by Rex Miller
"Deleted? What the hell does that mean?"
"There it is."
"For what?"
"You tell me, ace. First time I ever ran into that one. I called around, screamed and yelled upstairs. They got on the horn for me and nobody knows jack flash, okay? The killer's I.D.—which somebody, the feds or whoever, has on file, was deleted. Ain't that a beaut?"
"I don't get it," Apodaca said.
"That's right," the lieutenant said.
"Has to be a computer error," Hilliard said.
Llewelyn kept silent.
Trask woke up on the outside of a dream envelope, the memory of the mental excursion already fading, something about calling his daughter, and Kit telling him everything he already knew, that he hadn't been worth a damned dime as a dad—things like that. It was the phone.
"Yes?" he said through cotton.
"Vic, I'm very sorry to disturb you but—uh, we've got a bit of a situation down here at the station. Would you be too ill to come in for a few minutes?" It was Metzger. "We need to talk." This last in Babaloo's sucky voice that he reserved for ultimatums and such. It gave Trask a chill for a second.
"Sure. Absolutely."
"I hate to ask, man. I know you're under the weather. But, you know, if you can…"
"Hey, no problem. What's it about, Babaloo? Can you give me a clue?"
"Huh-uh. Probably better talk in person. An hour be enough time? Two hours?"
"I can be there in an hour. Sure. I'll see you."
"Thanks, Vic. I won't keep you long." Yeah, Trask thought. He was sure of that.
He went into the bathroom, relieved himself, tried to clean up a bit, was too shaky to shave, and finally just said fuck it and pulled some clothes on.
The drive to KCM was a nightmare, because he happened to catch a half-hourly newscast. The serial-murder thing had busted wide open without him, and—so it seemed—was not race-related. There'd been a couple more random rifle grenade kills—as the radio story termed them—long-distance homicides in Penn Valley Park.
He started to wonder whether it might be something they were planning to do on the show. But he instantly realized Metzger would have handled that on the telephone and told him to bring his research in with him. They'd never so much as asked about the piles of shows he'd prepared on the theme of violence—the fact that he'd screwed up this one thing had been sufficient to put his ass in the doghouse forever. He sneezed and it felt as if his head might come off. How could everything be so groovy one minute and so grunty the next?
He paid for parking and schlepped to the station. He knew it was bad before he got off the elevator. As the doors opened, he saw Adam David's face. David happened to be looking in his direction and he saw the news director's grimace of anger and distaste as he quickly looked away.
He turned the corner by the music studio and felt the oppressive vibes hit him like a wall of bad news. The first person he saw was Jerri, typing something at her desk.
"Morning," he said, entering. She jumped as if she'd been shot.
"Oh! You scared me."
"Sorry. I have that effect sometimes," he said, while she smiled with that look one reserves for relatives of the departed. "The man in?" He leaned his head a fraction of an inch toward Sean's office.
"Hm-um, He's over at Five. They're taping something—a panel or some show—I dunno."
"That's okay. You wouldn't have an aspirin or something, would you?" She didn't but made a big production out of finding him some and bringing them to him. He thanked her and took them without looking, not caring if they were cyanide or what. She'd even brought him a little cup of water.
"Thanks," he said. Trying to recall the name of the Dylan tune about the Mystery Tramp.
"Sure!" she said, overly solicitous. He knew he'd been fuckin' cut off at the knees right then and there. Flynn gone—as he always was when there was a dirty job to be done—Babaloo's forte.
He gritted his teeth and headed around the bend. His office door was closed, as was Barb Rose's. Nobody home. Metzger looked up with a small, tainted smile, which was even gloomier than his usual expression of dour cynicism.
"Oy vey! What a thing to do to a guy when he's got the flu—" Metzger began, with a cloying civility that made Mask want to become ill on the desk.
"No big deal. What's cookin'?"
"I'm sorry, Vic. We gotta let you go." He shook his head several times as if this were the worst news he'd had to convey in his entire broadcasting and journalistic career. "It's out of my hands completely."
"You mean because I fucked up on one goddamn story?"
