“What?” A big fat guy was sitting in the car, sunburned, smiling a friendly smile.
“Sorry. I was wanting to know if you were with the Mooney Kyle Shows.'
“Yeah,” she admitted. Not thinking that it would be obvious to anybody passing the rides to see all the cheap trailers parked beside one another in back of the rides. Those would be the spouses of the show employees back there.
“Your last name is what?'
“Thompson,” she lied, warily.
“Doesn't your husband work over there?” He gestured toward the midway area. He must know Marc.
“Yeah.'
“His name is—what?'
“Marc.'
“Sure!” His face lit up, “Marc Thompson. I know him. Helluva dude.'
“Really?'
“Me ‘n him use to work together.'
“You're kidding. When?'
“Here's a photograph of Marc—I got it here somewhere when we were, uh—” She leans forward to see what he's got and sees him pointing the pistol and her heart almost jumps up in her throat, “HEY!'
“Listen to me. I won't hurt you if you do exactly what I say, but that sucker you're married to owes me money and if you don't do what I tell you right now, I'll put a hole in your head and you'll be dead in this fucking street.'
“Hey, come on now—'
“Shut up,” he rumbles, keeping the barrel pointed at her and reaching under with his other arm and opening the door. “Get in here a minute—I want to ask you some questions.'
“Huh uh, I ain't—” She's shaking her head and he raises the barrel up on the back of the seat where anybody can see the pistol.
“I SAID GET IN THIS CAR OR I'll
“Okay, okay, be fuckin’ careful with that thing,” she says, and slides in and there's people all over the place why aren't they helping me? She's right on the edge of screaming for help, so he lets her have one above the left ear. Not anything serious. Just a good firm slap with the long barrel of the pistol and she goes, “Owwwwwww!” Her head seems to drop to her knees and he rather gently pushes her to the floorboard as he gives the gas pedal a tap and they pull away from the spectacular Mooney Kyle Shows employee parking area. Soon they are where nobody could hear her. Her hand was just about broken as he pulled it back, cuffing it ferociously, all but dislocating her arm as he jerked her to a nearby tree.
“You shit-ass son of a bitch,” she cries.
“Get over her and suck this,” he demands halfheartedly unzipping his fly. But he was thinking about where he'd bury her.
“Fuck you, you fat slob.'
“Suck it or die. Which will it be? You have three seconds and please no help from the audience.” He is just going through the motions and she is too angry to be afraid.
“Suck it yourself, fatso,” she tells him, straining at the cuff.
“Right,” he says calmly, pulling out the big fighting bowie and smiling his biggest smile. “You're going to be nice and tasty, I can tell that right now.” And he slashes her open across the front as she screams.
There is a second before he goes into the chest for her heart while she is still aware and in that beat she has time to think of her little Jerry and that she never got to settle down and she'd just learned to run the alibi and wasn't it a shame to die so young, and unfair and, shit, all of that in the one heartbeat or so, proving that sometimes your life does in fact flash before your eyes at the moment of death.
Jack Eichord dreams. He dreams of the icy depths of Sugar Lake. He is clad in rubber, a tight suit of black neoprene, and he spits into a visor, puts the mask on, and dives. There is nothing to see as he swims along through his own bubbles, circling the muddy bottom of the lake, swimming through the frigid underwater shadows. Diving down in the cold lake where the childhood bullies of his nightmares, Whortley Williams and Cabrey Brown, once held him under until he almost drowned. He forces himself to go down in the lake and relive it again.
But all he can see is a picture of his friend James Lee, telling him about how he took the money at Buckhead Mercantile, making Jack an accessory. And Eichord knows that Jimmie has forgotten something very important. He has forgotten the code of the street: you don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
He swims into the Kowloon dream. Swimming into clarity he first sees the crown colony of Hong Kong at the mouth of the Pearl River. He sees it as a teeming squall of life fighting for survival, then for economic superiority in the industrial renaissance—a tide of monkey humanity slowly melting in the cultural caldron. The edges of the races blurring with each new generation, the culture changing, amplifying as it resonates into the fuzzy space expander of high tech.
But he sees it as a colony of cluttering monkeys, yuppies, new-wave pirates, all in a mad race up the steep, sloping sides of a giant rice bowl. The Man in Kowloon does not belong to his world. He is an anachronism. He does not belong to this chittering, squalling, teeming time and place. He belongs in another century, alone and aloof in some mountain retreat, far from the crowd and the marketplace. He does not belong to a world where a woman will roll over onto a crying child to crush it and suffocate it because she has grown tired of finding baby-sitters to watch her babies while she goes out to take a lover. They are not of the same species.
The night is fire that always burns Eichord's eyes. The color is that of brilliant gemstones or broken glass. The smell is mass, fish, fear, electricity, mob smell. The sound is screaming, chanting, car-horn tympani. Cymbal crash. Oriental singsong lute mandarin samisen songbird fugue for panflute.
Then he is in the chamber with the drunken, chanting men. Lee's brother scowls fiercely into the face of his ancestors and picks up a short, gleaming sword. The flames from the torches flicker on the walls like dancing demons, ritual remnants of the antecedents who gave the clan its name. Light sparkles from the blade like sunlight on a golden Buddha. He takes his fingers and shapes them into a claw and oh God no don't let me dream this again don't let me see him pull his tongue out like that oh Jesus Christ oh please oh God don't let me see him start that sawing make that first sawing cut across that tongue that will prove so impossibly impossible to cut to sever to oh God don't make me see that first ridge of blood as he slices across his own AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Each month, like clockwork, Daniel would wait until Michael Hora was outside and alone and he would walk up to him and hold out the money. A thousand dollars. This would usually constitute their conversation for the month. There was no contact whatsoever. The few times that Hora spoke to Bunkowski he discouraged any conversation. Chaingang became more and more paranoid as he stayed in one spot for such a long time. The thought had occurred to him that Hora, while probably on the run himself—if only from the U.S. military—might consider a few probes to see if there were any serious money on his head. On the other hand, Hora had established a counterculture reputation of sorts for his “farm.” It had become known as a place where runaways, wanted men, mercs, and similar rogue elephants might seek temporary shelter from the eyes of the law and government.
