Slob

by Rex Miller

"Okay," he replied. He just kept standing there beside her, not moving, reluctant to let the mood disintegrate. Reluctant to show her the man. The thing had taken her husband and Lee's father away from them. This monster of a man. It seemed somehow a dirty, immoral act to show her his image.

  "If—you think it's okay. I'd like to see it."

  "Sure," he said. But he didn't at all. There was nothing okay about it. But he went over to his attache case and popped the latches and took out a slim manila folder and opened it to the thing she wanted to see.

  "Oh" was the sound he thought she made. A pair of coal-black, diamond-hard pig eyes stared out from the cruel, yet somehow childish, jowly face that confronted her. Even the two photographs, harsh and grainy and devoid of all attempt at reproducing the look of a naturally posed human being, even these identity mug shots from Marion Federal Prison failed to convey any instant sense of menace.

  It was the childishness of the man's face, the dimpled baby-fat face that made him look so unthreatening. She felt a cold tremor as she realized this was the thing that had . . . killed and mutilated Ed. And then it had killed again and kept killing, taking more lives without rhyme or reason.

  "Jack?" She started to say something and he was taking the photograph out of her shaking hands as the torrent of stinging tears began to flow from her eyes and she collapsed in her lover's arms and he held her for what seemed to be a long time as she shook with violent, bitter sobs of loss and anger. And as he held her whatever thought she had been thinking left her like a wispy, blackened, and charred fragment of a half-remembered dream.

  "Come here."

  "Nnnnnn." It was a keening, a pitiful, wordless cry. But she'd cried enough now, and he led her over to a chair.

  "Come on, hon. Sit down."

  "Huuunnnnggg, hunnnnngggghhhh," a sound like she was still trying to make tears come but the well was dry. He sat her down at the kitchen table and stared at the dossier, not so much reading as remembering word groups, and then busied himself finding the bottle that he knew she had in the kitchen someplace. He found it up in one of the cabinets with the crackers and breakfast cereal, a nearly full fifth of Seagram's, and he sloshed a little into a coffee cup, pleased that it wasn't for him but sorry for this sweet lady of his. He ran some tap water in over the booze.

  "Take a little sip." He put it in front of her. It was all she could do to get the cup up with both hands and she tried a bird swallow and went "Wwwwaaaaauuuu-gh," shuddering and pushing it away from her as she shook her head and he took it from her shaking hands and emptied the contents into the sink. And he took the dossier again and with eyes unfocused let the phrases and word blocks commingle in his mind, staring at the face that perhaps not even a mother could completely love, a smile like the grillwork of a 1949 Roadmaster, teeth meant to tear meat, huge, misshapen teeth—never a cavity in the strange head—perfect, perfectly awful teeth rendered obsolete by civilized society, teeth meant to wrest the crimped top from bottles now made to unscrew. A human shark's teeth. All business.

  A face like piles of dough, massive and oddly featureless. A soft face dimpled like a fat baby's butt, repulsive and kissable at the same time, free from facial hair or scars of combat. But there were scars and then there were scars. And Eichord knew that some people wore their scars the way Yakuza wear their dragons, discreetly. His scars, aside from broken belly veins that encircled his girth like pregnancy stretch marks, his scars would be borne like ostracized triad tattoos, old and fading pachuco gang cruciforms, worn secretly and surreptitiously. Socially unacceptable stains on civilized skin, his worst marks deeply subcutaneous—living reminders of unforgettable nightmares, burned down into the core of his twisted soul with the torturer's cruel branding iron. Twenty-year-old scars that would rankle and hurt like half-forgotten shrapnel working its way to the surface of this uniquely malevolent human being.

  There was something here, though, and he stared at the word groups and data patterns, letting the mass of fact and surmise free-associate and interconnect. Letting the life and times of Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski lap against his brain, sometimes not touching, sometimes in actual contact, contiguous and sequential and chronological, and sometimes without propinquity or connective. And he knew it was no good trying to force it and he closed the dossier not long afterward, going to her again and taking her in his arms.

  He told her for the first time that he loved her without speaking the words, making his first commitment to her and to the little child that now ran across the next-door neighbor's backyard, pulling a kite against the light breeze as a young, female hunting dog of dubious lineage bayed excitedly at her heels, committing himself to them wholeheartedly now. Wanting "to dump his love inner," he thought, smiling, to himself.