"Hear me, now. You could be in a great deal of trouble if it wasn't for the fact that you had some people here who were fond of you. I know you have had some problems on the job. But—wow! Two problems with the police in a matter of days—we have no choice. You know some little dweeb of a board man over at the Z—Doug Reid?"
"Yeah." Trask felt needles stick him in the kidneys. "Buzz Reid?"
"Vice-squad guy was by pure luck tight with Chase or you might be sitting in jail right now trying to line up a bail bondsman." Chase? Trask's mind wasn't working. He tried to swallow. His throat was raw. Metzger watched him try to breathe. "This cop calls Kincaid and says, 'Hey, I came on a conversation, with one of the KCM employees talking to this little pimp I'm busting about a plot to burgle the radio station."
"Aw, bullshit, man—it wasn't like that at all. I just—"
"He apparently overheard somebody who works at the station, thinks his office and phone are bugged, asking all this crap about how to break into Security?" He said it incredulously. "How to do illegal wiretaps? I mean, Chase said he couldn't believe it when he listened to the tape. You—"
"But I was right, wasn't I? You guys were taping me?" He was in a fog. His mind had become Gouda cheese. He couldn't even mix a metaphor.
"You're still missing the point. We weren't taping you-some vice-squad guy was taping the other guy. He was pimping his wife out of their home or whatever. You just got nailed on it. The point being—have you any idea what would have happened if the vice dude had gone to Higgins with this? You'd be locked up now, Vic. You're one lucky guy."
"Okay," he said in a quiet voice. "I just wanted to know—"
"Don't even bother, man. It doesn't matter that you weren't really going to try any of this stuff. Or even if you were just doing a piece of research, which, by the way, is what Chase, told his buddy. You were just researching 'Intrusions of Privacy'—so stick to that. Anyway, the point being—you've lost your judgment and your professionalism. We just can't have it.
"Kincaid had to tell New York about the two incidents and they said you're gone. That's it." Metzger got an envelope out of his desk and handed it over. Trask felt ill, sloppy, blank, and embarrassed, all at once—if that were possible. There was some panic as he peered inside and saw an absence of many numerals.
"What's this?" Trask snarled ungratefully.
"That's your severance pay and I had to argue with them downstairs to get you that," Metzger explained. Trask just nodded. "I need your keys. I'm to tell you that you're persona non grata at KCM. If you show up after this—and you're to take your stuff, which we have all in one box in your office—you'll be reported to the police immediately. I'm sorry, man, but they are not amused I'm sure you'll be pissed off, but all I can say is—count your blessings. As bad as this ending is, considering your lack of judgment, it could have been much worse."
"Okay." They stood up and Babaloo offered his hand. Trask shook it and walked out. Took his key off his ring and came back and put it on the desk and left again. Went in his office. Got the box. Walked down the long chilly corridor to the elevator, not seeing anybody.
The last face he saw was the gorgeous puss of Monica Heartbreak, just as the doors slid closed.
Metzger was right, he supposed. It could have been worse. They'd never learned that he'd bugged the office of a Homicide guy. Wouldn't that be fun—say the lieutenant would f
ind a hidden microphone among the volumes in his bookcase. Trask could imagine him talking about it to other detectives, and the vice guy adds two and two. It could keep on snowballing. Maybe the cops would decide he was the mass murderer. What a fucking nightmare!
Yet, as Metzger had said, it could have been worse. Think of the bright side: they'd never learned about that time he'd parked in VIP Sales Parking. Also…he was still clean on the Lindbergh kidnapping case.
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24
The hillside shooter, driving a rental, is loaded for bear. Polar. A nice fat polar. That fucking uncouth, stinking slob of a heavyweight, heart-gobbling, carnivorous, ursine motherfucker who was contaminating Price's ice—he had something for that big boy. A big, grave-digging antivehicle dumdum with Gangbang's name on it. After all, they were tank killers, right? And Bigfoot—shit, if he wasn't about as big as a tank. Gonna blow his fat mountain of blubbery lard to the sky.
