The curtain of rain enveloped everything in a stinking veil of wormy fish odor that he did not find unpleasant. The wet stench and the smell of his own scent in his nostrils accentuated the desolate look of these flatlands, broken only by occasional clots of woods and turnrow tree lines, and the little Monopoly-board houses of potential victims. It was his kind of morning.
Near the distant river there were rocks, willows, and a long ribbon of blacktop that fringed the man-made river levee. He thought about the woman and hardened, breathing slowly, savoring the memory of her look. He would have to get a live one next time. That was how he thought of it—a live one. Somewhere at the end of the blacktop, perhaps, she waited for the taking.
The rain increased in intensity, painting the landscape in a misty silver haze, and he gathered the huge tarp around his face and stomped out of the woods to the used Oldsmobile.
Chaingang Bunkowski could not waddle in off the street, reeking of subterranean sewers and dank drainage culverts, and ask to test-drive a new Peugot. He could, but it would be to create an unforgettable and altogether remarkable image. Nor could he wander into his friendly neighborhood BMW dealer's showroom without arousing considerable suspicions. So that was always the initial consideration when he interfaced with the monkeys: his predetermination of which places might allow him to effectively “blend in” and operate in the persona of a more or less “normal” consumer.
The buying of a used car was typical of such acts, and needed to be handled in the most surreptitious manner, with special care toward the selection of dealers. Williams Auto Mart, a lonesome strip of previously owned chrome, iron, and fiberglass just inside the twenty-five-mile barrier reef of so-called safety, looked appropriate.
Handling the prelims via telephone, delineating parameters, testing resistance quotients, probing the acceptable behavior tolerances, assessing risk factors, preselecting product possibilities, he further narrowed his field of choices.
There was a 1982 Cutlass, an “extremely clean” four-door Buick Century. The salesman, Mr. Williams, thought it was a ‘79. And there was the ‘81 Delta, which he ended up taking for pocket change. It didn't look like much, but it ran just fine.
The pink slip and appropriate DMV paperwork, replete with sanitized history and photo-correct laminated rectangle to match his tags (almost certain not to jar any wants-and-warrants priors) all made him as close to street-legal as he could reasonably get.
These formalities additionally paved the way for certain creature comforts like a place of inexpensive lodging, even a rental property, and—if he wanted to push it—financial respectability at the thrift institution of his choice.
It was, to be sure, a world of cars. Cars, trucks, RVs, and bikes were the core of civilized society. If you had a driver's license and a paid-for pink slip, you couldn't be all bad, so the inference seemed to be. And with that magic talisman, matching registration papers, and an engine block with original numbers—you had what it took to earn the Man's theoretical blessing.
Open the correct door, say the secret words, and you could then open checking accounts, apply for credit cards, hold your head up high, and walk tall and straight as any other lawful taxpayer.
“C. Woodruff” was a GM man, by golly, and he'd drive this old Delta till the bottom rusted out of it. And if Chaingang Bunkowski slammed his nearly 500 pounds into it too many times, the process might be accelerated, but it made a convenient and affordable throwaway.
The car ran quite well, he thought, although he immediately detected bad brakes, and his sensors filled him with an abiding distrust of the master cylinder.
Such thoughts were far from the top level of his perception as he slowly negotiated the pothole-laden blacktop, the faulty wipers producing a rather pleasing background noise. He was somewhere else at the moment, far from Waterton and Jackson's Grove, Missouri, collating and reassessing tables, lists, logs, balance sheets, and graphs. Analyzing deceits, misstatements, distortions, inventions, falsifications, and an entirely counterfeit spectrum of lies imposed by Uncle's hidden agenda.
The physical Chaingang, a well-oiled dispenser of final solutions, trained to kill with machinelike precision and efficiency, was controlled by his mental computer. That computer, in turn, reacted to a variety of triggers, some of them as inexplicable as the influences and confluences of earth, wind, sky, and water.
