Frenzy

* * *

Willie Ray Campbell was his name and he was about 379 million miles away from Jack Eichord ethnically, spiritually, mentally, anywhichway. Any honkie was galaxies and races apart from the North St. Louis ghetto that was home turf to Willie Ray. Yet Jack and Willie would touch, in a way, as strangers sometimes do, when destiny beckoned with her long and crooked middle finger.

Unblinking, hard, midnight-deadly. Outrageous and old-timey do-rag over his conk. Perfectly razored pussy-tickler drawn in a straight black slash over a cushiony pair of swollen-looking Naugahyde lips, Willie Ray looked the part. Big cokey nostrils. 110-proof Jamaican straight gangster with a dangerous, sullen mood, a nose full of bad dream, the stale tuna taste of unwashed twat on his tongue; 229 pounds of snatch-licking, rum-sucking, coke-tooting, pipe-packing, mean motherfuck of a no-nonsense nigger.

Standing out there on the corner of Struggle and Die, out there with the bad bros and the fierce fros, out to scuffle up some geetus, out to COP, you understand, 'midst the chicken-shack, chump-change, no-dick, no-chance, bust-out shooters, street-dealing hustlers, bogus flimflammers, sugar pimpin' chile macks, hos, bros, and fros. Out there with the junkie hypes, black bloods and princes of the netherworld, with allllll them other assholes, waiting to hear on some fucking humbug sham charges The Man had trumped up the way that terrible, worthless, chuck white devil likes to do. Keep a man down. Shhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!

Hi five to a boy he knew.

"What it is."

"Yeah—down."

"Keepin' on."

"Same old same ole'."

"Work it on out. Later." They parted with the sign. Past Soul Food and HairQuarters and Barbee-Q, the smell of hot home-boy cookin' comin' over and gettin' into his blow.

"Doctor Good," he greeted the man behind the counter.

"Say Hey, Willie Ray. Today's the day."

He finished his soul food, shot the shit with the brother for a while, and walked back out and stood around on the corner jivin' with the passersby.

A mean street subghetto called Sunset, the shacks across the tracks from the projects. Willie Ray "married" to a pouty little mama who had started tricking part-time. Bringing him a little trap money. He'd done a little plundering outside the family. Moved up to some gunwork. A little hit-and-miss action to cover some mistakes he'd made in his stock portfolio, don't you know? He'd been all right if he'd stayed with smack and snort and shit, but he hadda go be a big goddamn fucking GANGster. And now Willie Ray

Campbell was standing there waiting for the next load of deep shit to get dumped on him.

Waiting for nighttime and the sound of sirens that was the symphony of the subghetto after dark. Waiting for the neon night and the smells of this open prison that held him like a black, stinking armpit in the shadow of the high-rises — Willie Ray could have taught them about soul. Miles of that motherfucker. Taught those whiteys how to talk that talk. Bunch of jive no-good shit. And as if she'd heard the thought, Destiny's bony fingers curled around her quill and she dipped it in the darkest ink and added the name Willie Ray Campbell to the shit list.

Many miles away, on the other side of St. Louis, a man who called himself Carl Duncan at the moment, a.k.a. Frank Spain, was printing Willie Ray's name midway up a list of names. C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. Proving that no matter what they say, it doesn't always pay to get your name in the paper.

* * *

Jack "met" Willie Ray a couple of days later. He'd been working on his revised, updated "family tree" and crime chronology. On it the crime families were the international automobile industry. It was a thing he sometimes did as a learning trick — giving things a metaphorical identity. He looked at the National Council or Commission as the CEO and VPs from the big automakers. The Colombians and Syrians and other factions were the Japanese car market — hated competition but in bed with the Americans. He gave Sally Dago the rank of general as in General Motors. Tony Cypriot, Gaetano Ciprioni, was the admiral in charge of Ford. Rikla was Oldsmobile and Measure was Buick, and so on.

Certain patterns in the kills had begun to emerge. There was something else. A thread running through all the gangland wet work. Drugs? An internal power play by a rogue lieutenant? Who was left? The X factor. It was in the murders at the lower end of the spectrum. Jimmie the Hook Russo and Lyle Venable still both appeared to Jack to be gang whack-outs. But the way wise guys were turning up missing, and the civilian hits — something there. His mystery madman involved.

Eichord had not been watching his television or hearing a radio that morning so he had no idea there'd been another hit — a black dope dealer tied to the family, two cops and a bus driver had all been killed in another bombing. So he was doubly amazed to learn that Paul Rikla, his "Buick" competition also now dead and gone, was waiting at Police Headquarters to "turn state's evidence." Rikla wanted protection, as he had told a bewildered cop.

Rikla had "given himself up," as he put it, because of a black dope dealer by the name of Willie Ray Campbell. They'd never met. Campbell, thirty-two, coal-colored, with Son of Kong lips and smack-brown eyes, was aboard a federal prison bus headed for extradition to Kansas, where he was wanted for bank robbery.

When the television newscaster had reported the story about Willie Ray being extradited he had accurately referred to him as an "alleged narcotics dealer in the family headed by Paul Rikla. Rikla, owner of the Rikla Towing Service, is believed by police sources to be tied to the sale of narcotics and child pornography in the St. Louis area. Rikla, allegedly an underboss in the Dagatina organization, could not be reached for comment."

Rikla was now as scared of the Dagatina people as he was of the Measure crew, what was left of it, but what happened to Willie Ray was the final straw.

At about eight-thirty that morning Campbell, head covered in an old-fashioned do-wrap over his straightened, styled "conk" that looked like something from a Negro documentary, was just sitting there on the bus minding his beeswax, sitting there in his jail clothes when the whole frig-gin' bus blew up.

A two-man guard detail and the driver were also killed. No fucking reason. All the police told media was mere was evidence of electronically detonated high explosives. No known motive. No suspects. Another in the series of gangland-related homicides that had St. Louis terror-stricken. And now Measure gets taken down and his people are STILL goin' under. Suddenly Rikla felt like he had cross hairs painted on his forehead.

The bus bombing had occurred at approximately four-forty. The news had it on the early cast. Five minutes that included a three-and-a-half-minute sound bite at the crime scene and lots of gore. Rikla was home, watching it on a tummy TV, with a real bad case of the green-apple quick step. Two hours later, Paul Rikla and a pair of attorneys from Rozitsky, Karp and Nathan were waiting to see the DA and talking about RICO and the Federal Witness Security Program and trying to put some kind of a deal together for their very nervous client. Rikla figured, "I'd rather be a live rat than a damn dead man." Which pretty well summed up the situation. The consensus among all those close enough to hear the comment was that he'd described himself accurately, one way or the other.

