Cockeyed - Stevenson Richard (прочитать книгу .txt) 📗

“They want part of it to expand Crafts-a-Palooza and open a branch in Albany at the Crossgates Mall. The rest of it, they said, was for what they called their nest egg. They want to retire in a few years, and they want enough for an RV and a house in Tavernier, Florida, where their grandchildren can visit them.”

Lawn said, “That sounds like maybe four hundred K. Five at most.”

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“Maybe,” Art said, “we could convince them to take five hundred million worth of tranches.”

Hunny couldn’t help but chuckle — as he did at nearly everything Art said — but then he remembered something and his face fell. “Tomorrow’s my day to visit Mom. The Brienings haven’t said anything to her, have they?”

“Not yet,” Nelson said. “But part of their threat is simply disgusting. If you don’t give them what they’re asking for, Uncle Hunny, they say they’ll send letters to all the residents at Golden Gardens warning them to be careful of Grandma Rita because she is a thief and people should watch their valuables when she is around.”

Hunny clutched his head and shook it. “No, no! Oh, poor Mom! Poor, poor Mom!”

“It’s too bad,” Art said, his jaw tight, “that these Brienings can’t just be…oh, I don’t know. Don, in your line of work do you ever play rough with bad guys? Or, if you don’t, do you know anybody who might?”

Composing himself, Hunny said, “Art doesn’t mean that.

Well, he means it, but he’s not really serious. Anyway, in The Letter, it’s not the blackmailer that gets killed in the end. It’s Bette Davis, who only did what she did out of passionate infatuation.

And I don’t think any of us want to go down that road. No, this situation is different. More like I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

No offense to Mom.”

Nelson said, “The Van Horn family is not the Sopranos.

We’re going to have to deal with these dreadful people, and we have to be firm with them, but of course we’re not going to hurt them physically or otherwise do anything unlawful.”

I said, “How do the Brienings think they are going to explain to people their sudden vast wealth? To friends and family, not to mention the IRS?”

“They said they talked to a lawyer in Schenectady, and they can have the money held in a bank in the Cayman Islands. They told me not to be concerned about that, and they would work it out.

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They said they saw a report on ABC 20/20 about how people get away with this kind of thing all the time. They said they had worked hard all their lives, and other people were getting away with murder, and now it was their turn to make the system work for them, and it was time for them to clean up.”

The wall phone next to Hunny rang, and he picked it up.

“Good evening, Mr. Sands’ office. Susie MacNamara speaking.

May I help you?”

Hunny listened and said uh-huh several times, and then, “Just a minute.” He put his hand over the receiver. “It’s the Focks News people out front. They said they know I’m in here and if I don’t come out they will stay all night, and sooner or later I’ll have to talk to them. Maybe I should say something. They’ve already interviewed Marylou, and I doubt she told them anything helpful to our situation. Also, they may check and find out she isn’t the real Marylou Whitney, and this will only add to all our woes.”

Lawn said, “Well, you certainly can’t allow them into the house. The place is a pig sty, and there are people in the living room in varying states of undress, and they’re looking at some obscene video. It will just be fodder for what this busybody antigay, pro-morality organization is trying to do.”

Art said, “It’s a great video. Carnival in Costa Rica. But it’s not the one with Cesar Romero and Vera-Ellen.”

Hunny said into the phone, “Give us just another minute, okay?” A few seconds later, he yelped, “Oh no!” and hung up the phone. “They said Marylou invited them into the house for some good weed, and they’re on their way in!”

That’s when we all heard the sound of a woman’s high-pitched shriek.

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The Focks cameraman lay on the porch moaning and clutching his chest, and the woman with him was prone behind the porch railing, yelling into her cell phone, “Send the police! Send the police!” The 911 operator must have asked her where she was, because she said, “It’s on my gPs! It’s in the car on my gPs!”

I asked Hunny to remind us of what his house number on Moth Street was, and he said 126, and the woman yelled into her phone, “One twenty-six Moth Street, in Albany!”

We had all heard a car screech away, but there was no sign of the vehicle by now.

Hunny switched on the porch light, and I looked down at the whimpering young man on the floor. I got on my cell and told 911 that in addition to the police we would need an ambulance.

I said, “Hunny, is anybody in the house a doctor or nurse?”

The remaining partygoers were crowded just inside the front door, chattering and peering out.

“No.”

The woman with the cell phone came over and said, “Bert!

Bert! Don’t die on us. Bill needs you. We all need you.” She had a hard time bending down because the jeans she was wearing were so tight.

As I got down on my knees to examine the cameraman’s soaked T-shirt, I saw with relief that the shooting was not what it first appeared to be. The mess on the man’s chest smelled not like blood but like paint. I touched it, and I said, “You’ve been hit with a paintball pellet. It exploded but it didn’t penetrate your body.”

“But, hey, this fucking hurts,” the cameraman groaned. “I hurt my back. It hurts.”

“They tried to kill us!” the woman said. “My God.”

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“Who fired the paintball? What did you see?”

“I think it was a car. We were just coming up the steps.”

Then I remembered that the man dressed as Marylou Whitney had been ushering the newsies into the house, but where was the Saratoga and Palm Beach socialite?

Art had come out now with a flashlight, and he was shining the beam around the porch and the wooden front steps. More red paintballs had struck the porch railing and some of the shingles on the front of the house. A border of marigolds ran along the concrete walkway from the steps down to the sidewalk, also paint-splattered, and it was when Art shone the light down there that we saw the bottom of Marylou’s pink gown. Her legs were sticking out from under the forsythia bush below the porch.

Hunny raced down the steps, shouting, “Marylou! Marylou!”

A muffled voice came out from under the bush. “Hunny, I’m stuck. I fell off the steps, and my necklace is caught on something.”

“Oh, girl, you look like the Wicked Witch of the West and the house fell on you.”

“Somebody shot a gun.”

“But it was just paint, Donald says. Were you hit? Are you wounded?”

“I don’t know, darling.”

Now the woman in the tight jeans was on her cell phone again, and I heard her say something about “they tried to kill us”

and “a transvestite may have set us up.”

I asked Art for his flashlight and then crawled under the bush to find out what was holding onto Marylou. Her diamond necklace had become entangled on a forsythia branch, and while she aimed the flashlight I broke off bits of the branch and tried to free the Whitney jewels without damaging them further.

Marylou said, “I know we have known each other for such a short, short time, but I have to tell you, whoever you are, that I think I am falling in love.”

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“Okey-dokes.”

She had scratches on her neck and jaw and her wig was seriously askew, but Marylou did not seem to have been hit with a paint pellet.