"Uh-huh."
Trask kept going, waiting to hear the command to stop, but none came. His bed was made and there'd be no unmaking it now. The bug from Bob's Electronics was stuck under a shelf in Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn's office—for whatever that was worth.
Outside on the street, he bought a couple of papers. In one of them he saw the headline "Police Deny Mysterious Slayings Related to Sixteen Gang Killings." Clearly he hadn't been the first person to go fishing in this particular stagnant pond.
"Hey, Snooze," Sean Flynn called out from fifty feet away, as Trask rounded the turn to Production and Programming back inside KCM. Flynn, obviously in a good mood, was coming from the conference room. He only used his nicknames when he was in a good mood, which was-fortunately or unfortunately—almost never.
"Yo.
"Got a hole next week. Whatcha working on?"
"Right now?" Trask was ready for him this time.
"No. Not right now. What were you working on last February? Yeah, right now," Flynn said brightly.
"Telecommunications for the deaf. I've got a whole thing on the technology, the various devices, the way the operators work, the backgrounder—I've got staff and management types lined up. There's an eight-hundred number tie-in. A thing about prejudice against the deaf—they don't like the phrase 'hearing impaired,' by the way—and I, uh—"
"That's good. What else?"
"I got a thing on how parents, students, and media people have been acting as a pressure group, trying to get the U.S. Education Department to change its position on releasing crime reports at colleges and universities."
"Borrrrrrr-ing!"
"No. Wrong! Wrong, 0 mighty Flynn of the night. I got a bitchin' hot interview set with this gal who edits the student newspaper. She took 'em to court and won. It's perfect for you—the ant kicks the elephant's ass, so to speak."
"That is good. You're right. It's unboring as hell. I take it back. I stand chastised. Work that up. Like maybe three examples—each with a guest."
Sure.
"One other thing," Trask said, "I know what really killed the dinosaurs."
Flynn's handsome puss broke into a big smile. "Yeah? What's that?"
"They died trying to find a parking space."
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20
Bobby Price had slept on the floor of a deserted office and woke up stiff in most of his joints, no pun intended. He could not force more than one push-up out of his muscular bod, so gripped he was by a languorous, listless, languid, lovely, lethargic lassitude. He was up on those hard, extended arms, toes erect, frozen in midpush, thinking of lazy words that began with L: lazy, languishing, lambasted, lard-assed, latency. Latent—couldn't that suggest dormant? He was latent. A fucking latent. This lonesome longhorn, this lithe and lank lad was lamentably limp in the lap. Was he a motherfucking latent? Lordy, lordy, lock and load.
The shooter was a neuter, nude and unscrewed, and he had a need to see folks bleed. Bobby Boy had gone bye-bye yesterday evening, and a deliveryman in white coveralls had conned his way into the Kansas City Convention Center, pushing a large, heavy white box (marked FRAGILE) on a dolly. Bullshitting his way in with a big, foxy grin, getting into the building's knickers, finding a floor with nobody home, finding a place that was just the right space.
The deliveryman's costume was on the floor next to the box and the dolly. Hello, dolly, how's your box? He had the case open, his lady screwed together, his tool kit out. He decided to pull his clothes on—the carpet had left his skin with an itchy feel. He needed a hot bath, and a long shower. He felt unclean, and the stink of chemicals from the carpeting was strong in the room. Nanny li'l Bobby don't feel so good today. Tan I stay home fwom school, pwease?
He used the glass cutter and popped a good-size chunk of glass out, with some effort, keeping low and close to the corner. "Red Rock Match Grade Ammunition is available in two classifications of sniper rounds: Super-Hard-on and Anti-Pussy." He forced his mind back into the groove. "Super-Hardened ARmor-penetrating Projectile, High Explosive cartridges." He loaded a SHARP-HEX round into his sweet baby. Eye to the Laco. Careful to keep the tip of the silencer and flash attachment nearly flush with the glass. Far below, he saw a man driving a shiny new car and he blew the fucking thing to kingdom come.
"They consist of an incendiary detonator, a high explosive charge, a super-hard-on tungsten-carbide penetrator…" He snicked the spent shell case out onto the stinking carpet and slid an APEX(X) into her. Eyeballed the Laco. Red Nissan it looked like. Bus. Dizzying pan of vision. Woman in white shirt in front of a self-service gas station pumping her gas. A young girl getting out of her car. Why not? Squeeeeze. Ooh, grue.
Businessman in shirt and tie. Watch him die. Yeah! Reload, Paunchy man in green shirt, blue cap—time for your nap…surprise!
Keep this up all fuckin' day. Man on cherrypicker, two guys beside a truck but they move and spoil the shot. Billboards for the Missouri lottery and the virtues of diesel. Man walking. Squeeze…blood in the trees.
Load and look. Another dizzy arc as he searches for targets. Creme Pontiac Grand-Am. Distant image of a kid on a bike—a good two miles away. He sees a man and woman coming out of a building. Hallmark Greeting Cards, Inc. Imagines them talking about Hallmark signing Shaquille O'Neal of the Orlando Magic; the woman—she's into basketball players, the guy—he writes those sentimental verses inside cards. Roses are red, crosshairs on your head, here comes the lead…now you're dead. Hold still Sam, alakazam…wham, bam! Guts and jam.
To Shooter, at this moment, those who'd warned Columbus of a flat earth were dead right. It was flat, and the end of the world was marked by the horizon line in the far distance. Squinting into the 40X sighting scope, rubbing a sleep cinder from the left corner of his right eye with a thumb, he was amused to feel himself trembling.
The sun had come up the color of blood: a bright red fireball rising in the dark gray beyond the flat edge of the world. Blood red against gray. Far down below him, over a three-and-a-half- to four-mile radius, people were screaming, sobbing, hollering, becoming panic-stricken, telling other people what they'd seen or thought they'd seen, calling the police, calling for the doctor, calling for the nurse, calling for a lady with an alligator purse. But none of this was why he was trembling.
He saw a sign of movement near the locus of his focus and the word lollygag came back into his head after thirty years. He could recall nasty Nanny telling him "not to lollygag." Lollygag? He couldn't spell the fucking thing—but it was another lazy L word. Lollygag!
In Fort Worth, you heard folks talk about how they was gonna "sashay" over to so-and-so. He hadn't heard the word sashay in a hundred years. Sashay, lollygag, traipse. Traipse! There was a dandy. He hadn't traipsed in a coon's age. Traipse? He hadn't traipsed in a month of Sundays. He felt himself jerk, watching for the bright flashes from the mortar tubes. Shit! This was gooder'n sex. But he looked back to rub his eye again and saw all the empty brass on the floor and it snapped him into action.
He took his honey apart and put her back in the fitted case, and began to strap the whole shebang onto the dolly. He was out of there.
Chaingang had started to go roaring after Shooter Price to find him and kill him, but he'd immediately felt his governor stemming the hot tide of fury before it washed over him beyond the point of return. His legal wheels, the precious previously owned Oldsmobile, was a perfectly street-clean ride with sanitized, checkable title. The endless unnecessary aggravation he'd put himself through replacing the vehicle initially stopped him. He needed to take a car that he could dump after he was through with Shooter. Trade his Olds for something a bit more upscale. The implant kept intruding on every plan he made.