He said nothing. He only kept kissing her, but now in a different way, and after a bit he rolled over, wondering what it was that had passed through his subconscious, like a cold, dark shadow. Donna wondered what she'd done this time to attack the fragile male ego bastion. Both of them thinking these things but said nothing. Donna wanted to say, “It's okay, my sweet. No big deal.” But she thought it inappropriate and dangerous and silly anyway. Saying it was no big deal was saying that it might have been a big deal, having all this go on inside her head. Jack wanted to put his face in that pillow of luxuriantly dark hair and just breathe her in till the bad jazz blew away. But neither of them did anything.
He spotted her on Randolph, walking slowly, looking straight ahead, and his eyes targeted first on the thin fabric of the white dress that reminded him for some reason of an actress in the movies. His computer showed him a mental image and he pulled the car over to the curb, lowering the window as he forced a huge, crinkly smile onto his face. She was thin, ordinary-looking, anywhere from nineteen to twenty-three years old, alone, and she met all the requisite minimums.
One may have trouble understanding how this 460-pound killer with the bandaged face could work his magic. The fact that this was not an unattractive young woman makes it all the more incomprehensible to some, but age, sex, personality, they have very little to do with the phenomenon that a man like Daniel Bunkowski exploits.
His eyes saw a female form alone and zeroed in on the legs, which were silhouetted through the thin material of the dress by the sunlight. The fact that she wore a dress—that alone triggered a whole battery of responses in him. Then there was her vulnerability. Who can say why some individuals project this quality and others do not? Vulnerability runs the full range of a wide and complicated spectrum of auras—from projected vulnerability, a far different thing, to true vulnerability, the brand of the profile one so often sees among life's casualties. This young woman had that thing. It was a quality the star-maker machinery looks for in females. When you find it in concert with overt sexuality, the package is dynamite. But in this one it simply said to Daniel, I am vulnerable to the taking.
Even as he pulled to the curb, hitting the electric window controls and reminding himself not to turn his face too far to the right while he was speaking to her, he was sizing up his pitch by her appearance, the clothing, the shoes, the degree of cleanliness, the gait of her walk, the purposefulness or lack of purpose in her physical movements, the tilt of her head now and the way it changed when his voice drew her eyes, the eyes themselves— which so often will give it all away even in the most practiced liar—the hair, the hands and what she was carrying, everything about her told him a quick story. It said, VICTIM.
“Hi.” There was no response as she turned. “Excuse me,” and a mumble of words followed, calculated to pull her over by the side of the newly stolen wheels.
“What?” She moved a little, warily.
“Do you have any idea why I can't get across the [something] to the other side of [something else]?” The inflection was that of a sincere question, his eyes cast downward as if in a map, his Pillsbury-Doughboy-meets- FrankenKong face a pleasant, beaming, lost, wrinkled, jowly, and deceptively cherubic mask of fat and friendly exasperation.
“Huh?” She had moved closer and looking into the front seat of the car she saw a huge man of indeterminate age staring and shaking his head at a street map.
“Can you help me?” he asked, pointing at the map. She moved closer, right by the window and he had her then. He knew if he could get them within touching distance he had them. Always. That was the reality of the track record.
If they were reluctant to get within arm's length, it usually meant that they were too wary to con into the vehicle. But if they got that close to him, he always had them. They'd get in a car with Daniel Bunkowski no matter if he was bleeding, drenched in sweat, covered in sewer filth, or immaculate and in a rented summer tux. The ease with which a victim went with Daniel seemed to be in almost inverse proportion to the social acceptability of his appearance. It was as if anybody who looked like THAT couldn't possibly be a bad guy too. It was too much of a cliche, perhaps.
The trust factor. He began working on it now with the girl. His eyes never looked at anything but the map, and at her eyes. He let himself blink a lot, squint, shake his head, and put more movement into his normally static and inert facial features, sniffing, grimacing, scowling, licking his ups, shaking his head, all the while the torrent of words flooded out of his mouth, a river of busy verbiage lapping against her resistance.
“When I tried to cut through there it was a one way street, see?'
“Yeah. They got the town all screwed up now with the one-ways.'
“Yeah. They got the town all fucked up now.” He said the word to her naturally, really bummed out by the crazy street system. “You can't find your way around for shit.” The big head moved, the words testing her probing getting the lay of the land and the temperature of the water.
“Yeah,” she agreed, laughing, the phrase “fucked up” as common to her as blue sky.
“I haven't been here in a few years,” he said. “Are you from here or what?” Big friendly smile.
“God, no. I came here with Mom a couple years ago. We're from California.'
“No shit,” he said, his face lighting up like a Christmas tree. “Where ‘bouts in California?
“Bakersfield,” she told him.
“Oh, God. That's wild. I'm from L.A.'
They both laughed.
“No kiddin?” she said, having to stop herself from saying “no shit.” And he was telling her the first thirty-five things he could remember from doing time with cons from the Los Angeles area, saying things about how great it was out on the Coast, how much it sucked back here, and in the wave of California dreaming and nostalgia for the palm trees and the ocean and all, she was soon sitting in the front seat of the car and the car was moving then as he talked and, yeah, she agreed, “I can't wait to get outta this shitty city.” And he laughed like that was the funniest remark he'd ever heard in his life. And she smiled at his recognition of her wit and acumen and personality.
“God, what happened to you?” she said, natural as you please. He told her about the accident on his Harley, and they talked bikes for a while. God. How cool, she told him, “I love bikes.” And before he could stop her she was off and running on the long and intensely boring tale of how somebody named whatever asshole name—Kevin or whatever—used to take her riding in the “hills,” and that went on to the point where it was starting to give Daniel a headache to concentrate even fractionally on the pitch so he finally had to interrupt her and say, “Hey, excuse me and all, but shit, I just gotta ask. Have you ever done any modeling?'
“Modeling?” She looked over at him like she'd never heard the word before in her life.
“Yeah. You know. Posing for pictures in magazines. Being photographed. High fashion work. Swimsuits. That sort of thing.'
“Naaaaw.” She laughed a little and looked to see if he were putting her on.
“Boy,” he said, his face deadly serious, “what a waste. You know, that's what I do.'
“Photograph models?'
“Well, no,
“You know,” she said, “you might laugh at me but I've been thinking about trying some high fashion modeling.'
He couldn't believe the nitwit said it—TRYING SOME HIGH FASHION MODELING. What an idiot. He smiled and shook his head in amazement. “I just can't believe nobody's ever asked you. Wow! Listen, I don't know if you'd