  So close. Forty-seven minutes away, driving the speed limit and hitting all the lights just right, only forty-seven minutes away by vehicle, sitting in a cramped framework of two-bys some nine feet below the city streets, the killer sat watching them. Looking at Jack and Edie. Then dropping remnants of a beef-and-cheese burrito onto their likeness in the grainy photograph as he continued to scan the somewhat lurid, breathless, and largely inaccurate account of the special homicide investigator and the widow of one of the first victims of the Lonely Hearts killings.

  The name Edith E. Lynch and her suburban Chicago address typed themselves on his mental word processor and filed themselves neatly away for retrieval. And each word of the report and every word spoken by the arrogant cop on the television program struck at Daniel like the sharp stings of a rattler, taunting him, biting at him until he stomped down on the filthy paper with a vicious, 15EEEEE heel obliterating the images that enraged him. And he imagined he could hear the cry of the snake man again. It was taking him around the bend. The kind of purple, swollen rage that made him do the awful thing to the Volkers that day. It was going to make him take the cop and the cop's bitch and create a special and mouth-watering feast.

  And just at that moment, when the killer's grotesquely brilliant mind began to get the first glimmer of his next move, Jack heard the hound baying out in back and an almost-ignored fact popped a red signal up amid the flood of trivia awash in his brain, and he knew then—as he always knew—without a moment's indecision, he knew exactly how he would take this man down.

  It was not until the phone call late the following night, Edie calling him at eleven-thirty, after a day that included another long interrogation of the biker punk and a series of fruitless and frustrating attempts to pry more information loose from the people at Marion Fed, Edie calling him just as he was hitting the sack, not until then that the whole thing began to come together and his own plan started to assert itself.

  "Hey, babe!"

  "Umm, yeah?" A voice like a mouth full of cotton.

  "I'm sorry, honey. Had you just fallen asleep?"

  "No. Just got back. What's up, love?"

  "Ohhhh," she sighed audibly, breathing into the phone. "The man. The man's face you showed me last night. I've seen him, I think."

  "Say again?" He was wide awake.

  "Jack, I know how this is going to sound but I have to tell you. I don't know—I almost didn't say anything, but—I mean, something was so familiar about that face when I looked at it, but—I just . . ."

  "Huh?"

  "I just couldn't put it into the right pigeonhole, but then I remembered when I was talking to Sandi about going to the center it came to me where I'd seen him before."

  "You talking about the killer?"

  "Yes. The man's photographs you showed me from prison. What's his name?"

  "Bunkowski."

  "I think I've seen him. I know that face. I saw him down by the center the other night."

  "What center. What are you talking about?"

  "The Crisis Center where I do volunteer work." She gave him an address in downtown Chicago. "I saw that face; I know I did."

  "You—uh, you're really sure about this? I mean, look—"

  "No, Jack. I know what th
is must sound like to you, but yes, I think—I am sure. I'd remember that face. I know it looked different, he'd look older now, wouldn't he?" She wasn't asking him. "But even so, the face is the same. Heavier maybe. I saw him in lots of light. It was a dark night but there was plenty of light to see his face and it scared me. He was huge. I was just getting in my car and I saw this—I saw him going down to work in a manhole. He was dressed like a whadyacallit? A sanitation worker. Those guys who work in manholes?"

  "You saw Bunkowski, you think, across from the Crisis Center going down into a manhole?" He was beginning to think he had hallucinated the phone call.

  "I swear I'm not kidding, honey. He had on like—this pair of coveralls or something and this big—uh, ladder thing, and a sack. And naturally I just thought it was a workman. And it struck me as kind of odd he'd be going to work down in a manhole that late at night. It was like maybe ten, ten-thirty, something like that. And you know, I was tired and all. But I think that was him. I mean his size. He was huge. There can't be that many guys that big that look like that. Can there? I—"

  "Edie. You're sure about all this now?"

  "Jack, I'm not playing games. I almost didn't say anything but I had to tell you. I think that was him. Really. I bet it was him. Honey?" No response. "Is it possible?" A long pause. She could hear him breathing. Thinking.

  "Hell, I don't know."

