Frenzy

rock would he do that?'

'Because the son of a bitch is a whacko. Fucking looney tunes, that's why.'

'Coulda been a belt-fed weapon,' somebody offered. 'That'd explain why there aren't any magazines, only brass shells, eh?'

'Wonderful,' Springer said.

'He got in here somehow. Or got somebody else in here. Or two of 'em got in here somehow. And they put 'em under with the gas and then he and his partner made meat loaf out of them with submachine guns. No?'

'Why not?'

'Jack?'

'Vic?'

'It's a mess, huh?'

'Shit.' A hybrid killer. Some kind of superfly mother.

What they didn't know yet was how the hit team or hit man made his entrance. Measure's pad was supposed to be a fortress. But they got in somehow. Or he got in. They could scarcely believe one man could have brought about all this slaughter. It was a mess, all right.

They didn't know about Lowenstein yet.

Ben Lowenstein, a slickie from Narcross, Georgia — Spain used him for the door key. Got him alone and took him home to the interrogation room in his house and worked on him for a few minutes and he gave him a way in. Told him about a boy who would do anything for money. And Spain got a mule to take the gas bombs inside. It cost him five thousand but it was worth it to nail Measure. When Spain was through with Lowenstein he put him down in the culvert in Treflan cans. A right leg and torso here. An arm, head, and leg there. You could say Lowenstein was laid off permanently. He got the ax. With severance.

There was nothing at the crime scene but the gas cans and lots of spent brass. Brass and gas. And gangster blood. There was one hell of a lot of that. No fingerprints that didn't check out. Nobody saw anything, as usual. Nobody heard anything, until a neighbor saw the smoke from the drapes. Zero. And these were not the GSA, these were hard core, made Mafs. Experienced wise guys and he — or they — took 'em like they were asleep. If this was a single man, crazy or not he was very, very good.

Eichord drove around, wanting to call Rita and not wanting to wish himself on anyone that sweet in the condition he was in. The idea of a couple of beers sounding pretty marvelous. Jack was neither brilliantly deductive nor was he even extraordinarily ratiocinative. The process of exact thinking, the mastery of reasoned train of thought, the Holmesian modes of deduction, all eluded him.

What it was, instead, was his ability to distill and extract the essence of a thing that made him so relentless a bringer-forth of the coldest trail or the faintest clues. However dissimilar, he was a pro at educing the latent commonalities when there appeared to be none.

He could evoke the forgotten images, elicit carefully guarded responses, extract the buried nuggets of data, extort the best-kept secrets. Eichord was superb when it came to extrapolating the unknown, excavating the buried, exculpating the innocent, extricating, exonerating, extirpating, and eliminating, and don't mess with Mister In-between.

He called it by a simpler name. To Eichord it was — vibes. His was a critical mission in the holy war of Good vs. Evil and it was the mission that made his work autotelic and sancrosanct. He plodded down the center, absorbing, listening, soaking it all in, watching. And he never stopped working. Not completely. Except with Rita. That was his one time to let it all fall apart and cleanse his mind in the soft, clean, happy, and carefree music of their relationship.

He was drawn to a phone like a magnet and he called her and just the sound of her voice on the phone lifted the load from his shoulders and he couldn't wait to see her again. And that night his blue funk dissipated and for a short time he was able to forget the sick, violent world of murder and madness and lose himself in her.

She was his music and he soloed magnificently, blowing hot, unashamed jazz licks. Triple-tonguing the instrument. Playing riffs he never thought possible. His embouchure so flawless the mere touch of his lips made her come to life beneath him. Nice 'n' easy and then penthouse-wild and finally jail-house jam. Kissing the delicate hollow of the throat, the edible declivity of the lower tip, the back of the knees, above her metatarsal arch, the delicate ligatures; tactile symphony of smokin' hot, mouth marmalade. And then easing out in a dreamy coda and back for a steaming, cookin' finish to blow minds, loving each other with the loose insouciant ease of soulmates.

And they loved it. It had never been better between them. And after a long time Rita turned and whispered, 'Oh, boy? The memsahib would like to fool around with the natives again? Speak to me, gun-bearer.'

But he was gone.

The mob had hit Spain's home in Ladue and gone through it like a cyclone. Leveled it. Buddy Blackburn's live- in lady had come home from Walmart's and felt something clamp over her mouth and suddenly she was in an awful world of danger and pain.

'We want Frank . . . Spain . . . understand?' It was the softness of the voice. The mock gentleness of the swarthy, scarred man who held her face cupped in one of his huge hands. Other men were holding her arms behind her.

'I don't —' Her face was being crushed by a grip of steel.

'No. You . . . ain't . . . listening. You say I don't again I give you to Shake. He likes to hurt women. Where . . . is . . . Frank?'

She blinked back tears and thought carefully. These men were going to kill her. She tried to talk and remembered she hadn't breathed in a while and took in a big gulp of air and gasped as she sobbed, 'Our little gir . . . he hired . . . this you know, this . . . detective and he . . . Frank said ...' And she started crying and somebody had an arm twisting her hair the pain her shoulders elbows dislocating pulling hurting. 'He was a private detective. Traskle or something like that, I swear . . . That's all I know. I don't know where Fr —'

'You did a no-no,' the scarred man whispered. 'You said I DON'T.'

And she heard a raucous laugh as he made the lights go out.

* * *

Willie Ray Campbell was his name and he was about 379 million miles away from Jack Eichord ethnically, spiritually, mentally, anywhichway. Any honkie was galaxies and races apart from the North St. Louis ghetto that was home turf to Willie Ray. Yet Jack and Willie would touch, in a way, as strangers sometimes do, when destiny beckoned with her long and crooked middle finger.

Unblinking, hard, midnight-deadly. Outrageous and old-timey do-rag over his conk. Perfectly razored pussy- tickler drawn in a straight black slash over a cushiony pair of swollen-looking Naugahyde lips, Willie Ray looked the part. Big cokey nostrils. 110-proof Jamaican straight gangster with a dangerous, sullen mood, a nose full of bad dream, the stale tuna taste of unwashed twat on his tongue; 229 pounds of snatch-licking, rum-sucking, coke- tooting, pipe-packing, mean motherfuck of a no-nonsense nigger.

Standing out there on the corner of Struggle and Die, out there with the bad bros and the fierce fros, out to scuffle up some geetus, out to COP, you understand, 'midst the chicken-shack, chump-change, no-dick, no-chance, bust-out shooters, street-dealing hustlers, bogus flimflammers, sugar pimpin' chile macks, hos, bros, and fros. Out there with the junkie hypes, black bloods and princes of the netherworld, with allllll them other assholes, waiting to hear on some fucking humbug sham charges The Man had trumped up the way that terrible, worthless, chuck white devil likes to do. Keep a man down. Shhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!

Hi five to a boy he knew.

'What it is.'