A young girl walked by and Shooter opened his car door, winking at her. He carried his impotence around like a challenge, now, flashing it in the direction of every attractive woman he saw, metaphorically opening his trench coat and showing them his big gun.
She was right behind him. Screwed together and locked tight as young snatch. "To eliminate parallax…loosen her forward end…insert…into, female aperture L5…move the head in slight increments…" She waited in the back seat, waited for him to take her from beneath the covers.
"Hi."
"Howyadoon." A college-age boy. Shooter glanced around. He liked this hillside.
"SAVANT accessories include case cover, ammunition case, shooting gloves, entrenching and hide-excavation tools. Hole-digger, awl, spade, posthole tool, shovel, axe, pick, hatchet, lopper, saw, hammer, nails, wire pliers/grips, lumber, metal supports, sandbag, net, tarp with grommets, canvas sheet, paint, brushes, ladder, drainage tubing, auger, detection monitor, synced auto-pager, radio transceiver, auto-destruct…"
He was crazy as a fucking loon and he'd switched himself to auto-destruct.
"Hi," he said, friendly as hell. More passing trim.
"Hi." She smiled, and her pretty mouth made a phony curve. He would wipe that shit right off her face, he decided. Teach you to smile at me. This lady is a jealous bitch, he whispered to no one, reaching under the canvas cover for the weapon.
The second he touched her, that was all it took. He was instantly hot.
The smiling phony's back might as well have had a bull's-eye painted on it.
The master's touch. He glances around carefully—not that he really cares who sees him—out of long professional habit. He is alone with his lady and a primary target. He wonders if he should see if he could just graze the skull with that antivehicle round in his lady. Mercy!
Touch her. Feel her skin. Slick and hard. Smooth and where one's hand curves she curves, a tough familiar coolness that will grow warm with the pressure of flesh.
Rest the cheek just so. There is no doubt of her sexuality when one's face is pressed so close. She reeks of animal lust and controlled power. The cheek and jaw mold to her, and there is the pleasurable familiarity present with any pair of old lovers. Everything fits perfectly and feels so right to the touch.
She is without morals. She makes no judgments. Renders no decisions. Casts no jaundiced eye. She takes all comers without preconception, partiality, bigotry, bias, or subjective discrimination. She is, after all, the ultimate kind of whore, What she gives she offers to all equally. Her dark hole is always open.
Yet, conversely, the bitch is capable of the harshest, most deleterious, incapacitating, and destructive urges. She will lash out with incredible hostility, striking with nothing less than the most extreme prejudice.
He huddles close, warming her. Touching her in the most intimate ways.
Her unblinking gaze is stern and sharp. He sees as she sees, and her vision—as with everything else about her—is perfect. Nothing escapes her sight.
There is a special place underneath her where she begs to be touched. He cups her smoothness, the fingers resting near the spot that sets her loose. He does not trifle with her as she brooks no capriciousness or teasing. If his desires are genuine, however, she will know, and sensing his sincerity all it will take is a gentle, even pressure.
Without preamble she will explode at the touch, and she gets off with a bang. There is no feeling of raw power quite like it: the rush one feels as a mighty shudder blasts through her long, sleek body. The master's pleasing caress sets the beautiful bitch loose once again.
In the rearview mirror of the Buick, Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski sees the bleached hair of a former identity almost gone. He is on a sidestreet now, and turns down an unpaved access road beneath a hill. Just the sort of place that Shooter would enjoy killing from.
He slows. A movement or a sense of something makes him turn and he sees nothing, but the moment of intuitive feeling does not go ignored. He stops. Kills the engine. Freezes like stone; patient.
He began at the easternmost edge of the concentric circles of shooting sites, working his way to the west, basically, from Lee's Summit, various historic homes, centers, parks, landmarks, north to Sugar Creek, south to the freeway, angling back parallel to the Big Blue feature, and back south to the Sports Complex, circling the stadiums but never getting the vibes, heading west now on sidestreets abutting the Interstate, moving past Wabash…Euclid…Tracy…near the heart of the punk's comfort zone. At the corner of his vision, he'd seen something, felt a hidden presence, and it had drawn him to this unpaved road.