Rightfully, Rikla had told his personal mouthpiece, "I don't know who's doin' da shit, if it's coppers, wise guys, or a crazy contract man that's doing the work. Whoever they are if they got the balls they can blow up a federal prison bus. I'm not waitin' around for 'em to come for me. That's it. Fuck it. I'm history."

So there he sat in his "surrender" clothes. The bottom half of an eighteen-hundred-dollar silk suit, and a Neiman's cardigan over a LaCoste golf shirt, gold chains, watch, ID bracelet, pinkie diamond big as a grape, pure twenty-four-karat wise guy, wanting to go public behind the "witless protection program," as Leech had called it.

They were joking about the four-hundred-pound hit man who had been given a new face with plastic surgery, a new identity, and flown from the Boston area to Seattle, where he was relocated under a new name. After a few months of boredom he went back to his old line of work and was promptly found and obliterated, being the only four-hundred-pound hit man on the West Coast with a South Baaahston accent you could cut with a knife. What they cut with a knife wasn't his accent.

Rikla, who had been Sally Dago's counselor, friend, confessor, confidant, and sounding board, knew where all the bodies were buried. He went back to the beginning of the Dagatina thing. He claimed he knew things that nobody else in the family knew and if the feds would take him into the program he'd testify. Give us an example, the big boys asked him, and he teased them with a tale of a chief enforcer trying to wage a one-man war against the families, and tantalized them with the promise of dirty cops.

"When I know I got full-time protection and d' coppers or the Dagos can't touch me, I'll give you the whole outfit. Right from the top down and you won't fuckin' believe it. I've got coppers runnin' my own scams right here in St. Louis. I ain't just talking about no bagman, I'm talking about swindles where you go in a certain place of business an' if we don' get five cents the coppers will come around and shut the house dis way," meaning they'll close the business down.

"Give us a for-instance — like what jurisdictional area?"

"I'll give ya a taste but dat's it until I see the thing come together for me. Awright, would you believe Metro East?"

And it went on like that for a while and the big boys took him away for bigger and better things, and Leech told Eichord about it. They were both tired. First thing they got off on "what's the worst thing you've ever seen" stories, and Leech told his, which was the old lady that committed suicide with an ax. Eichord said he didn't believe it and Leech told him,

"Emmis, my man, she was a stout old gal about eighty years old, big heavy old gal with arms like this, and she went nuts, got into it with her old man, and chopped his head off with an ax while he was dead-drunk. Doubt if he ever knew what hit him. Then she decided to kill herself."

"With the ax?"

"Exactly."

"Hey. Could I ax you a question?" a cop named Wunderlicht said, and they laughed. "How can you do it with an ax, slit your belly open?"

"Nope. She took hold of the handle with both hands like so, held it as far out as she could, and goes WWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAAAMMM-MMPPPPP! Right smack dead-center in her forehead. Right between the running lights."

"Bullshit."

"I got the fuckin' lab photos if you want to lay a ten on it. Jack. You can see it. She's still got a holt of it, and you can see the skull and that sucker is wedged in the brain real good, like a big ole ripe melon that busted open."

"This conversation has made me hungry. Let's go get some melons."

"Seriously, how can you —" And for ten minutes they lost themselves in a discussion of the ax weight, and the best way to hold an ax to kill yourself with it, and on and on like that.

Eichord knew cops. He liked them, too. He knew what made them tick. Why they were there and what it took to keep you sane on The Job. This kind of talk was just blowing off steam. It was a way to say. This dirt I live in, this filth that I work in, it's not real. It doesn't really touch me. It doesn't exist. Just words. At least this was the way he looked at it.

He listened to another cop, Pat Skully, talking about the time back when he was a narc and they raided a house and dead babies were everywhere. It was the worst he'd ever seen and there was no joking during the story. Two dealers had beat the cops to the pad, which was a shooting gallery for hypes. The woman who ran the house had four little kids ranging from a newborn baby to about six or so in age. When the narcs found them the dealers had killed all of them in a rage. The babies were flattened. As Skully started telling how it had been done, Eichord got up quietly and unobtrusively left the room.

Bud Leech caught him down on the street.

"Let's catch a buzz," Eichord said.

"Why not?" And they went in the nearest tavern and tilted a cold one each.

"The funniest thing about Rikla, you know, giving himself up today. I know this pervert from way back. I go back to when I was working in a little hick community and hearing horror stories about how Mr. G. ran St. Louis, an' these St. Louis ad vice guys were telling me all about this dude named Paul Rikla who was a chickenfucker. And I told them, You mean he liked little boys, like a chickenhawk. No, he liked fucking chickens.

"He had priors going back to this time they answered a disturbance call about some perv waggin' his wienie in this residential neighborhood. Man in a car nude, they hear. They investigate and there's this Coupe De Ville parked there, and the cops go up to it and shine the light in, and out of the Caddy hops Rikla, stone mother naked and carrying a butcher knife all covered in blood. This is a true story, by the way. He looked like he wanted to be shot real bad and he almost got his wish 'cause they damn near popped a cap on him when they saw him like that.

"Inside the car was the rest of the story. He has this beautiful young Syrian daughter, and she was with him in the front seat of the car, and the vehicle is covered in blood and feathers. Rikla would slice the head off of a chicken and daughter would take and jam the fowl's severed windpipe down on Daddy's cock-a-doodle-doo, and the headless bird would flop and bop him off."

"I —" Eichord started laughing before he could get it out.

"I swear, man. If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'."

"Oi. It's been a long day. Let's go get somethin' to eat and get outta here," he said, draining the last of his Light.

"Okay. Where you wanna eat?"

"Colonel Sanders?"

Eichord liked Bud Leech a lot. He was good people. Jack could imagine how much the incident of the lost tail would goad Leech every time he thought about it. He was a good cop and it could have happened to anybody. What Eichord didn't know was that very soon Bud Leech would acquit himself of his great sin.

But Jack's thoughts kept returning to that teaser from the very frightened Mr. Rikla. The "bullshit" story about a chief enforcer waging his own solitary vendetta. His SEE NO EVIL brainstorming and hunch-playing finally had the vestiges of a motive to chew on. One superkiller. What if they were dealing with a mad enforcer on a rampage?

They were on their way to chow and picked up the call on the two-way. Eichord knew what it was before he heard the word Russo in the clear. Multiple-shooting fatality. One male, two female Caucs down. Christ. The house had been under "loose surveillance," which meant that once an hour or so a scout car would slowly roll by, what they call a "boogie man." Wonderful.

Eichord knew he'd find Angelina and her mother dead. All the way out there be thought about the unpunished crimes. The crimes committed every day by land barons, police officials, network executives, union bosses, TV evangelists, petrochemical tycoons, political figureheads, automakers, commercial mavens — all the dirty, mendacious hypocrisy. The bush-wacking, degenerate, back-shooting no-good bullshit that people get away with. It kept his head busy till they got to the crime scene.

