Slice

by Rex Miller

  “Sure.” The girl started dialing his number.

  “Peg'll worry now, schmuck,” fat Dana said to him as they went to the car, “all the time till you get there. She'll wonder if Jack and her had a fight or something. What a dummy."

  “Hey. That's show biz,” Lee said, starting the car and roaring out toward Buckhead Springs in the fast lane.

  Twelve minutes later they were pulling into the street leading to the Eichord's subdivision. Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski and his newborn son were a half-mile away, driving at the speed limit, and looking for the street in the newspaper piece on which the Eichords lived. Bunkowski had the newspaper that he'd had photocopied by the Buckhead Library spread open in the seat between his massive body and the baby's nest. The microfiche had made grainy but usable copies. He had found the street and now had the chore of spotting the house that matched the one visible behind the smiling couple in the photo.

  He looked at the monkey with the little tiny hands and feet all bundled up in the pile of blankets and thought he could make a perfect and safe bassinet out of his camouflage tarp and the enormous piece of mosquito netting he sometimes used in his night ambushes. He looked back at the houses, driving slowly, and missing nothing, every house automatically checked against the image retained in his mental computer, he concentrated fiercely with the total dedication that marked all his moves in combat situations.

  Bunkowski spotted the house, the name “EICHORD” across the side of the mailbox at street level, and mashed the accelerator a little, heading for the shopping mall he'd seen. All the time the mental computer gears whirred, sorting possibilities, permutations, ways and means, options and escape routes, logistics and countermeasures. Was parking the baby on a darkened side street, hidden on the floor of the DeVille, the best way? The only way? Ample oxygen? Peril assessment? It was the last calculated gamble he'd make with his little monkey. He'd park two blocks from Eichord's. Make the car switch within seconds of the “calling card."

  While Chaingang was taking care of business Chink and Chunk were parking out in front of Jack's and Donna's house, feeling oddly out of place to be here on cop business instead of socializing, and they headed up to the door and rang.

  “Wait here, I'll go around back.” Dana stood on the front stoop and Jimmie ran around in the back yard. No Donna Eichord in sight. He banged on the back door. Nothing. He went back around. Tuny shook his head.

  “I'm gonna see if I can slip the lock."

  “Eichord have yer yellow eggs for an omelet if you go walkin’ in on her in the can,” Dana said, followed by something else Lee didn't catch as he was halfway around to the back again, slipping the back door lock only to find the door was open. He went in, thinking about his Magnum almost as an afterthought, the way one does when one goes through a door and nobody's there.

  “Donna?” He called out louder as he walked through the home, “DONNA, ITS JAMES LEE. DONNA?” Nobody. He opened the door for Tuny.

  “She ain't here,” Dana told him as he came in, unnecessarily.

  “Yeah, I can see that, Jumbo. Listen. Uh, whyncha go hit the neighbors’ houses. Maybe she went next door for a cuppa coffee, whatever. I'll wait in case she comes back."

  “Yeah. Awright,” his fat partner said, and went out the door and down the stairs, taking off at a brisk waddle.

  Lee went over and sat in the front window, where he could see Dana going up to the door to the Eichords’ east and ringing the bell. Waiting, then moving off and trying the next house. Lee turned back to the window and put his feet up on the ottoman and waited impatiently. He picked up a magazine and thumbed through it. Put it down. Listened to the clock tick. Picked up Jack's old Mets cap. Fooled around with it, trying to spin the bill on his finger. Stuck it absentmindedly on his head, whistling softly, waiting.

  Chain parked in the center of the street, the motor running, in park, door open, came out hard and fast and tough and mean. An amalgam of pent-up, murderous emotions housed in the body of a twisted giant, controlled by the tortured mind of a genius, a physical precognate, running up the bank on those steel tree trunks, not an ounce of fat on the enormous body, lightning-fast now, so far from the Chaingang of old as to be unrecognizable in motion, none of the inertia problems of the massively ponderous, no pachyderm ludicrousness, all fast well-oiled blur, the hands, fingers, muscles in the arms and shoulders rippling, the muscles capable of squeezing a flashlight battery, those HANDS, the steel-fingered hands that could rip a human's rib cage apart, that could rip a girl open in a steaming stinking ghoulish goulash of horror, three-hundred-plus pounds of rock-hard killer hurls the satchel charge through the front window at the image of the man in the Mets cap, grainy microfiche trigger of data retrieval feeding the on-line terminal, the body flattening on the bank as it blows upward and outward.

