Slice

BAYLORVILLE

Even without his frightening and lethal abilities, a physical precognate—that rarest of the presentient humans—who planned and prepared with the degree of dedicated concentration that marked Chaingang's best efforts, was all but unstoppable as an adversary. As a manipulator he had few peers. The afternoon before, still in the stolen wheels, he'd begun to lay the groundwork for the next move.

“I definitely think so,” he told the girl.

“God. You really think I could be an ACTRESS?"

“Absolutely,” he told her, shaking his head no, but sending the vibes of a totally convincing yes. The bandaged face was held carefully to minimize his frightening countenance: the dimpled, radiant, ear-to-ear grinning and beaming smile was in place and doing its thing, hampered only slightly by the wounded cheek. “I see it as you talk. The way you hold your head. The way you move.” The way you sip your tea. He couldn't believe how easy she was.

“I mean, I've never thought about acting. Well, I thought about it but I mean, every girl thinks about it. Aunt Pearl said I oughta be an actress or a model. And I thought about goin’ down to the TV station and trying out and that. And then, you know, Toby, this one boy, he said I oughta try to get on TV, you know, like national, and Aunt Pearl said I should write a letter and, you know, send my picture to Johnny Carson, and then this other guy he said, No, Johnny Carson probably gets a lot of mail and the picture might get lost. And then I decided that..."

He tuned out and sighed as he nodded along. This was going to take a lot of his patience.

Finally he could stand it no more. He wanted to get his point in and interrupted her, as he usually had to do, saying, “Yes—I can see. I understand. I do think you might work toward becoming an actress in addition to your high fashion and bikini work. Maybe posters, too. But I think we should start tomorrow with lessons."

“Lessons,” she said with a catch in her voice. It was a word or phrase like screen test or starring role. A word out of a tabloid in the supermarket. A word out of an article about Morgan Spacek/Sissy Fairchild having taken ACTING LESSONS SINGING LESSONS MODELING LESSONS LESSON LESSONS, a buzzword from the beckoning, impossible world of a thousand million Sissy-girls since the beginning of show biz.

“This is the Stanislavsky Dihedral Method,” he said, enjoying himself as he toyed with this nitwit, “and it comes from the reliance on believing your character. I want you to pretend that you are my niece."

“Niece?” It was such an odd word. It meant nothing to her. He sensed that. She was used to having some guy want her to pretend she was his slave and get on her knees and do whatever he said. No, he'd approach more directly.

“We're going to play like you are going away to college—no, to Hollywood to be a model. And your uncle, who is rich—me,” he beamed, “is buying you a car. You go into the dealer and you say this—” And he began to coach her on what he would have her enact the following day. She tried it and it was easy. This acting thing was a breeze. She had no idea that the next day he would hand her thousands of dollars in actual real money and she would have to go in and buy a car. They spent the night in a motel. Uneventfully.

The following morning they drove to a place he had spotted and he gave her some “notes” to rehearse, carefully printed in large, block letters neatly made with a black marker by a hand that mashed the pen point down with each firm and precise stroke. She studied the words like they were her opening lines in a new hit on Broadway. Showtime. To this moment she'd not been told it was for real.

He'd spotted a gleaming black Caprice parked between a Celebrity and a used Nissan something-or-other. He saw the words on the windshield in white “$5,245 ... 50,000 miles! Loaded!"

“Wait here and be rehearsing,” he told her, extricating his near-quarter-ton load from the car. He waddled toward a pay phone. The model year wasn't readable on the windshield but he knew it couldn't be over four years old. It looked about right to him. Chaingang checked the directory, dropped some change, and heard a busy woman's voice.

“Mannschrecker's."

“Sales manager, please,” he said. A long pause.

“Hello."

“Sales manager?"

“Parts."

“I was waiting for the sales manager. Can you reconnect me, please?"

“Sure.” The line clicked. Then obviously disconnected. He dropped more money and dialed again with his usual total concentration and unswerving perseverance.

“Mannschrecker's.” The same busy voice.

“I was holding for the sales manager and was cut off,” putting a bit of fake edge in his tone.

“Sorry you had trouble, sir, just a moment.” Click. A tune by the Beatles performed by some butt-kissing, nothing band played in the bowels of a far and unnecessary hell, then—"Here you are, sir,” again unnecessarily.

“Tim Brinkman, can I help you?"

“Tim, I was in last week looking at that black Caprice?"

“Yeah.” Friendly tone. Meant it had been on the lot for at least a week. Good.

“I just drove by and see you still got it. I just was wondering here, uh, tell ya what, Tim, I just don't wanna go five thousand for it like I talked to somebody there. But, uh, let me say this: you let me have it forty-five hundred and I'll come in right this minute and write you a check."