The killer had massacred the bodyguard, the maid, and Rosemarie Russo. No sign of forced entry. No sign of Angelina Russo.

A news reporter had phoned the archdiocese to inquire about the state of health of Auxiliary Bishop O'Consky, and while he was on the phone and they were chatting he happened to comment about the terrible thing — how awful for the lovely Russo family — he was a personal friend, and with James and Phillip taken like that, sure 'n' it would be so hard on the rest of the family. And the newsman seemed so unusually solicitous, the man on the other end told him how there was a special service being planned, and one thing led to another, and in the course of the conversation the caller discovered that the bishop had never actually met any of the Russo family, and one thing and another.

So when the bishop himself called from the archdiocese to inquire if he might come 'round tomorrow just to pay his respects to the Russo family, and give them some mementos of the deceased, also to show them some material that had been donated to the Cardinal Glennon College Seminary School, of course he'd be welcomed in and greeted by the grieving survivors, Mother and Daughter Russo.

"Dominus vobiscum," the good bishop whispered, crossing himself in his own special way as he made his way up the steps.

"Et cum spiritu —"

A passing motorist might have observed the bishop himself helping the exhausted and grief-stricken Angelina Russo down the steps and into a waiting vehicle. Ominous vobiscum.

Angelina, now hog-tied, gagged, blindfolded, weeping silently on the floor of the back seat, would be the next visitor to learn of the peculiarities of Spain's house. They traveled down a long, winding gravel road. The house was located on four lonely wooden acres.

Following the road, rather indifferently maintained county gravel, one reaches the end of the county's responsibilities. Winding past a small family cemetery with its overgrown headstones and massive, horrifying ironies, an old graveyard beginning to push up remnants of the long dead. Past the weed-choked graves in dark, deep thickets, where old bones are working their way toward the surface.

The last hundred yards of this dirt road becomes a mudhole in heavy rain. You want to make certain you're never caught out on this road in a rainstorm because should your vehicle bog down and you go to the nearest house for help, your gracious host may prove unpredictable. He might be witty, urbane, even comforting. All the amenities of telephone, warm fire, even a libation, might be offered.

The next few minutes might be uneventful. Simply a pleasant, comforting respite from the elements while you waited for a taxi or a tow truck or a friend. And then again, there could be minutes that would drag like days. Minutes that would plunge you down into an unspeakable world of sudden and exquisite pain. Because your host is two, very different, wildly unpredictable men.

Both of the men who call themselves Spain kill. But the second Spain, the one whose madness has taken him far out over the edge and flung him screaming down into the bloody nightmare of his psychoses, this Spain kills without reason.

These split halves of the killer live in that ordinary-looking brick residence by the side of the lonely, gravel road. Spain the psychotic. The cold-blooded, trained assassin who is killing in a blood lust of revenge. The Spain who plots to take Ciprioni and Dagatina down. The one whose kills are premeditated. Carefully prepared.

Then the other half. Even more dangerous because he kills from some unknown, dark, and motiveless wellspring. Taking human lives at random. Lashing out without cause or fear of consequences, murdering blindly, spurred by some psychotic fountainhead that has burst within his soulless center.

Here, in the house that had heard the tortured screams of Blue Kriegal, the house of Ben Lowenstein's final agonies, in a murder laboratory less than two yards wide, this is where Angelina Russo's blindfold is removed. And the first thing she sees is the face of the smiling madman, and behind him the bloody wall of the charnel in which she now awaits his pleasure. And the split halves of Spain silence her scream in a steely-fingered grip telling her, "Now now now now now. There now," in his soft, measured speech, "there, there now. Calm down. You could wake the dead." And her tears flow and, angry now, she forces the crying to stop and spits in his face. And she knows she is dead and only hopes it will be quick and merciful as she says to herself. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of . . . And she sees him laughing as he carefully wipes her spittle from him and says to her, "You should meet my wife. You and Pat have a lot in common. Perhaps later. Yes, very soon, in fact, I'll let you say hello to Mary Pat. And you and the bitch can talk over your mutual interests. She has a great thirst ... for companionship. And she's dying to meet you." And he chuckles again and asks her, "Do you believe in demons?" And her throat is very dry now and a faintness is coming over her like an ocean wave and he says, "Would you be surprised to learn that I am what you would call in your quaint underworld patois a worker? That I was your society's chief enforcer for many years? That I was the cutting edge of your Capo di Tutti Capi and never in all the contracts went shy? Never. Would you be surprised to know that succubi transfuse me while I sleep? Do you believe in magic?" And he touched her then and she fainted.

"Did you have a nice rest?"

"You crazy face da borco —"

He slapped her viciously and spoke in his soft tones. "You can make this hard, you know. Very hard. And your life will end for you in a soundless and tongueless scarlet sheet of awful, mind-mangling pain. Say hello to me missus."

"Hu — hello." The point of a knife was touching her throat. She imagined a trickle of blood.

"Say, Hello, Mary Pat."

"Hello, Mary Pat." She knew this was it. It didn't matter what he said to her. She could see the insanity and death in his hooded eyes.

"If you do as I say I will let you live. Otherwise, I will let her slake her thirst on you here —" He penetrated and she fought back a scream. "And here." Angelina cried out in pain.

"Now do as I ask or Mary Pat will SLICE AND CARVE AND TEAR UNTIL YOU ARE ANYTHING BUT RECOGNIZABLE, YOU GUINEA SLUT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

"Yes."

"Good." He moved out of her vision for a moment and she heard a clicking noise and he held a piece of paper on it with a typed message. "Read exactly what it says. If you fuck with me Mary Pat will rend the side of your face into pumping, dripping shreds of bloody meat." His icy calm was more frightening than the screaming. She read as he held the small microphone to her mouth: " 'I am alive and well. You must do as I say. Dagatina m-mus' die. Here is what you mus' do if you want me to live.' " She had read almost all of the message before it occurred to her what she was reading. She figured the lunatic would play this for Joey, her older brother, to convince him to whack out the old man. Even then, she kept reading. Angelina did not want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.

It actually began with the most unlikely of sources, the one and only BeBop Rutledge, and a conversation between Bud Leech and his snitch along the lines of, "You gotta help me, man, this ain't FAIR."

"Life's a trade, BeBop. You gotta give to get."

"I gave till it hurt, man. I come right to ya with it."

"You ain't give us shit."

"Murder fucking one."

"You're goin' down behind that righteous coke bust and we both know it. I can't go to MY boss and get somethin' for you with no better'n this. I mean, I can talk to Her Honor for ya, but you want some heavy-duty clout you got to gimme. You got to bring some to get some."

"I didn't SEE the fucker. Just that second or two in that funky light from the goddamn EXIT sign. I don't think I'd know the dude if I bumped into him."

