Savant

She reached over and slid her hand up under his cashmere sweater, and he felt long, sharp nails on his chest. People were all around but he wasn't aware of any stares. The bartender was too busy to watch and the people on either side of him were into their own conversations. She just stood there, playing with one of his nipples and suddenly she began to squeeze very hard.

'Ouch,' he said before he could catch himself. Then he laughed nervously. She just smiled and kept squeezing. He felt so odd. Why was she doing this?

She just kept looking at him, reading him—as if his face were a book and his chest were Braille, and she had to pinch his tits to see the words form—and saying nothing. He felt like an idiot. He couldn't think of what to say. After several moments of pinching, she leaned over close and whispered something into his left ear.

'Do you know what Ben Hoa balls are?' That's what he thought she had said to him.

'I was stationed there during the war,' he said. Her fingernails were still on his chest, but relaxed now. 'That was a long time ago,' he said. It was the funniest joke anyone had ever told her. She started laughing raucously, taking her hand out of his sweater and pounding on the bar. People looked over at them. He just kept smiling. The bartender said, 'Tell me, too. I need a laugh.' But she just ignored everybody. She laughed hard, finally stopping.

'What did I say?'

'Don't. Don't start me again. What did you say your name was, lover?' He started to answer. 'Bobby. That was it.' She slid that hand back under his sweater and he could feel the long fingernails stop at his left nipple, which already was sensitive from the squeezing she'd given it. 'Bobby, I'll tell you what, old cowboy. You pay for these drinks and come with me, lover.' She turned and was fucking gone.

He threw a twenty on the bar and was running to catch up.

'Hey—thank you, sir,' he could hear the bartender say gratefully. Where was she?

He ran out of the dim interior and almost ran into her.

'You got a car?' she asked. She looked nearly fifty in the sunlight, and he thought she was the sexiest-looking woman he'd ever seen, including on TV and in the movies.

'Yeah. There.' He pointed. Almost tongue-tied.

They got in the car and she sprawled out like she owned it. Her left hand glanced against the back of his neck and he said 'where to' and she gave him her address.

Price started the car and pulled out, asking for directions and getting them. Her voice was cold and matter- of-fact. But her fingernails were playing with the hair at the back of his head.

He reached for her and she chilled him with her voice.

'You drive and don't be touching me till I want you to, okay?'

'Sure,' he said, chagrined. After a few moments, he said, just to make conversation, 'I don't even know your name.'

'Listen. Here's the deal. You don't talk unless I fucking want you to talk, do you understand me?'

'Yeah, okay—but…' He was so confused by this woman, yet so totally drawn to her. 'I…'

'You listen good, Bobby baby. We're gonna have a fucking ball. My name is Cindy Hildebrande. You know everything about me now, all right? You can call me Mama, okay?'

'Sure, okay.' He smiled. Whatever you're into, he thought.

'Just drive, cowboy.' He'd obviously done something to piss her off. He knew one thing. This old Cindy was going to be dynamite in the sack.

Kansas City, Kansas

There were four names in the Boorum & Pease Accounts Receivable Single Entry Ledger under SVS/M, and he regarded the names as unfinished business, to be dealt with in the harshest possible way.

Bunkowski no longer needed to open the pages to read the names inside his head:

Belleplaine, Rene (Tiny)

Cholia, Carlos Garcia (Kid Gloves, a.k.a. Cee-Gee)

Harrison, Donald (Donny)

Vale, Ashley Yaples (Bluto)

The third gangbanger, Donny Harrison, was doing hard time in the joint for second-degree murder.

He is aware that each of these punks holds a title in their now-almost-defunct organization: War Lord, Sergeant at Arms, President, Road Captain.

He has researched their real names, records, home and work addresses (a joke for the parole board's files), and all of this data he came by easily, with a few questions to street people, a few bureaucratic phone calls to the proper agencies. One could learn anything over a telephone with nothing more sophisticated than an official, curt tone and the proper-sounding jargon.

Chaingang wanted them all gone. He'd do these, and when the opportunity arose he'd whack the punk inside as well. Put an end to the line.

His mind sorted probabilities, tactics, strategic contingencies. He knew they were hunkered down in a trailer the gang kept north of town, and he was in his wheels, crossing the river, heading over the Intercity Viaduct bridge on the route that became Highway 24, turning left in the busy traffic on Winter Road, driving in the direction of Sugar Creek.

He knows what he would like to do to them, what would be fitting, and he has already taken certain steps toward that end. His computerlike brain probes for weak spots, exfiltration snags, and the myriad details of hazard assessment. He concludes that if something unforeseen happens he can improvise something. He does not see the three biker punks as a serious threat, but while he still regards them as buffoons, scum beneath contempt, Chaingang is conscious of the fact that his immediate goal is to punish.

He would take his time with the targets, and on a conscious level his logic was strong and uncompromising. His subconscious mindscreen, however, was scanning retrieval for something unrelated. Dr. Norman would have been fascinated to watch the beast's mental computer examine stored data:

Reclamation of X-velocity materiel from chemical compounds.

Big-bang mixtures from over-the-counter accessibles.

Improvised M18A1 antipersonnel mine detonation devices.

Construction and field usage of homemade munitions.

Chemistry, math, and the general sciences…

He also saw something with just the

EDGE

OF

HIS

MIND

and tried his best to stop it and look at it but to no avail. It had flashed by too quickly. Something akilter, out of place—jarringly so—an element he had 'seen' with his presentience, perhaps, but not identified. A danger to him.

The harder he tried to lock on to it the farther it fled from his grasp, so he relaxed his mind and thought of pleasant scenes. Old killing fields and brutalized sex he'd enjoyed. Tried not to focus on the mindscreen's present to him-sometimes that worked.

Sterling Avenue caught his gaze from a street sign and he turned north into the flow of heavy traffic, driving defensively, but not overly slow—the model of a careful driver if you were behind him. (He was also capable of expert, fast driving. In his lifetime, he'd been stopped by various state cops a total of nineteen times. Once, in legal wheels, he'd taken and paid for a forty-six-dollar speeding violation. Seventeen times, in stolen vehicles, he'd talked the state rod into both tearing up or not starting a ticket, and into killing the 'wants/warrants' check! He could have been an amazing confidence man had money interested him. Only once he'd been unable to dissuade the unlucky state highway patrolman with words, and had left him filling his front seat with blood.)

In a more receptive state, he realized that something was still seriously awry with his system. Each time he