Top Ten (19 page)

Six days. He sat on the bare spot every waking hour. Put his hand to the bare wood where the girl’s life had pooled under the carpet. It was not sticky. He had cleaned it well.

Seven days. No police. He hadn’t watched the news. Hadn’t read the paper. Didn’t know if she’d been found. Didn’t know if she was even known to be missing.

Eight days. And now he stood over the spot. Looking down. Remembering. Wondering. Why was he not in trouble?

Why?

Why had they not come for him? Hadn’t he done wrong?

He looked at the spot. He remembered. The confluence. Life. Death. Color.

What he had made.

What he had created. Of her.

For six more days he sat alone in his dead mother’s apartment. On the seventh he packed up and paid to have the carpet replaced. He was gone on the eighth.

He drove north from Texas and never looked back. He worked odd jobs in towns along the way until his twenty first birthday. On that day he contacted the law firm of Grant, Mullavey, and Scanton in Houston, Texas, and told them of his whereabouts. They requested proof of his identity and he mailed it along. A week later he received a check for more than eleven million dollars. He was set. He would never have to work again. He had all the time in the world to decide what he wanted to do.

For the next seventeen years he did just that, the madness in him smoldering, flaring on occasion to consume another, to
provide
another, as he expanded his creative repertoire. Learned it. Perfected it. Practiced it. Here and there. In personal ways. Art for him. For his satisfaction.

Until the day another understanding came to him. An understanding of progress. Of evolution. The next step his art must take.

Yes. He had been selfish with his greatness for too long. Far too long.

It was time to share.

*   *   *

And did they appreciate it? Michaelangelo asked himself in the room where he was not alone. Mickey Strange might think yes. That any notoriety was good notoriety. That to be spoken of was enough.

But it was not.

Mickey Strange thought himself mad, and at times Michaelangelo could feel his lesser half still toying with the idea of guilt. But lesser that part of him was now. Greater was what he was now. What he was doing. His process.

Greater was what he was giving the world. Proof of his superiority. His master status.

They had challenged him, and he was responding. Much like he had responded with his creations before. With men. How great they could be without that which made them men. How he could make them greater through art.

How he could cleanse them of that thing through art.

He smiled to himself and reached into his underwear. He closed his eyes. He would leave in an hour. If there were more time he might take a whore into his company. Might blindfold her this time. But there was not time. He had only himself. That would have to do.

He had no doubt that it would.

Seventeen

Death Live

“What the heck is everyone so pissed off at this Michaelangelo guy for?” ‘Racy’ Rob Logget asked a good portion of the northeast through the power of his microphone. He sat close to it, his lips almost touching it at times, his electronic lover as he had been known to call it on the air. “I mean, this guy is doing us a favor.”

Beyond the glass that separated the booth from the producer, Leigh Taday shook her head at her bad boy and held up one finger. In the booth, Racy Rob pressed the button on his phone for line one. “All right caller, go ahead. Give me a piece.”

“Am I on?”

“You’re on something,” Racy Rob chided the dumbshit. Where did these doorknobs come from? he wondered. “Yes, you’re on WMBZ. It’s Monday the twenty fifth of October. This is earth. Earth calling caller. Are you there? Hello?”

“Yeah, yeah, Rob. I’m here.”

Racy Rob rolled his eyes at his producer. “Okay, what’s your name? My screen’s screwed up here.”

“Jimmy.”

“Okay, Jimmy, what do you think about Michaelangelo and his community service project?”

“Hell, I think we should turn him loose on the drug dealers.”

“Yeah, Jimmy, but then how would you maintain that even temperament of yours.” Racy Rob clicked line one off and looked seriously over the mike as if he were a giant gazing upon a good chunk of the United States. “Okay, folks, come on. I mean, since this story broke we’ve had all kinds of bleeding hearts bemoaning Michaelangelo’s lack of humanity. ‘
He killed a woman. He killed an innocent lawyer
’. They seem to forget that that
woman
was keeping her fugitive son in underwear and good cooking. And the lawyer... Well, if you can’t get a medal for killing a lawyer, then I don’t know. Come on. We owe Michaelangelo a big thanks for scraping some of societies scum off the planet.”