"That's a shame, BeBop. Dig it, my man: the lieutenant's got him a SLIDE into Wilma Smith. I mean, if you could really think, put your shit down tight for it and give us a better sketch. Shit, The Man would start talkin' and you'd start walkin'."

"Aw, man. I guess I could sit down with the dude again. Whatsisname with the drawings."

"Weyland. Yeah. That's it, my man, you need to sit down with the dude again. Concentrate. Think real hard. Maybe he'll come back to ya." So it was that, fuliginous visibility notwithstanding, a refined Identikit got put together. Sort of. More or less. The more BeBop thought about Judge Smith stomping his grapes the better his retroactive vision became. He saw the light so to speak. And there is no vision with greater clarity than 20-20 hindsight.

With the exception of Eichord, perhaps held in check by the powerful fabric of SEE NO EVIL intuition, only the wise guys still worked to nail a lone assassin. The cops themselves appeared to no longer be interested or concerned with the mad enforcer — only that the thing, whatever it was, be contained from escalating into wide-open gang warfare throughout the inner families and ethnic fringe factions.

"The Two Tonys gang is a fuckin' memory," Eichord heard one cop tell another, "and that means you know what."

"Turf up for grabs."

"Fuckin' A." It was times like these when a couple of defecting gunmen could start all-out war by themselves — never mind the "lunatic chief enforcer" theory. But Jack did not share their preoccupation. He listened quietly as they talked.

"Russo torched the old man, right? So what have you got here? You got a power thing from the inside." Sally Dago! The madman had managed to reach inside the prison walls. Soak the old man with oiled gasoline and torch him in his cell. Joey Russo righteous for it.

To Eichord it was so clearcut now. The enforcer had kidnapped Angelina. Somehow got through to the brother in the slams: either hit the old man or your sister dies. Some scenario along those lines. She'd told him how close they were. The watcher had been watching. Had he also been listening? Anybody with this level of skills would find audio surveillance little more than child's play.

Jack pulled Leech aside. "How can I get to Tony Cypriot?"

"You tell me and we'll both know." Leech laughed. Jack just looked at him. "You're serious. Okay. I doubt if you can. Why?"

"I just want to get a message to him. On the telephone. How would I call him?"

"He'd never talk to you. You'd have to go through a million underlings. Shit. It'd take a week."

"I don't got a week. How can I reach the man? Think."

"If you had something he wanted. You could get one of his top people to get the word to him, I suppose. Maybe somebody in New York." Leech sounded very unsure about it. Like it was a total timewaster.

"Humor me," Jack said to the big man. "Who would be somebody could reach Cypriot right now? Rikla?"

"Fuck, no." Leech laughed. He thought for a moment. The wheels turned. "Okay. There's a guy who's inside. Serving a twenty-to-life. If he thought it was in The Man's interest. You know."

"Can you get a message to him quietly?"

"Does Oscar Peterson sweat."

"Oscar Peterson? Oh, yeah, the guy plays basketball for Cincinnati?"

"He could play it if you'd hum a few bars."

"Okay. Hum a few bars of this: tell him to get word to Tony Cypriot. Jack Eichord has something to sell the godfather. He can give 'em the man they want. Tell him that I want the scum dead and I'm afraid if we bust him he'll end up walking. Some high-priced legal talent will plead him fruitcake and he'll be back on the street. If Cypriot wants him handle it through me personally. Him to me. Tell him to call me. I'll do all the talking. He can listen and make up his mind. That — or the man he wants to nail so bad keeps waging war."

Now it was Leech's turn to just stare. "He'll never buy it," he said finally. "No fuckin' way."

And of course he didn't. Not for a second. But within twenty-four hours he was on a telephone in Eichord's ear.

"Don't waste my time. Whatd'ya REALLY want?"

"It's not what I want. It's what you're going to do. You're going to go pack a few things — don't take much because you don't have a whole lot of time. Get on a plane or your private jet or whatever, and fly back here. I'm going to put you in custody. For your protection."

Cypriot began laughing uproariously. Roaring, hysterical guffaws. Eichord waited him out.

"Oh, shit," he said, catching his breath. "I haven't had a laugh like that in weeks. Christ. Oh. You're all right. That's funny. Hey, listen. I got to go now and —"

"HOLD IT! You put this monster on the street for the Council or Committee or whatever you assholes call it. Do you have any idea what the other families will do if I get the word to them that YOU were responsible for all these kills within the organization?" He didn't hear any more giggling. "Your ass will be grass." When Jack Eichord wanted to seriously threaten somebody his soft-spoken tone hardened into a razor-blade edge, and when he opened the floodgates and let all his poison pour out in a hot, acid gush, you'd better not be downhill.

"Forget about it," Cypriot said disdainfully.

"Forget about it, huh? If you don't cooperate with me and come under our protection ... I go right to the dons. I'll tell 'em what I know about your chief enforcer and how you fucked this up." Eichord was winging it now. "And by next week there won't be enough of you left to fill a fucking shoe box. Now you gonna cooperate or what?"

Any other time and Gaetano Ciprioni would probably have told this no-dick cop to go fuck his mother. But he'd just had the sad and awful chore of canceling out one of his great friends and one of the company's most trusted vice presidents. The Russo kid had got word to him about the hit. What should he do? he wanted to know. Ciprioni knew that Spain knew — he WAS the godfather, the REAL godfather, to Angelina Russo. No way he'd let her be killed for the old man. So he passed the word back for Russo to do it. He hated to do it. Helluva thing. But sometimes you had to cut your losses. "Go ahead," he said. "Tell him to burn him."

Then they'd finally run down Troxell, the two-bit, whorehouse mouse of a shamus back in Cleveland or Cincy or wherever the fuck he was. Found out about Spain's daughter. Run that back to its origin points. Ultimately this whole fucking grab-ass began to make some sense. Of all people to go over the edge. Spain. He shook his head as he thought about what he should do — and in those few extra seconds he listened to the cop he'd ordinarily have hung up on as he told him, "I know a way to set this guy up but I have to know all about him and how this happened. If you cooperate with me I can guarantee we can get Angelina Russo back, number one, I can guarantee your safety, and I guarantee you we'll take this lunatic down." The more the cop talked the more Ciprioni thought it might work, against all his instincts. Who'd ever believe THIS shit — he smiled humorlessly — the cops an' ME on the same fucking side!

Eichord cinched the deal with some clever tap dancing about the charges that could be brought to bear in the ex-Mrs. Pat Spain, and a general amnesty number, and one thing and another that he thought he played by ear rather well. But long before Tony Cypriot could pack a bag Eichord had talked to the PI in Ohio about his client, and he was back on the phone to The Man.

"One thing I need day before yesterday," he told Cypriot, "is that film."

"What film?"

"What film? The film of Spain's kid. The snuff movie. I need it NOW."

