Savant

Kansas, and turned down on a service road that accessed the river. He parked and got out of the car.

He knew this place. The hideous, violent history of his hellish childhood poured across his mindscreen. He stood, perfectly inert, an immense statue in the shadows of the river, soaking in the stinging memories.

The cons had a saying about him inside. Chaingang had nothing but his hate, they said, with the common wisdom of the joint. In truth, it was what nurtured and sustained him. He was motivated by it. He opened himself to the pain and fed off of it.

Overhead in the darkness, headlights of passing cars illuminated moments of moving time, as he saw it inside the strangeness of his mind. The traffic noise was a continuous humming sound and he willed it to feed him, as he stored away fury.

When he was ready, he returned to the vehicle, changed clothes, got back in the car, and resumed his journey back to the place of his birth.

Imagine that his headlights are those you see in your rearview mirror. Exercise the greatest care. Drive defensively and for God's sake don't slam on the brakes unexpectedly. In the vehicle behind you is a man-mountain of brutality; a gifted presentient with an I.Q. that warps every curve; a killer whose secret biochemistry deviates from every known pattern. A giant of destruction follows you, waiting for you to become vulnerable—to show him that you are a potential victim. Make no mistakes tonight, dear heart. Death waits. Behind you. In the shadows.

Kansas City, Missouri

One big man parked his wheels, but another got out and used the pay phone. It was yet a third who payed the week in advance at Mid-America Parking, a fourth who summoned the taxicab and rode to the Hyatt. Some might have found all this a trifle confusing, but juggling disposable personas wasn't even a flyspeck as far as challenging Daniel Bunkowski's mental abilities.

'Thank you, sir,' the cabbie told him, pocketing a slightly excessive tip. The man who took his bags received a similar gratuity from the extremely large, but well-dressed Giles Cunningham, whose company, York Sprinklers, Inc., of York, Pennsylvania, had called ahead the day before.

The caller priced the clubrooms, but decided instead on a guest room accommodation for two evenings. The seasonal day rate at Kansas City, Missouri's Hyatt Regency was eighty dollars, which Mr. Cunningham felt was more than reasonable after enjoying their luxurious and remarkably comfortable accommodations.

'Hello.' The gigantic figure in the three-piece suit beamed down at the woman behind the front desk. 'My company has made a phone reservation in my name. Giles Cunningham? From York, Pennsylvania?'

'Yes, sir,' she said after consulting the computer beside her. 'We have you in one of our guest room accommodations, double-bed, single-person occupancy for tonight and Saturday night—is that correct?'

'That's it. I'll confirm checkout tomorrow, if that's okay.'

'Fine. How did you wish to take care of this?' The young woman was quite professional and did not appear to be the least flustered by the sight of a human woolly mastodon towering above her. 'Are we charging this to your credit card, Mr. Cunningham?'

'I'll just pay cash, if I may,' he said expansively, pulling out a huge wad of what appeared to be hundred- dollar bills and dexterously peeling two crisp C-notes off the outside before returning it to his voluminous pocket.

She smiled professionally and began making change. He thought how easily he could reach over the counter, grab her by the hair, and crush her skull against the desk.

'Here you are, sir,' she said, telling him his room number, in case he was too stupid to read it off the door opener. He thanked her and in no time was in an upwardly mobile elevator, looking down at the head of a bellhop some two feet shorter and three hundred pounds lighter. He imagined how pleasant it would be to twist the man's neck until it snapped, then shove the body up through the ceiling trapdoor.

'In town for the show?' the bellhop asked.

'Unn,' Chaingang grunted in a tone that could have meant anything, yes, no, or fuck you.

'You brought that hot weather with you,' the man said, smiling. He was the type who always joked in Chaingang's presence, made intensely uncomfortable by the awesome size of the man. Bunkowski stared down at him without a flicker of response.

The smaller man carried a heavy suitcase, a used knockoff of a Vuitton that had been purchased that morning in a pawnshop. The two-suiter was full of Goliath-size apparel just purchased at Mr. Hy's Big, Tall, and Stout Shop there in the Crown Plaza shopping complex. The sign read, MR. HY'S HAS SOMETHING OF EVERY SIZE! In truth, the shop had been able to fit Chaingang with shirts, slacks—to be hemmed to a basketball player's inseam length —socks, a tie, an ascot for God's sake—two sweaters and a blazer. They'd had to say no to the 15EEEEE footwear, so he would have to make do with his burnished oxfords and the combat boots which he routinely wore.

The moment he was alone in the room behind a closed door, he began peeling off his clothes until he was nude, and then surveyed the wreckage of his personal treasury. The center of the huge flash roll of hundreds that he carried was, of course, blank paper.

He'd spent the night in a fleabag motel over on the Kansas side, and bright and early had been up looking at the storefront and industrial rentals. A deposit had gone on a second-floor cubicle of office space recently vacated by a fly-by-night ad agency. A tattoo parlor had tried to make a go of it downstairs, but had gone in the toilet subsequent to the AIDS epidemic. It was a shade more than he wanted to spend but it was isolated and—as a plus—it had a small bathroom with a sink.

The Southwestern Bell folks would be getting a healthy deposit, too, since the 'Norville Galleries,' which would be occupying the office space, hadn't had previous phone service. A quickie printer was doing some signage and letterhead stuff, and within the next forty-eight hours or so the company would be open for business.

'What kind of business is this?' the landlord wanted to know, as he counted the money for the closet-size office on East Minnesota Avenue.

'I'm in the mail-order game,' the big man informed him, giving him a moment of terrible anguish as he came down hard on the poor fellow's foot. 'Oh, my Lord. I'm sorry!' He was most apologetic. He had kind of 'lost his balance' and something like five hundred pounds of meat had come to rest on the landlord's bunions. The guy had wanted to ask about this mail-order business the new tenant was going to be doing, but by then all he wanted to do was put some distance between himself and the behemoth whose money he'd just accepted. The name of his reference had been one Giles Cunningham, of York Sprinklers, Inc. The landlord might or might not realize that he'd given the address of the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Everything was going according to schedule, Chaingang thought, surveying his vast nakedness in the mirror. He cranked the air conditioning down another notch and picked up the telephone, summoning the front desk.

'Yes, this is Mr. Cunningham. I'm going to be getting a couple of telephone calls this evening—perhaps—and tomorrow, which will be for a business I own here in town called the Norville Galleries. If I should get any calls for the Norville Galleries, that's me.' He made sure they noted his room number. 'Kindly pass this along to the other operators, would you? It's very important. I appreciate it. Thanks!' He waited a few minutes and called back and spelled N-o-r-v-i-l-l-e for the person on the switchboard, drumming the name into their head by repetition. When he went out later he would call for himself using another voice, and they'd ring an empty room.

He decided that the haircut was next. He put on a change of clothes and took the elevator back downstairs. The newspaper ad was set to hit in the next morning's Kansas City Star classifieds. One or two more details to attend to and the Norville Galleries would be well on its way. Another entrepreneurial success story: the American Mercantile Dream in full bloom.

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