Savant (8 page)
"Thanks." She felt tongue-tied. One of the sides of her blouse was riding a bit low on the shoulder. She didn't care.
He looked for another ten minutes and came back to the counter with an autographed first edition of Daoust's
Cent-Vingt Jours de Service Actif: Récit Historique Trés Complet de la Campagne du 65 Eme au Nord-Ouest
(1886),
Shooting to Survive: Indian-Fighting at Adobe Walls and Buffalo Wallow
, an original
FMFMI—3B
manual,
Memoirs of a Marksman at Peachtree Creek
, and an ultrarare edition of
Tagebuch: Eines Ordonnanzoffiziers Von 1812-1813
that made Bobby's ticker start thumping hard again when he saw the hand-drawn map in color! He loved this store and everybody in it.
"You must be a real collector," she said, not keeping the awe out of her voice. He had peeled off twenty-seven pictures of the late, great Benjamin Franklin, then went back and got the bound book of
Sniper's Journal magazines
, which brought his purchase to nearly three thousand dollars. Hardly the biggest sale she'd rung up but Bobby Beautiful paid for these as if he were buying an armful of paperbacks at B. Dalton or Waldenbooks, instead of plunking down three grand for a few books and booklets. He was gorgeous, single, and rich. She wasn't going to let him out of the store alive.
"Didn't you see anything else that you liked?" she asked him boldly, the heat evident in her voice. Not caring about what a bimbo she might appear, or how far the blouse was slipping down as she leaned forward on the counter.
"I saw a lot that I liked." He had ferocious eyes, and he ate her up with his gaze—just the way the man in the romance novel had devoured the heroine. "I didn't think I could afford it. It looked too special," he said. She thought she was going to have a heart attack.
"You're never going to know unless you ask." She colored at her own chutzpah. She boxed the books very carefully.
"I need somebody who really knows these things to act as a guide. You know what I mean? Like—well, you know this stuff. I wonder if I could get you to help me? Say, later, when you get off work? Would you have time to advise me in these collecting matters?" Why did he go through this over and over? He knew it wouldn't amount to anything but he insisted on putting himself through it. Maybe he'd get one who'd do what he wanted without having to pay for it.
"But we hardly know one another," she said, coquettishly, telling him yes in every other way but words.
"Sure we do. I'm Bobby. You're Melissa. What more do we need to know?"
"Are you married—for one thing."
"Uh-uh." What an airhead. He was already regretting it, but the blouse and bra had fallen away from her breasts and he couldn't help but notice a distinct nip in the air. "Are you?"
"Free. White. Twenty-one. Female."
"What time do you get off…work?"
"Four-thirty. I live down the street."
"Hey—that's great. Would you mind if I drop by? Take you out for
dinnah?
" he asked. She thought his accent was cute.
"That'd be nice."
"Seven?"
"Sure." She was used to eating at five, but for him she'd eat at midnight. "Sounds great."
"Okay, Melissa. Sounds real good. Where do you live?"
"Oh, yeah!" She snapped out of it and wrote her address and phone number down, then her name, in big, circular, loopy script, and dotting the
i
of Melissa with a small heart. "See you tonight, Bobby." She started to ask him his last name and decided she didn't care. Bobby Beautiful was his name.
She smiled and he blew her a kiss goodbye. She watched him through the front window, grateful the boss hadn't been here to overhear her coming on to a customer. He drove a sharp convertible—it figured he'd have great wheels—she wasn't sure what kind.
Why did he go through the motions? he asked himself again. He wasn't stupid—why do it? They wanted the same thing. He couldn't give it to them. They never liked what he liked. Why didn't he pay for it? Because it wasn't any fun to pay for it. One of these days he'd find a girl, just like the girl that …he whistled the last five syllables to himself. Loading the books in the trunk, packing them in a cammo-cover and wedging the box in with SAVANT and the tracker, the items nearly filling the small trunk of the car.
Fuck her, he thought, as he drove off. Knowing that he couldn't. His mind now on the rare books.
Bobby woke up in one of those terrible fuzzies between sleep and the fully awake stage, head pounding softly with the dull precursor to what could be the front edge of a bad dream, but he forced the thoughts through, replaying a totally real experience from his groggy memory banks.
