Along Came A Spider

CHAPTER 21

I now, Gary boy. the fat woman out of the left eye. He watched the blubbery blob the way a lizard watches an insect-just before mealtime. She had no idea that he was studying her.

She was a policewoman, so to speak, as well as a toll I collector, at exit 12 on the turnpike. She slowly counted out his change. She was enormous, black as the night, completely out of it. Asleep at the switch. Soneii thought she looked like Aretha Franklin would have, if Aretha couldn't sing a note and she had to make it in the real, workaday world.

She didn't have a clue as to who was riding by in the monotonous stream of holiday traffic. Even though she and all her cohorts were supposed to be desperately searching for him. So much for “massive police dragnets” and your basic “nationwide manhunt.” What a fucking letdown and disappointment. How could they

T possibly expect to catch him with people like this in the hunt. At least they could try to keep it interesting for him. Sometimes, especially at times like this, Gary Soneji wanted to proclaim the inescapable truth of the universe.

Proclaim. Listen, you slovenly bimbo bitch cop! Don't you know who I am? Some paltry nothing disguise have you buffaloed? I'm the one 'you've been seeing in every news story for the past three days. You and half the world, Aretha, baby.

Proclaim. I planned and executed the Crime of the Century so perfectly. I'm already bigger than John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Juan Corona. Everything went right until the rich little blue boy got sick on me. Proclaim. Look real close. Take a good look at me. Be a goddamn hero for once in your life. Be something besides a fat black zero on the Freeway of Love. Look at me, will you! Look at me!

She handed back his change. "Merry Christmas, sir.

Gary Soneji shrugged. “Merry Christmas back at you, ” he said.

As he pulled away from the blinking lights of the tollbooth, he imagined the policewoman with one of those smiling, have-a-nice-day heads on her. He mind pictured a whole country full of those smiley balloon faces. It was happening, too. It was getting worse than The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, actually. Drove him cra-azy if he thought about it, which he tried not to do. Country of smiling Balloonheads. He loved Stephen King, identified with His Weirdness, and wished The King would write about all the Smiley fools in America. He could see the dust jacket for King's masterpiece-Balloonheads.

Forty minutes later, Soneji pulled the trusty Saab off Route 413, in Crisfield, Maryland. He accelerated down the rutted dirt road to the old farmhouse. He had to smile, had to laugh at this point. He had them so completely fooled and bamboozled. Completely turned in side out.

So far, they didn't know which way was up, down, or sideways. He already had the Lindbergh thing topped, didn't he? Now it was time to pull the mat out from under all the Balloonheads again.