Finally a quail jumps, flying across the road in front of the Buick, but Chaingang's paranoia is not totally appeased. The flapping of wings and subsequent lack of vibes only infuriates him. After a long delay, he starts the engine again and slowly drives off.
Reaching the Big Blue wet feature, he parks. Gets out. A large "salami" wrapped in butcher paper is cradled in his arms. He sees a desolate river rat shack and is drawn to it. There is no sign of any presence but the heart-eater waits patiently, listening with his mind, and a watcher could not possibly hope to understand why he wastes time on a lonely unpaved access road, or near a rotting shack at the edge of the river.
He buys unleaded for the gas-guzzler. As he pays, the back of a dollar bill nudges him with its pyramid graphic art. "Eye in the sky." A taunting thing he pushes back for now.
Chaingang knows many things, Dr. Norman: ontology, cosmology, epistemology, triggernometry. He carries his killer salami back to the car and a quarter ton of monster lurches down on the springs; he grinds it to life and eases back out in the world of monkeys.
Passes low lifes. Urban rot. Doorway winos twitching in the throes of the jittery jim-jams from Sterno and muscatel and subripples of wet Missouri skid-row dreams. Pig eyes watch as a black whore moves her arm in play despair and a chinky jingle of bijoux can be heard from the trinkets she wears. Two hours before sunset and the Kansas City sky is like looking at sunlight through the bottom of a lithophane beer mug. He smells faraway rain.
The huge beast keeps driving the quadrants. Waiting for his unique sensory banks to hunt, excited by the proprioceptive stimuli that make him sui generis. Moves back along the blue—drawn to it himself, truth be known. It is here he would set up if their roles had been reversed. Here is where he would feel most comfortable performing those SAUCOG-otomies with surgical precision.
Bunkowski's bibliomania has taught him many things, Dr. Norman—and as his weird mind scans for traces of a dangerous presence, he sees that a more appropriate analogy for the overcast sky would be Meissen bisque porcelain. That in turns makes him think of Elaine Roach and he visualizes her identifying him to a chief postal inspector, but intenerates his reaction to this treachery. He cannot help but think of the poor lady fondly. Certainly, she is as out of place on the planet of the monkey men as is he. He should have removed her from mortal coil. He sees himself leaving a trace at Mr. Hy's in Crown Plaza, recalls a moment when he burnt in an im
age, how that description will lead to a Mr. Cunningham who advertised for help at the Hyatt Regency, and, of course, to Tommy Norville of the Norville Galleries on East Minnesota Avenue.
With a start, he jerks his mind to matters at hand. An old woman, staring at him boldly from a street comer, looks—just for a half second—like Mrs. Garbella. Daniel is quite disappointed. He will find her in due time and extract an appropriate measure of her life force.
Back on another access road. Another knoll overlooking miles of monkey targets. Macroscopic floating vegetation weaves slimy green pleustonic mats across the surface of the water. A happy little goldfinch flutters across the road. Anything that is alive, he will sense it.
He looks up and sees, on a utility pole, a huge nest-probably built by sparrows but as big as two squirrel's nests placed end to end. Nearby a cluster of white gourds, bleached by the sun, hang from a pole. The holes are hotel rooms into which mocking birds, indigos, and others he cannot identify check in and out. He sees sign—animal and human sign—even from the moving car. The vibes are still.
If you see him perhaps you will have sensed him before-if only momentarily. When he lumbers into view, if he is on shank's mare, you will recoil as you're caught in a stinking downdraft of raw body odors and unspeakable vileness. If he is in a vehicle and catches your eye, look away. The heart-eater hungers for a kill.
In the front seat of the stolen car is a map decorated in circles. But Chaingang heeds neither azimuth nor monitor. He has slipped beyond graded rings or grids of probability. He is somewhere east of Oceanus Aethiopicus, south of Septentrio, north of Lis Incognita, on a heading west, his back and shoulder to the Mar del Norte.
Distance is no longer measured in miles but by bathymetry. He is a shark swimming in lazy dangerous circles, drawn by the smell of blood in the water as he goes down deeper into the land of the lost.