“Way she goes,” Meara said.
“You could probably sue that shoat and who knows what? Win a box full of money or somethin'."
“I think I've had my share of tryin’ to get even, Doug, ya know?"
“I hear you there. Anyway, thought you'd want to know. Better sink a well down in them woods, man."
“Thanks."
“Oh, here.” He handed Meara ten folded twenty-dollar bills. “These won't bounce. Sorry it took so long."
“Hey, no big deal."
“If you want to do anything about our friend,” Seifer drooped his eyelids and raised his shoulders, “I'm willing to throw in with you."
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Revenge just doesn't cut it. I finally learned that the hard way, Doug."
“Okay.” Seifer started for the door.
“But thanks, pard. You've been a good friend,” Meara said. Seifer got back in the boat and they pushed off toward the drainage ditch, the motor loud over the expanse of water.
He didn't have Sharon but she'd managed to give him some values anyway. He'd learned that vengeance is empty. He'd finally learned something.
She'd taught him a lot. Gave him a lot to ponder, in the short time they'd had together. He'd have a long while to sort it all out, to think about what she meant to him, and he knew a part of her was going to stay with him.
Ray stood in the open doorway watching the boat disappear into the distance. The drizzle opened up again, and behind the dark clouds the afternoon sun played tricks with the sky, splattering vivid reds across the deep blue. Raymond looked up into it, his face streaked with rain.
Life was nothin’ but tricky.
71
Memphis, Tennessee
Bunkowski woke up thinking about the little babies and the animals with their skulls open and the brain cavities empty. He knew that some of those photos were burnt into the deepest wrinkles of his own brain forever. Dr. Norman was to blame for all of this. He was every bit the devil that Emil Shtolz had been, and his government was just as corrupt. We didn't kill Jews, but we killed others. What was the big difference? Man was basically evil. Serial killers and mass murderers—he happened to qualify as both—were, in his opinion, like AIDS or cancer, just doing God's work. Getting rid of the assholes. Cleaning up the Big Experiment That Failed.
He flipped on the television set in the low-rent motel room outside of Memphis and lurched into the shower. The weather map showed the showers that had recently brutalized southeast Missouri clearing out and heading east, right into Memphis. Chaingang was unaware, even as water pelted him in the shower, that his own personal rain clouds were following him. When he emerged, cleaner than he'd been in a long while, he watched a fat female comedian make fun of animal rights activists while he dressed. He was dressing for success: expensive grey suit with striped shirt and microdot tie. Cologne. A close shave.
Daniel turned the sound off and tried mouthing the words along with her, seeing if he could lip-read her jokes. She had a mouth like a knife slash in a face nearly as doughy as his.
He was ugly to begin with and the bad eye had not helped his appearance. It gave him an even more gruesome visage, a sort of Satanic bloodshot look. But, amazingly, he could do all sorts of facial tricks with that rubbery physiognomy. If he held his head at a calculated angle, smiled that beaming doughboy grin just so, the old gunshot wound that puckered his cheek looked more like a big dimple, and the scar visible in his eyebrow became just one more wrinkle, a character line as it were.
His smile was, quite literally, disarming when he wanted it to be, and his talents included the ability to easily manipulate and sway people with his face, voice, and body English, to an astonishing degree.
“Good evening, ladies and gerbils. I'm Allan Hampster,” he ad-libbed into the motel-room mirror, his face scrunched up in the parody of a human smile. “I tell ya these animal rights nuts kill me.” The basso profundo rumbled out in the identical rhythms he'd just seen on television. His mimicry skills were totally professional.
Satisfied with the reflected image, he packed his duffel, left the room with lights on, water running, and a fresh puddle of urine soaking through the mattress, loaded the car, and headed for the other side of Memphis.
Midway to the Executive Suites Hotel out in southeast Memphis, he stopped at a pay telephone and confirmed his reservation under the name Lionel Hampster.
By midmorning he was parking his wheels outside the huge hotel complex and registering. The Executive Suites was a blur of activity, one of the busiest hotels he'd been in, a perfect hiding spot. How does one hide when one weighs a quarter ton, stands nearly seven feet tall, and has a puss like an exploded pizza? One doesn't.
If a person wishes to hide an object, as the old saying goes, the best way to do so is to hide it in plain sight. The easier it is to see, the harder it will be to find. Who looks for a stash in the centerpiece on the dining-room table?
A black girl fresh from hostelry school looked up from behind the registration desk to see a grinning clown bear of a man.
“Hi!” he beamed. “Man, I loves that brown sugar— mm! The darker the cherry the sweeter the meat.” He was so stupid she couldn't help but smile. “No offense, but if I was thirty years younger and a ton lighter, I'd jump right on your bones. I'd jump on them now but they'd never find you later.” Everybody behind the counter laughed. “Ladies and gerbils, I'm Lionel Hampster, and I demand service.” He snapped his fingers in a young man's face. “Oh, there you are. What took you so long? Gimme my room key thing and point me toward the bar."
“Would you like a bellman, sir?"
“No thanks, I'm trying to quit.” They laughed again. “Have someone take my bags up, please. But right now I need you to find me four or five strong men and put me on a baggage cart and wheel me to the drinks.” Laughter. Lionel was already a hit at the Executive Suites.
“Here's your key card, sir. Now don't lose it!” the girl joked with him.
“No,” he said, as a tongue the length of a tongue in a pair of shoes and the color of fresh lox lizarded out. He placed the room opener on this horrible appendage, retracted it into his mouth, made a show of swallowing, gulped, and opened his mouth to show it empty. “It's nice and safe now where I won't lose it.” Nobody made a sound. They'd never seen anything like this in their lives. Suddenly, he reached over and goosed the bellman, who let out an involuntary scream. “Ooh!” He held up the key card in his right mitt. “Good thing I brought a duplicate along.” The people behind and gathered around the desk applauded as one, and the huge man waddled off, swaying from side to side like Chaplin, the sound of laughter music to his cauliflower ears.
No, they would not soon forget Lionel Hampster the entertainer, there at the hotel's reservation desk. But Lionel Hampster a wanted fugitive? Nah. He was hidden in plain sight, a ton of fun on the run.
He spent a great first night in his suite, ordering one hundred and twenty-four dollars’ worth of room service from Guido Lucci's Italian restaurant down in the inner courtyard of fountains and fake rock. Tournedos buona fortuna, stacked filets of beef béarnaise with march-and de vin, baby duck salad made with Italian spinach, and fettuccine Alfredo ("named after the weak Corleone brother,” he told the room service waiter), and visions of baked pasta danced in his massive head as he slumbered behind a Do Not Disturb sign for thirteen hours.
Lionel Hampster would stay there for a week, eating, feasting, drinking, sleeping, riding up and down in the elevators, resting and recuperating, and then he would go make Dr. Norman remove his fucking implant, after which he'd suck out the sissy's bone marrow for dessert.