As he pushed himself up from the carpeting he took stock of his surroundings. Melissa's place. The bedroom white with a surfeit of wicker and bric-a-brac. He got back on his bare feet and went in and urinated, splashing into the center of the bowl, flushing, running water. Melissa said something from the next room, a sleep-muffled comment, which he ignored.
Their coupling had started out as it often did, with an exchange of tender kisses and endearments, the romantic prelude to lovemaking heating up into a wild mating game. Four days of this.
She was dressed in a flimsy camisole top, spike heels, and nothing else. He loved the way the sharp heels felt against his legs and feet. He was ready to be punished.
"Stand up," he said to her, warming inside.
"Huh?" She didn't understand, What was wrong?
"Stand up in the bed. Come on."
"Right now?" She couldn't figure him out. Bobby was so weird.
"Yeah." His voice sounded hoarse. "Come on." She stood up on the bed as he directed.
"I'm going to punch holes in the bed with these heels."
"Turn around. Let me see you. Yeah. Turn—like that."
"You like me like this?"
"Put your foot here." He offered his testicles to her.
"Do
which?
"
"Yeah. Put your spike heel right on me there."
"I might hurt you, Bobby."
"That's okay—come on. You won't hurt me."
She tried to comply, gingerly placing her shoe in contact with his genitals. "Put your weight on it." She did and he moaned.
She thought she might have hurt him and she dropped down on her knees in the bed.
"Please, honey—let's just make love, okay?" She tried to kiss him and he pushed her roughly away.
"Make me call you Mistress Melissa and squeeze my balls real hard."
"No," she whined. "I don't want to do that. Please? Just hold me."
He held her, but he had grown very cold. She tried kissing him again, then she lowered her face over him, letting her hair sweep along his flat stomach and thighs. It was a trick of hers, and it had enflamed other men. But when she tried to take Bobby in her mouth he merely rolled over away from her. He had lost all interest.
In the bathroom mirror, Bobby Price's reflection was pale, but his face felt suffused with something akin to anger—a combination of embarrassed guilt and rage. He wanted to strike out.
Four times they'd been together and he'd get her so hot she thought she'd go up in flames—then he wouldn't do anything. She'd never been with anybody like Bobby. She knew that she had a body that turned guys on. But he never got—excited. He was so small. She wondered how big it was when it was erect. She'd been with another guy who had a small one when it was soft but it was plenty big when he got a hard-on. He was so uptight. She had to make this new man in her life respond. Maybe if he could relax…
"Bobby?"
"Huh?" He came out of the bathroom with his clothes back on.
"Don't go, honey," she said. "Let's have some wine."
"Um." He grunted, wishing he had an excuse to hit the bitch. She returned with a tray. Two wine goblets and a little plate of snacks. Cheese and crackers and stuff. "Sit on the bed there. No. I'll sit and you be the priestess." She had no idea what he was-saying. He took one of the wine goblets and sat on her bed. "Now…you put a cracker in my mouth." For some reason he started rubbing himself, trying to get turned on.
"Huh?"
"Feed me a fucking cracker. Stand in front of me and act like you're feeding me a cracker." He was a puzzle to her, but she stood in her little see-through camisole and the spike heels and started to comply, holding a cracker in front of his mouth as if he were a parrot or something. A cockatoo.
"
Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuaam in vitam aeternam
," he intoned. She recoiled in shock.
"Don't!" she said. "That's blasphemy."
He'd had enough of her ass. Price stood up and, for no real reason, tossed the wine into her face.
"You dirty—" Wine dripped from Melissa, her camisole, staining bedclothes and white wicker. She came at him, a tough girl and a strong fighter, and he took a couple of punches before he had a chance to clobber her a good one with that weight-lifter's power arm. She went down in a wine-stained heap on the bedroom floor and he turned and walked out, forgetting her the second the door closed.
He unlocked the car, plopped into the seat, keyed the ignition, and then the engine roared to life as he sped away from the apartment house.
He drove north in silent rage and self-pity, finally getting his shit together when a familiar street sign nudged him. He realized he was on busy Linwood Boulevard, and he drove a few blocks and turned. Bobby knew what he was going to do before he did it, and when he saw the field in back of the gas station he turned, taking a service road until he'd reached just the right isolated spot.