"That's no problem," the man told him, and he called and had two prints on Eichord's desk before you could say "Anytime you're ready, C.B."

And not a minute too soon, either.

Jack Eichord was the official greeter when Cypriot arrived on his company's private Lear. Two bodyguards got off first and Eichord was surprised they didn't fit the usual defensive-left-tackle and nose-guard stereotype. Both were small men, extremely professional, and — like Tony Cypriot — looked like business-men but with a hard edge.

The man himself was distinguished-looking. A natty dresser in a two-thousand-dollar topcoat over quiet Savile Row banker's gray.

"What's he for?" he said to Eichord as a police photographer flashed a bulb at him.

"Publicity." Eichord told him about the setup he was planning. At first Ciprioni balked but it was too late to back out.

Jack said, "I give you the same guarantee as on the phone. We'll take this maniac down and you'll skate clear of your problem." He would be nice and safe in his bulletproof long johns. "He won't hurt you. I promise."

The snitch's Identikit composite had brought forth nothing from the St. Louis area realtors. Cops had been ringing the doorbells at motels, hotels, rooming houses, trying everything from trailer parks to camp-grounds, anywhere they thought there might be a possible trail. Nothing.

Ciprioni looked at the sketch in the car and nodded. "That's him okay, but you can't tell shit from the likeness." He started talking about the hooded eyes and the differently shaped forehead and nose and Eichord promised a touch-up from Weyland, as he visualized the SEE NO EVIL face in the airport gift shop in L.A.

As soon as Mel Troxell had run it all down for him he knew the man Spain was the one. It all fit together, and the killings of a couple of innocents along the way proved Eichord's hybrid theory. Spain was a maniacal schizoid assassin. One deadly and dangerous manhunter who had gone insane.

Ciprioni said quietly, "If that crazy fuck has hurt Angelina I wanna whack him myself," and Eichord thought he'd never heard the transitive verb "whack" as often as he had since he'd started on this investigation. Back home when you got whacked out it was on PCP.

"You know your attorneys have already okayed your deal. You've got complete, unilateral amnesty. So I got a question. The "Eyeball Murders" in L.A. . . . did your, uh, council order them?"

"Nah." Cipriona exhaled. "That's their country out there. Who knows from fucking California." He wouldn't give him anything extra. "That's somebody playing games with the eyes. Like sending the dolls with the pins in the throat. That's all Mustache Pete bullshit. We don't play that way."

"Was this Frank Spain's work?"

"Ehhh" — he shrugged —"who knows? He didn't always clip the numbers himself, ya know? He'd control the job. Hire the workers himself. That's the way he liked to work."

Jack fed the St. Louis area media a juicy photo story on the infamous "Godfather" Tony Cipriot who'd been placed under official police protection. He gave it to some key media friends around the country such as Letty Budge, who would give it lots of ink and mileage. He knew there was no guarantees that Spain read papers or watched television or turned on radios. But the word was also all over the street. Eichord had Gaetano Ciprioni. The man who, more than any other, could be considered ultimately responsible for the kiddie-pom business and therefore the torture and death of Tiff Spain.

Troxell the PI, who'd already been "debriefed" by the mob, had taken Eichord back along the trail of the Dawkins and Nunnaly plan to turn Tiff out as a pros. Met Troxell told him about the boy Nunnaly being killed in a traffic accident. About the missing Dawkins kid's probable fate, the disappearance of the daughter, and the why and wherefore of her death.

Eichord had put Jeeter Oliver to work. Jeeter was the cop shop's guy who handled anything related to motion-picture film, surveillance videos, and similar materials. Eichord was setting up his game in several different locations. Just in case. A couple of extra face cards in the deck, in case of . . . well, just in case. He'd pick locations where he thought Spain might be comfortable. Places he might trust again.

The Special Division had come alive with activity. Realtors and land owners and renters and managers all over the greater St. Louis area were being shown the newly revised revision of the Frank Spain sketch, which Eichord had presented to Bud Leech saying, "What's his name — Rebop? Your snitch?"

"Yeah — BeBop. Yeah?"

"Flaky little fucker's RIGHTEOUS. And give yourself a raise, by the way."

Eichord patted the big fellow on the back and strode briskly back to his temporary desk, leaving Leech scratching his head and saying, "A raise — what the hell is a RAISE?" But Jack hadn't seen that wide a smile from him in a while.

Eichord was taking care of the million and one loose ends that suddenly loomed large on his horizon. Checking out final details of his trap with Chief Adier, through the good offices of Victor Springer, playing it by the book now as he tried to think of everything. Stay one jump ahead. He had the last survivors of the Dagatina family picked up. He had people surveil Pat Spain's insurance hustler, the Dawkins and Nunnaly houses, everybody that manpower would allow. Covering the bases.

No sooner than the pictorial coverage of Tony Cipriot splashed onto the front pages than the switchboard plugged a call into the division and Springer was screaming at Jack, "RUN!"

And Eichord came tearing down the hall and picked up the phone on the lieutenant's desk, conscious of the ubiquitous Realistic recorder plugged into a telephone adapter jack, the machine taping every breath and utterance as he said, "Hello."

"This the cop in charge of the gang-related assassinations?" Eichord made the voice instantly and his flesh crawled the moment he heard the distinctively enunciated, oddly precise speech pattern.

"Yep. And you must be the one and only Frank Spain, right?"

"Very clever. So what?"

"I was hoping we could make some sort of a deal. You know we're not altogether unsympathetic to your situation. Who cares if some worthless vermin get wasted? We're on your side, believe it or not." He could hear his own voice selling too hard.

The very measured, precisely calm tones in his ear saying, "I have no idea how stupid you are personally so I can only offer what I feel is sound advice and hope you take it. What you do not want to do is to bullshit me, can you comprehend this?" The voice overly precise. Frighteningly cool.

"I meant it about the vermin," Eichord said in his quietest tone. "We've got Ciprioni. We'd consider a trade for the innocent woman if we had certain assurances."

"Will you take a fucking cab?" Spain snorted. "You're either an idiot or you think I am to fall for such silly shit. Either way you're about to lose. What's your name — Officer Oehlert?"

"Eichord. But no, I don't think you're an idiot. I just think we have something mutually —"

"Whoa. Save us both time. Let me cut through. You have some barren, pitiful scheme to entrap me. Okay," he sighed audibly, "I know you have people at the phone company matching pairs and so on. Tell them to forget all that. I've been doing this for a lot longer than they have. By the time you figure out where I'm calling from I'll be long gone. You'll offer to swap that garbage you have in custody for the little lady. You have SWAT and tactical people ready and when I show up I get arrested. The music swells. You get the girl and ride off into the sunset, and the closing credits roll. I've SEEN those shows. No."