  But he was pulling his pants back on as he told her he'd talk to her first thing in the morning. And at 011500 Eichord and three other armed detectives, plus two backup units of uniformed cops, plus a chief inspector, plus Lieutenant Arlen himself, were standing with their weapons drawn and staring down into the eery shadows of a submain, looking at the remnants of the killer's last feast, feeling icy fingers of dread reach up toward them in the flickering lantern light and flashlight beams and spotlights as they looked down into the den where the beast lived.

  Eichord felt two things. A thrill, not exactly elation, but that sort of an energy spritz—and fear. He was afraid. A nervous tic was pulling at his right eye like a Bell's palsy attack, and he could feel the side of his face twitch as he stood in the middle of the street staring down into this vista of another world. And he wanted a real drink.

  Leroy and Albert

  You know how it is when the table sort of turns to rubber on you, and the windowpanes liquify. Well, that is how it was behind the green door of Dr. Geronimo's HERBS, ROOTS, DREAMS, CANDLES AND . . . POTIONS on the south side. The fat, black buck with feet unstable did not pound on the table for that very reason. When a table gets all rubbery, you can just about do good to hold on to the sucker and that was the case here. Everything was liquifying, rubberizing, moving.

  It was either blood pressure, the dropsy, the whim-whams, an evil spell or curse, migraines, incipient tuberculosis, a severe hitch in the gitalong, or one of those cases of spofus sporium you read about. It could be the half tab he'd just done, some old hippy sunshine he'd smoked up somewhere, fuckin' hippies sell you any kind of shit, on top of all the gangster he'd smoked and that good sweet Boone's Farm he'd done put a hurtin' on.

  Whatever it was it had Dr. Geronimo all queeeeasy Jesus I'm gonna lose it any minute, he thought as he saw the green door open and a man with spiky Martian-green-and-pink hair come slithering in.

  "Oh, no. Lord have mercy omigoodness oh Sweet Jesus in Heaven I'm trippin' out baaaaaaaaaaad."

  "Hullo," the Martian said.

  "Ommma gowaamba, mumbo-jumbo, bopovauni—" It was the first incantation Dr. Geronimo could think of. Pure nonsense, but hell, maybe the Martian wouldn't know the difference and the fake curse would cause him to flee. "Fepoapalula zawfram paradiddle oomgawa b'wana melloroony," he intoned, waving his hands toward the Martian in the hopes of warding off the Evil Eye, voodoo hoodoo, and whatever bad jazz the Martian might try to lay on him.

  "How do?" the man from Mars with the pink-and-green hair said pleasantly, liquifying slightly and waving as he dripped in the rubbery acid manner.

  "I warn you extraterrestrial heathen slime, I am a fully ordained witch doctor of the Comanche Indians, licensed to kill by voodoo, and if you come any closer, I will put a curse on the entire planet from whence you come, not to mention any heirs and assigns you may have left on your Martian spaceship. So stay where you are oomala maxamillian shellaroony dilly gilavauni oomashabadoo," still with the hands waving, fingers fluttering through the stale storefront air, warding off Martian badjazz.

  "Hell, Dr. Gee, I ain't from Mars. It's only me, Woody." The man with the spiky green-and-pink hair came a couple of steps closer.

  "Damn you to creation, you dripping, poisonous, pukeface, I'll put such an incantation on you that your entire family will . . . Woody? Woody who?"

  "Whatsa matter, Dr. Gee? J'a break your glasses or sum'thin'?" the man asked him.

  "Ummm. Er, ah, hold on now just for a minute." The room was beginning to solidify slightly, and a wave of nausea receded. The man named Dr. Geronimo steadied himself on the hardening rubber table and squinted at the apparition confronting him. A blurry focus sharpened and he could see that it was indeed a man with spiky pink-and-green hair but it was only Woody Woodpecker and not an evil further mucking Martian hit man.

  "Woody, my main man. Er—uh, I was jes' jivin' witcha'—how's to it, brother?" he asked amiably, feeling his thumper palpitate with relief.

  "Doin' fine, Dr. Geronimo, nothin' to it," he told the man behind the counter, who was approximately the shape and hue of a cannonball. "I need to ask your professional advice."

  "Axe away, my man," Geronimo said expansively, as the rubber hardened.

