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  She said she didn't care what they did and she let him pick a movie and he didn't care either and he'd seen a pair of twin cinemas on the way to get the pizza and so he headed back in that general direction, driving automatically as work and The Job intruded on the evening. His thoughts turned to the latest murder, a wealthy and influential head of one of Chicago's oldest corporate law firms. What triggered it was he had picked up one of the papers and tried to find a movie he thought she'd like, and in tiny print some art house was advertising CLASSIC SERIAL MURDERS and he did a double take and went back and read in fine print CLASSIC SERIAL TRAILERS and this is what he remembered as they drove along in silence.

  Two flake cops named McCluskey and Scheige had caught Charles Maitland while they were playing Hawaii Five-O over at the First. Every day they'd play something, these flakes. Like one day they'd be Kikes 'n Robbers, and all day long it would be Jew and Nazi gags. And today it was all TV cop crap, Columbo and Kojak bits all day long. And McCluskey was closest to the phone when it rang in Homicide and on the first ring Scheige had gone,

  "That could be the phone."

  And his partner went, "McGarrett, Five-Oh?" like he was answering a phone, and then smoothly picked up the receiver and said "Homicide," breaking Scheige up, and then listening and hanging up and telling his partner, "Jesus. Somebody just killed old Charlie Maitland the lawyer. Let's go."

  "Well, book him, Dano," Scheige said, pulling on his coat. And within half an hour somebody had Eichord down at the crime scene looking at the old man's fresh corpse, and sniffing around the already-cold trail of another Lonely Hearts murder.

  This one was a little different, and not just the MO. The target was W. Charles Maitland II, one of the richest heavy-hitters in Chicago or for that matter Cook County politics. Wealthy, but like so many rich men, power hungry in a profession where power is the abiding lust and common denominator.

  As one of the founding senior partners in Symington, Maitland, Eaves, and Cox, he had carefully sculptured a stratum of political machinery that Eichord was told would now come crashing down around the cop shop like so many tumbling boulders in an avalanche of payback. Someone would feel the wrath of the gods, and his new colleagues informed Jack that the trick was to make damn sure the buck didn't stop with them.

  Charles Maitland had been the living embodiment of Lord Acton's oft-quoted truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely. He had lobbied in the mecca of corruption, trading in weaknesses and follies, dealing in conflicts of interest and political vulnerabilities, in the foulness of old-time Cook County ward healers, fund-raisers, feather bedders, judges, a couple of congressmen, a senator here, a governor there. Maitland had bought and sold people like rental properties, paying so much down, buying them on paper lock, stock, and porkbarrel, paying them off in time payments, amortizing them, netting thirty, depreciating their corrupt asses, and now this merchant of corruption was dead. Someone had killed him and butchered him within two blocks of one of the most carefully guarded high-rises in Chicago, mutilated Charlie Maitland within TWO BLOCKS OF FUCKING LAKE SHORE DRIVE and people wanted fast answers. There'd be shit rolling downhill and you could count on that, Eichord was told.

  The movie was Burt Reynolds in something or other and the other one was something something Part Two, and it all looked so totally irrelevant and predictable and bogus and boring and they just stood out in front of the giant marquee, looking up at the one-sheet for this piece of Hollywood dreck, and he turned to her and said, "Uh . . ." and she looked at him and he locked his little finger with hers and she smiled at him and he said, "Just how badly do you want to see this award-winning motion picture anyway?"

  And they both broke up. And he made a couple of other suggestions and she kept holding on to his finger and then they were holding hands and walking back to the car.

  The motel couldn't have been worse, first off. It might have been okay if he'd been some cocksman and had planned it all out, rented a nice Best Western or something up front, had the room key, a nice out-of-the-way room, and driven right up to the door. But he'd pulled into the first motel they'd found, some little dumpy Mom and Pop No-Tell Motel, and she'd had to sit there alone in the front seat cooling off while he watched some dour old character who looked like a hype he'd once busted spill ashes all over himself and fumfer around making sure Mr. and Mrs. J. Eichord, Eichord Company, Self-Employed, cash-in-advance, weren't going to get away with the broken twenty-one-inch Zenith in 312. And by the time they got in the room it was like oh good Christ what are we going to do now and the prospect of actually undressing in this fleabag was so depressing and remote that when he sat down on the lumpy bed she went over and sat in the sixteen-dollar sling chair by the window.