This morning it had come to him as cold rain, and the thing—whatever it was—had triggered the computer as the beast slept. He came awake with a violent jolt, full power of concentration locked in, packing his belongings with a vengeance, leaving his apparently safe hideaway in Tinytown for the last time.
With the blanketing rain had come a mysterious honing of the discriminatory faculties, a deepening of the sensory capacities, a sharpening of the perspectives—real-time and historical—an enhancement of creative thought and intuitive analysis, and whatever it was that Dr. Norman defined as “physical precognition.'
This data-base-directed logic bomb, this cold-hearted heart-taker, idiot savant killer, mindless monster without redeeming humanity, saw the reality with eyes that few of us are even permitted to open.
He drove, driving on automatic pilot, the sky eyes forgotten, because he knew—understood the larger game. He saw the invisible wires. Comprehended, for the first time, the real plan, of which he was only a disposable extra. Stopped. Stood, hiding in rain-drenched woods, listening and sensing the busy, invisible world around him:
Under his 15EEEEE feet, ciliated protozoans, minute infusorian organisms, decomposed. Slow-moving tardi- grades, microscopic eight-wheelers, came from their watersheds and mossbanks. His computer sorted assertions, theses, conjecture, hypotheticals, ipse dixits; chose the most likely unproved dictum. Scanned.
And just as the four pairs of microlegs moved the tardi-grades in the direction of the decomposing protozoans, the thing that no one could explain pulled him in the direction of the least resistance.
Who understands—in an earthly sense—the mysteries of faith? There are those phenomena that are unknowable, but made conceivable to reason by one's spiritual soul.
Those who believe in God are in very real touch with the supernatural, mystical, yet incontrovertible truth of a holy divinity. The Lord's invisible but certain presence chums out of the believer's heart, appealing to the noble aesthetic sense that is the sum total of one's inner reality.
For Daniel Bunkowski the inner essence is altogether different. Where someone else has the Immaculate Conception, for example, he has this—the thing that lets him see.
This is the truth of what Chaingang believes: that an unseen, unknown watcher clicks a hidden field cam loaded with Ektachrome 400 stock, shooting with one one-hundredth-second shutter speed at f11, using 200-mm telephoto, and he is going to take those fingers that hold that camera and RIP THEM FROM THE ARMS AND THEN RIP THE ARMS FROM THE HANDS AND THEN RIP THE HANDS FROM THE MONKEY SOCKETS and that is what he truly believes in the madness of this cold, wet dawn.
There is a prison term for a con who has an ability to work himself free from handcuffs—even when “black- boxed.” The phrase sits on Chaingang's mental shoulder and smiles:
He was passing through Briarwood on his way toward Tennessee. He'd decided he'd shag a motel, maybe give some thought to an appropriately declasse rental of some kind—there were ways to remain away from the transaction, but these ways all required elaborate setups and time. He liked the looks of the isolated phone and stopped the Delta, heaved his bulk out from the groaning scat, and splashed through a deep puddle toward a bank of vending machines and telephones.
He stopped in front of a large soft-drink unit, almost blocking it from view as he spread his massive poncho even further, reaching in as if to get coins. He was reaching in for his tubular pick. Great for coin ops like commercial washers and soda dispensers. He carefully inserted the business end, adjusting the tension with the knurled collar as neoprene O-rings held the feeler picks in place. He was a superior locksmith, among his other talents, and could penetrate a simple center-spaced TL with his mind on autopilot. He swung out the coin tray and helped himself. Took a bottle of cold soda and closed the machine, going to the nearby wall phone to dial.
“East Coast Big and Tall,” the woman's voice announced after a few rings.
“Howdy, could I speak to a salesperson, please?'
“Surely. One moment.'
“Yes?'
Chaingang placed an order with the salesman who answered. Referring to a catalog number in his head. Charging it to Mr. W. W. Conway, who had just rented a tiny mail drawer. His order would be shipped via general
