Savant

1

Columbia, Missouri

The Show-Me Motor Lodge was a busy operation on the outskirts of Columbia, a prosperous college town in the American heartland. Conway Seymour out of Pine Bluff, Arkansas—self-employed according to the register—spent a couple of easy days there on R and R. All 469 pounds of him kicked back on a Show-Me king-size Beautyrest, mother naked most of the time, his lips wrapped around a quart of Wild Turkey when he wasn't eating.

The maid ignored the DO NOT DISTURB sign as was her custom, and tried to open the door. The policy of the Show-Me was make whatever noise was necessary to get the guests on their feet again by eight A.M. or thereabouts, so the staff could take care of business: cleaning, readying the rooms, emptying out the disarrayed beds for the next lot of paying customers. Hostelries, like restaurants, didn't care for folks who dawdled. They took up space and they interfered with the flow of business.

To be sure, at six feet seven inches and the better part of a quarter-ton, Mr. Conway Seymour took up space. But until the maid tried to open Room 366 with her passkey he was just another sleeping bod to be evicted. The lock clicked open but she couldn't budge the door. Some wiseguy had jammed furniture up against the door or something. Well, she thought, I'll handle that.

"Anybody in there?" she screamed, in a voice that might have summoned a few errant hogs in its time, as she beat on the door with a businesslike fist. "Do you want your room cleaned?" That was always a good one. When they angrily complained she could say she was just checking. You don't want fresh linens and stuff—fine, she thought, sleep in your dirty bed and see if I care.

The idea was to roust the slumberers. The vacationers or conventioneers who'd had a few too many the night before. She'd teach them to shove a chair under her doorknob.

She waited for the door to open and some frazzled housewife or bleary-eyed Joe to growl "Didn't you see the sign on the door?" But there was no reply. She banged again. This time she heard a huge, deep basso profundo rumble out at her.

"GO AWAY."

"Yes, sir," she said, with mock politeness. "Do you want some fresh towels?" Drag it out and make sure he can't go back to sleep.

"GO AWAY." Something about the voice made her flesh crawl, and she was not easily frightened. The maid shrugged and rolled her cart down the sidewalk to Room 367, where she was able to admit herself and go about her business, the first order of which was to turn up the TV nice and loud.

But neither loud television sets nor screeching maids disturbed Mr. Seymour. When he sensed that she had removed herself from the door, his eyes blinked shut and he fell instantly into a deep, untroubled sleep. His flawless inner clock registered 0758 inside his subconscious, as it monitored his vital signs, and such externals as ambient temperature—whatever might constitute a possible threat to his welfare.

What would the maid's scream have sounded like had she been able to see the sleeping man, much less his dream, as he fantasized about a pleasureful kill? The massive hulk registered as Mr. Seymour, nude, an immense hairy mound of muscle covered in ugly truck tires of rubbery fat, obscene pink johnson stiffly erect as he remembered the last "live one" he'd consumed, slept without covers, comfortably cool in the frigid Show-Me Motor Lodge air conditioning. His fearsome mouth, the mouth of a human shark, gaped open in the blubbery rictus of a wet grin, and contorted his dimpled, baby face into a mask of hatred.

Every detail of the kill and the mutilation was replayed inside the depths of his dream. If only the maid could have seen what was inside the mind of the sleeping man in Room 366. Behind that door she so desperately wanted to enter, a bestial monster lay. The heart-eater slept now. And in his sleep he dove down into underwater Corpse City, breast-stroking through the junkyard of glass-walled coffins.

The desk clerk and the manager would both recall Mr. Seymour, the "big heavyset gentleman" who'd been a guest for a couple of days. He had slept several hours past checkout the second day, finally pulling pants and shirt and shoes on, and driving to the nearest fast-food joint, a KFC, and immediately returning to the room where he devoured a twenty-one-piece bucket of chicken, three quarts of potato salad, and a six-pack of cold Cokes iced down in the motel bathroom sink. He killed the last of the Wild Turkey for dessert, and tidied up the room for the maid.

As a going-away present in memory of her special wakeup service, he took his giant fighting bowie knife and slit open the pillows, defecated in them, repacked the feathers and sealed them with duct tape before returning them to their pillowcases. He also slit the bottom of the mattress open and urinated in it, more out of principle than for effect, cleaning himself with the bottom of the drapes. He figured the room would start stinking real good in a few hours. With that bizarre activity completed, he showered, shaved, dressed in his three-piece business suit and tie, and took his key to the front desk.

