Savant

9

The telephone in Elaine Roach's apartment had the bell position muted to its lowest point, but still she jumped when it rang.

"Hello," she said.

"Miss Roach, this is Tommy Norville."

"Oh, yes, sir!" Her voice brightened. One of the boss's infrequent phone calls.

"Well, how did the first auction night go?" he asked, with just a hint of sibilant simper and pseudo-world-weary petulance in his voice.

"Very well. Sir—I'm glad you called and I certainly hope you won't be angry with me but I—uh—had to take the phone off the hook at two-thirty A.M. I just couldn't stay awake any longer. I hope it's all right?" He could hear the nervousness and fear in her scratchy voice.

"Of course, it's all right. You mean you were still getting calls as late as that?"

"Oh, yes, sir. I think they must have tried to phone me all night, for when I put the phone back on this morning at seven-thirty, it rang instantly. A man in California said he'd been dialing and getting a busy signal all night long."

"Hmm. Amazing!" he said through fat pursed lips.

"Of course, I didn't tell any of the ones who phoned this morning that I took the telephone off the hook last night."

"Well," the effeminate-sounding man told her, "you certainly didn't get much sleep." He wanted to ask about the auction response but he decided he'd go gently. "Perhaps tonight you could retire earlier, Miss Roach. And then, of course, you'll have a couple of weeks to recuperate before the next round of telephone calls."

"Yes, sir. Oh, by the way, you might want to know that we had many calls on one of the items, Mr. Norville. Number forty-one? The cased dueling pistols that belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?"

"Oh?" He kept the interest out of his tone. "Did they fetch a decent price?"

"Oh, yes, sir! The highest bid was from a man in New York who bid $24,500 for them."

"Pardon?" He had to make a noise that sounded like a loud cough, and he covered up the mouthpiece of the phone while he laughed. He loved making fools of the monkey people.

"A man in New York bid twenty-four thousand five hundred for them. And we had about two dozen bids on that item. Next to number forty-one item number three was the most popular, it appears—" Then she began to give him an accounting of the telephone auction. He let her ramble on for a while.

"That sounds excellent, Miss Roach. And you emphasized we would need cashier's checks or money orders, did you not?"

"Yes, sir. And I told them we had to be in receipt of payment within ten days as per the stipulation in our printed terms. Everyone said they would comply. Several persons wanted to know when their items would be sent out, and I reminded them that you will notify all winners within one week, and that it will take about two weeks to process the winning remittances, so with packing time one could safely say approximately six weeks from the time their remittance is sent." She was maddeningly pedantic and precise in spelling out everything she'd enunciated or done in the last twenty-four hours, but that was exactly what he'd wanted. Nothing would reassure a mail-order customer more than a nice, long phone conversation with somebody as obviously straight as Elaine Roach.

He realized that it was doubtful anyone would be writing him a certified check for $24,500, not for a sight-unseen item from an auction with whom they'd had no prior business, but if her figures were any indication, he knew that his war treasury would soon be healthy again.

Daniel Bunkowski had no interest in profit for money's sake, but he had a need for operational funds, and the response to his first mail-order auction had been satisfactory. As soon as he'd notified all the winning bidders of their good fortune, he'd be ready to resume the so-far-fruitless search for his foster mother of years past, Mrs. Nadine Garbella, for whom payback was long overdue.

Kansas City, Kansas, 1958

Little Danny Boy waits, hurting, fearful, trembling from the anticipation of what terror awaits him as much as from the cold. He huddles in the closet with Gem, the little dog who is his only companion. The closet is cold, pitch black, foul with the stench of urine. This is where the Snake Man often makes him stay. He and the dog huddle together for warmth and companionship. His small, plump fingers curl in the mongrel's matted hair and he strokes the dog gently, whispering to it reassuringly with his mind.

The most recent welts have begun to scab up now, and he hopes he will not be whipped. Pain is only part of it, he realizes in some undeveloped pocket of his mind. There is the sense of dread that chills him. It is easily as difficult to bear as the physical abuse and pain, although his child's thoughts do not consciously make such distinctions.

For a time he called it the Dog Boy, but once the Snake Man called him that, and now he calls it Jim, which—later—he will misspell. Typical of his strange mental capacity, he will retain the spelling of a word—the one that means "precious stone or jewel." Because the two words sound much the same to his ears, he spells the proper noun G-E-M. Later he will learn that the word means "something that is prized for its great beauty." It will be an appropriate name for this dog, which he regards as a beautiful animal. He prizes it above all else, this young child who doesn't know an antonym from a homonym, his gem of a dog, and now he hears the threatening voice of the hated Snake Man and he and the pup both tremble at the sound.

