3 Strange Bedfellows by Matt Witten Read Free Book Online Page B

hard time, I said, "Oh, right, it's all coming back to me." It actually was, mi ddle-aged forgetfulness notwithstanding. Yancy H. was a gadfly from Stony Creek, way up north, who ran against the Hack in the Republican primary and got two percent of the vote. Most of that two percent were probably people who meant to vote for the Hack, but pulled the wrong lever by mistake.
    I peered out the window past the "Tamarack for Congress" posters, but Huggins was gone. Meanwhile the widow was at the podium now.
    She stood there woodenly, her body too tense to move. When she began speaking she used a frozen monotone, reading off lame platitudes from a prepared speech. I'd heard my share of lousy speeches in the past couple of days, but this one took the cake. It was so amateurish I felt bad for her. My five year old could read with more expression. And my seven year old could write a better speech. If this was what she learned in Rosalyn's Comp 102 class, she deserved her money back.
    Enough of this. I was tired of hanging out with stooges in suits and the women who love them. It was time to get with the madmen and the dreamers. I jumped up and bolted out the door in search of Yancy Huggins, the last real Republican.
    The man who believed that Jack Tamarack got exactly what he deserved.
     
    I didn't have far to look. Huggins was holding forth at the corner of Broadwa y and Phila, standing on a soapbox—yes, an honest to God soapbox, marked "Alamud Soap" and at least a century old. I had to hand it to the guy, at least he had style.
    "My fellow countrym en," he was shouting, "the Visigoths are on the march! They're taking away our freedom to hunt deer, to go fishing and swimming in our lakes, to think for ourselves!" Meanwhile the pedestrians stepped around him, avoiding eye contact and going on about their business. Sometimes a passer-by paused long enough to throw a giggle his way. Robert Pierce was a veritable giant compared to this fellow. Huggins was four-eleven max, and he looked pretty goofy standing on top of that box trying to be tall.
    "We have become a nation of sheep!" he proclaimed. "Sheep, I tell you! Baa! Baa! Baa —"
    "Excuse me, sir," I said, interrupting him in the middle of his third baa. He stopped short and stared at me, obviously startled that someone was actually paying attention to him. In fact, he was so startled that he stepped backward—and fell off his soapbox.
    As he tumbled to the sidewalk, arms flailing, several passers-by chuckled. I held out my hand to help him up, but he just glared at me with a look of pure, white-hot fury. I was so thrown b y it that I stepped backward myself—and tripped over his soapbox, and fell. Now there were two of us lying on the sidewalk, and even more passers-by began laughing.
    Huggins jumped up and stood over me. I was afraid he'd stomp on me, all one hundred pounds of him. I was also afraid he'd pull a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoot me.
    "Are you mocking me?" he hissed.
    "Not at all, sir," I said, standing up quickly and brushing myself off. "I work for the Daily Saratogian, and I'd like to interview you."
    Huggins's jaw dropped, and his angry eyes suddenly turned wide open and childlike. "Really?"
    "You have a couple of minutes?"
    His face turned all wary and suspicious again. "You sure this isn't some kind of joke?"
    I hated to deceive the poor chump, but I said, "Of course it's not a joke." What the heck, maybe I would write up the interview. I'd try to convince Judy to stick it in the inside pages somewhere on a slow news day.
    Of course, if Huggins turned out to be the murderer, then we'd be able to get him a spot on page one.
    I took him to Bruegger's Bagels and offered to buy him lunch. I didn't have to offer twice. He proceeded to order three garlic bagels with honey-walnut cream cheese, two of which he gobbled down immediately. The third he stuffed in his pocket for later.
    Large chunks of the first two bagels ended up in his thick beard, so he'd be