Cockeyed

“Watch your language in the presence of my wife.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, what are the police doing, anyways?” Arletta asked.

“Are they investigating the hoax theory? Bill O’Malley is a man who knows what he’s talking about.”

“I know that the police are following every lead they can. The East Greenbush sheriff is coordinating with the Albany Police Department. The State Police are on the case, and there’s talk of bringing in the FBI.”

“The Van Horns are getting the celebrity treatment,” Arletta said, and sneered.

Clyde looked puzzled. “Why shouldn’t they?”

“Just because he won the Instant Warren? He’s a pervert and she’s a thief. This is what we’ve come to!”

Now Clyde grasped what his wife was getting at. “More of the same,” he said. “Just more of the same.”

“Obama’s America.”

128 Richard Stevenson

I said, “The threatening letter you sent to Mrs. Van Horn was found in her room. So we know she received it. Probably on Saturday, the day before she walked out of Golden Gardens and has not been seen since. It does seem possible that your ultimatum

— Hu

Van Horn. If so, are you prepared to accept moral responsibility for that?”

“Desperate act, like what?” Arletta asked.

“We can only guess. I suppose she might try to kill herself. Or has already done it.”

“Oh!” they both cried.

“I’m not saying this just to frighten you, but there is also the possibility that she might try to get rid of the two of you. She is known to be distraught, and it was probably your letter that pushed her over the edge. What is your security situation here and at your home?”

Arletta was aghast. “Do you mean shoot us or something?”

“There’s a shotgun missing from the office of Mrs. Kerisiotis, the administrator at Golden Gardens. There is no evidence that Mrs. Van Horn took it. In fact, she has no history of violence.

All I’m saying is, the two of you might want to kind of lay low for the time being. And don’t do anything more to provoke Rita Van Horn or her son.”

Clyde had gone pale below his A-1 hairdo, but now Arletta was looking suspicious. “It sounds to me, buster, as if you are threatening Clyde and I. Trying to spook us and make us back off. Well, if you are, you just might want to try some other tact.

We are both stubborn, and when we are in the right we stand our ground. We have our principles, and they matter to us more than life itself.”

It was all I could do to keep from wrenching Clyde’s glue gun out of his hand and gluing his wife’s mouth shut. But I knew that that wouldn’t help in the long run. I said, “I’ll report back to Hu

in touch again later in the week to try to work something out.

Meanwhile, you’ll be giving Hu

Clyde still appeared shaky, but Arletta’s look hardened even more. She said, “Behind this curtain is a lockbox containing Rita Van Horn’s confession of a major felony. It is a confession that will put that dirty old embezzler behind bars where she belongs unless Hu

ChAPteR eighteen

Hu

I arrived back on Moth Street just as Art and Hu

“Yoo-hoo! Anybody home on Queer Street?”

The man waved at Hu

The man was ectomorphic and gaunt. He was mostly hair from the neck up, frizzy and white. He wore sandals and knee-length cargo shorts, though oddly he also wore a button-down oxford-cloth dress shirt and a large necktie with an image on it that I was not yet able to make out.

The man crossed the street as the security guys watched him, 132 Richard Stevenson

and Hu

This is when Hu

“Hey, girl,” Hu

Maybe you were there, Quentin, unless, of course, you hadn’t even been born yet, ha ha ha.”

“Oh, I missed all that urban cuddling and cooing, Hu

Art looked apprehensive. “So what are you? Born again?”

“Yes, again and again and again and again and again.”

“But not a born-again Christian, if I’m not mistaken,” Hu

“No, in fact if all those senators arguing about health care and the public option and the trigger and so on would just take off their clothes and give pleasure instead of pain to one another, we’d have a single-payer system like Canada’s in place in no time at all.”

“Hey, you should write your congressman.”

“I did. I got a nice note back, too, saying he would be considering all sides in the health care debate and he valued my input.”

CoCkeyed 133

Hu

“You’re a private detective?” Shoemaker asked. “I never met a real one. I sense that you are not like many of the men in your line of work. You are freer.”

“Apparently. At any rate, today I am comfortably in the company of two men who own Jack Wrangler neckties. That must mean something.”