To whom will he appeal? He has pleaded with Mrs. Garbella a thousand times and her answer is to give him more of the same, or—if she is too tired to lash out at him—laughter, which can sting almost as much as a switch, when it is the court of final resort. He and Gem will appeal to a higher authority, to the place inside his head where the others live. To the place where he and the dog can escape.

Marion, Illinois—30 years later

Some believed he was retarded. Some said he was a genius. They said he had a raw intellect that zigged off of every chart, zagged off every graph. He was said to possess a mind that was incredibly keen and a sociopathic brutality. They called him the Beast.

Dr. Norman headed the R and D team that found him, and hid him in a special kind of housing. A place from where it was believed, prayed, he could not escape.

Norman had first learned about the Snake Man, and the tortures Daniel had suffered in the loving care of his foster mother, during one of their initial hypnosis sessions in which he'd employed the experimental drug known as Alpha Group II.

The software containing that memorable interview resided in a secret place, inside a smudged, worn Manila envelope marked Bunkowski, and what appeared to be a man's name Max D. Segmarion. A closer inspection revealed that the label read Max/D Seg/Marion. Shorthand for "Maximum Security, Disciplinary Segregation, Marion Federal Penitentiary"—the most dreaded, hardcore solitary "hole" in the prison system. A violent unit designed for the only man ever given a level-7 danger rating: Chaingang Bunkowski.

The cassette in the old envelope was a working copy, a second-generation dupe of a master which resided with the other treasured matrices in a vault. It was on this interview tape that he'd speculated that he might have taken down one "monkey man" for every evil pound of blubber and muscle on his then 420-some-pound carcass.

The heavy hitters who were on the subscription-distribution list for this bizarre information, planners in the clandestine intelligence think tanks, came to an immediate consensus: He was running a gigantic shuck on his case handler.

Only Dr. Norman there in the Marion "shop" believed. He felt the power of Chaingang's aura in the same way that a woman feels a man's vibes and attunes to it, calling it love. In a sense, he loved Daniel, whom he felt was the oddest of deviates—a physical precognate. A genius who could physically foretell peril to himself. Norman was certain that his strange and mysterious early warning system was what had allowed him to murder so wantonly for extended periods, in spite of law enforcement's concerted efforts to stop him.

Now Daniel Bunkowski, a mountain of fat, hard muscle, and kill lust, sat moldering away inside the Max, while Dr. Norman's colleagues tried to decide if he was for real, and Dr. Norman worked on a plan to watch him in the field.

The first time Norman managed to break through, his "proofing session" as he'd later call it, was Alpha Group II Interview #8, in which for all to hear he captured the true essence of the beastly killer on tape.

"Daniel?"

The doctor's voice. No response…the tape reels revolve but there is only the light machine hiss of the playback.

"Daniel, can you hear me?"

"Rrra." The lion coughs on tape.

"Daniel, it's your friend, Dr. Norman." Norman knew this tape from memory—it had played inside his head many times. "You know you can trust me." There is the sound of breathing. Deep, relaxed breaths of the drugged, hypnotized mass murderer. "Daniel? Can you hear me?"

"Mm."

"Daniel, do you feel good? Are you relaxed?"

"Mm. Feel good."

"Daniel…Dr. Norman would never hurt you the way that your foster mother and her friends hurt you when you were little." He could recall the way the beast clenched his hand into a huge, hard fist and how he was so thankful for the chains and straps that restrained him. "Those bad people hurt you. The Snake Man. He did things. Awful things to you, Daniel, and you had to punish him for it. Remember?"

"Mm."

"You learned many lessons when he hurt you, Daniel. Lessons about survival. How to remain still. You learned how to control yourself inside, didn't you?" No response. "You could lower your—Daniel, you learned to regulate your heartbeat and…breathing rate, didn't you?"

There was a loud and frightening noise as if an engine had started or the lanyard on a chainsaw had been pulled. But it was a human bark. Daniel's laugh chilled anyone who heard it.

"I agree." The doctor laughed gently. "Your friend Dr. Norman agrees that it is very funny, Daniel. I am pleased you were able to construct these defenses against the bad people. Remember how you told me about you and your little dog? How you'd stand in the closet hiding from the Snake Man?"

"Mm."

"You learned to get revenge, didn't you, Daniel?"