"Don't you think I know it is impossible for local fuzz to swap out live bodies?" Eichord started to answer but he said, "Put all that sophomoric DRECK out of your head. You with me?"

"Well, I don't know ..."

"Give it a rest." Spain laughed coldly. "CIA, now maybe THOSE assholes swap people but you guys don't. Well. So why I called you is, I'm going to tell you why your plan won't work and why you will do precisely what you just claimed. Why you WILL give me the scum Ciprioni. Because if you don't several more innocent people will die, not the least of whom is the buxom Miss Russo. Who, by the way, is not doing well at all. If I don't get what I want I don't believe she's going to pull through." Laughing again. For the first time Eichord thought the caller sounded crazy.

"I just went into a grocery store and left a calling card. It's one of those old-time pineapple grenades from World War Two. People buy them for paperweights. Only this one isn't inert. It has the powder and the goodies and a nice short fuse. It's behind a stack of canned peaches or something — I forget what. It's just an illustration of one of my larger, uh, ideas. It's the IGA store on Olive. Also, I've shoved a couple of pineapples down into the cushions at Bielerman's furniture."

And the cops listening to him give an address took off as Springer nodded and pantamimed, GO.

"See. I pull the pins, put the rings in my pocket, walk out nice 'n' easy. Somebody goes in and sits down on a sofa or pulls the wrong can of peaches off the shelf, or opens the wrong dresser drawer and — BA BOOM!"

"Where did —"

"I WANT you to find these, see. I mean, I know you guys are thick so I'm trying to teach you what it will be like. The same only different.

"Not pineapples next time. Something better. Not little shaped charges of explosives to take out one or two people but big surprises for lots of people. That's the sort of legacy I'll leave behind before I show up for any swap.

"I realize even I cannot predict the behavior of bureaucrats, not to mention imbeciles, so it's entirely possible you might attempt to sandbag me in spite of what you'll find at the grocery and furniture stores. The cop mentality being what it is. If that should be the case I will have left behind suitable payment. You will have deprived me of my vengeance, and I will have retaliated with commensurate force. Convey this to your superiors. If they try to outwit me by capturing me, all of us lose — and for what? For the life of that human garbage Ciprioni.

"Since you know me you also must know that in my field I am considered the best there is. As a professional you can appreciate what that means. So you understand that if I tell you I know demolition — let's say — inside out, you know I speak the truth."

"I understand."

"I hope so. You'll cost a lot of loss of life if you don't. I have considered how I would be treated after capture. I am a sophisticated and experienced man. I will have taken pains to . . . Well, what's the point of belaboring this. You'll either believe me or your actions will cause many, many persons to die unnecessarily. If I don't have Ciprioni handed over to me tonight, those deaths will be on the police's hands, and I have sent a brief summary of this situation to certain inquiring minds in the media. I think you'd be well advised to cooperate."

"Obviously," Eichord said, "I'm going to have to talk to the people in charge. But I think I can say with some certainty that we'll be reasonable. We want to avoid any more bloodshed."

"That's nice. But if it turns out to not be the case — or if your superiors don't believe me — I'll be glad to blow up a few dozen people just to show you I'm for real."

"Come on, Mr. Spain. You know you don't want to do that. I'm sure we'll find a way to give you what you want. Ciprioni is nothing to us — just one more hoodlum."

"Just stress that his life isn't worth the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. That should do the trick. But, if not —"

"I think it will."

"Tell them if my instructions aren't carried out, if you fail to bring that garbage to me tonight, I will begin a series of executions that will turn this town upside down and inside out. I'll begin taking lives in the most terrible and spectacular ways. Remember — if you need proof you'll get it, and lots of it."

"When you say bring him to you tonight, what did you have in mind?"

"What did I have in mind? I just told you — bring me Ciprioni. Period."

"I mean, where did you want him brought? We'll gladly comply with whatever precautions you might want to take to ensure your personal safety if we make the trade you propose —"

"It's YOUR personal safety you'd better concern yourself with, you understand?"

Leech signaled him no — meaning the tap had turned out to be another phone which Eichord knew would be the case.

"Absolutely."

"We'll trade tonight. At midnight. You bring me Ciprioni and I'll guarantee not to kill again if I'm not threatened. Also I'll turn the Russo twat loose when our deal is consummated. If you cross me or try to capture me or you don't have the scumwad with you — a lot of people will have the bad luck to become very fucking dead."

"You won't be double-crossed. Where do you want to meet, assuming we can go the deal."

"I don't give a shit. It can be in the damn police station for all I care. Remember — my legacy of death depends on your giving me what I want. You take me out and you've removed the key to keeping lots of people alive. The, uh, legacy is such that even if you had the locations you couldn't, let's say, disarm the items."

"Where do I call you when I find out if we can do the trade?"

"Pathetic!" Spain laughed again. His laugh was not a thing of humor but of madness and rage. "I'll call you, Mr. Eichord. And tell your bosses, don't forget, if you screw with me I'll also be forced to deal with Miss Russo in the harshest and most permanent manner — she'll be one more death you've caused."

"I'm sure we'll go the trade. The bosses won't like it but you haven't left them much choice."

"Whichever. I'll be phoning back soon so you don't have much time. Don't be stupid." He saw the auto-stop kick the tape off as the telephone receiver clicked.

"Well," Springer said, "how about them apples?"

"Yeah. Well. I read it as pure bullshit."

"Jack, you think he's bluffing about the bombs?"

"I think we'll find the grenades. But no. It's bullshit. He's a sicko. And he's good. A pro. He thinks he's invulnerable now. He didn't even bother to lie convincingly. That was all bullshit about him writing letters to the papers."

"Yeah? You think?"

"Sure. The implied contradictions. One second he shows he knows how we work, implies we respond to media pressure, then he runs the letter thing by us forgetting that if such letters were sent, they'd also tell the press we gave a mad killer a human sacrifice. He's just jerking himself off now. I think he knows we're going to take him down but the desire to smash out at Ciprioni, coupled with his guilt and mental illness, probably have brought him to this point."

"I hope you're right."

"He's crazy as a fucking loon, of course." Eichord wiped perspiration from his forehead. He moved his head from side to side and heard bones pop. "Hey, look at me — he's saying." Springer nodded glumly. " 'Course . . . " Jack added with a sly half-smile, "on the other hand I could be wrong."

"Wonderful. Fuckin' voon-der-bar."

Suddenly Eichord thought of eighteen things that could and probably would go wrong, ranging from the weather to Jeeter Oliver. He looked at a yellow legal pad in front of him and couldn't read anything he'd written. He wanted to take his notes and hand them to somebody and say, "Run these down to the lab."