  “BLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM!” Wood asbestos insulation glass flesh offal intestine steel rock earth kidney face iron shingle shutter door fingernails doorknob window lungs skin nails screws balls sparking sizzling shooting red yellow white blue hot slag sparkling flying metal melting wood splintering shrapnel whistling people screaming sonic booms crashing autos diving planes bomb blasts ripping the quiet suburban air in a molten metal blast furnace of death and destruction putting an end once and for all to the earthly woes of one Detective Sergeant James Lee in a million microscopic shrapnel bullets designed to cut, rip, tear, mutilate, shred, cut off, cut out, cut down, and permanently excise.

  And Chaingang Bunkowski is in the car and gone, his maddening hunger for vengeance slaked, as the terrorizing blast still echoes in the litter-strewn street.

  LAKE BUCKHEAD

  Chaingang at five hundred pounds, six feet seven inches of killer gorilla, had first faced the seemingly impossible challenge of obtaining a low profile. Where could he possibly hide?

  He had emulated his former enemies, the NVA hard core, who hid by day, emerging at night to kill, resupply, move, then vanish again without a trace. They went down into the vast tunnel complexes that spanned the whole of Vietnam ... to hide, to sleep, nursing their wounded, planning strategies, shaping tactics. And so this is what Bunkowski did.

  Knowing how his enemies live by their utilities, he goes to their source: the water supply, sewage disposal systems, electrical hookups, telephone cables, pipelines, subways, underground linkages. The subterranean world that charges and flushes and rumbles beneath the surface of urban America.

  Now he is down to 320 pounds, but he knows he will be very hot. His face or a reasonable facsimile—scars, dimples, warts, and all—will be plastered all over Buckhead. And there is the little newborn thing that must be cared for. He cannot go back into the sewers.

  It is pitch-black night and Chaingang is behind the wheel of the maroon Sedan DeVille cruising through a rich residential section of suburban Buckhead. He is looking for a certain type of midrange home. Medium wealth. Somebody on vacation, maybe. No house-sitter. A certain look that will make his sensors purr. The look that says, NOBODY HOME.

  He spots a couple of houses that both feel very good to him. He drives on past, cruising the neighborhood. He doesn't want the kind of Beverly Hills-Bellaire thing where you have a private security force running the streets constantly, yet the homes should be monied. The kind of families that can take long, unhurried vacations.

  He stops at an all-night convenience store, buys a paper, a quart of Wild Turkey, and some junk food. Why deprive himself? He deserves some R & R now. He worked for it. He buys some fruit juice. He will wean the newborn monkey onto some juice soon. He will get out of this suit. Put his feet up. Enjoy the pleasure of having paid back that arrogant cop.

  Chaingang drives back to the darkened area that still beckons him with its aura of vulnerability and access. One of the houses feels especially good and he has long ago learned to trust these vibes. He pulls up to the rear of the house in a shelter of trees and shrubs. It is a perfect p
lace. Isolated. Total privacy. He checks for the signs of “bells” which can be anything from special wiring to the light beam type detectors. The good feeling is still there. He silently opens the back door with one of his special tools.

  Had he not opted to be a killer he would have made a wonderful thief. His burglary skills are superb. Soon the baby infant is inside and safe, and Chaingang, working with a penlight, is securing the windows of a back room so that he can turn the lights on. He does so and completes his initial inspection of the house. His estimate is that a family of 5 lives here. The father owns an insurance agency. They have been gone for 8 days. That means he has anywhere from 2 days to 5 days time here if his assessment proves correct.