“Who's zis?"

“Oh, Tim, you don't know me. I'm wantin’ a car for me but I'm gonna let my niece take it when she goes away to college,” he started the story he'd concocted for Sissy. Using the name the way he'd want it on the registration.

“Bud, ah can't do it. I mean, that Caprice's a honey. Hell, it's LOADED. I might knock a couple hundred down if you came in right NOW with the check, but, no, I just can't—"

Chaingang cut him off, “I understand that. But that's for comin’ in there right now an’ writing a CHECK. I got us a better idea."

“How's that?” Suspicious tone.

“Suppose a feller like you wanted some immediate cash flow. And a feller like me wanted a nice little ole’ Caprice for forty-five hundred dollars. Looks like there's some way we could strike a deal?” A pause and Bunkowski knew instantly he had him and he closed it. “So I say I send the girl on over with the cash money, an’ you write it all up real nice any old way you like. You understand what I'm telling you. We're not talking financing. We're not talking checks. We're talking those nice dollars. CASH money, Tim. Forty-five hundred and we'll drive it off the lot now."

“When you think you could get here?"

“Oh, I'd say about five minutes.” He was looking at the lot.

“You got five minutes,” the sales manager said in his best sucker-con voice and hung up. Chaingang walked back to the stolen wheels and over to the girl's side.

“Memorize your part?” he asked, smiling in the window with the right profile toward her.

“Yeah. You want to hear it?” She was ready for the applause. If this was all there was to acting...

“Okay. Let's really try it out. I got an idea,” he said with sudden animation, and in a burst of energy he chugged around and got in behind the wheel, perhaps for the last time. “Here. I want you to try your luck. Go across the street there and—” He pulled out the big roll and started counting big bills off to her. She almost fainted. Welcome to the big time, she thought, not really believing it but not NOT believing either.

“This is five thousand,” she said to him somewhere in between the inflection of an interrogatory and an exclamation. Five grand could do a lot to make disbelief go up in a puff of lime-colored smoke. Five thousand in real money. She'd never dreamed something like this could happen. She'd hit the bull's-eye that people talked about. This was it.

“You really want me to BUY a car?” She couldn't quite let it register.

“Yep. I want to see if you can do. Uh, that is, I want to let you have this acting experience. Think of it as a lesson you can draw on later.” That magic word again.

“And really GET a car. BUY a CAR?"

“That black Caprice, right there. He pointed, letting his hand graze her leg and she sat there calmly.

“You gonna be there."

“No. Talk just like we rehearsed. If I'm there you won't be alone ON STAGE. This way you're the lead actor. You get experience in a starring role. Get it?"

She nodded, the money feeling good in that big stack that dried her throat just at the exciting thought of it all. “Yeah."

“Can you pull it off?"

“SURE."

“Okay."

“But don't we trade THIS car in?"

“No.” He had forgotten she had a functioning human brain. It was by far her most intelligent question or statement, and he had to take a beat to frame an answer.

“See, the deal is, most people TRADE and they lose so much in blue book. What your best deal is—you SELL your own car to a private individual, then amortize your collateral or if you have a mortgage or submortgage your equity, you see—then take the difference and put it into your refinancing."

“Oh,” she said, satisfied at the double-talk. “Okay. Do I have to do anything else?"

“No. Just the way we rehearsed it. Then get the temporary tags, and after you pay tax and title and all, you be sure you have the motor vehicle registration, the pink slip we talked about. That's it. You drive ‘er back over here."

“Okay,” she said with a luminous smile. She looked pretty to him and he patted her leg and the smile didn't change. And Chaingang realized how horny he must be.

“Okay,” he rumbled. “Outstanding."

“Now?"

“You're ON,” he told her, his huge, dimpled grin straining at the battle dressing. “Break a leg."

He watched her get out of the car, pushing her dopy sunglasses that were held by a cord around her neck back up on her nose and starting across the street with the money in stolen bills clutched in her small, bony hand.

“SISSY,” he called to her, his bark startling her, and she spun around, hurried back, and stuck her head in the car window.

“Probably be better,” he said, smile fixed in place, “if you didn't have the money in your hand like that. Ya know? Why don't you put it in your purse now? Then you can hand it to the man when you get the thing all signed, eh?"

“Yeah, okay.” She opened her purse and stuffed the money in. “Good idea,” she told him.

He thought how he'd like to pull her right in this second. Grab that hair and just yank her in, slapping her hard enough to break her puny neck and then masturbate into her open mouth while she died. How easy it would be to waste her. He watched her walk across the street, her thin legs outlined through the cheap dress.