Slice (11 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mannschrecker's."

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

“Hello."

“Sales manager?"

“Parts."

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

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

“Mannschrecker's.” The same busy voice.

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

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

“Tim Brinkman, can I help you?"

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

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

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

“Who's zis?"

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

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

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

“How's that?” Suspicious tone.

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

“When you think you could get here?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And really GET a car. BUY a CAR?"

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

“You gonna be there."

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

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

“Can you pull it off?"

“SURE."

“Okay."

“But don't we trade THIS car in?"

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” he rumbled. “Outstanding."

“Now?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

A
gent Pfeltmann was reading the chronological sequence report in a loud, slightly adenoidal, singsong voice,

“...constitutes the relevant and known sequence of events in the investigation of the bank robbery and shooting death of Mr. Floyd Raymond Coleman, of 2802 Brook Valley, Buckhead, which occurred on the morning of 3 July as per attached 52-11.

“Time: 0610. Occurrence: Two armed male Caucasian subjects gained entrance to the Fields residence at 34822 Cypress Road, North Buckhead, by means of prying the front door loose. All power lines to the home had been cut but the alarm system line, which was buried under the home, was not severed and—"

“Too bad they didn't cut that too, we wouldn't have to screw with this.” The alarm system in the Fields home was triggered so that a cut in the line for longer than three minutes signaled the local police. They had complained of many recent inconveniences caused by interruptions in the power by the local utility company.

“Yeah. Anyway, it goes on about the wife and child being out of the house. Mrs. Fields substantiating and corroborating the husband's story. Blah, blah. Two armed subjects ordered Fields to accompany them to the premises of Buckhead Mercantile Bank and Trust, 1705 East Broadway, where he is employed as a manager. Goes on about the surveillance video.” He read ahead silently. “And the fingerprints from the home and the crime scene, and goes on about the vault. Let's see, he described the vehicle as a late-model dark colored Crown Victoria, either dark blue or midnight blue. What the hellsa difference between dark blue and midnight blue. Okay, goes on about the guard. Coleman blah blah, fifty-two years old, blah blah, coroner's report, ballistics, the forensic analysis, spent projectile report, again referencing the surveillance video,” his voice going up and down in a bored little song, “okay, now we get to the nitty."

“Silent alarm 07:01:30. Dispatched uniformed officers Eleven-Yankee-One. Backup car Eleven-Yankee-Six. Robbery in progress. Okay, here BOI gets the robbery-with-shooting call. Man down. Buckhead homicide rolls on it. We roll on it. SAC, you, me, Delgado. Two uniforms inside when we arrive on the crime scene: Ramírez, Jones. Five clothes: Brown, Lee, Tuny, Peletier, Ecklemeyer. You got the janitor, Jefferson. You got Fields. You got the broad. What's her name? Kelly Pierce.

“Fifteen people besides the two perpetrators who had fled. Now our good friend Mr. Monroe is telling us
they
got sixteen thousand dollars and change. That Mr. De Witt did, rather. We got Mr. Phillips telling us they got twenty-eight thousand and change. What is it? $28,145 I think it says on the 52-11. Okay. So what are our options? What are we lookin’ at?” He took a piece of white chalk and started making marks. He printed on the blackboard the same way he talked, in screeching little singsong, bored strokes.

“ERROR you got. Somebody didn't count right. Whatever. THEFT BY BANK. Cover embezzlement. That kinda thing. Phillips, or a teller, or the one with the tits. Sees it as an opportunity to cover a mistake. Phillips looks good if you're gonna hypothecate. He could pick up twelve kay and who'd know? He might bet we're not gonna get the perps. So we look at his life a little closer. But from a cursory glance he don't NEED twelve thousand. The janitor picks up some money. When? You got the surveillance tape against that. One of us. We didn't get there soon enough.

“PERPETRATOR you got. John Monroe decides he'll burn his partner and walk away from a Murder One. Shit. Homicide committed during an armed robbery of a bank? He'll burn for it. So he squirrels away twelve grand and calls us with his story. He looks sorta good for that until you spend five minutes with him.” There was laughter in the room.

“So this leaves THEFT BY INVESTIGATING POLICE.” He wrote DIRTY COP on the blackboard, and the chalk scream as if tortured.

T
hey stayed the night in a motel in Rosemont. Chaingang began weaving a tale that was calculated to cover their next move—a move that would surprise her.

“You have all the tools,” he told her in his concept-producer voice, “all the gifts.” A big, dimpled, lopsided smile. “And you're beautiful. But remember where we're going ALL the girls have all the tools and all the gifts and they're all beautiful. I want you to learn the whole thing. I want to give you EVERYTHING so that when we get to California we'll blow the town apart, right?"

“Right."

“But, Sissy, this won't be easy."

“Yeah. Well, that's okay."

“So you are willing to work?"

“Sure."

“You really want this?"

“Yeah."

“Well"—the huge head tilted—"what this means is lots of hours of practice, coaching, meditation, thinking, soul-searching, and GUIDANCE. More LESSONS. Understand?” She nodded yes. She had no idea, but whatever. She was game for it. “Here's what I think we need to do. I think we should PREPARE for a few weeks; you'd be on full pay of course the entire time, but spend a few weeks in preparation before we light up the town with your big entrance."

“What do you mean? I mean, what do you want me to do?"

“This is just a spur-of-the-moment idea, but I know this man who owns some property out in the country not far from here. I was thinking an arrangement might be made where we could stay there and polish your new career until we were ready, and then...” And the words poured out, clouding her mind in a billowing smoke-dream of heady possibilities, and she nods yes. And he is pleased and makes sure she is fed, watered, settled cozily in front of the television set, tucked in, and his game locked down tight. Then he excused himself to “take care of some business."

His homeliness was not the issue. When he was moving from the black Caprice, his first legal wheels, to the motel room, a pair of punks had pulled out of the parking lot beside them in a red pickup and Chaingang had seen the driver's face laughing at him and then looking over at the passenger beside him as they both roared in derision. But this is not what had distressed Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski. Something else, the crooked smile, the set of the upper body behind the wheel, something stabbed at him.