  After he changes the little guy's diaper and washes his hands, he and baby take their bottles. Monkey gets formula—Chaingang Wild Turkey on ice—just the way he likes it. He hangs the suit up carefully and sits on the bed in his skivvies, watching his son contentedly suck down formula as he sucks down whiskey, still the killer, still the madman, but changed.

  Gone is the old necrophagiacal heart-eater. Sissy will prove to be his last mutilation. There will be no more hearts. He has partaken of his last ritualistic devouring of the enemy.

  He turns to the story he senses he'll find in the paper and reads with more than a bit of amazement that he has blown up the wrong cop.

  BUCKHEAD DETECTIVE KILLED IN BOMB BLAST (BP)—A bomb thrown into the home of a well-known detective, serial murder expert Jack Eichord of Buckhead Springs, killed detective James Lee, 46, police said. Lee had been conducting an inquiry that led him to the home of the special investigator who was out of town on another case at the time of the explosion. “We cannot comment on this at the present time,” Buckhead detectives said, when asked about who they thought had thrown the bomb.

  The Buckhead Bombing and Arson Unit said the bomb appeared to have been “a high explosive such as C-4 or plastic explosive, something with a detonation velocity of 25,000 feet per second, like a military explosive, and that the bomb had been built with fragmentation shrapnel such as the satchel charges used in the Vietnam War."

  The blast lifted the roof from the home at 2771 Spring Hill Drive, blowing large holes in the walls and floor. “It even blew the window frames out,” one observer said, “and you could see right down where it blew holes all the way through the floor joists."

  The baby began crying and Chaingang tossed the paper onto the floor and looked over at the infant beside him on the bed. In just that heartbeat there was a flash of insight that somehow penetrated through to Chaingang's core, and for just that flicker of light Bunkowski realized how insane he must be. Just a flickering hint of the monstrousness of what he'd done, the tableau of depravity and murder revealed itself to him. The revelation was so surprisingly disgusting to him that he felt himself shudder at the awful, bloodsoaked picture that was the sum of his repugnant past.

  The huge man gently reached out a steel cigar finger and tried to put it in the baby's tiny fist, and he knew why he had shuddered in that flash of insight. For the first time in his horror of a life Daniel Bunkowski had something to live for.

  SOUTH BUCKHEAD

  “I'm sorry.” It was all he could say. Peggy was on his shoulder, collapsed, and he held her and rocked her like a baby for a moment as she sobbed. Donna had to physically pull her off and lead her into a bedroom. Bev Tuny had readied their guest room and the doctor was going to sedate Peggy. Donna was going to stay with her the rest of the afternoon. Tonight they were moving everybody to another location. Federal marshals were already working on a transportation plan that was as elaborate as could be devised and quite impenetrable. It would have to be, considering their adversary.

  “He tried every way in the world to warn you. He couldn't find you,” Dana was saying.

  Eichord answered in a cracked voice, emotionless and flat, saying the words not for the first time, “He datafaxed the latents to me about the time I got the rundown from docs on the note. It tested as Bunkowski's printing. Hair and fibers cross-matched the two locations, and so forth. And so on. It was him. Hadda be. I knew I had to get out of there. He was obviously on the way. But he's capable of anything. I had ‘em put a lid on it up there. I thought it might give us an edge. Shit, all it did was get Jimmie killed."

  He broke down and Dana hugged him and said, “Don't say that, man. You didn't get him killed. No fuckin’ way. It was just—shit—his time.” They both sobbed. “If we'd found Donna there. Jesus, Jack, we would have left with a warning to her, or just put surveillance on the house and that insane piece of shit would probably have taken me and Jimmie out and gone in and got Donna, too. Just look at it like this—Jimmie saved her life."

  “If she hadn't been outta the house because of the cat...” He trailed off. Donna had called Tuffy and the kitten hadn't come and she'd gone outside looking for him. The black tomcat had him cornered and she'd seen the cat attack the kitten again just as she went running toward them. The tom had Tuffy about half-killed by the time she chased it off. She had gathered up the injured cat and a neighbor lady had been kind enough to run them over to a nearby vet, where Donna had waited while they sewed up Tuffy's injuries, and they told her they'd keep the kitten there overnight. She took a taxi back to find her home, or what was left of it, in ruins, police cars, ambulance, God knows what all from the fire department to the bomb squad parked in the litter-filled street.

