Hunny said tearfully, “Poor Mom, poor Mom.”
After a moment, Art said to Lawn and me, “After Hunny’s father died at the age of sixty-four of testicular cancer, Mother Van Horn had a rough time of it.”
Hunny nodded and shook his head and cried some more.
“Rita had always enjoyed a drink before and after dinner,” Art went on. “And to ease her sorrows she — well, let’s be frank -
Rita started drinking to excess. She had gone to work at Clyde and Arletta Briening’s crafts shop as their bookkeeper, and while her imbibing did not immediately affect her work there, it did affect her judgment after hours.”
Hunny lowered his head now, and it seemed way too close to the two smoldering cigarettes in his ashtray. Not unaware of the danger, he picked up one of the burning Marlboros and took a drag on it.
Art said, “Mother Rita had always had a nice time playing the ponies at Saratoga, and unfortunately after Carl died she apparently got it in her head that she could help make ends meet with her winnings at the track. One season she had actually come out ahead, and this must have clouded her judgment. But, well, you know how it goes with gambling. Lawn, I suppose you understand, since you are in a similar line of work.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Anyway, one thing led to another, and apparently pretty soon Mother Rita had begun covering her losses at the track with money she — I’m sorry, Hunny, but I have to say the word — embezzled at Crafts-a-Palooza.”
Hunny flinched.
“By the time Arletta and Clyde realized what was going on two years later, Rita had taken sixty-one thousand and some odd dollars from the business. When they confronted her, Rita begged them not to go to the police because it would be so embarrassing for Miriam and Lewis. Hunny, too, but especially Miriam and Lewis, who are active in the Epworth League and other Methodist organizations. Hunny, of course, has a forgiving nature, and also he has always had a soft spot for the criminal element.”
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Hunny said.
“The horrible Brienings unfortunately saw this as an opportunity, and they took it. They knew that Mother Rita would begin collecting over thirteen thousand dollars a year in Social Security in just a couple of months, and they made her sign a letter confessing to stealing their money and agreeing to pay them a thousand dollars a month until the sixty-one thousand had been restored — plus interest. Except, when you figured out the interest, it came to more than two hundred thousand dollars total. So every month Mother Rita’s Social Security has been going into her account from the government and then straight out and into Crafts-a-Palooza’s account. This has been going on for thirteen years.”
Lawn stood looking grim. “I have never heard of any of this.
I’m stunned. And I’m sure Nelson couldn’t have known either.
He would never have put up with extortion. He would have gone to the police, or he would simply have held his nose and paid these people off.”
“It’s true,” Hunny said, “that Miriam and Lewis decided not to tell Nelson. He had always thought so highly of Grandma Rita, and they were afraid it would break his heart. And also it might not be appreciated by Nelson’s investment clients that there was a crook in the family. It could have been bad for business.”
“A crook in the family that got caught,” Art said by way of clarification.
I asked, “How did your mother live, Hunny? With no income to speak of.”
“We all helped out. I paid her oil and electric and cable, and Miriam and Lewis dropped off groceries. We all pitched in one time for a new roof. For a number of years Mom worked off and on at McDonald’s. Then her mind started slipping a couple of years ago and she became frail at around the same time. She had to get out of the house, so we sold it and that’s when we got her into Golden Gardens. The house proceeds paid for the nursing home until that money ran out, and then the home said Mom would have to turn over her Social Security every month.
We told the Brienings, and they got mad and said all the money hadn’t been paid back yet and they might have to go to the police.
That was last month. So I bought two hundred dollars’ worth of Instant Warren tickets, hoping I would win and could pay off the Brienings, and — praise de Lawd! — I did win.”
“But now, apparently,” Art said, “the Brienings want half a billion dollars to shut them up, not just what Mother Rita still owes.”
Lawn said, “This is just totally bizarre. It’s no wonder Nelson is so distraught that he missed a dinner engagement.”
“The Brienings have been leaving phone messages since I won the lottery,” Hunny said, “but I’ve just been tossing them in the laundry basket with the other requests. I did mean to get to them, but I thought it wasn’t going to hurt if we all did a little partying first and got mellow and the friggin’ Brienings could just wait their turn. But they must have gotten antsy and called Nelson. The poor lad. First he has to put up with his rude, crude, proud-to-be-lewd Uncle Hunny, and now he has to deal with these shakedown artists from Cobleskill. The embarrassments for Nelson just keep a-rollin’ in, poor sweetie-pie.”
The door to the living room opened again, and this time Nelson himself walked through it. He looked frazzled and bordering on the unkempt.
CoCkeyed 41
Nelson said, “Uncle Hunny, I don’t know if you want to go out there. Probably not. But there are some more TV people out front, and they say they want to interview you and it would be best if you agreed to talk to them.”
Hunny looked uncharacteristically nonplussed. “At two in the morning? Who are they? Channel Ten? Channel Thirteen?
Channel Six? What is this?”
Nelson said, “They showed me their ID from Focks News in New York. There are two of them — a woman and a cameraman — and they say they’re from The Bill O’Malley Show.”
Chapter Six
“This is a damned impertinence,” Hunny said. “Tell them I’ll only talk to Anderson Cooper.”
“Bill O’Malley is doing a report,” Nelson said, “on some organization that wants the lottery commission to take back your winnings because they object to a state agency providing money for immoral purposes. Have you not heard about this? When they told me, my heart just sank.”
“Oh, some PR woman from the lottery called this afternoon.
She said not to worry, that as long as I was eighteen years old and didn’t have a relative who worked for the lottery commission, I was the legal winner. Some other reporters called, too, but they went into the laundry basket.”
“These O’Malley people have just driven up from the city, they said. One of your neighbors is an O’Malley viewer and called them and said you were partying and driving everybody in the neighborhood crazy with the noise. I can only begin to imagine how accurate that description was.”
“That was earlier. Anyway, what immoral purposes? There’s nothing immoral about playing some peppy dance music and throwing a party in your own home.”
Lawn said, “I’d be willing to bet that there is a good deal more to it than that.”
“It’s some religious group,” Nelson said. “The Family Preservation Association of Albany County. I told the Focks News people it was too late for an interview, but they said they could see that a party was still going on and they refused to leave.
Donald, maybe you are the man to handle this. Would you mind?”
“Normally I don’t do press relations.”
Art said, “We could send the twins out to talk to them. They could tell about how Hunny is going to put them through medical school.”
44 Richard Stevenson
Lawn shut his eyes, and Nelson said, “Art, I don’t believe that will help. Having those two tarts speak for Uncle Hunny is exactly what we do not need at this point.”