The sound of a deep breath sucked down into huge lungs. "Identification of human and animal spoor." This would be the first of many such interview sessions in which Daniel would open up a random corner of his dark mind for Dr. Norman. "Inconstants in motor vehicle identification and postal indicia as boundary-value problems, utilization of passive infrared external sensors as detonation devices, contemporary uses of figs, pomegranates, poplars, oaks, cypress, ashes, and other organic materials in blood rites, offal, tripe, ascarids and other lumbricoids as bait, chemistry, math, the general sciences…" Chaingang Bunkowski's gospel.
Three decades later, Daniel continues to play his own tape inside his mind, just as Dr. Norman was sure he would: he hears the "deathscreams" of his torturer each time he kills and it is the very heart of pleasure. Remembered pleasure. Imagined pleasure. Yet something is missing. Perhaps it is payback.
Compute the hatred he feels for his foster "mother" and the crimes she committed and allowed to be perpetrated against him by this formula: Apply the rules of kinesics and physics to the laws of mass and motion, multiply by the origin and intensity of rapid movement, governed by the rules of impetus and inertia, and add the sum of vengeance squared. Take this to the cube root of fear. Divide by madness. Add bloodlust. Compute the hypergolic synergy as you would for the explosion of typical rocket fuel.
That is how much hate boils inside Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, and that is how many pieces of flesh he will tear from Mrs. Garbella before he allows her to die.
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10
An enormous man named Mr. Bentley, driving legal wheels, headed west on 670 across the stretch of oily water that separates Kansas from Missouri. His I.D. would convince the casual inspector that Mr. Bentley was a prosperous insurance man from St. Louis, dressed for fishing.
He crossed the river in a stream of traffic and turned right looking for Mrs. Garbella. She'd moved around a bit, understandably, over the years. The street signs indicated that he was at the corner of Fourteenth and Bunker. Bunker was a name out of his horror-filled past, and just the word sent a jolt of rage through him.
Say the word and most have some association: Hitler's Bunker, Archie Bunker, but to him it is a synonym for hell. Bunker—even now it can reach whatever vestiges of the little boy that still reside deep inside his massive hulk. The name is a fanged, slithery thing that crawls out of the past, snaking through his memory banks. Terror Avenue.
In his fishing clothes, Mr. Bentley parks, locks the vehicle. A decrepit river-front building, once a cheap hotel, now a sub-poverty-level rooming house. Each time Mrs. Garbella moved she dropped another notch down the scale. This is the bottom of the poverty chain.
He wears a voluminous jacket, too much clothing for the sizzling temperature, but he appears impervious to such mundane externals as heat, and the huge, canvas-reinforced pockets of the jacket bulge with weighty goodies. Many pounds ascend rickety stairs to the second floor. 2C.
A shotput of a fist the size of a small ham threatens to take the peeling door off its rusting hinges. Slow movement inside. The occupant takes her time getting there. He realizes she must be nearly seventy. Late sixties, perhaps. The door cracks open and old eyes peer through from the darkened interior.
"Eh?" the crone cackles from the safety of a chained door, much the same as in his dream about her.
"Hello. Remember me?" he asks in a rumbling, deceptively soft voice. "From many years ago?" He pushes his way in.
"Please—please don't hurt me. I don't have any money. You've taken everything. Please go away." The old woman begins crying.
It is not Nadine Garbella. He is so disappointed. And now here is some old crone blubbering, and he'll probably have to take care of her—seeing as how he's thrust his way into her life.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he says gently. "I thought Mrs. Garbella lived here. Where is Mrs. Garbella?" The tears flow and she crumples into a chair.
"Stop crying, please. I must find Mrs. Garbella." The woman seems to be having a full-fledged nervous breakdown. "Stop it." He gives her a light shake, but a light shake from him is equivalent to a roller-coaster plunge and she momentarily stops but begins gasping for air. "Let me get you a glass of water. This is all a mistake." He searches for a glass in the tiny apartment. He must interrogate this old witch before he can put her out of her misery.
"Please—" She tries to beg him, her sobbing getting worse.
"Listen. Listen to me!"
She gasps like a fish on land.
"Here. Drink." He gives her a filthy cup of tap water and she tries to peck at it like some ancient bird, but immediately resumes soft, monotonous sobbing. Somewhere outside he can hear the intermittent pop of firecrackers in the July streets.
"How long have you lived here?"
"About a year," she says, managing to show coherency for the first time, between gasped sobs.
"Where is Mrs. Nadine Garbella?" Sobbing. "Do you know?" The old woman shakes her head. "What is your name?"
"Ethel Davis," she says and another big flow of tears begins.
"Why do you keep crying? I promise you won't be hurt. Listen, it is important I find Mrs. Garbella, the previous tenant. Where did she move to? Who would know?" Tears.
"Who do you rent this from? Who's the landlord?"
"The boys let me live here."
"What boys?"
"The ones with the bicycles. They're bad boys."
"Did you ever see Mrs. Garbella?" She looks like she's about to die on her own. A few more minutes of this and nature will take its course, he thinks.
"They killed my little cat. My poor little cat!" This starts her off again. He stands there, a monumental mountain of patience, biding his time.
"Who killed your cat?"
"The boys."
He gentles her down, the way one would gentle a wild animal. Reassuring her that everything will be all right. He learned that this pathetic old crone moved into what had become, essentially, an empty, condemned building. But the building had occupants. A biker gang was evidently using it for a combination crack house and torture chamber.
When the "boys," as she called them, weren't otherwise gainfully busy, they liked to take neighborhood pets and play with them. Play, he gathered, involved throwing dogs and cats from the roof. They had extracted some pitiful sum of money from old Ethel for her lodging, and when the well ran dry they decided to take a measure of revenge on her. She had one possession, a cat. They told her they taught it to fly, and laid what was left of it on her doorstep as a parting gift.
She had thought they were back for another round of fun when Mr. Bentley forced his way into her sad life.
"Are the boys up there now?" he asked.
"Yeah." She nodded, still trying to stem the tears.
"Here—for your door." He peeled some small bills off his roll. "Get another cat," he told her, turning and leaving. She watched this huge apparition's back fill the doorway, waiting a long time and not touching the money that had fallen to the floor.
To understand the why of it—why Chaingang let the old woman live, why he gave her money for the broken door, why he didn't shake the bag of wrinkled skin until the secret of Nadine Garbella's whereabouts fell from her, why he did what he now did—took a degree of understanding not even Dr. Norman could claim.
Only the beast himself knew why he was motivated to kill. There are obvious possibilities: it had been a long, dry spell without killing, and he'd been in close proximity to the monkeys, the hated ones, for periods of forced interfacing. He was tired of taking monkey shit in any form. He was tired of sleeping on the floor of an office overlooking East Minnesota Avenue. He had been screwed with and manipulated once again by The Man. He was crazy as steel cheese—that was part of it.