"Yes." Very clear, the deep basso profundo like a steel column in the listener's ear. "I poured acid into his eyes and listened to his deathscreams." Deathscreams? But the Snake Man was blinded, not killed.

The noise again. The coughing bark of the lion's laughter.

"You know all about acid, don't you, Daniel?"

"Yes."

"Chemistry, math, the general sciences, engineering, physics, biology, biochemistry, you know many things. I am proud of you, Daniel," he said on the tape, meaning it. "Your new friend Dr. Norman is quite proud of Daniel. How did you acquire so much knowledge? Do you read a lot?" No response. "You don't tell just anyone about how smart you are, do you, Daniel?"

"No."

"It is our secret, Daniel. I know you camouflage your intelligence but you know many things, don't you, Daniel?"

"Yes."

"Tell Dr. Norman, your friend. Tell me your secrets, Daniel. What do you know?"

"Many things."

"What things?"

"Chemistry, math, the general sciences, engineering, physics, biology, biochemistry, I know many things." Daniel played with him. Repeating his words back to him. Teasing him. Buttfucking the doctor in the brain. Showing him his eidetic recall.

"I love it when you share your intelligence with me, Daniel. Your friend Dr. Norman loves to see how smart his friend Daniel is. You have a wonderful brain. Dr. Norman is proud of you."

"Chemistry, math, the general sciences, engineering, physics, biology, biochemistry, Safar, Rabi I, Rabi II, Jumada I, Jumada II, Rajab, Sha'ban, Ramadan, Shawwal, Dhu'l-Qa'dah, Dhu'l-Hija…"

"That's right, Daniel. You have a wonderful brain."

"Cold chisel, blacksmith's chisel, bricklayer's chisel, box chisel, floor chisel, beveled firmer chisel, socket paring chisel."

"Tell your friend, Daniel, how you predict—uh—tell Dr.Norman how you know when something is going to happen? Can you tell me that?" No response.

"Daniel?"

"Mm."

"Tell me."

"Nnn."

"Tell Dr. Norman more of the things you know." No response. "Please tell your friend Dr. Norman about how you learned to punish the Snake Man?"

"Yes."

"You know many things, don't you, Daniel?" He thought he'd lost him.

"Many things, Dr. Norman, such as but not limited to the following: paramagnetic resonance and the spectra of diatomics, the role of the mystagogue in televangelistic fund-raising, procambium, protophloem, and cellular phenomena, theoretical fluid mechanics, noncyclical phylogeny and cenogenesis in numerical humankind, orthogonal polynomials, classic profiles of psychologically externalized business failures, elliptical intuits and precognitives, friction, viscosity and hysteresis, application of quantitative prediction to the 'Rossler Effect' in found objects, fundamentals of resupination cosmology, employment of steerable null processing group equipment, statistical mechanics in orbital angular momentum theory, field expedient timers utilizing piezobuzzer voltage pulses, analysis of EMP frequency radiation, quotient grouping in vector algebra, countermeasures to defeat clue sprays and detection powders, half-rhombic directional theorems, DNA intermediaries from the cosmic ocean, hypno-inducing properties of crystalline hydrates, behavioristic variationals in catabolism."

The sound of a deep breath sucked down into huge lungs. "Identification of human and animal spoor." This would be the first of many such interview sessions in which Daniel would open up a random corner of his dark mind for Dr. Norman. "Inconstants in motor vehicle identification and postal indicia as boundary-value problems, utilization of passive infrared external sensors as detonation devices, contemporary uses of figs, pomegranates, poplars, oaks, cypress, ashes, and other organic materials in blood rites, offal, tripe, ascarids and other lumbricoids as bait, chemistry, math, the general sciences…" Chaingang Bunkowski's gospel.

Three decades later, Daniel continues to play his own tape inside his mind, just as Dr. Norman was sure he would: he hears the "deathscreams" of his torturer each time he kills and it is the very heart of pleasure. Remembered pleasure. Imagined pleasure. Yet something is missing. Perhaps it is payback.

Compute the hatred he feels for his foster "mother" and the crimes she committed and allowed to be perpetrated against him by this formula: Apply the rules of kinesics and physics to the laws of mass and motion, multiply by the origin and intensity of rapid movement, governed by the rules of impetus and inertia, and add the sum of vengeance squared. Take this to the cube root of fear. Divide by madness. Add bloodlust. Compute the hypergolic synergy as you would for the explosion of typical rocket fuel.

That is how much hate boils inside Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, and that is how many pieces of flesh he will tear from Mrs. Garbella before he allows her to die.

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