He parked on the shoulder and opened the trunk and got the big case out, carefully stepping over a barbed-wire fence after he'd snagged his shirt on the top strand in the darkness. With a small penlight he worked his way to a position where he could look back down the hill on a side road. There was a brightly lit tavern and another business of some kind next to it, and a few cars in the gravel lot. He opened the case.
"
The U.S. M-3000.50 SHERFSAVANT Weapon System, is referred to by the abbreviated acronym SAVANT. It is a unique sniper rifle with a maximum effective range of nearly two miles, well over three thousand meters. With Laco 40X sniperscope It weighs 29.5 pounds. The rifle is equipped with a fiberglass transit case with fitted sponge rubber compartment liners. The cased weapon system weighs approximately thirty-one pounds
." Bobby said his rosary as he assembled the piece by touch.
"
Classification and type: silent, extended range, covert. Operation: bolt-action. Caliber: .50. Capacity single-shot. Length: 48 inches. Barrel length: 27 inches. Scope and Optics: Laco 40X, Lenses are Magni-coat. Reticle: mil dot duplex. Silencer and Flash Suppressor: Ultronics. Eye relief: 3.5 inches. Lands and Grooves: 9. Twist: right hand, I turn in 9 inches. Trigger pull: 3.25 pounds. Magnification: 40 power. Ammunition: Red Rock Match Grade (Silent S-type). Main elevation: Ballistic comeups built in. Elevation, fine-tune. adjustable Windage adjustable. Muzzle Vel: hypervelocity Manufacturer: USARCO Mfg. Division of Quad Cities Tool and Die, Rock Island, Illinois
." "Tool and Die." He liked that. He always enjoyed saying that to people who asked him what line he was in. "Tool and die," he'd tell them, meaning it.
The stock and shoulder rest had been custom-molded to fit his face and body, and the finger indentations and palm moldings on the grips in back of the trigger housing and forward of the action had been cast from his hands. Sighting the piece in darkness was as simple as pulling on a pair of comfortable old leather gloves. She fit him perfectly. But the stock hurt him a little when he put his face down close to his main squeeze, and he whispered to her, "Not you, baby. Melissa hurt your daddy." He: fondled her knurled bolt, snicked it, and a big, hard sniper round filled her oily mouth.
"Anti-Personnel APEX(X) rounds consist of a full steel-jacketed shell containing propellant,
A
nti-
P
ersonnel
EX
ploding projectile (
ex
tended range), high explosive, and detonator." He looked down through the calm green of her and clearly saw a man step out of the tavern and into the parking lot. There was no one else in sight. "
When a round is fired and the bullet strikes the target a detonator causes the high explosive charge to explode the fragmentation material. This material consists of soft, scored
penetrators
that fragment like miniature bomb shrapnel, and which are designed to tumble at hypervelocities, mushrooming and disintegrating at the point of impact. This round is particularly effective against human beings and other soft targets
. "
"Corpus Domini nostri—" Bobby Price whispered to the soft target below as he applied the requisite three and a quarter pounds of pressure to his favorite squeeze.
V
ictor Trask was feeling semi-shitty. He'd woken up with a terrible, pounding hangover and since he didn't drink that was not a propitious beginning to the day. Neither did it auger well that he cut himself while trying to shave his face, the right side of which was pockmarked with old acne scars. He knew that others, women particularly, found his face appealing—women used words like "character" and "interesting-looking" when describing him—but he thought he was ugly as sin, with a face like the landscape of the moon. Actually he wasn't half bad-looking. His features were sufficiently chiseled and decently proportioned to give him a craggy profile, and he'd been blessed with a tight cap of hair that never seemed to be in need of a comb. Trask, true to his inner character, tended to see only the worst. He saw the salt and pepper in his prematurely graying hair, the residual complexion of a zit-ridden childhood, and a bulbous "clown nose." Pulling clothes on he briefly examined himself in the door mirror and saw a thirty-six-year-old guy with a body the color of a dead bluegill. Make that carp. He had to get out in the sun one of these days.
He hated the sun. It was so…sunny. He was a night guy and had nocturnal inner rhythms. It was three in the afternoon, which was like seven A.M. to him, and he had a half an hour of Kansas City traffic to negotiate before he was safely ensconced in the KCM building. The kids were out, which probably meant the traffic would be even worse, if that was possible. He put three Tylenols in his mouth and drank a swallow of tepid water from the tap. Breakfast. He wanted coffee but he would be half an hour late as it was.