Slob (21 page)

"No, hold it. We assumed that too. But I had our chief out here run that aspect down himself through the Bureau and it isn't a clerical mistake. That is some kind of maximum security deletion. Somebody with heavy-duty clout pulled a curtain down on that person; the error was that they shouldn't have identified the deletion, But what was apparently somebody's in-house response to an inquiry went public in the bureaucratic computer shuffle. I gotta cut through this, Sonny. Please, man, you need to help me on this one."

"Official channels, pal, that's the way to move. I couldn't do it any faster than the Major Crimes Task Force, fer' Chrissakes. Just put an urgent/special-priority request trace in motion through your chief of police or whatever and— "

"Will you listen, man? I've already gone that route. I've already banged up against all those walls. Hey. We gotta PC out here with ties to plans at CIA. Big personal pal of the former deputy director, okay? He called himself. They say it's out of their hands. Deleted at the highest levels of government. That's gotta be one of your people or a cabinet secretary, or somebody swimmin' around at the presidential level. I gotta have serious help on this one, Sonny. And I don't wanna say you owe me but
You Owe Me."

"All I can do is check it out, Jack. What's your number?" Twenty-five minutes later Colonel Sonny Shoenburgen was on the line telling him the same crap he already knew.

"Jack, your partial print check was run through McTuff, and NCIC, all the usual, and it got kicked out. Printout flags an official deletion and nobody can go behind that. Someone very senior has put the identity of the subject under a tight national security lid. Best I could do was run it back to the input point which appears to have been Fort Meade, but there's nothing more I can do on it, pard."

"Bullshit Sonny. I
gotta have it.
This guy is ripping the hearts outta people, goddammit, I need you on this, man.
You have to fucking help me!"
Eichord was yelling into the telephone.

"Well. Shit. What can I say, Jack?" A pause and he says, "I know a guy. I can't promise anything."

"That's not what I said to you, man, once upon a time. I don't like saying this, but dammit when you needed me, I was there for you and now I could have found out this much on my own, and I need to know who this fucker is, Sonny—and I need to know
bad
. . .
please."

"I'll call you back," he replied, with an audible sigh.

"When?"

"As soon as I fucking
can,
all right?" Sonny promised, somewhat pissed, and hung up the phone—not too gently.

A minute became an hour. Eichord, way, way beyond having any reluctance to push this one regardless of how badly it maxed out the colonel, called Sonny. Colonel Schoenburgen was on another line and would Mr. Eichord like to wait? Why the hell not? Five minutes and he's getting really steamed and he hangs up. Nervously, he's trying to figure what to do next. Two minutes later his line rings.

"Eichord."

"Okay," Sonny told him, "I had to call a big fucking favor for this, so don't do anything like this to me again,
Ever,
I mean this is
Payback—in
spades. You roger that?"

"Affirm. Whatcha got?" Eichord asked eagerly.

"I got a deletion for maximum national security reasons, which we knew. Military intelligence at the highest levels. It was part of a sanitization program that swept a lot of the dirty files clean at the time of the big shake-up over at the Company.

"From what I can gather this was a joint thing between Clandestine Services and the military people. Something that was in place right before the

Phoenix Program. Not domestic, best I can make out. I'm going to give you a telephone number to call. Now listen to me, Jack old buddy ole' palsy-walsy, man—no follow-ups. None. I had to pay some fucking long coin of my own to get this son of a buck to hold still for it. I explained the subject is some nut who committed every murder back to the Kennedy assassination, so it's up to you now.

"He'll give you about two minutes on the phone so don't expect more and don't call me back because I won't be here anymore for you. Understand? That's it for me—even steven, agreed?"

"Gotcha. What's the guy's name and who is he?"

"Negative. You just call the number and ask him what you want to know. Don't fuck around with him. He'll hang up and that'll be it. I've given it my best shot." He told Eichord the number, which happened to be a Virginia pay phone, wished him a cool good luck, and clicked off.

