Skunk Hunt (46 page)

"There was never any talk about money that I
remember," Todd continued. "I don’t understand why Mom moved out. I
never heard her screaming about being broke."

"Precisely," Carl smarmed.

"There weren't any celebrations, either."
Todd arched an eyebrow in Carl's direction. I wondered if I was
capable of that expression, or even if it came naturally, without
my knowledge of it. I found it peculiar and unsightly and blushed
for both of us. Todd said: "You'd think there would've been some
kind of celebration if they'd come into a lot of cash. Besides, Dad
wouldn't have risked losing what he had by taking stolen money. He
had more in ready cash than what those jokers took from Brinks. I
told you, he was in asbestos—"

"SWAM," I said.

Todd and Carl looked at me bemusedly.

"Did your father always have the abatement
contract?" I asked Todd. "Was there any time that you can remember
when he said something about losing it?"

"Not really..." Todd said uncomfortably.

"There's probably a way to look it up on a
computer," I said, without adding "If I only knew how to turn one
on."

"Something came up last year," Todd admitted.
"I just remember him saying something about losing the house."

"Sounds like money talk to me," Carl
observed, then turned to the yard. "Will you stop making that
racket, Dog? I know you're crazy, but there's no sense letting the
neighbors in on the secret."

Joe Dog stopped rolling in the grass and
weeds and blinked at Carl. Of course he was crazy, he seemed to be
saying. It went with the profession. We all waited for him to bark,
then returned to our lunatic conversation. I said:

"I was thinking about the state's SWAM
program. That's Small, Women and Minorities."

"What, a program for midgets?" Carl said,
having missed the comma. More proof that most crooks have the
mental odds stacked against them.

"That's an acronym," Todd scowled, and turned
to me. "Right?"

"When the state buys anything, it gives
preferential treatment to small businesses, women and
minorities."

"That's discrimination!" Carl protested,
genuinely moved.

"When's the last time you hired a fat pole
dancer?" Todd asked.

"Or a grandmother?" I added.

My brother and I exchanged glances, dismayed
to find ourselves on the same wavelength, however briefly.

"That's different," Carl said. "That's
art."

Todd and I sniggered in unison, then shut up
just as quickly. How embarrassing. I put it on a par with seeing
yourself pick your nose on a surveillance tape with Miss Manners in
the audience.

"He was probably lying to me, because he died
broke." Todd seemed to be inferring that some kind of ultimate
price had been paid and that one should not speak ill of the
dead.

"Broke, but still with the house," Carl
persisted.

I was still yearning to see a picture of
Todd's alleged family. When he put me off, I asked, "Did you see
your father dead?"

"Hmmm?"

"You went to the funeral?" I said.

Carl saw where I was headed. "You think Skunk
split his time between families?"

"Half the time I was growing up...more
than half...he was in jail." I eyed Todd closely. "But did he
spend
all
that time in
jail?"

I was waiting for Todd to confirm my growing
suspicion that, in addition to his other crimes, Skunk had been a
bigamist. All my alleged brother had to say was that his father had
spent a great deal of time away from home. An excessive number of
abatement conventions, out-of-state construction sites that had to
be visited, late meetings, early appointments...the list of excuses
was virtually endless for the modern man with multiple families.
The problem being that, at my end, Skunk had never displayed the
energy that kind of life demanded. In fact, I sometimes wondered if
he spent so much time in the slammer because his escapes were so
sluggish. "Hurry up, boys! The cops are on the way! Wait, here's a
7/11. Let's get a case of beer." That was Skunk's league. And to
secretly maintain two families, you needed the gear of
practicality: a daytimer, a digital watch, and a fair degree of
organizational savvy, none of which my father had ever shown
evidence of possessing. Well, that's not strictly true. I mean, he
had had the sense to get a real gun instead of drawing down on some
hapless clerk with nothing more than a loaded banana—which actually
would have shown a sense of artistic inventfulness, sort of. He had
been a bad ass, not a dumb ass. If Daddy Dearest had a trace of
subtlety in his makeup, I hadn't seen it. Which opened up the
unsettling possible that he had successfully played a con on his
own flesh and blood.