Mr. Conway Seymour of Pine Bluff paid and thanked the desk clerk, got back in his car, and drove to the self-service gas station across the highway from the Show-Me. There, he ceased to exist, and another "real big guy" materialized to pay for the gas with his credit card. The Visa/MasterCard Merchant Center recorded that the purchase was made by one Paul Grose of Little Rock, Arkansas.

The unusual aspect of this transaction was the date of the purchase.

According to authorities, cardholder Paul Grose, otherwise unconnected to the individual who had used his card, had been missing for over two weeks when the card was used. The scrawled signature on the receipt duplicate did not match that of the missing man.

When the driver of the vehicle pulled back out onto the highway, a Mr. Vernon Jones of Valdosta, Georgia was now behind the wheel. A huge, meaty hand flung the wallet of the missing Mr. Grose over the side of the first creek he crossed. The driver discarded I.D.s the way the average person throws away used facial tissues.

He drove four to six miles over the speed limit, picking up speed a bit as the evening darkened and the prevalence of truckers forced the stream of traffic to move a bit quicker. Booneville, where he'd spent some terrible time once-some twenty-five years ago—was far behind him, both literally and figuratively. He had made his way through Overton, Sweet Springs, Concordia, Odessa, and Grain Valley, as the night swallowed him.

It was dark by the time he reached the outskirts of Blue Springs, Missouri, where he topped off the tank out of habit, paid cash, urinated on the seat of the men's urinal and then across the sink, for no particular reason.

Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, at age forty-one or forty-two, the records varied, had taken more human lives than any other person in modern history—some said he'd taken a life for every pound of his weight. As is often the case the myth did not match the horror of the reality. Personally, he'd quit keeping a tally in the mid-sixties, but he was certain the count was well over five hundred.

Daniel Bunkowski, a.k.a. "Chaingang," headhunter of mercenaries, executioner extraordinaire, butcher and heart-taker, was the worst serial killer of the twentieth century. In legal wheels and with his choice of disposable identities, he drove through the bright lights of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, crossed the river into Kansas City, Kansas, and turned down on a service road that accessed the river. He parked and got out of the car.

He knew this place. The hideous, violent history of his hellish childhood poured across his mindscreen. He stood, perfectly inert, an immense statue in the shadows of the river, soaking in the stinging memories.

The cons had a saying about him inside. Chaingang had nothing but his hate, they said, with the common wisdom of the joint. In truth, it was what nurtured and sustained him. He was motivated by it. He opened himself to the pain and fed off of it.

Overhead in the darkness, headlights of passing cars illuminated moments of moving time, as he saw it inside the strangeness of his mind. The traffic noise was a continuous humming sound and he willed it to feed him, as he stored away fury.

When he was ready, he returned to the vehicle, changed clothes, got back in the car, and resumed his journey back to the place of his birth.

Imagine that his headlights are those you see in your rearview mirror. Exercise the greatest care. Drive defensively and for God's sake don't slam on the brakes unexpectedly. In the vehicle behind you is a man-mountain of brutality; a gifted presentient with an I.Q. that warps every curve; a killer whose secret biochemistry deviates from every known pattern. A giant of destruction follows you, waiting for you to become vulnerable—to show him that you are a potential victim. Make no mistakes tonight, dear heart. Death waits. Behind you. In the shadows.

Kansas City, Missouri

One big man parked his wheels, but another got out and used the pay phone. It was yet a third who payed the week in advance at Mid-America Parking, a fourth who summoned the taxicab and rode to the Hyatt. Some might have found all this a trifle confusing, but juggling disposable personas wasn't even a flyspeck as far as challenging Daniel Bunkowski's mental abilities.

"Thank you, sir," the cabbie told him, pocketing a slightly excessive tip. The man who took his bags received a similar gratuity from the extremely large, but well-dressed Giles Cunningham, whose company, York Sprinklers, Inc., of York, Pennsylvania, had called ahead the day before.

The caller priced the clubrooms, but decided instead on a guest room accommodation for two evenings. The seasonal day rate at Kansas City, Missouri's Hyatt Regency was eighty dollars, which Mr. Cunningham felt was more than reasonable after enjoying their luxurious and remarkably comfortable accommodations.

"Hello." The gigantic figure in the three-piece suit beamed down at the woman behind the front desk. "My company has made a phone reservation in my name. Giles Cunningham? From York, Pennsylvania?"

"Yes, sir," she said after consulting the computer beside her. "We have you in one of our guest room accommodations, double-bed, single-person occupancy for tonight and Saturday night—is that correct?"

