nude so he could work on her, hang her up there with those nice tan legs all spread open and those little nipples are erect and how he'd start pinching them real easy and then fingers like vise grips like steel tempered steel
He has a case of fragmentation grenades in his duffel. He starts to fantasize about some of the things he could do to the girls in that automobile—as he limps painfully toward the little store. He thinks how pleasant it would be to grade and brand that little USDA prime trim that just whizzed by him, stamp a brand on it then, a hot brand to mark the U.S. Government Inspected Prime and watch a hot iron burn its shape deep into the tortured, bleeding rawness of the jerking, squirming pink flesh, that pampered, untouchable young flesh and how he'd like to give it his special brand. Something to get their attention as they hung there like meat waiting for him to take his turn with each of them, letting his wild imagination invent new games to play with their bodies and souls and how easily and pleasing it would be then, later, to take their young, tender hearts.
He steps to the side of the building that advertises STRAWBERRY SODA and PROFFER'S BRAND MEATS, pushing on the dented metal door marked GENTS and letting it stand open behind him as he extricates his penis and for no reason begins urinating on the sink then guiding the stream of awful-smelling urine across the room and into the wastepaper can where it pounds like a hammer and only his inability to arc his stream that high prevents him from pissing on the empty towel dispenser. He walks back around to the front of the building, a combination grocery/package store/gas station, and pushes on the tin strip that says RAINBOW IS GOOD BREAD and lets the door slam behind him as he strides toward the food.
'Hah-dee,' a wrinkled, middle-aged woman says from the shadows behind the counter where he can hear a vapid game-show host mouthing some vocal feces and he ignores her as he grabs the first packages he can reach out of the refrigerated tray, a large box of pasteurized American cheeze and a package of sliced ham and he rips the ham open with his teeth and tears the top off the cheese dropping the cardboard into the vegetable tray beside him and pinching the end off the foil, ripping a huge four-inch hunk of cheese off and wadding it up in the slices of ham and swallowing about half of it instantly, pulling a bag of something resembling potato chips off a nearby shelf absentmindedly and stabbing a finger into it then ripping it open and shoving a pawful of something into his mouth, just about ODing on sodium and preservative as he swallows a great mouthful of an awful chip of some kind, slamming one of the refrigerator doors open and grabbing a half gallon of milk and draining four-fifths of the half gallon in one long gurgling, ravenous chug-a-lug.
'Ah-gols-ah swear ah never have seen nobody drink thet much milk all at a time like that! Ah swear!' she says nervously as he continues to ravage and plunder the shelves, ripping open some cookies and another pair of meat-and-cheese combinations, walking toward her as he crams an entire package of sliced swiss and bologna in his maw, scarcely taking time to chew before he swallows and says:
'Where's 'a beer?' coming toward her like a human King Kong, this human garbage disposal that nearly hits his head on the ceiling of the room now swilling the last of the milk as she says:
'Rat there inna frig, ova' to the rat.' Wrinkled old cunt, he thinks as he lets out a loud belch and opens a Michelob on his teeth the way he always likes to do when somebody is watching him and spitting the cap off, letting it hit the floor as she looks at him and says halfway under her breath:
'Ah hope yew kin pay fer all that food,' but thank God he doesn't hear or pay any attention to her as he chugs the cold beer and belches most offensively again, taking a quart of Wild Turkey off the shelf and spitting it on the counter. She no longer worries about the bill as this last item legitimizes his movements, and not only is he apparently going to pay, this is the first thing he has done that resembles the actions of an ordinary human, actually picking out something and not consuming it there in the store. She looks up at this mastadon and with the luck of the stupid says:
'Gols, yet a stout one. Whatcha' weigh there?' He looks down at her like she is a dog turd he has just stepped in. For just one second her life is in some serious danger but she says it again, 'How much d'ya
'Four thousand pounds, Lucky.' He rumbles good-naturedly. He likes the old crone. Also he doesn't want to have to relocate as he has a nice place to crash tonight all picked out. Very safe. Still, as he steals food from the shelves, he thinks how amusing it would be to take one of the large cans of V-8 juice there and pound it into her temple until she died and how easily he could snuff out her dull existence. Perhaps he'll come back tomorrow and do the old bitch a favor. Put her out of her misery.
He takes a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Spaghetti and Meatballs off the shelf and puts it in his left hand with the other cans he'll pay for, then slips a jar of deluxe olives, a can of Bush's Best hot chili beans, and a large can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew into the voluminous chain pocket of his coat. He goes back to the cold section and gets a quart of milk, as he puts fourteen-dollars' worth of various meats and cheeses into his other pocket. He goes up to her and pays for $6.95 worth of food, a quart of beer, and the quart of Turkey, and walks out with another twenty in canned and packaged— foods. As a—shoplifter he has no equal.
He has a large sum of money in his pocket but he never or seldom ever pays for everything. It is, as he sees it, a matter of principle. He loves to steal and is an accomplished thief. Had he not opted to be a murderer and let his warped life gravitate around crimes of violence he would have been a spectacular major thief. He knows everything about antiques and collectibles, fine art, numismatic coinage and precious metals and, stones, stamps, weaponry, both arms and edged, music, virtually any field in which memorabilia is of value falls under the omnivorous umbrella of his computer retrieval system and general expertise. The thing is he has no interest in material goods or money.
Waddling along, a little less uncomfortable now that he's taken the edge off his enormous appetite, he heads back to the fence row where his duffel is hidden. Carefully, very carefully, he reaches under the duffel bag and his viselike fingers get a firm grip on the spoon of the 'nade that is wedged under the corner of the bag. Carefully he eases it back out and with the fingers of a skilled surgeon slowly slides the pin back in the retaining apertures, bending the cotter pins back with a fingertip as you would bend a wet straw. That done he shoulders his burden and limps on down the road to his private cabana.
His accommodations for the night will be cramped but secure. He is burglarizing a concrete block building owned by Ma Bell, sometimes referred to by the misnomer
If you take a crowbar and pry the heavy steel door open, a silent alarm is activated in Chicago Central and the dispatcher calls the boys in blue to investigate. Depending on the time of day and the fates, you have anywhere from two minutes to half an hour before you're in the backseat of a patrol car. Ma can't take a joke when it comes to screwing around with her repeater stations.
Of course you can get lucky. About once in every thousand times somebody does any work on the equipment they forget to hook the alarm back in after it has been disabled and that would be a free ticket to ride, roughly the equivalent of winning $100,000 playing Blackjack in northern Nevada.
Chaingang knows things like this and so he removes a small black case from his duffel. It contains a full set of Deluxe Taylor Picks, a set of homemade picks and levers, a small mini-key unit, a massive ring with 250 masters for everything from old time skeletons to the latest GMs, house keys, ornate keys, you name it. His case contains half a dozen jimmies and slim jims and pry bars. He also carries a cold chisel and a small sledge which he sometimes kills with when it suits him.
And he is inside standing there very still breathing in the electronic noises and just checking out the vibes, inside Ma's Repeater Hut 724 before you can say in-like-Sean-Flynn. And something is awry. Something doesn't quite, let's say, parse. His astounding mental computer is whirling away a mile a minute, tired as he is, and he is rethinking the last hour of his dark life even as he scans his close quarters for the thing that has disturbed him. Is a hidden, surveillance camera now taking his picture? He blinks and begins to still his vital signs slightly, involuntarily and automatically, putting himself on hold as he scans and excogitates.
It is a presence, a feel that something is out of place. What went undone. What detail was overlooked. What