"Yep," a gruff voice barked on the first ring.

"My name is Ja—"

"I know who you are, Mr. Eichord, I ran my own check," he said talking very fast, slurring his words slightly. "And as it happens I also know about the Kasikoff case. The man you're looking for is—and get something to write with now, although I assume you have a tape rolling too, is—I'll spell this name, B-U-N-K-O-W-S-K-I. Bunkowski, Daniel Edward Flowers and he's killed a lot of people. I assume he's still at it, right?"

"Right. What's the story on him and why was his identity deleted?"

"Can't tell you that. He was part of a program that was run back when we were experimenting with the use of mercenaries and such over in Southeast Asia, and this the early sixties, back before we got completely involved in the war. Around sixty-four, something like that, he came into the program, which was disabled after a very brief period.

"Deleting his identity was the right thing to do, the mistake was to have those blood groups and prints in the computers, but those things sometimes happen. I'm telexing you his dossier as it applies in your case, and sending the official photograph of Bunkowski down the fine to you as well. Don't bother trying to reach me again here or through Sonny Schoenburgen because he will not be able to contact me again. This bridge is burned—no matter what."

"Hold it, mister. This Bunkowski may have killed
dozens
of innocent people and the entire city is about to be thrown into a grab-ass panic the likes of which you've never seen. So let's cut out all the national security bullshit for a goddamn second and give me some real cooperation here. I need anything at all that might give us some perspective on the man. I mean . . . what makes him kill? How does he know to pick certain victims? Who taught him to kill so well? What are his weak points? How is he vulnerable? How can we catch him? I need to know how—"

"What makes him kill? He likes it. Who taught him to kill? We sure as hell didn't. He was self-taught. What are his weak points? Well, he weighs about 450 pounds, Mr. Eichord, so if you wait long enough he'll probably eat himself to death. Dossier's on the way. Good-bye, Mr. Eichord."

The machine rumbled inside, printing hundreds of thousands of impulse dots, and he waited for it to give him an electronic facsimile of a face. And he took it from the machine when it was through and saw, for the first time, the face of the beast.

T
he smell in the trap was the smell of excrement multiplied by what? A million? Ten thousand? Was there an olfactory scale for shit stink? Was this 147.2 on the shit scale, 139,000 stink power? It was almost more than he could take and he could take anything. And so he uncapped the quart of bourbon and took a mouthful and swallowed it, loathing the taste and gagging nausea as he swallowed but welcoming the deadening of the sensory organs and the blocking of the afferent nerve impulses.

A particular sound, look, or odor triggered the most intense memories from childhood, or from his institutionalized years of concentrated horror. What for you or me might be only unpleasant, a smell of cigar smoke, the feel of a chalky eraser, the aroma of sachet, the hospital smell of antiseptic, could goad him into a killing frenzy. And the waves of hate and madness would sweep over him in a blinding raging red tide, kill lust taking him, pouring down on him in a scorching effusion of liquid fire and it was then he would require all of his concentration and skill and control because it was then that he would do the bad things.

The smallest most inconsequential thing. Like a finger pointing on a direction sign. The sound of wind rustling through leaves or metal-cleated footfalls and distant voices on the landing and he was back in the closet huddled in icy fear waiting, praying to gods that only he could summon, promising begging them to hear him and spare him as the loud footsteps and the quarreling voices drew closer and he saw the snake man again and the little boy Danny peed himself knowing fearing that it would be him again and then and then oh oh aaaahhhhhhhh nnoooooooooooo not oh oh don't hurt me oh don't let him Mommy Mommmmmmmy urinating in little uncontrollable spasms wetting himself there in the foulness of the closet, daring only a brief peek through the crack, holding on to his little dog in the blackened space, hoping the snake man would not find him again.