Todd had also seen where I was headed, and
was making mental tailspins to avoid the cliff. "Maybe we better
get that DNA test, after all."

"I'm all for it," I said.

"Or maybe not. Shit." He gave me a glum look.
"You're wasting your time. All of you. I don't have a cent."

"You say there aren't any liens on this
house?" Carl kicked his heel against the deck, as though checking
for a hidden mortgage.

I shared Todd's obvious dismay. Could this
sleaze-meister really be suggesting Todd sell the house and give
him the proceeds? Were racketeers ramping up a new scam? Forget
credit cards, checkbooks and the odd wad of cash. And forget
breaking and entering. These guys wanted the whole shebang, hearth
and home and the toothpaste in the medicine cabinet. It wasn't
exactly no-bid contracts for Iraq, but it wasn't petty cash,
either.

Carl seemed pretty confident that Todd would
not call the cops, even if the property had been acquired with
time-honored, legal brow-sweat. Why was that?

"I'm meeting me," Todd glowered at me. "And
it's not me."

"I know what you mean," I said. Well, I think
I did.

"I'm meeting a couple of chumps," Carl
grunted. "You want to know why Todd doesn't call the cops? Because
if he complained about us shaking him down, I would turn him in for
conspiracy. Don't bother with brotherly love. He wanted to sic us
on you, make sure you didn't try to lay a claim."

"I have a claim?" It had crossed my mind, but
the act of innocence is bliss.

"I don't know, but you could probably cause
Todd here a heap of headache, either way. You can't take a piss
without a lawyer. I should know. Whether there's a will or not,
your ass will end up in court. As soon as the probate clerk asks
Todd here if he has any relatives, he can't say 'no' without
perjurizing all over himself and making a mess. Not anymore, now
that he’s met his surviving relatives. Next thing you know, all the
assets are handed over to a court-appointed administrator. By the
time the accountants sort it all out, he'll be peeing in his
Depens. He keeps the house...joint tenancy and all that...but he
can kiss the rest goodbye—if there’s anything left."

Todd's scrotum was giving him trouble. He
looked as though he had been kicked in a most discourteous manner.
Not exactly something you'd want to kiss and make better.

"So I'm sitting in the bird dog seat," said
Carl. "Only there's one big problem. Two, actually. Actually...a
shitload."

"'Catbird'," I corrected. "What kind of
problems?"

"Your brother and sister, for one."

"Jeremy?" I said. "He's no more a
problem than I am. Oh...sorry. So far as you're concerned,
I'm
a problem."

"Maybe," said Carl, "but I'm more concerned
that those two have gone renegade. If they're drawing attention to
themselves, they're bound to draw attention to us."

"Meaning you," I said.

"I'm not one for finger-pointing, especially
when I'm being the one fingered."

I thought Joe Dog had ranged out of earshot,
but a loud snort from inside some rusty monkey bars said
otherwise.

"And I don't want to be the next duck in the
shooting gallery," said Carl with sincere emphasis.

He was referring to the sniper. I saw one of
my assumptions drop out of the flock and fall dead from the sky.
Joe Dog might be Carl’s dogbot, but it was starting to look as if
he was not the one who had taken potshots at us. Jeremy or Barbara
or both must have filled him in about what had happened on Route 6.
Fear of my captors dipped somewhat, leaving me strangely deflated.
That Carl and Joe Dog might not be as dangerous as I had originally
thought removed some of the cachet of the occasion. Maybe we were
freighting this whole business with more meaning than it deserved.
Human ephemera trying to rise out of the mist...but that's a little
too meaningful.

"Who shot who?" Todd said, alarmed.

"Just a warning shot," I answered,
casually dismissing a moment that had nearly trashed my Dockers. "I
thought they were trying to hurry us on, but now I wonder if we
weren't somehow trespassing." Well, we
had
been on state property.

"No clue who the shooter was?" Carl was
uneasy, too.

"It could be one of the Congreve brothers," I
said. I explained their role in the story, then added: "But we've
been spied on ever since Skunk last got out of jail. They're not
the only ones looking for the Brinks money."