"That's it. I'll confirm checkout tomorrow, if that's okay."

"Fine. How did you wish to take care of this?" The young woman was quite professional and did not appear to be the least flustered by the sight of a human woolly mastodon towering above her. "Are we charging this to your credit card, Mr. Cunningham?"

"I'll just pay cash, if I may," he said expansively, pulling out a huge wad of what appeared to be hundred-dollar bills and dexterously peeling two crisp C-notes off the outside before returning it to his voluminous pocket.

She smiled professionally and began making change. He thought how easily he could reach over the counter, grab her by the hair, and crush her skull against the desk.

"Here you are, sir," she said, telling him his room number, in case he was too stupid to read it off the door opener. He thanked her and in no time was in an upwardly mobile elevator, looking down at the head of a bellhop some two feet shorter and three hundred pounds lighter. He imagined how pleasant it would be to twist the man's neck until it snapped, then shove the body up through the ceiling trapdoor.

"In town for the show?" the bellhop asked.

"Unn," Chaingang grunted in a tone that could have meant anything, yes, no, or fuck you.

"You brought that hot weather with you," the man said, smiling. He was the type who always joked in Chaingang's presence, made intensely uncomfortable by the awesome size of the man. Bunkowski stared down at him without a flicker of response.

The smaller man carried a heavy suitcase, a used knockoff of a Vuitton that had been purchased that morning in a pawnshop. The two-suiter was full of Goliath-size apparel just purchased at Mr. Hy's Big, Tall, and Stout Shop there in the Crown Plaza shopping complex. The sign read, MR. HY'S HAS SOMETHING OF EVERY SIZE! In truth, the shop had been able to fit Chaingang with shirts, slacks—to be hemmed to a basketball player's inseam length—socks, a tie, an ascot for God's sake—two sweaters and a blazer. They'd had to say no to the 15EEEEE footwear, so he would have to make do with his burnished oxfords and the combat boots which he routinely wore.

The moment he was alone in the room behind a closed door, he began peeling off his clothes until he was nude, and then surveyed the wreckage of his personal treasury. The center of the huge flash roll of hundreds that he carried was, of course, blank paper.

He'd spent the night in a fleabag motel over on the Kansas side, and bright and early had been up looking at the storefront and industrial rentals. A deposit had gone on a second-floor cubicle of office space recently vacated by a fly-by-night ad agency. A tattoo parlor had tried to make a go of it downstairs, but had gone in the toilet subsequent to the AIDS epidemic. It was a shade more than he wanted to spend but it was isolated and—as a plus—it had a small bathroom with a sink.

The Southwestern Bell folks would be getting a healthy deposit, too, since the "Norville Galleries," which would be occupying the office space, hadn't had previous phone service. A quickie printer was doing some signage and letterhead stuff, and within the next forty-eight hours or so the company would be open for business.

"What kind of business is this?" the landlord wanted to know, as he counted the money for the closet-size office on East Minnesota Avenue.

"I'm in the mail-order game," the big man informed him, giving him a moment of terrible anguish as he came down hard on the poor fellow's foot. "Oh, my Lord. I'm sorry!" He was most apologetic. He had kind of "lost his balance" and something like five hundred pounds of meat had come to rest on the landlord's bunions. The guy had wanted to ask about this mail-order business the new tenant was going to be doing, but by then all he wanted to do was put some distance between himself and the behemoth whose money he'd just accepted. The name of his reference had been one Giles Cunningham, of York Sprinklers, Inc. The landlord might or might not realize that he'd given the address of the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Everything was going according to schedule, Chaingang thought, surveying his vast nakedness in the mirror. He cranked the air conditioning down another notch and picked up the telephone, summoning the front desk.

"Yes, this is Mr. Cunningham. I'm going to be getting a couple of telephone calls this evening—perhaps—and tomorrow, which will be for a business I own here in town called the Norville Galleries. If I should get any calls for the Norville Galleries, that's me." He made sure they noted his room number. "Kindly pass this along to the other operators, would you? It's very important. I appreciate it. Thanks!" He waited a few minutes and called back and spelled N-o-r-v-i-l-l-e for the person on the switchboard, drumming the name into their head by repetition. When he went out later he would call for himself using another voice, and they'd ring an empty room.

He decided that the haircut was next. He put on a change of clothes and took the elevator back downstairs. The newspaper ad was set to hit in the next morning's Kansas City Star classifieds. One or two more details to attend to and the Norville Galleries would be well on its way. Another entrepreneurial success story: the American Mercantile Dream in full bloom.

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