And the memory does not come from that back center of the brain within the hippocampus, it comes down a toilet flushing in a high-rise, yes flushing out in an effulgence of liquid gold flushing and circumfusing, surrounding, enveloping his memories in the shit stink smell as it gushes, flushes, rushes down through tubes down to the sea in shits, down to timeless bowels down to Danny Boy oh Danny Boy the pipes the pipes are flushing down down down it comes flowing and circurmfluent down through the caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sewer and clay and concrete and chemicals and the pipes and tubes and tunnels and submains and declinations of defecations into the main flowing under him and he is back in the closet and the hate the putrid mean bitterness of it drowns his mind in the memories of the dreaded snake man.

And Danny is waiting in the closet as the snake man rages and he catches words and threats as the arms with the snakes the serpents coiled around hairy muscled awful arms smash out knocking his mommy from the chair and the booze stink from a broken bottle and he sees the frightening blue writhing snakes and guns and scorpions and dragons and skulls and scarabs and eagles that coil, fly, crawl, levitate, creep, slither, stampede and explode around the smelly, rubbery, matted pelt of hairy flesh and scaly skin of the snake man whom he detests with a child's loathing, abominating and fearing him with all the contempt a little, tortured boy can feel in his bursting heart. And the snake man vows he will kill the little dog tomorrow and he will throw it out the window and maybe the punk too he laughs as he stomps toward the closet for something but in that instant as he starts to open the closet where the boy and the dog are cowering together the boy has stopped him somehow, and he tells the dog you will be safe speaking in his mind and all of this is happening on some inexplicable mental plateau that you and I will never travel in our comfortable chairs and clean, neat, orderly lives free from the mind-exploding childhood terrors that were the daily regimen of the little boy Daniel.

In the basement his memory lingers on the two bottles there in the row of dusty chemicals on the shelf down in the basement, the two bottles he always remembers as the smoking bottles because when they are unstoppered a dangerous, acidulous wisp emanates from the small, thick glass bottles and he takes them both and when the snake man is asleep, his eyeballs rolled back in his head, dead drunk, his small hands wrapped in rags take the bottles and his mind, HIS MIND oh, God, Jesus his mind warping the curves destroying the graphs lightning bolts of kinetic mystery, powerful energies on an uncharted level of will NOOOOOO THE ACID pouring the smoking liquid into the eyes and face of the sleeping blue snake man and knowing even at age nine what payback is and savoring it as the sleeping, drunken filth screams awake blindly plunged into an anguished world of mindless, unutterable horror.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAAAAAA AAAHHHHHHi ACID"
The snake man's screams have a lovely, nourishing echo even now. And he is in The Max again back in Marion hearing the two blacks go over the side hearing the screams as they plunge off D Tier. He is back with the most incorrigible bad asses in all of the entire federal system, back in the bull tank in D Block where a white effigy pincushion man hangs with BAAD sprayed on him, voodoo hoodoo admonition of the Black Afro-American Defenders who control D, and the two black bosses who run it brace him and light flashes on the knife and pipe and on some level of energy beyond understanding he destroys them.

Their arrogance to think they might threaten this force this presence who draws on a power source beyond any witless muscle or martial skill an all conquering, indomitable energy flowing out as an implacable physical law of mass and motion and will twists rips splits breaks rends cleaves destroys snaps maims mutilates ruptures tears through spines like twigs, crushing bones like dry limbs, chainsnapping them breaking their weight-lifter necks which to him are the nothing pencil necks of geeks fools hulking bull morons.

"DIE!" he screams.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAAAAAAAA HHHHHHH!" The scream again the scream of the snake man as this human garbage goes off the high tier in a stinking blackness of deathscream smashing down into the dumb mass of guards, inmates, snitches, killers, sissies, wardens, hacks, cons, jailhouse lawyers, fish, rapos, short-eyes, jerks, parole boards, and then the other one, still remembering the sewer stink of him as he died, and then he is down in the hole waiting execution, bread and water and rotting food and his own filth and roaches and the occasional rat for pets.