many opportunities — to do so. I came home after Larry’s funeral that day and got lit. However, Donald, I’m just a social drinker, I want you to know. I never missed a day of work on account of the booze. Oh, Artie, what time is it? Lord, I cannot believe that I’m not out at the warehouse right this minute punching in my time card and planning out my day of trying to grope a few of the stock boys.”

“Why don’t you just pretend,” Art said, “that this is a workday and you’re not going to have your first cocktail until after work.

Later on you can be as social as you please. Just as long as you don’t have to go on TV again.”

Hunny chuckled. “Did I really call the other Marylou Whitney Mary Cheney, the war criminal’s daughter?”

“You did. We were all so proud of you. Marylou and Antoine were rolling around on the floor, they were laughing so hard. The twins thought it was a riot, too, even if they weren’t sure who Mary Cheney was. Tyler asked if she was part of that old folk-song group.”

“Bill O’Malley must have swallowed his tongue.”

“He thinks he’s the unperturbed type, but you could tell that your remark got to him.”

“Mom would have loved it. She’d have been falling out of her wheelchair.”

“It’s good that you insisted on showing her picture. O’Malley was just going to blow her off. He just wanted to distort everything and make you look bad. And then showing Mason Doebler and saying you molested him. What a lot of BS that was.”

Hunny set down his coffee mug. “Was Mason Doebler on, too? I don’t remember that.”

“The twins taped it.” Art said to me, “The boys know how to work the vCR.”

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“Oh. Should I watch it?” Hunny asked.

“No. Don’t.”

“What did Mason have to say? That he crashed his car while I was sucking his dick? He likes to go around making a big deal of that dumb incident.”

“He said you molested him when he was an altar boy. He’s suing you for three hundred seventy-five million dollars.”