drunken asshole who closed his eye, the Snake Man, the girls who'd laughed at him that time as they sailed by in their daddy's convertible, the people who made hospital gowns, Spanish Rodriguez, Mommy, Dr. Norman, the designers of cars who made them for fucking dwarves, the seven goddam dwarves themselves and the cunt who dropped them, Norwegian whalers, Japanese sailors, Illinois jailers, the whole shit parade, the double-zero buck punching a nice wet hole in the middle of all that trash.
Quick resupply. A fast gathering of money, food, weapons, this and that. He cut the horses loose and waddled back toward the ride.
As he pulled off the gravel the fucking car was limping—a flat. He sighed, heaved his tonnage out of the vehicle, opened the trunk. Nothing. The asshole hadn't even been carrying a spare. He left the thing where it sat, his duffel and weapons case in his hand, and started down the road toward the nearest heartbeat.
The kill had been satisfying in one respect but Bunkowski was less than devoted to firearms. They were never his weapon of choice in ambush situations, where he preferred a killing chain, his hands, a club, or his fighting Bowie. Grenades and shaped charges were next on the list, and, finally, guns. Shotguns were accessible, cheap, and disposable, but they were noisy. The one exception, a suppressed street-sweeper with poisoned shell loads, had grown difficult to obtain for field-exigency situations. Even distant neighbors would have heard this ruckus. He shrugged it off.
The ma ‘n’ pa bait-food-crackerbarrel-gunsmith-dog pound-shit hole never closed, apparently. He propped the used shotgun up against the wall by the screen door, opened the door, and clomped in, his ankle now one more point of hurt. He was beginning to drop back into one of his dangerously ill-tempered moods.
“Hey, big boy!” the proprietor called to him. Chaingang's face crinkled in its deadliest configuration, a malevolently beaming ear-to-ear grin. The President of the United States mouthed platitudes and promises in the background darkness. “Come on in. I been watchin’ that fackin’ liar on TV,” the older man said, viciously. “Them sons of fuckin’ bitch'n crooks in War-shington—” he began a tirade about politics in Missouri pidgin English, as Chaingang fumed. While the store owner ranted he noticed mud on the giant's booties.
“I know what you been up to,” he said, knowingly. “You the one, all right. You behind the Winchester
How could he have known? Obviously someone had found the body already. Perhaps it had been on the news, a television bulletin, or the noise of the blasts had ... he was too exhausted and irritated to aggravate himself with the illogic of it. A yard-long steel snake that slept in a specially reinforced canvas pocket dangled from the beast's hand. Taped steel links the size of cigarette packs chainsnapped the idiot into oblivion.
Daniel stepped over the body and without preamble searched the premises, taking some money, another shotgun, and the keys to the man's pickup. He placed the Winchester, wiped, not that it mattered, back on the rack of firearms for sale, and, almost as an afterthought, added the weapons he'd taken from the punk's shack.
The truck was a real piece of crap, but the tires were fairly round, at least before Chaingang threw his elephantine load into the front seat with a crash and groan of old springs. He got the seat back, arranged his duffel and weapons case, and drove to the pumps. After filling the rusty pickup with gas, he wedged his bulk back in behind the wheel, started up the sewing machine engine again, and gunned it into life, driving down the road in newly acquired wheels which he knew he'd have to dump immediately.
About a mile and a half down the blacktop there was a muddy access road that led up over a nearby levee, where it disappeared. It was near the river, probably a place frequented by local hunters and fishermen. The small sign by the road told the whole story: Winchester Chute.
Nobody's perfect.
The loud vocal bark that was his approximation of a human laugh snapped forth involuntarily.
45
By late morning Meara was working on a piece of fence out behind the house. The sky was a wet-looking gray at the horizon, and the sun had come out for a time, but the pollution of industry from Clearwater to the south scumbled the blue with semiopaque, dirty smoke. The clouds and smog gave everything an ominous overcast layer of foreboding.
He saw a speck down on the Mark Road and was trying to place the car as it drove past the big willows and came winding down the gravel in his direction.
Ray realized it was Sharon Kamen's car and in spite of himself he could feel his heart pounding like a little kid's on a springtime Saturday night. What a fool! But by the time she pulled up on the chat driveway he had a big smile plastered across his tough, scarred face.
“Hi!” she called out, getting out of the car.
“Hi,” he said. God, she looked good.
“I tried to phone but you were outside, I guess.'
“Yeah?” He couldn't imagine what had happened to bring her out there. “Did you locate your father?'
“No.'
“Oh. I thought maybe...” he trailed off.
“No, I just wanted to, you know, talk. I thought I'd call, but when I tried to phone three or four times this morning...'
“How'd you get through the water on Highway 80?'
“The woman in the motel office told me how to come around the back way.” She gestured.
Hair. Chest. Face. Meara struggled with his involuntary reactions to her slightest movements. He tried to keep what he was feeling out of his eyes. “Good,” he managed to articulate. Jesus. Eyes. Mouth. He was so drawn to her.
“You have a nice farm,” she said, feeling like an imbecile. “Oh, did you see the paper?'
“Uh-uh, I haven't.'
“I brought one,” she said, and he followed her back around the side of the car as she reached in. He looked at the back of her legs.
She had on high-heeled shoes—in the country! The women here wore flat shoes, or what the guys called hag-pussy shoes, big old thick, clunky jobs favored by wrinkled country grannies, therapeutic boondockers to go over their ugly, wide-ankled support hosiery.
A few inches of the backs of her legs were visible, smoothly muscled, slick, tanned flesh under pantyhose or sheer stockings that curved up from trim, perfect ankles to flawless calves. He held the door as she turned and handed him the paper.
Ray assumed it would be something about the Neo-Nazis and the scuffle but it was the write-up on her dad:
DISAPPEARANCE IN BOOTHEEL
LINKED TO SEARCH
The search for a fugitive German war criminal, Nazi scientist Emil Shtolz, may be connected to the disappearance of celebrated Missouri Nazi hunter Aaron Kamen, of Kansas City, and a Bayou City resident, according to law-enforcement sources.
“Well,” he said, after he'd skimmed the rest of the story and found nothing on the skinheads, “it finally made the papers.” He handed the newspaper back to her.
“Look, Ray, I know I have no right to ask, but I was wondering,” the green eyes reached into him, burning him, “if you'd consider being my chauffeur some more. I want to keep asking about Dad.” Not batting her eyes or even using them. Not blinking her “Gee, officer, could you let me off with a warning?” eyes.
“Sure, if you really think that's what you want to do.'
“I don't see anything else I can do. I want to give it my best shot.'
“Well,” he said, exhaling a lot of air and then puffing his cheeks out, “I'll help any way I can.” He made a move with his hand the way she'd seen him do several times since they'd met. It was a characteristic movement that seemed to say to Sharon,