  There's a little production of hanging coats up that he does, and then he sees her sitting there kind of forlorn and he just goes over and takes her hand, talking soothingly, very softly, talking about nothing, and they're sitting together on the bed and it just doesn't seem that natural to be in a motel room with him, she thinks, but she is a grown woman and nobody's forcing her to do this against her will, and she tries to relax, and he kisses her very softly on the cheek, and then again, and then it begins between them for the very first time.

  Very very chaste, unsexy, brother and sisterly smooches. Just holding each other, tentatively, with him doing most of the movement, leaning in to her, exchanging a couple of little-kid-type kisses, and from out of nowhere he's shooting this enormous fucking boner into her leg as they are halfway lying in bed, one of her feet still touching the dirty carpet, and they both break up laughing and that helps some and then he's embarrassed and rolls over on his back wishing it would go away and knowing now what a mistake this whole thing was.

  And she can sense that this is a very nice man here, a good man, and they can at least laugh together, and she leans over him now and kisses him softly on the lips, and he says it's all a mistake and she says don't be silly and he says I know you don't want to do this and she goes it's probably bad for a man to get a great, throbbing erection and not—you know—climax, and when a man is aroused like that she should reach an orgasm. You know, it's no big thing. We don't even have to do anything together or make love yet. Why don't you masturbate, and it sounds so silly they both break up again.

  But she persists with it and she knows what she's talking about, she says, it's probably bad for you to be aroused and so on and so forth and he says yeah very hoarsely yeah it probably is and she kind of takes things in hand herself and begins rubbing him gently and oh my oh oh oh my godddd GOD-DDDDD that feels so good so wild and now he know he's going to be going off like a rocket and he unbuckles his pants and slides his pants down and the embarrassment is gone and hell, he thinks, let her do it and she has matters in hand. A mercy cuddle, he thinks, that's what this is turning out to be.

  "Edie, that's almost it, but don't let the top come up like that. You wanna' keep your hand real slick there, see—and just keep a nice steady movement up and down on it, not too loose and not too tight." I should know, he thinks, after years of devoted whacking off. "Yeah. That's oh that's it! That's more like it. Do that. Oh yeah. Don't-stop!"

  Thing about sex. Even when it ain't too good it's great, he thought. And so they began inauspiciously, to say the least, with a mercy jerk.

  Chaingang

  He has formed a kind of grudging respect of sorts for the little people. He readily admits they soldier better than we do but that's saying nothing. Our childish, arrogant bumblers are reckless and inefficient in the field. At least the little people have some soldiering ability. He loves to kill them—to ambush them and feel the life flowing from their wiry little bodies. He likes to chainsnap them, crack them open like rotten fruit, slice them, eat their strong life source. Eat their raw hearts.

  Once in a killing field where he had gone alone he had discovered one of the major tunnel complexes. First he had found the entrance, a tiny spider hole that he couldn't get more than his leg through, and then
some sixth sense led him to the blue feature that ran two hundred meters to the north and he had removed his ruck and shirt and pants and gone in the cold water, diving down with his blade and chain, a waterproof flashlight tied to him, diving down looking for the other hole.

  He found the exit on his third dive. He was a powerful swimmer and could easily hold his breath over two minutes, and he feared nothing. He knew Charlie loved to dig down next to blue and make a slanting escape tunnel that would exit out below the water table. Depending upon the season of the year they could be impossible to detect. But inside the tunnel complexes there were traps, blind alleys, secret passageways that only the little people could squeeze through. He found the exit but he could see there was no way he'd be able to cram his bulk through the tiny exit hole. But it was here that he devised the beginnings of his plan.