"So we're looking at second and possible
third and fourth and fifth parties," said Carl, his loose-skinned
face drawing up in pique.

"
You're
the third party," I reminded him.

"I guess this brings up the reason for our
conference," Carl continued. "Even if some of Skunk's stash ended
up here, it's gone now. Look at this dump! Didn't anyone teach you
to maintain your property? Property loses all its value if you
don't polish it and kiss it and rub it down once and awhile. You
have to love your property. You use it, but you treat it with
respect, or enough respect to keep it from falling down."

Was he thinking of his pole ballerinas?
Not exactly traditional real estate, but they
were
his primary source of income, giving a
casting-couch hue to his domain. I suppressed a mental image of his
laving tongue applying Lemon Pledge to my sister's dusty
shelves.

"I love my house," Todd protested
unconvincingly.

"It looks lived in," Carl conceded. "But
there aren't any gold bricks here."

"You're joking, right?" Todd scowled.

"But this
has
to be the Brinks money," I said, looking up
at a broken gutter. "Or what's left of it."

"Don't think where it should be, think where
it is." Carl's eyes narrowed. "That letter you got from
Skunk...Barbara...Jeremy...you..." He turned to Todd. "And
you?"

"I didn't get any letter from this Skunk
guy," said Todd, fidgeting.

"Look me in the eyes," said Carl.

"I didn't get one!" Todd repeated, his eyes
wandering.

"Betcha did." Carl went all fat with
smugness. "None of you've thought this through. If Todd got a
letter, someone knows about him and his connection to Skunk and
Brinks. Someone we can't guess. But they know this isn't
Brinksland. It's just another dump, whoever lived here. The money
went somewhere else."

"Skunk could never afford this place," I
pointed out. "Not unless the money came from the robbery."

"That may be so. But you see, why would Todd
get a letter at all, unless the money was somewhere else?"

Good point.

CHAPTER 22

Carl and Joe Dog were giving a premier course
in the raw nerve needed to survive beyond your means, which in
America is the only way to live . If Todd's house had been properly
groomed, with new coats of Sherwin Williams Deluxe outside and in,
and a properly manicured yard, it might very well have been
housejacked. Yes, it's crazy. After all, none of it was portable,
and none of the crap inside was what anyone would pay good money
for. Such a scam usually involves a semi-abandoned house, a forged
power of attorney, a fake ID, and a bogus quit claim deed. With
this documentation in hand, the thief sells the house and
disappears with the proceeds. But Carl would have to invest way too
much time, effort and money before he could put this shack on the
market. I could only thank my foresight for keeping my own house in
permanent disrepair.

Before departing, Carl loaded us down with
every sort of voodoo curse imaginable to a well-cultivated idiot.
If we contacted the police, Joe Dog would do a lot more than just
poop on our doorsteps. In fact, if we told anyone anything, our
brains would dissolve, our dicks would fall off, and our shit would
petrify in our bodies (all of which applied to my current physical
state—I was feeling like a dickless wonder). Above all, they would
hear and see all that we did, up to and including grunting on the
toilet. Considering the amount of A/V I had been subjected to
lately, I could only believe it to be true. Even if the
surveillance wasn't 24/7, a small slip could turn an
inconsequential moment into lifetime ruin. Just think of the
upstanding pastor innocently browsing for a Betty Boop doll for his
daughter, momentarily coming upon a girl stripping off her tight
black dress, and being busted by the internet police for soliciting
child pornography. Think of the technologically challenged
politicians who post their abs on Facebook, accompanied by lewd
text, never imagining the picture would be duplicated a zillion
times in a blink of an eye, sending their careers down the tube
reserved for dumb asses. I wondered if there were images of me
circulating the globe, gawping stupidly in the old farmstead and
the abandoned pump house.

The torture began right away, when Carl and
Joe Dog left me behind with Todd. My curiosity was aroused, but so
was my antipathy. My new brother was obviously a cretin. I saw him
as a caricature of myself, a garbled echo that shared my
discomfort—naturally. I went around to the alley to get my car and
found it had been towed, courtesy of the Ferncrest Masters of
Anality. It went back to the house and banged on the door.