“Well,” Lee said, “hair or not, I'da fucked her.'
“BullSHIT!” Dana laughed. “Be like tryin’ to fuck Lyle Alzado.” They laughed. “Really, man. Fuckin’ big shoulders and legs onner. Big old hairy thing. Be like tryin’ to put the pork to Dutch Hornung.'
“Who the fuck is Dutch Hornung?” Lee asked seriously.
“JESUS, you simple midget, don't you fuckin’ know anything, Paul Hornung, f'r Chrissakes. Don't you—'
“Lower your voices.” Eichord was laughing. “Come on—shit, these people around here don't know I associate with riffraff like you guys. Come on, let's go back.'
“Who the fuck is Paul Horney?'
'That guy used to be on the radio.” Dana gave his voice a distinctive inflection, “and that's the way it is, the whole fucking story—'
“That was Walter Cronkite, goddammit, not that other guy—whatjasay—Dutch Hardon or whoever.'
“Don't you know any fuckin’ thing about sports?'
“Just submarine racing.'
“Muff diving.'
“The fifty-meter broadchase and leaping humperjump.'
“The three-minute free-hand jerkoff.'
“I took some money.” Lee said, in a cold whisper.
“Huh.'
They stopped.
“Yeah.'
“Whatya talkin’ about?” Dana laughed.
“I took some money. A lot of it.'
“Bullshit.” Not meaning bullshit at all, Dana recognizing the chilly tone.
Lee was suddenly very sober and serious. “I don't want to talk about it.'
“Uh huh.” Eichord said nothing. They stood there, the three old friends, with their empty glasses in their hands and their withered old-cop dicks in their pants, standing in the darkness of Buckhead Springs.
“Fuck it.'
“Whatya fuckin’ mean ya took some money, a lot of it?'
“You know what I mean. You know exactly what I fuckin’ mean. I took money.'
“Don't tell me this shit,” Eichord said, and turned and started back toward the house.
“It wasn't on the arm—'
“I don't care. I don't want to hear that crap.'
“I had to, man. It was a LOT of money.'
“How come ya didn't gimme any?” Tuny said to him, half-joking but seriousness in his voice.
“Want some? I'll give ya some. Then when those butt-sniffers bust me and they make me tell what I did with it, I can bring YOU down too, izzat whatcha want, ya dumb zeppelin?” Butt-sniffers was his name for Internal Affairs cops.
“You serious.” It wasn't a question.
“Yeah. Believe it.'
“Who the fuck be dopey enough to give YOU a lotta money?'
“Nobody GIVE it to me, jackoff. I took it.'
“Where? When?” He sounded like Peggy. Where? When? Who? Hah?
“At Buckhead Mercantile.'
’”I'm not hearing this shit,” Eichord said, and he walked back toward the house.
Even without his frightening and lethal abilities, a physical precognate—that rarest of the presentient humans—who planned and prepared with the degree of dedicated concentration that marked Chaingang's best efforts, was all but unstoppable as an adversary. As a manipulator he had few peers. The afternoon before, still in the stolen wheels, he'd begun to lay the groundwork for the next move.
“I definitely think so,” he told the girl.
“God. You really think I could be an ACTRESS?'
“Absolutely,” he told her, shaking his head no, but sending the vibes of a totally convincing yes. The bandaged face was held carefully to minimize his frightening countenance: the dimpled, radiant, ear-to-ear grinning and beaming smile was in place and doing its thing, hampered only slightly by the wounded cheek. “I see it as you talk. The way you hold your head. The way you move.” The way you sip your tea. He couldn't believe how easy she was.
“I mean, I've never thought about acting. Well, I thought about it but I mean, every girl thinks about it. Aunt Pearl said I oughta be an actress or a model. And I thought about goin’ down to the TV station and trying out and that. And then, you know, Toby, this one boy, he said I oughta try to get on TV, you know, like national, and Aunt Pearl said I should write a letter and, you know, send my picture to Johnny Carson, and then this other guy he said, No, Johnny Carson probably gets a lot of mail and the picture might get lost. And then I decided that...'
He tuned out and sighed as he nodded along. This was going to take a lot of his patience.
Finally he could stand it no more. He wanted to get his point in and interrupted her, as he usually had to do, saying, “Yes—I can see. I understand. I do think you might work toward becoming an actress in addition to your high fashion and bikini work. Maybe posters, too. But I think we should start tomorrow with lessons.'
“Lessons,” she said with a catch in her voice. It was a word or phrase like screen test or starring role. A word out of a tabloid in the supermarket. A word out of an article about Morgan Spacek/Sissy Fairchild having taken ACTING LESSONS SINGING LESSONS MODELING LESSONS LESSON LESSONS, a buzzword from the beckoning, impossible world of a thousand million Sissy-girls since the beginning of show biz.
“This is the Stanislavsky Dihedral Method,” he said, enjoying himself as he toyed with this nitwit, “and it comes from the reliance on believing your character. I want you to pretend that you are my niece.'
“Niece?” It was such an odd word. It meant nothing to her. He sensed that. She was used to having some guy want her to pretend she was his slave and get on her knees and do whatever he said. No, he'd approach more directly.
“We're going to play like you are going away to college—no, to Hollywood to be a model. And your uncle, who is rich—me,” he beamed, “is buying you a car. You go into the dealer and you say this—” And he began to coach her on what he would have her enact the following day. She tried it and it was easy. This acting thing was a breeze. She had no idea that the next day he would hand her thousands of dollars in actual real money and she would have to go in and buy a car. They spent the night in a motel. Uneventfully.
The following morning they drove to a place he had spotted and he gave her some “notes” to rehearse, carefully printed in large, block letters neatly made with a black marker by a hand that mashed the pen point down with each firm and precise stroke. She studied the words like they were her opening lines in a new hit on Broadway. Showtime. To this moment she'd not been told it was for real.
He'd spotted a gleaming black Caprice parked between a Celebrity and a used Nissan something-or-other. He saw the words on the windshield in white “$5,245 ... 50,000 miles! Loaded!'
“Wait here and be rehearsing,” he told her, extricating his near-quarter-ton load from the car. He waddled toward a pay phone. The model year wasn't readable on the windshield but he knew it couldn't be over four years old. It looked about right to him. Chaingang checked the directory, dropped some change, and heard a busy woman's voice.
“Mannschrecker's.'
“Sales manager, please,” he said. A long pause.
“Hello.'
