“Wait here, I'll go around back.” Dana stood on the front stoop and Jimmie ran around in the back yard. No Donna Eichord in sight. He banged on the back door. Nothing. He went back around. Tuny shook his head.
“I'm gonna see if I can slip the lock.'
“Eichord have yer yellow eggs for an omelet if you go walkin’ in on her in the can,” Dana said, followed by something else Lee didn't catch as he was halfway around to the back again, slipping the back door lock only to find the door was open. He went in, thinking about his Magnum almost as an afterthought, the way one does when one goes through a door and nobody's there.
“Donna?” He called out louder as he walked through the home, “DONNA, ITS JAMES LEE.
“She ain't here,” Dana told him as he came in, unnecessarily.
“Yeah, I can see that, Jumbo. Listen. Uh, whyncha go hit the neighbors’ houses. Maybe she went next door for a cuppa coffee, whatever. I'll wait in case she comes back.'
“Yeah. Awright,” his fat partner said, and went out the door and down the stairs, taking off at a brisk waddle.
Lee went over and sat in the front window, where he could see Dana going up to the door to the Eichords’ east and ringing the bell. Waiting, then moving off and trying the next house. Lee turned back to the window and put his feet up on the ottoman and waited impatiently. He picked up a magazine and thumbed through it. Put it down. Listened to the clock tick. Picked up Jack's old Mets cap. Fooled around with it, trying to spin the bill on his finger. Stuck it absentmindedly on his head, whistling softly, waiting.
Chain parked in the center of the street, the motor running, in park, door open, came out hard and fast and tough and mean. An amalgam of pent-up, murderous emotions housed in the body of a twisted giant, controlled by the tortured mind of a genius, a physical precognate, running up the bank on those steel tree trunks, not an ounce of fat on the enormous body, lightning-fast now, so far from the Chaingang of old as to be unrecognizable in motion, none of the inertia problems of the massively ponderous, no pachyderm ludicrousness, all fast well-oiled blur, the hands, fingers, muscles in the arms and shoulders rippling, the muscles capable of squeezing a flashlight battery, those HANDS, the steel-fingered hands that could rip a human's rib cage apart, that could rip a girl open in a steaming stinking ghoulish goulash of horror, three-hundred-plus pounds of rock-hard killer hurls the satchel charge through the front window at the image of the man in the Mets cap, grainy microfiche trigger of data retrieval feeding the on-line terminal, the body flattening on the bank as it blows upward and outward.
“BLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM!” Wood asbestos insulation glass flesh offal intestine steel rock earth kidney face iron shingle shutter door fingernails doorknob window lungs skin nails screws balls sparking sizzling shooting red yellow white blue hot slag sparkling flying metal melting wood splintering shrapnel whistling people screaming sonic booms crashing autos diving planes bomb blasts ripping the quiet suburban air in a molten metal blast furnace of death and destruction putting an end once and for all to the earthly woes of one Detective Sergeant James Lee in a million microscopic shrapnel bullets designed to cut, rip, tear, mutilate, shred, cut off, cut out, cut down, and permanently excise.
And Chaingang Bunkowski is in the car and gone, his maddening hunger for vengeance slaked, as the terrorizing blast still echoes in the litter-strewn street.
Chaingang at five hundred pounds, six feet seven inches of killer gorilla, had first faced the seemingly impossible challenge of obtaining a low profile. Where could he possibly hide?
He had emulated his former enemies, the NVA hard core, who hid by day, emerging at night to kill, resupply, move, then vanish again without a trace. They went down into the vast tunnel complexes that spanned the whole of Vietnam ... to hide, to sleep, nursing their wounded, planning strategies, shaping tactics. And so this is what Bunkowski did.
Knowing how his enemies live by their utilities, he goes to their source: the water supply, sewage disposal systems, electrical hookups, telephone cables, pipelines, subways, underground linkages. The subterranean world that charges and flushes and rumbles beneath the surface of urban America.
Now he is down to 320 pounds, but he knows he will be very hot. His face or a reasonable facsimile—scars, dimples, warts, and all—will be plastered all over Buckhead. And there is the little newborn thing that must be cared for. He cannot go back into the sewers.
It is pitch-black night and Chaingang is behind the wheel of the maroon Sedan DeVille cruising through a rich residential section of suburban Buckhead. He is looking for a certain type of midrange home. Medium wealth. Somebody on vacation, maybe. No house-sitter. A certain look that will make his sensors purr. The look that says, NOBODY HOME.
He spots a couple of houses that both feel very good to him. He drives on past, cruising the neighborhood. He doesn't want the kind of Beverly Hills-Bellaire thing where you have a private security force running the streets constantly, yet the homes should be monied. The kind of families that can take long, unhurried vacations.
He stops at an all-night convenience store, buys a paper, a quart of Wild Turkey, and some junk food. Why deprive himself? He deserves some R & R now. He worked for it. He buys some fruit juice. He will wean the newborn monkey onto some juice soon. He will get out of this suit. Put his feet up. Enjoy the pleasure of having paid back that arrogant cop.
Chaingang drives back to the darkened area that still beckons him with its aura of vulnerability and access. One of the houses feels especially good and he has long ago learned to trust these vibes. He pulls up to the rear of the house in a shelter of trees and shrubs. It is a perfect place. Isolated. Total privacy. He checks for the signs of “bells” which can be anything from special wiring to the light beam type detectors. The good feeling is still there. He silently opens the back door with one of his special tools.
Had he not opted to be a killer he would have made a wonderful thief. His burglary skills are superb. Soon the baby infant is inside and safe, and Chaingang, working with a penlight, is securing the windows of a back room so that he can turn the lights on. He does so and completes his initial inspection of the house. His estimate is that a family of 5 lives here. The father owns an insurance agency. They have been gone for 8 days. That means he has anywhere from 2 days to 5 days time here if his assessment proves correct.
After he changes the little guy's diaper and washes his hands, he and baby take their bottles. Monkey gets formula—Chaingang Wild Turkey on ice—just the way he likes it. He hangs the suit up carefully and sits on the bed in his skivvies, watching his son contentedly suck down formula as he sucks down whiskey, still the killer, still the madman, but changed.
Gone is the old necrophagiacal heart-eater. Sissy will prove to be his last mutilation. There will be no more hearts. He has partaken of his last ritualistic devouring of the enemy.
He turns to the story he senses he'll find in the paper and reads with more than a bit of amazement that he has blown up the wrong cop.
BUCKHEAD DETECTIVE KILLED IN BOMB BLAST (BP)—A bomb thrown into the home of a well-known detective, serial murder expert Jack Eichord of Buckhead Springs, killed detective James Lee, 46, police said. Lee had been conducting an inquiry that led him to the home of the special investigator who was out of town on another case at the time of the explosion. “We cannot comment on this at the present time,” Buckhead detectives said, when asked about who they thought had thrown the bomb.
The Buckhead Bombing and Arson Unit said the bomb appeared to have been “a high explosive such as C-4 or plastic explosive, something with a detonation velocity of 25,000 feet per second, like a military explosive, and that the bomb had been built with fragmentation shrapnel such as the satchel charges used in the Vietnam War.'
The blast lifted the roof from the home at 2771 Spring Hill Drive, blowing large holes in the walls and floor. “It
