"He's coming up. Just forget all that stuff about Barb, man. She's not out to get you."
"Everybody always said, you know, she and Babaloo…" He let it go. This thing was lost.
"Babaloo is old enough to be her father, for one thing. They're friends. They go way back—from Memphis-they've been a team for a long time. I can assure you they don't have anything going. Not like you're inferring. Vic-what can I tell you?"
There was a brief period when no one spoke. Trask could hear music, talk, ringing phones, faraway conversations, the Mystery Tramp typing. "Hi," he heard.
"Hello." Inspector Higgins of the Yard. Another mustached, receding hairline type. "Hi."
"Hi."
"Bill—Vic has concerns. He feels a phone call may have been bugged. Maybe a mike in his office. He worries about rumors he's heard about KCM having a policy involving the monitoring of conversations—things like that. I thought perhaps you'd set his mind to rest."
"Sure. Do my best." Higgins had such a warm, trustworthy smile. They hadn't exchanged fifteen words in all the time Trask had been with the station, but he instantly liked and trusted the man—suddenly. Perhaps because he seemed so open.
"It's bullshit, I guess," Trask said. Defeated. "I've always heard that—you know—there were hidden mikes."
"Not bullshit at all," Higgins said. "When I came here there were units in all the office intercoms. The general manager back in the old days—I don't have to tell you-had a penchant for eavesdropping. He had it fixed so that all the office intercoms doubled as microphones. In theory, they were always on, and all he had to do was flip a selector switch and he could listen to any office from downstairs. We had all those mikes removed."
"Everybody said—you've heard, I'm sure—that you guys tape everything with the camcorders and stuff…" He was no longer even bothering to form complete sentences so incoherent were his thoughts.
"The camcorders are for your protection. Programs such as Sean's are often controversial or provocative in nature and—even the newscasts—will sometimes be capable of generating a degree of anger in the listener. You know, I'm sure, about the dangerous lunatic fringe of any large audience, be it radio or television or whatever. This is why stations like KCM have to have security staffs. We're not watching you, we're trying to keep you safe. I'd be glad to take you down right now and show you how we operate." All of this in the friendliest, most open manner.
It ended up that Trask, Flynn, and Higgins had to troop downstairs en masse and take the fifty-cent guided tour of Internal Security. Somehow Trask made it through the rest of the afternoon and early evening without collapsing, even if half his time was spent on the throne in the men's potty. By nightfall, he was home—violently ill—and within twelve hours he was getting flu shots, albeit too late. Mercifully, he was dead to the world and missed the next couple of editions of the local papers and the various electronic media newscasts. The news would have only made him sicker as he'd have had to watch others slide the pieces of his jigsaw together for him.
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22
Shooter Price, SAVANT in his arms, had managed to escape unscathed. It filled him with self-confidence, to have so easily evaded an attack by an adversary as cunning and deadly as Chaingang. Those fucking shitheels had used his own tracker to locate him. But he had fooled them! He was alive and well, with his incredible weapon and plenty of rounds for her hungry maw, and he would show all of them what payback meant—starting with that fucking hippo.
Back in Illinois, Dr. Norman did not think of Daniel as a hippo so much as a huge, angry bear. He shuddered as he read of the killings, and of the attempt to get their sniper. Like maddened polar bears who have invaded the same huge ice flow, they were now circling each other in the dance of death. One, armed with a sniper weapon without equal, the other with presentience to warn him of danger; each seemingly invulnerable to attack from the other. But Norman knew, as he read the account, precisely what the outcome would be. He knew that there was no living human who could go up against Daniel and live. And he understood the prison wisdom that stated "Chaingang has nothing but his hatred." He was sure that the knowledge of the implant had only amplified that, if anything.
Bunkowski, the man, was precisely the reverse of Danny, the little boy. In Chaingang's world, he rules and you are the victim. The cons always said there were three codes inside: the penal code by which the prison operated, the inmate code by which cons coexisted behind bars, and the survival code. The last code transcended the others, the one that Chaingang practiced as a religion.
In Kansas City, Missouri, it was another day. The dawn had come up gray and wet-looking. Shooter felt tough and privileged. He did a few half-hearted push-ups, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He showered, shaved, and dressed with some care, dressing for success.
Price wore sandwashed bronze linen slacks from Côte d'Ivoire, a metallicized anaconda Western-style belt with verdigris-patina buckle by Mark Cross, and a River Crest Pro Shop pullover in mulled claret. He pulled on pale yellow silk socks from Neimann's, and antique gold, woven ostrich quill skimmers. The sniper as fashion plate. It wouldn't matter. He was going down in the pit, under full camouflage.
Shooter in Missouri and Dr. Norman in Illinois both began their morning with the same news. Neither man happened to turn on their respective television sets. Each read, with divergent reactions, the substantially identical accounts of the previous day's violence. One from local law-enforcement agencies' reports to the various data-collection terminals such as NCIC and VI-CAP. The other from the Kansas City papers.
"Six More Killed in Bloody Massacre" was the headline of the Star, and Bobby Price smiled when he read the stories under the subhead "Police Confirm Mass Killer on Rampage."
A lone gunman is believed responsible for six murders and one attempted murder in midtown Kansas City, Thursday, as the spate of bloody homicides continued, pushing the city's violent death record to an all-time high. In what were termed sniper killings, a man that witnesses called huge, over six feet tall, weighing between 350 and 400 pounds, is thought to have taken six more lives using a long-distance rifle of some type. Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn of the Kansas City Homicide Division of the Crimes Against Persons Unit said that he is believed to be using some kind of high-explosive projectiles such as rifle grenades.
Llewelyn confirmed that the killer's weapons and methods appear to match those employed in twenty-nine recent slayings. He's probably got automatic weapons, grenades, and is familiar with various explosives.
Kansas City Homicide has called in a special department of the FBI for assistance with the case, which may or may not be drug-related. The shootings and firebombings that resulted in thirteen dead in an attack on a biker gang's headquarters, and the grisly ritual mutilation and murder of three other bikers at Mount Ely, have lead to speculation that drug dealers may be involved with the slayings. The biker-gang members had a history of drug arrests, both for possession and distribution of drugs like crystal meth.
Fatally wounded Thursday were Mark Berkemper, forty-two, a professor at State Business College; a Jane Doe of approximately twenty-six years of age, Dick Thompson, thirty-three, an advertising consultant with Saveth-Blackman-Grant; E. L. Campbell, twenty-six, a driver for a lawn center, George D. Unwin, fifty-seven, U.S. Army, Ret.; and Phyllis Guthrie, thirty-eight, a clerk employed by the Kansas City Housing Authority. Neither the Kansas City Police nor the FBI would comment further as to any possible connection between these killings and what were called random murders. The deaths brought to 173 the number of homicides in the city since January 1.