He picked up the phone and put it down again. Went in and peed and sat back down at his desk. He thought of all the things that could go wrong that he HADN'T thought of before. He hoped the fault lines wouldn't crack apart and swallow him as the terra unfirma had threatened to do before. He hoped that it would rain on Spain and he'd fall mainly on the plain. He hoped that Jeeter would not get the jitters.

What could go wrong? EVERY fucking thing, that's all. Everything could go wrong. Eichord thought to himself, I can have a heart attack and bite it right now. That's what can go wrong. And he felt his palms turn damp, and he had a hot and unpleasant feeling inside his head, and out of nowhere he thought of Rita and realized that it was true what the sages wrote, that abstinence made the fond grow harder.

Time compressed like a drunk's afternoon and early evening, swirling fuzzily, and it was all gone and he could feel how cold he was and how hot his forehead felt as the time slogged on. The phone ringing stabbed like a knife wound. He had heard the phrase triple-take before but never seen one much less done one. He did a triple-take. He was starting to walk into the next office and his phone rang and his head came back then returned in the direction of the body movement, then corrected, then recorrected, then changed its mind — a little St. Vitus dance here on American Band-stand.

"Hello." His throat sounded like he'd been gargling Drano.

"Well?"

"Okay. They say you can have Ciprioni but they want assurances from you. What's to stop you from leaving time bombs anyway once you have what you want?"

"Nothing. If I was out to destroy the city. But if I was out to destroy the city the fucking city would be GONE, wouldn't it?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Brilliant. I've told you I won't kill anymore if you give me my dear friend for disposition. A deal's a deal. I can't bring my daughter back. I will have reached them all and dealt out the appropriate punishment." Eichord hoped that in the throes of his insanity he'd have forgotten that the police were holding Rikla under guard.

"Fine. I made a list of meeting places, do you want —"

"You want me to come there? I don't care. I've warned you what will happen if you try to take me down."

"Um. How about that theater where you were. The EGA they call it. I'll bring Tony Cypriot there at midnight if you'll assure me Angelina Russo will be there alive."

"Forget snipers and all that crap too, friend. Remember my precautions are no joke. I fall down go boom, EVERYBODY goes boom —" He chuckled mirthlessly. "You read me?"

"Right. I don't see a problem. Frankly, Mr. Ciprioni has no value to us. But Miss Russo is a civilian. She's no more tied to the family business than your daughter was tied to your work. We don't want to see another innocent hurt and I don't think you do either." He wondered if he'd gone too far. A pause and the voice had turned to stone. Cold and hard like a tombstone.

"You bring the scumbag. You personally."

"Okay."

"I see anybody else. First thing I do is I drop this Russo bitch like a real bad habit."

"All right. I'll be alone and I will have Mr. Ciprioni. See you inside the theater at midnight." The line went dead. First question he could decipher from the legal pad was, what if he's waiting outside? What if I can't get him inside? Hey, no fair, these are too tough for this late in the day. Also, that's two questions. But on another level he knew that Spain would go inside, or anywhere else. Confidence was in his tone of voice. And insanity.

Victor Springer looked like someone who'd just seen the Titanic go down, and everybody aboard owed him money.

"I'm not liking this much," he told Eichord.

"Umm."

"In fact, I don't like any part of it."

"I hear you. What he is about is punishment. He wants revenge. He's several bricks short of a load."

"He's also an expert, highly professional hit man, booby. He KILLS people. THAT'S what he's about." It was another negotiation. The lieutenant agreed to lose the tac unit, Eichord conceded to the backup and trace vans. Whatever other high-tech bullshit — just let him go in there and get it done.

The bomb squad had sent Leroys, which was what they called their expendable technicians — a bit of tongue-in-cheek cop wit — to find and secure the grenades in the two stores. They had been there as advertised.

McTuff had factored the probabilities and rated the situation as an assessed threat that was high but acceptable — to whom? Eichord was where the buck stopped, and he tried to think of an appropriate cliche.

"Sometimes you have to fish or cut bait," he said to nobody. He was going in. He'd been adamant about the loner thing. He told Springer, "You mount people on the rooftops, Spain eyeballs 'em, not only will we lose him he'll probably scope off the coppers too — just out of meanness. We gotta try to get in and play our hole card."

Gaetano Cipriano was not thrilled. And the less thrilled he got the closer the hour drew near. It looked for a bit like Eichord was going to have to cuff him to drag him into the EGA, but in the last minutes the man fell into a becalmed state.

Oddly enough, Eichord was quite unafraid. Relaxed. Getting out of the marked vehicle and stepping over the bright-orange tape, going into the EGA, where the police seal had been broken, the chain cut, walking in and around the box-office area, then stumbling with Ciprioni and both of them tripping over some-thing and a hoarse "SONOFABITCH!" escaping in-vol-untarily as they found themselves staring down the center aisle into the blinding flashlight of the killer Spain.

"You scumwad," Spain said,

"Hold it, Frank, at least listen to my side," The Man began pleading.

"This is for what your filth did to my little girl," he said, and Ciprioni screamed at Eichord, "Come on, COME ON GODDAMMIT DO SOMETHING WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR —"

"Whatsa matter, MISTER Ciprioni," Spain said, and laughed that non-laugh of his.

"YOU LOUSY FUCK. YOU SAID I'D BE SAFE. YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN'T LET HIM HURT ME."

Spain thumbed back the hammer on his piece and Eichord said, "I lied," and jumped into the darkness as Spain blasted the life out of the man who was his mentor, Gaetano Ciprioni. Hidden somewhere in the recesses of what was once a projection booth Jeeter Oliver keyed the machine and a blinding stab of bright, yellow light tore through the darkness, the screen lighting up white as a huge image of Spain's daughter filled the back of the tiny theater with movement and a man's voice said something about " — displeasing me, you cunt —" and Eichord is in the two-handed grip and the Semi-Weaver stance and carefully squeezes. Drawing down not altogether reluctantly on the totally mad Frank Spain.

A thousand boxes of police shell casings and high-power load attest to the practice that brings him to the firing line in this thirty-minute second. That is how long it seems, conservatively, the next second takes to tick by. It is a second he will relive again and again in bad daymares, as he kicks himself for his failure and the "what-iffing" you always do when things like this happen.

The hammer begins to drop and Jack sees it very clearly, seeing it fall slowly toward the pin as he steadies controls grips the Smith & Wesson firearm just so, rigid but not too staff, by the numbers, easy squeezy bang, and when the bang sounds, close like this, in the filth and decay of the old theater with this foul, deranged killer at point-blank range, it will be like Spain's gunshot into the head of Tony Cypriot. It will be a cartoon bang, a comicbook POW, where it requires an entire panel of artwork to phoneticize that concussive, ear-shattering, close-up explosion, and Eichord remembers every second of this, all of it, each detail as he freezes the awful hammer fall.