Leigh Taday pressed her mike button. “Some thinking people might point out to you Rob that he killed people before this ‘community service project’, as you call it. People who weren’t criminals.”

“So he’s making amends,” Racy Rob told his producer and a million or so others. “All I’m saying is let him finish what he started here and then give him the chair. So, America, come on. What do you think? We’ll be back in a minute after we make a little money.”

*   *   *

Music rose, and a jingle rolled, and a hundred miles from the studios of WMBZ a car pulled to the side of the road. Its driver got out and walked to a pair of phone booths sitting unused beneath the yellow glow of a streetlamp. He put in some coins and dialed.

*   *   *

“WMBZ, the Racy Rob show,” the call screener said for about the thousandth time that night.

“Yes, I’d like to talk to Rob. I have an opinion about his topic tonight.”

The screener checked the queue on his computer screen. “Okay, we’re on a commercial break right now. You’d be like sixth in line after that. Maybe fifteen minutes on hold. Can you wait?”

“Will you be coming back on to update the wait?”

The call screener shook his head. “Uh, no. You’ll have to commit to the wait?” Rob was right sometimes. Half the country was a bunch of doorknobs. “Can you commit to fifteen minutes on hold?”

“I certainly can.”

“All right, them what’s your name?”

“I’m Mike.”

*   *   *

They were split in two. Jaworski, Sam Dane, Jenny Thomas, and Anthony Dominic were with part of Rudy Kingman’s Task Force Seven patrolling the streets of Camden, New Jersey in rentals that looked not a thing like Bureau cars. That was the plan. Ariel and Les Zacks, Joe Peck, and Tom Romero prowled the streets of Vineland with another four agents from the task force assigned to nab Robert Jack McCormack. They had no plan, other than to be ready if one of the police’s local informants came through. Or if they just happened to get lucky with a citizen spotting the fugitive.

The truth be told, though, they really did not want to catch Robert Jack McCormack that Monday night. They simply wanted to be near him. He was their bait. The difficult part was not having a line attached to him. That would make it harder to reel him in if Michaelangelo decided to bite.

And that would make Robert Jack McCormack about as useful as a bucket of chum.

*   *   *

The wait was sixteen minutes, not fifteen, and when Leigh Taday came on the line she thanked the caller for waiting and told him the next voice he heard would be Racy Rob.

A half a minute later Mike’s wait was over.

“All right, caller, you’re on the air with Racy Rob. Thanks to the complexity of modern electronics I don’t know your name.”

“Hello, Rob. My name is Michaelangelo.”

Racy Rob chuckled and made a spinning motion at his temple. Leigh Taday threw up her hands beyond the glass.

“Okay, buddy, cute. You got an opinion or should I cut you off?”

“I do have an opinion.”

“Okay, then let’s hear it. What do you think about public enemy number ten?”

There was a pause. “That’s just the kind of talk that got me started on this crusade.”

Racy Rob hit the kill switch on his mike and spoke to his producer over the intercom. “I’m gonna have some fun with this nut.” And back on the air: “Really. So, tell me, Michaelangelo...or do you prefer Mike?”

“You don’t understand my art, do you?”

“No. You know I don’t. What is it? Finger painting with your own feces.”

A longer pause now. “You can ridicule me if you please, but that will not change the fact of who I am and what I am doing.”

“Right,” Racy Rob said, patronizing the loony for the million plus listeners tuned in, two of whom were in a plain looking Chevrolet Lumina on the streets of Vineland, New Jersey.

*   *   *

“King Five, you copy?”

Ariel picked up the handheld from where it lay on the floor between her feet on the passenger side. “King Five here.”

“You got your radio on, Ariel?” Les Zacks asked from King Three, the designation of the unit he and Joe Peck comprised that evening.

“I’m responding, ain’t I, Les?” she radioed back.

“Other radio,” Les told her from a few miles away. “AM Twelve Sixty. There’s some fruit on a talker claiming to be Michaelangelo.”

Ariel looked left to Tom Romero and sniffed a laugh. “This oughtta be good.”

She punched on the radio and dialed in the station and shook her head at the stunts some people would play.

*   *   *

“Okay,
Michaelangelo,
just what is it you’re doing? Besides the obvious.”

