Sure, as a boy his only companion had been a mongrel pup, and there was the thing the shrinks call transference, and the thing that made him believe animals were better than humans, and the fact that no animals had ever done to him what people had done. But that didn't begin to cover his true feelings.
Chaingang roared his parody of laughter when he saw the bulls gore the onlookers in Pamplona on TV. He wanted to take the ears from every matador, and every other spic piece of shit in those arenas, blow all those chili-sucking grease-ball beaners to a place beyond Latin hell, and it was not a figure of speech in his case. He wanted every bullshit bullfight, cockfight, dogfight to go up in flames. He wanted the puppies in the labs to go for the throats of those sensible, maddeningly "reasonable" men and women who were only doing "humane" experiments, as they shot bullets into animals and mutilated them so that young ham-fisted surgeons could practice on them. He wanted everybody in the fucking shit army dead of colon cancer, he wanted all the rodeo stock to throw and break the red scaly-assed dumb necks of every shitheel moron cowboy on the circuit, he wanted every slimy-boxed whore at Barrie K Cosmetics suffocated in her own putrescent filth for the cruelties their lab assholes inflicted on animals, he wanted to take the offspring of the cunts watching every donkey baseball game and petting zoo and cheapskate-run mall pet shop and slit their whelps open while the bitches watched—and that was when he was in a good mood.
When he was in a dark killing mood—as he was now—well, by Christ, you'd better run silent and deep. Whoever crosses his path now he plants. To observe his actions you'd see nothing untoward. The man in his fishing clothes waddles out into the street and unlocks his ride, heaves his bulk in, and the driver's side of the vehicle now rides dangerously low on its springs as he starts the car and eases on down Bunker, turning at the next comer and disappearing from view.
The car is tucked away out of sight and he is puffing and blowing as he ascends the stairs of an adjacent building. Three flights later, his strong heart pounding like a jackhammer, he waits until he has his breath back, and easily penetrates the locked door that leads to the roof. Carefully and slowly he eases out onto the roof, keeping close to the air ducts, chimneys, and walls.
There are people visible on the adjoining rooftop. His computer logs "eight Caucasian males," then he sees a female, then another. Then an eleventh person who appears to be a young male. In his data storage bank he realizes that he automatically filed away the intelligence that there were no bikes on the street. He scans below as best he can and sees nothing—no passers-by to speak of. He sees neither bicycles nor motorcycles. He sees something that does not enrage him so much as freeze him inside.
An animal is thrown from the roof of the building; he hears the shouts and the noise as he momentarily files the image, realizing that the sounds of popping firecrackers he'd heard while inside the slum building were small arms. A dog. Airborne. Gunfire. Hoots and laughter. Inside his mind he has recorded the memory of a shout to "pull"—their game. They have seen skeet-shooting; this is their joke-their firing range. Killing stray cats and dogs for sport. He does not let rage come.
The first reaction is to get the SKS and take as many out as he can. No. They are a gang. There will be more to replace whomever he manages to exterminate. It occurs to him in passing that he wishes the biker gangs were more like the blacks. The crack dealers kill each other, while the white bikers are merely a general nuisance. He wishes all persons of all races would kill one another with equal enthusiasm and fervor; he is an equal-opportunity hater.
Now he sees (a.) why no bikes. This is their play place. They must have a club nearby. It is unlikely they would use their own haven for such fun and games as they prefer to draw no unnecessary heat—these outlaw gangs. Perhaps they cook crystal in the old building as well. This explains (b.) why no guards. No street kids. No beepers. No walkie-talkie units. His computer registers that he observed no "jigger" on the premises, "jigger" being D Seg slang for one who acts as lookout.
He closes the door to the roof and keeps the picture of the scene on freeze frame inside his head, and for a beat he allows enough of the red tide to come so that he can imagine clicking a full mag into the Chinese submachine gun (a crude copy of the Swiss weapon that he converted himself to "legal collectible" semiauto status), and selectively taking a few—but he thinks better of it.
Back downstairs, in his wheels, the huge killer circles the block until he sees street people. It takes him less than five minutes with his magnetic personality and acting ability to learn what he wants to know. He lays down a convincing screen of gab and draws the words in like a fisherman with a net, hauling in facts about the gang "doin' all that shootin' around the corner."
He has their identity now, their collective name, and he knows where they hang. When Chaingang Bunkowski has your name and address it does not bode well. The prognosis for your future is a gloomy one. You are in a world of deep shit.
He stops and retrieves a book and pen from his duffel and prints SVS/M in block letters, each letter perfect and without character, pressing hard with the writing instrument that indents each notation on the page.
Their name, he has learned, is Steel Vengeance. They regard themselves with a proud bravado they have not yet earned, but in time these errors shall be corrected.
Beneath their "recreational" address he writes the address of their meeting place of record. He will add their names and much more.
He thumbs past drawings: an M-3 firing unit duct-taped to a length of det cord.
A "smart bomb" activated by an ordinary kitchen food timer.
A recipe, for mixing powdered potassium chlorate with a modified Vaseline-base paste, that bakes a very nasty cake.
A device for starting an undetectable fire.
A place inside an ordinary home where a five-hundred-pound giant can hide and not be found—even by trained dogs.
A drawing of an impromptu fougasse bomb fired with an M-57, firing wire, and a fulminate of mercury blasting cap.
A powerful rocket launcher and projectile made from common hardware store materials and home appliance parts.
A lethal bomb made with nothing more difficult to procure than a shotgun shell, a nail, a cigar box, a spring, and an ordinary mousetrap.
The look on his huge, fat face was positively beatific as he devoured each drawing with his eyes. A sense of reverence filled him when he touched this tome, much as a Gideon Bible gives comfort to the soul of a weary traveler.
Chaingang Bunkowski had his own Bible of sorts. It was a very old Boorum. & Pease Accounts Receivable Single Entry Ledger, blue with maroon corners, 272 pages. It was headed Utility Escapes and that is how he thought of it. The book had survived two prison incarcerations, one on death row, and had accompanied him on over a hundred excursions into murderous madness. It was much more than a book of escape plans, although it was certainly that. Over half the ledger was filled with meticulously rendered drawings, plans, diagrams, sketches, maps, schematics, blueprints for hideouts, evasion devices, mantraps, escape routes, dump sites, ready-made burial spots, and assorted doodles and cryptic signs decipherable only to the artist.
One reason why the book had not been permanently confiscated by authorities was that the head of the program responsible for Bunkowski's recruitment, Dr. Norman, had long ago prepared his own secret copy of the book, which he continued to study with the same fascination that one might examine the Rosetta Stone. He considered the pages to be the work journal of a genius of evil, and he regarded the sketches and jottings of his lunatic Leonardo as parts of a decoder. He had made certain that Chaingang would continue to add to his handbook of homicide, and so further Dr. Norman's own work.