  "Well, I got me a girlfriend now. Well. Not a girlfriend exactly. It's May Seebaugh. You know May? From over on Wells?" May was a bag lady.

  "I don't think I've had the pleasure."

  "A delightful flower. But to the point. Dr. Gee, I know you're a man of the world so that I don't have to feel shame at this admission, but sometimes, at a certain age, a man has problems with—" He trailed off as Dr. Geronimo surreptitiously attempted to glance at his watch, which was no longer dripping from his wrist in a Daliesque meltdown, but was hardening nicely into readable numerals.

  "Urinary infections," the good doctor helped him, "prostrate problems, assorted plagues and social disorders, malfunctions, dysfunctions, nonfunctions— "

  "I'm having trouble getting it up."

  "And an Afro-dizzy-act is in order. Well, Woody, you have, as they say, come to de right place. I have something so fantastic, so incredible, so foolproof, it would stiffen the member of a dead eunuch. It is the most secret, hush-hush Afro-dizz ever invented. It is called Alura."

  "How much is it?" Woody Woodpecker was fifty-seven and did in fact have pink-and-green hair. His real name was Albert Sharma.

  "It ain't cheap," said Dr. Geronimo, a.k.a. LeRoy Towels.

  "Say what?" Woody Woodpecker was reasonably intelligent or had been prior to the pickling of his thinking apparatus in a variety of stimulants and depressants that included but was not limited to vodka, gin, tequila, paregoric, Ripple, pruno, White Tiger, Black Panther, Green Dragon, absinthe, Brut, Sterno, Chaps, Old Spice—the list is long. He had ended up with a partiality toward Mission Sweet Lucy and all he needed was a drink of men's room water and he stayed on a kind of semipermanent buzzer.

  "Two hundred a cap," the cannonball-shaped entrepreneur told him.

  "Wheeeee," Woody lamented, "shit."

  "I know, my friend. But you have to understand, it's not like there was an unlimited supply. When these caps are gone, that is the end of the tune. This was the top-secret discovery of the Sexual Research and Development Unit of the CIA. It is called Alura, the letters standing for Autoerotic Lutenizing Reagent. Only a small amount of this was cooked up, for use by impotent spies so they could seduce women to get information. It'll make your tool so hard you can use it for a cat-scratch post. So two hundred for a cap of this magic is a bargain."

  "Wow," said Albert Sharma, trying to figure o
ut how the hell he could boost enough cassettes and shit to come up with two bills. Woody Woodpecker was the name he'd gone by for six, seven years since he'd been known as the Wood Man. But Woody Woodpecker seemed more appropriate, and it had a street rhythm so it stuck. Now he worked to the image, talked funny, told people his pecker was wood, stuff like that. Punks sometimes spiked his hair and the pink-and-green bit was a leftover from a recent Woodpecker do.

  He was called the Woodpecker, and Woody, and before that the Wood Man, because he saw men in wood. This is what started Albert Sharma drinking in the first place—years ago. He could not look at a piece of wood without seeing faces. If you're a carpenter by trade, this can become a very unsettling experience, and one thing had led to another, and before long the Wood. Man was down and out, among the street people. So it sometimes goes.

  "What say, brother," said Dr. Geronimo, who claimed to have lived with the Comanche tribe for many years learning potions, spells, and miscellaneous divinations and witch doctoring. But who had in fact lived with some stockyard workers in Omaha, from whom he'd picked up a variation on the fortune-teller pitch which he used in his current dreambook emporium. It made a nice little lucrative sideline to the roots-and-herbs thing

  "I ain't got the two hundred. But you know Deuce, doncha'?"

  "Yeah," he commiserated, "a deuce ain't easy to come up with, but that's the price."

  "No, doctor. I say you know the dude calls hisself Deuce? Deuce Younger?"

  "Say what?"

  "You know, man. The biker dude. Guy runs the Flames?"

  "Oh, yeah. I know the man. So?"

  "I got something."

  "Yeah?"

  "I heard he put three hundred on the street for anybody could give him the one that hit Mr. Tree."

  "Now, Woody, you're a good old gentleman, and you best be not messin' with them boys."

  "Yeah, but I need that stuff. And if he gave me three hundred, I could buy a cap of Alura, and me and May could take a real honeymoon together."