Cross is making a living in advertising, which, he had to admit, the kid had made a few dollars at. But what a disappointment to Howard that the boy didn't come in with him.
Then the kid winds up running Marsh-Endicott and rubbing the old man's nose in it that he's a big success, you call this a big success running around in a little car with legroom like a fucking Nazi wagon, hair down to your ass, you call this wonderful? And now he's marrying some shiksa named Sharon Souther he never heard of, God only knows from their family what does the father do—a fucking poet, for all he knows—and never mind where the Kresse and Company, Inc., money is all going to end up someday. It's a heartache. But Mother makes him promise so they're spending the day together and they play golf and dinner at the club so he can't even get to the bank, and now this aggravation.
And some big guard is coming up to the window and the kid rolls it down and the guy is saying something about the night deposit being temporarily closed and all the old man can see is a cap and a badge of some kind and there's the loud bang and Dick is slumping over my God something shot him OH GOD DON'T NOOOOOOOO THE EXPLOSION AND BLINDING FIRE AND THE SMACK OF THE TINY LEAD NEEDLE THE BULLET EMBEDDING ITSELF IN HIS NECK AND OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU KILLING US LIKE THIS? And the guard leans in and shoots the man on the passenger side again but still it doesn't kill him. As he shoots the car starts moving as Dick Kresse/Richard Cross slides down and to his right and into the man beside him and his foot is off the brake and the car's idling engine is tuned up so high that it surges forward slightly as the huge man tries to wrench the door open but it is locked and the car keeps going until it hits a concrete abutment and it stops and the man has charged after it on strong, tree-trunk legs and he smashes the window and pulls the driver out of the way, taking the checks and cash in the zippered envelope between them, pocketing the checks, which he'll destroy later. He will not try to dispose of these bodies, and he senses the older man is still alive and he puts the long-barreled .22 to the ear of the one on the passenger side and fires another round killing him.
Chaingang takes the two wallets containing, respectively, $68 and $170, and then he finds two hundreds tucked inside a “hidden” compartment in the wallet with the $68 in it, and he doesn't stop to count it all but in less than three minutes he's made about $6,300 and change. More than satisfactory, he thinks, quickly obliterating the prints on the envelope and door handle, and moving toward the car parked nearby, wiping off the empty billfolds and pitching them in the street as he walks. He will not endanger himself further here but soon he must satisfy his hunger for bloody essence of human. He craves a fresh heart.
Even the girl's would do, he thinks, letting himself toy with the idea in his twisted mind as he drives back to her, although he knows he needs her if only for the time being. Soon, however, he will slice open this albatross.
Eichord, who has not had one of THOSE nightmares—for over a year, comes floating up to the surface of a screaming hell, dreaming the word “INTEGUMENT,” something that covers or encloses, an enveloping layer of skin, a membrane or husk. He is unable to break through to the air, but finally comes up fighting, lungs bursting, and it is one of the worst of the screaming dreams. It's a nightmare of tortured, mad, blue-eyed twins from the Mengele clinic, a fearsome thing borne of his most redoubtable adversaries. Searching for parallels in the demonology of classical antiquity, he finds a face that resembles a dead assassin in his dream of the necropolis, and he comes awake screaming in fear. No! HEARING a shrill, frightened scream, the agony of his amanuensis, and he comes out of the dream fighting for the surface hearing Donna Scannapieco fighting her assailant.
He breaks through the integument woven across his old boozer's face to find himself facedown on his own bed and safe, but Donna
“JACK! JACK!” Donna's screams fill his head as he crashes through the door nearly taking it from its hinges. Donna has the kitten now and he sees that she is safe and the cat is hurt my God it was just the kitten not Donna oh Jesus not Donna oh God his heart is thumping pounding threatening to burst through his chest and then he sees the black cat the mean fucking little yellow-eyed tough-guy tomcat and he draws down on it drawing down on all the Cabreys and Mansons and Zodiacs and Williamses and Houtchesons and Gaceys and fucking Spanhowers and sniping, torturing backshooting crazies and squeezes through sleep-encrusted eyes.
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM! The fucking thing sounds like an H-bomb going off in his back yard and of course Christ he's asleep and the little cat is fifty feet away and moving and Eichord can't hit shit with a handgun and never could and all the missed shots that have cost him, perhaps even the ones he doesn't know about yet, all those fantasies from a thousand Johnny Mack Brown and Durango and Wild Bill Elliott westerns in the Uptown and all those movies and TV show cowboys and cops and perfect, perfectly wonderful sharpshooting mothers come back to kick his ass as he misses. Nothing but a fucking yellow-eyed bully of a tomcat. Still, the noise scares the poor kitten and it scratches Donna, who screams again and runs into the house with the little cat. Tuffkins has a mangled ear, and Eichord is filled with a blue-eyed, dadgummed Mengele clinic rage the likes of which has not possessed him since the old hard-drinking days of alcoholic, mindless frustration and self-flagellation. He stomps in through the house and out into the garage, where he pops the cartridges and the spent shell casing out of his service revolver. For whatever combination of reasons—out of control, fucked over and fucked up by the thousand and one inequities and irritations and shit he's had to swallow—he cranks that vise handle down tight, cranking down on case-hardened steel, twisting down on good ole Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson, tightening down on his weapon. Shit—he can't believe he's doing it even as he twists the vise—he's just so fucking mad! If he could only laugh, stop for a second, count to ten. But he's out of goddamn maniacal, shit, fucking CONTROL. He just can't take any more and there are limits. But maybe part of his brain is still asleep still fighting his way through the husk or whatever it was, as he puts it all into the first shot, with the four-pound mini- sledgehammer. Jack puts all his weight, his shoulders, his upper-body strength his biceps, his triceps, forceps, foreplay, foreskin—FUCK FUCK FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
He's pounding that barrel, that sight, that trigger guard, that hammer, slamming down on all the bullshit and the bad guys and the B-movies and the bad jokes and the bad shots and the people who would hurt sweet ladies and innocent kittens and oh fuck do you want a list of them—DONT YOU FUCKING KNOW WHO THOSE SONS OF BITCHES ARE? ARE YOU A FUCKING IDIOT—? CAN'T YOU
He makes that total body gesture that begins with the wrinkles in the forehead and goes down through the hands that says, “I know. I'm sorry. What can I say?'
And turns and goes back to the bedroom and goes back and gets his oldest 12-gauge down and carries it back through the house, saying to Donna on the way out into the garage, “Don't worry. I'm not going to do anything else weird,” but he goes out into the garage and does something very weird indeed. He pounds his workbench vise open, drops the remains of his revolver in a box to be buried with full honors later, and wrapping an old oily towel around the gun, he puts IT in the vise, takes a hacksaw, and begins sawing the barrel off. Gunsmithing for the terminally insane.