  Yet it was not until he had escaped their efforts to terminate the spike team and destroy him, escaped back to a warm, green place where he licked his wounds and by the sheer effort of his will brought himself back up out of the pit of raving lunacy that still reached up to claw at him, it was not until then that he began to transfer the dream to paper. The plan didn't totally crystallize until he'd finally reached the comparative safety of the mainland "back in the world" and was roaming, killing again as before.

  He had been inside the car for a long time and it was cold and noisy in the foulness of the car, but his thoughts were elsewhere. For long hours he'd daydreamed of the woman he had killed and the amazing and stunning luck of the draw in choosing her. She had proved an incredible, rich, spectacular choice, a truly beautiful woman whom he had been able to keep alive for many hours as he took her down into his hellish horror of unspeakable filth and terror and then killed her with delicious restraint.

  Cody Chase was her name. He whispered it to himself inside the darkness of his pyschopathia. Cody . . Chase. Imagine someone being named that. A bright, animated, physically breathtaking young palomino who thought for so long that she could outthink him, outrun him, outguess him, outfox him, outsmart him, outwait him, and then as it went on perhaps just outfuck him, outsuck him, outbeg him, outcry him, outbleed him, and then—she'd finally run out of outs. And that was when his pleasures began. When he could look into those dazzling blue soul reflections and see them turn tombstone gray with fear and know that she was now vulnerable to him the way he wanted. She at last realized that there was no exit. And in her vital, strong, willful abandoning of that last hope he let her rally then and began playing with her, teasing, showing her some of the first, simplest steps in the sometimes stately sometimes frenetic always awesome last dance of death.

  He fantasized about another Cody Chase and the refinements of what he now practiced as an art form, nuances and embellishments, small improvements, little tricks to make the next bitch's hell all the more depraved, the more unendurable. Cody . . . Chase the outrageous untouchable bodacious temerity of the cunt to have a name of such lithe, sensual, elitist elegance and to flaunt herself in front of this great, fat, waddling blimp so far beneath her station in life, this disenfranchised, disgusting slob of a wretch who actually had the gall to breathe the same upper-class air as she. Cody fucking Chase in her Neiman's haute whatever, bathing him in fashionable scents and promises flirting with him simply by her bold and undisciplined movements taunting him with her long, shaggy, impeccably coiffed blondness, enraging him with her waspish, tight-pussied, high-assed, firm-breasted, long-necked, slim-legged, pampered, fastidious, God God dammmmmmmmmake her crawl make that bitch eat the foulest shit hurt hurt hhhhhrrrrrrrrrtttttt her and then kill her slow easy slow easy make it lassssssstttttttt ohhhhhhhhh the white-hot waves were coming now and he must be very careful.

  The words echo around inside that snake pit of a mind. Cody . . . Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssse . . . . sibilant and snaky slithering syllables sliding around the twisted corners and crashing on the rocks. To find her like that and as always to move her to motivate her so easily the ultimate ego stroke to a monster man like him to gently cover her in a blanket of confidence masquerade and lies to play with the bitch that way proving himself that way simply turning her head around and then turning her again leading her so easily, she was so sure he was one thing and she was so maneuverable as he put her in exactly the position he wanted all the time making the cunt think it was her decision, selling her, closing the deal, getting the slut's name right there on the dotted line. And then taking her as he had planned from the first.

  He could hardly breathe at the thought of it. The excitement of the kill had got him hot again as he relived it for the third, fourth time, remembering every tiny detail, running it back, playing it over again in his thoughts.

  "Why would anybody get in a car with somebody like that?" he'd once heard some ignorant ass ask during an imbecilic television program that never even began to touch on the real guts of the mass-murder phenomenon. "Who would get in a stranger's car?" some nitwit had asked. Why, YOU would. ANY- BODY would, you dumb, arrogant, insipid ignoramus. If the right strings are pulled, anybody will do anything. If a more powerful mind, a masterful and dominant intelligence, decides you will do something, you will accede to the wishes of the greater being. Because you are SHEEP.