“What obvious?”

Racy Rob scratched his ear. “Killing, buddy boy. Erasing human garbage heaps number eight and nine.”

“You truly don’t understand.”

“Clue me in here, baby, before commercial, okay?”

“I’m righting a wrong. I’m sharing my greatness.”

“Okay...”

“It’s not easy for you to understand. I might need to convince you.”

“You got a note from your momma, or something, Mikey?”

Fuming silence, then. “I’d like you to speak to someone.”

The sound of tape ripping away from skin scratched the airwaves. Racy Rob looked up to his producer. All the humor had drained from his face.

“Say hello,” the voice of the caller said, seeming distant, away from the phone.

“Hello,” a small and terrified voice said. A different voice.

“Tell them your name,” Michaelangelo instructed.

“My name’s Bobby... Bobby Jack.”

*   *   *

Ariel sat ramrod straight in her seat. “Stop here! Stop!”

Romero brought the rental to a dead stop in the middle of the deserted streets, its brake lights glowing bright.

Ariel was bringing the handheld to her face when it came to life. “

”King Five. King Five. That’s him! That’s him!”

Ariel keyed her radio. “Unit calling identify.”

“This is King One, Task Force Seven. Agent Mintzer. That’s McCormack! That’s his voice!”

“Jesus Christ,” Ariel muttered after letting the key up. She thought fast and keyed the radio again. “Get a hold of that station. Tell them to keep him on the air. Keep him talking. And get a trace going. Fast!”

“Copy King Five. King One out.”

Romero looked to her from behind the wheel. “What do we do?”

“Wait,” she said, and turned the car radio up.

*   *   *

Racy Rob’s head cocked a bit at the mike. “You’re who?”

“Your full name,” the instruction came, as if from behind the man now on the phone.

“Robert Jack McCormack,” the caller said.

In the booth Leigh Taday was drawing a finger across her throat, signaling to Racy Rob that she was going to cut this off. He shook his head vociferously back at her and moved the mike close to his face. As close as it had ever been.

“You’re saying you’re number seven.”

“Man, help me...”

There was a loud slap, and a whimper, and then directions given that were only a mumble coming over the air. “Art is...”

The statement degenerated into a roiling cry. During that, Leigh Taday killed Racy Rob’s mike. He looked up and she was holding a phone to her face. She said to him over the intercom, “It’s the FBI. They want us to keep him talking.”

“No problem here,” Racy Rob told her. He was dreaming of astronomical ratings. “Now make my mike hot again.”

“Art is...suffering,” Bobby Jack told the audience.

“What do you mean, Bobby?”

There was some commotion, sounds of movement, then the principal was back on the line. “He can’t explain that. He must experience it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll demonstrate.”

A quick second later, Bobby Jack was on the phone. “Oh, man, help me, please...”

“Tell them what I’m doing,” Michaelangelo said from behind.

“Oh, man...”

“Describe it.”

“Please... Please... PleAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Racy Rob jumped instinctively back from the mike. The sound, the scream did not emanate from it, but it was his connection to what was happening.

“I’m gonna cut this off,” Leigh Taday told the FBI agent still on the phone with her. “We can’t have this on the air.”

“If you cut this off you may be condemning more people to die,” Les Zacks told her. “We’ve got a trace going. It won’t be long.”

“It’s too fucking long already!” she yelled at him. “What’s he doing to that guy?”

Racy Rob was wondering the same thing. He came close to the mike again with the cries of Robert Jack McCormack ringing in his ears. “Hey. Hey. What’s going on?”

“Tell him,” Michaelangelo ordered, and the phone scraped against Robert Jack McCormack’s wet cheek.

“Oh, man, he cut my fucking finger off. Oh, Man.”

In the booth, Leigh Taday missed the delay and ‘fucking’ went out to the northeast United States. She didn’t consider it terribly troubling compared to what she was being practically forced to leave on the air.

“He cut it off withAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

This time Racy Rob shuddered where he sat. Leigh Taday screamed again at Les Zacks. Her phone lines were lighting up like a Christmas tree. One of the callers, she was certain, would be the station manager wanting to know if she’d gone as insane as her caller.