  Eichord had been on the scene within an hour and a half. It was then that he learned Jimmie had been killed in the explosion. Donna and Dana Tuny and Bev had gone to tell Peggy and they were with her when Eichord arrived.

  Dana and Jack went outside and sat on the front steps.

  “It don't seem possible.” Dana shook his head.

  “Yeah. I know.” Jack took a pen and pocket notebook out and began making notes. He would have sketches made of Bunkowski in every possible wig, facial hair combination, glasses, anything he could think of. He'd use his position with the media. He had an idea: a way he could make it very hot for the killer, whom he knew was still close. If not now, as soon as he found out Eichord was alive, he would be back to try again. Eichord could use himself as bait if he could devise the right sort of a trap. He tried to make some preliminary notes but all he could think of was Jimmie.

  “Jack? Dana?” Donna was at the door. “Peggy wants to see you both."

  The two of them got up. Eichord started through the doorway, but then stopped and held his arm out for his friend to join him. Chink and Chunk had a thousand little routines they'd always do. Like when they went through a doorway they'd try to go through at the same time so they could pretend they'd gotten stuck. Fat Dana's wedged-in-the-doorway shtick.

  Dana realized what Jack wanted and he stepped up into the doorway and they squeezed through together, both of them laughing and then sobbing at the same time.

  Jack looked at his fat friend. “I've never loved you any more than I love you right now, Dana.” And Dana hugged him and Jack sobbed. “Of course, I've never loved you any less either,” and broke up completely. He finally got control of himself and they went back to see Peggy, blowing their noses and wiping their eyes.

  “Come in, guys,” Peggy said, and they went into the bedroom. “He would have said, Hey, you two look like you-know-what.” And they both smiled and nodded.

  “That's right,” Jack said.

  “Listen. I know you two are willing to do everything, but I'm okay. I've always been waiting for something like this. You're not ready for it, naturally, but I know what I have to do. I'm going to take care of the details. I've called Jeff and told everybody. I'm about to notify his family in China when the call finally goes through. I've been making some notes. I'll arrange the funeral details and all. I'll be okay.

  “I know there was something going on and whatever it was it's all over now. I don't care what it was, but I know that at last he'd decided to do something different and, I dunno, change whatever it was so that it would be rig
ht. He was going to make things right. He said to me—one of the last things was, ‘Dana and Jack'll be relieved.’ So whatever it was he'd got it out of his system and I thought you both should know he'd said that to me."

  Neither of them said anything.

  “He loved you both very much, you know,” she told them, and the tears came in a screaming, uncontrollable flood, and both men went to her and the three of them held one another and cried.

  It would be early the next morning before Peg told Jimmie's family about her husband's tragic murder. Nighttime, a day later, as a family friend would listen, carefully taking notes on the other end of a conversation that spanned an ocean and the international dateline. The friend would convey the news of the sad and tragic, faraway death of James Lee to a man who had no voice with which to cry and whose steel hard eyes had long since lost the capacity to shed human tears.

  LAKE BUCKHEAD

  For two days Chaingang had busied himself with plans, strategies, options, looking at the realistic future and the course of possible actions open to him. The rest of the time he relaxed with baby monkey, playing with it incessantly, loving it the way you would a small puppy, amazed by its microscopic features and the parallels of its biological clock.

  Like him, it was little more than a machine. All but without a soul or personality or character. Only the raw mind there for whatever input the river of experience and data would leave in its wake as it washed across the brain wrinkles. A human being in microcosm, designed to ingest formula, convert the matter into energy and bodily waste, sleeping, building, growing, repeating the process. It amazed him. He suddenly realized that a newborn human was the exact mirror opposite of an old person, who slowly degenerates with the intake and expulsion of matter. He saw humanity as a miraculous eating machine.