  No one had ever refused him. If he wanted to convince you that the sky was orange instead of blue, he would simply first put on his orange sky coat. He could pull on a characterization, a personality, a facade, the way you pull on your clothes. It is something any good actor can do. You can see the difference between genuine acting and reacting very simply: just turn down the volume on your TV Set and watch the players. Most of them are unconvincing without the dialogue and a supportive story line to propel them. You have no sense of who or what they are. But the good ones—that's another thing. And they can even do more than react. They can act—alone—in a vacuum.

  A true actor, a good one, pulls on a character and motivates that persona from an inner wellspring of some kind. And the reality of their own lives may be used in whatever the outlandish personality they are adopting for the moment. You can see the difference in the convincing sureness of the portrayal. He had the actor's skills, but learned the hard way, learned as survival tools as a baby, learned in dark, stifling, deadly places frightened out of his mind, learned so that he would please, and so that he would survive another tortured day. He is a chameleon when it suits him to change outwardly.

  So you first see the same great, huge, waddling, terrifying bulk but not the same at all because this creature means you no harm,—au contraire, he is a friendly, lovable, jolly fat man of great need and somehow has had the luck and taste to know that you of all God's critters out there in the swim this day, that you alone can help him in his dilemma or need. And all of this before a word is spoken. All of this in the posture, the diffident stance, the crinkled, dimpling smile, the radiant and puffy Pillsbury Doughboy cheeks all full of innocent, gigantic, Santa-caring and tenderness, or reflecting wonderment, confusion, loss, opportunity, the marketing need of that second's sales pitch.

  And then the words come. A river of noise a flood of information a rushing inundation of data a damn ocean of input that you are suddenly awash in, all this raw verbiage lapping at the shores of your mind, saturating your thoughts, a tidal wave of talk assails you and the actor is never off the mark with the words. First the word. The word is always right, apt, mesmerizing, in character, convincing, captivating, so flattering to you, custom-designed to lull you, stimulate you, make you forget the simple reality of this frightening specter suddenly inserting itself into your life, always reasoned, impenetrable in its logic, unwavering, so certain that you will respond like so, and perhaps a gentle physical pat from this behemoth, guiding you, nudging you, HANDLING you as the stream of words hits you and you drown in the linguistic undertow of this powerful and evil intellect.

  And the weirdness of the world helps. It's such a crazy place now who is to say that this huge, sloppy, grinning bear isn't a bizarro television produc
er, Cody, and hell everybody's always told you for years that you're beautiful enough for the movies and gee golly he seems to know what he's talking about and what—what's that?—you want me to go with you to the studio now so you can—oh, the photographer is only going to be there another half hour—oh, no, that's all right—I guess I could run by there. Where's the studio? No, I don't know where that is. Follow you? Well. Okay. Ten minutes? And he has them just that easy. Always some quick, surprising, even credible bullshit that sells them, convinces them instantly, that deep, basso-profundo smoke screen clouding minds as he lays down his con. And it just takes that one second—that moment when you drop your guard, Cody, and you get in the front seat with him for just that second just to—you know—go over one last thing before we go in there and start working with the photographer and you see the big, wicked, razor-sharp knife pointing at your belly and smile now, real nice, real friendly and you plaster a smile on and he's bent you over out of sight and a little careful tap just to keep you down on the floorboard for a couple of minutes until he can get over in the alley there and load you into the trunk—you know, Cody . . . for LATER.

  And the scary thing is they all seem to have it now, baby. Even the dumbest baby raper has learned the verbal tap dance, the combative vocal retroflex, the conversational tennis match that will get in the pants of your mind, Cody doll. The satanic cat butchers, the psy-war voodoo priests, the benign seat murderers, the optical illusionists in the Pentagon, the young one-liner pickpockets from the coast, the rock stars from hell wearing pentagrams next to the skin, they all, all, have it down cold. You've got a whole gang of folks can get over on you just slicker 'n pee on a doorknob, Cody. But the big man-he's the great grandmaster of the bullshit ryu—the doctor of death with a Ph.D in psyche. The king daddy rabbit of the ultimate, big, fat mindfuck.