Some people can do that. They can stop time. When they are very frightened or nervous or both. When they want to put off that terrible moment that they know is just around the corner they simply put on the brakes and go. Hold it! Slow down, there, time. And they nail time's shoes to the floor and nothing moves. No second hand sweeps. Nothing ticks or toes. It all slows, drags down to a stop, and they refuse to allow it to pass through their frightened, apprehensive space. And Jack Eichord stopped it then. And he had to breathe, unfortunately, so he started time up again and let it go and watched the damn hammer fall.

Point-blank. As up close and personal as it gets and still, as the saying goes, you have to go ahead and putt it out. It ain't ever a gimmee. And you see the target fine, right there over that sight, but the thing is — shit, you can see how he's got the Russo girl. Holding her so close. Why worry, though? What hardened, practiced, supermacho cop ever missed at this range? Right? Right.

W R O N G, bourbon breath.

And now, a woman he really didn't care that much about, this stranger was depending on his skill and his coolness under pressure, and this was the frozen beat of stop-time he'd relive again and again, reddening anew each time he played it back.

What you do is you bring the top of the I, the blade, up into the U. And when me top of the I fills the U with the sight right there on your bull's-eye you stare a hole at your target and squeeze 'er off. What you don't want to do is move and what you especially NEVER want to do is blink or squint one eye shut like they do on TV.

And a thousand boxes of cop rounds ROUNDS YOU BUY, ole buddy, no they don't furnish you bullets, you BUY every damn one of those expensive babies you blast out there on the range, and every one of fifty thousand rounds or whatever astronomical number he'd run through the barrel of that Smith over the years, every one of them went right out the fucking window as he squinted or a tic pulled his left eye shut Christ make up some lame bullshit he MISSED HE FUCKING MISSED and it was the bang of a Red Ryder Daisy B-B gun and Spain was down almost breaking her neck as he dragged his human shield down behind the dirty theater seats, crawling toward his detonator as he screamed at Eichord, "YOU'RE DEAD YOU LUMP OF STUPID SHIT YOU'RE A FUCKING DEAD MAN AND YOU CAN WATCH THIS WOP CUNT DIE NOW TOO," and more that Jack could never really remember hearing.

He could only remember his breathing and the sound of the gunshot as Spain fired one at him over the seats my God it was the comic-book BLAM POW CRAKKKKKKK he'd been waiting for and it sounded like a cannon going off. They may sound small when you miss but when somebody fires one at you. Jack ole pal, it sounds like Nagasaki going off in your head and his breathing so loud, so hyper, going "haaaaaannnnnnnngggggggghhhhh, haaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnngggghhhh," hunkered down flat against the grime-coated cold stone floor, so afraid, and the bright, awful, evil streak that came with the loud noise crashing into the steel and cushion beside him and he could never recall a moment when he'd been so frightened and he wanted to pray and he knew there was no time now. Now, now when he needed to stop time, it wouldn't stop for him, and that lunatic sonofabitch was dragging the Russo woman away firing off another snapped shot at Eichord and Jack knew he had to do something and oh-God-oh-Jesus, he prayed he wouldn't be shot. He was afraid. He didn't want to die. It was like in combat. All you cared about was living. Surviving. Fuck 'em all. Be on MY side, God.

You 'n' me, okay? And with that the man upstairs played Eichord's ace for him.

And he made himself come up as the little girl on the screen screamed again, and audio was up and it was loud by the ancient, cobwebbed speakers, and she saved Eichord and the Russo woman when Belmonte stabbed the metal thing into her eye and she screamed the awful scream of pain and death screaming at her father, "DADDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEE!" as he looked toward the noise, looking up at the hell of his daughter's tormentor blinding and killing her then the screams are not of a father gone mad but of a tortured animal at the cracking point and in that instant of mind-shattering recognition and agony Eichord raises his weapon in the old-fashioned way, raising the gun with one hand, squeezing the trigger, carefully taking the killer out. And the screaming of the woman and the man and perhaps Eichord and the echo of the weapons deafening blast all die as the screen returns to a blank glare, the projector — like Jack Eichord — running on empty. And a man who was once named Frank Spanhower lays rapidly dying.

Eichord sees his lips move and hears a whisper and he drops down making sure the killer holds no knife or gun and he asks him, "Please. Were there any time bombs? You don't want innocent people to die as your little girl did. Did you hide bombs?" and leaning in close to hear the stammered whisper, "M-m-m-m-ma-ma-ma-ma-" as his life force ebbs completely. And he could have been saying anything. Mary Pat. Mama. Merry Christmas. And Eichord took the woman and put his arm around her and started back toward the street and the real world.

He couldn't make it to the bar for the obligatory two beers and the camaraderie and that wasn't like him. He knew he just didn't dare. Not tonight. He was afraid the first time somebody congratulated him he'd either cold-cock them or dive into a water glass full of Daniel's. Or maybe both, and not necessarily in that order.

The lean, mean coppers of the Special Division notwithstanding, St. Louis was typical of the police departments around the country that were, collectively, out of shape. New and stringent physical requirement minimums would mean a lot of good cops might no longer make the cut. But it was probably for the best. Fewer heart attacks would be an obvious positive benefit.

Eichord was getting too old for this shit. He went home and sat on the edge of his bed. Got up and turned on the television. Sat back down. Got up and turned it off again. Got in bed and covered his head. He stayed like that until about two in the morning when he woke up soaked in perspiration and shaking in fear. He was consumed by paranoia for a few minutes, totally disoriented, with the awful, nagging fear that the night had been a bad dream and that the one called Spain was out there in the night waiting for him. He turned on all the lights like a little kid, made himself a strong cup of coffee, and called Rita.

"I'm sorry to call like this. I need to see you." She told him to come on over and he went out the door half-dressed. By the time he got there he was a little less paranoid but still a bit shaky. She'd heard on the news earlier but she didn't ask him too much about it, for which he was grateful, and he crawled in bed with his sleepy-headed lady and they kissed a few times. Rita giving him nice, warm kisses to which he was not responding. And he held her close with his lips by her ear and said, "Hi, you."

"Hi, yourself," she said back to him, letting him squeeze her.

"Just tonight — I, uh, just let me hold you."

"Okay. Let's just snuggle."

And they did and finally he went to sleep with her like that, holding her in his arms, his face in her soft, silky hair.

Sometime around dawn he woke up again, still holding her, and he whispered, "Hi, you."

And Rita said, "Hi, yourself," in a very tiny voice full of sleep.

And he asked her, "Are you awake?"

And she told him, "Yes. I think so. Are you?"

"Yes."

And they got each other uncuddled for a second and Eichord tried to rub some feeling back into his arms, and then they kissed some more, but hotly this time, and he finally said to her, "I want romance and I want it now," and she understood.

And it was comfortable and surprising and velvety and viscerogenic, and you know how it is. Even when it's bad it's fabulous.