"No, I'm talking about what's happened to Puma. The Venom Club and Vindaloo. I mean, what if I go berserk like that? What if I happen to kill somebody?"
Koch-Roche shrugged his narrow shoulders. "As far as legal consequences go, as long as you've got the bread to pay for a proper defense, conducted by yours truly, there won't be any."
Chapter 14
Before he drove out of the mansion's eight-car garage, Chiz Graham removed the convertible top of his custom-made, cream-colored Excalibur sports car. Jimmy Koch-Roche had suggested that he take his own wheels to the police station and drive Puma home personally. He'd also suggested that Chiz put the top down so the army of waiting photographers could record the happy event in its entirety. In the hope of coloring the water for potential future jurors, Koch-Roche wanted a public display of confidence from Chiz. Strong, committed husband supports wife's innocence. The usual drill.
Chiz made good time on the freeway. As he took the exit nearest to the station house and pulled onto the city streets, he realized that he was going to arrive a few minutes ahead of schedule. Because he was starting to get a bit hungry himself, and he figured that Puma would be famished after her ordeal, he decided to make a brief stop at a minimart to pick up some tasty snacks for the return trip.
He drove past the double row of gas pumps and parked out front of the SpeeDee Mart. When he walked through the automatic doors in his skinny, blue-tinted, wraparound sunglasses, no one recognized him. The store clerk, a rail-thin Pakistani, was preoccupied. From his station behind the cash register, he was nervously checking the antitheft mirrors along the back wall, trying to keep track of a half-dozen teenage shoppers. The do-rag sporting lowriders, ball caps backward, were gathered over by the dairy case, apparently comparing prices on whipping-cream aerosols. The clerk was trying to see if they were slipping the cans into their enormously baggy clothing.
A few yards farther down the wall, a trio of overweight Hollywood housewives in tentlike caftans was sucking down sixty-four-ounce, sugar-free, all-you-can-drink sodas while making moon eyes at the icecream case. Their facial expressions as they continued to sip their diet sodas all said the same thing: Well, maybe just one DoveBar, because I've been so good.
The SpeeDee Mart's only other customer, a salesrep type in a short-sleeved dress shirt, pocket protector and wide tie, was over by the coffee corner, tapping steaming brown fluid from a stainless-steel urn marked Irish Mint Mocha into a very large thermos cup.
Chiz took a wheeled cart and started down the narrow aisles. He was drawn at once to the hot-food section by its wonderful aroma. Under warming lights was a tray of chicken tidbits, deep-fried to golden perfection. The grease in the bottom of the pan remained liquid from the heat. Chiz dumped the entire tray of Gobs O' Chicken into a pair of foam containers, pouring the grease over the top like it was Sauce Bernaise.
He left one container open on the cart's little raised shelf and began to eat as he shopped. As he quickly discovered, the snack food contained a special surprise. Every time he crunched down on a gob of chicken, a squirt of warm grease was released from within. There was hardly any meat inside the nuggets-a minuscule speck of flesh surrounded by seasoned batter and fat.
Delightful.
He filled his mouth, packing his cheeks with them. SpeeDee Mart's other warm treats were less appealing to him because of their disappointing fat content. Hot dogs on rotisserie spits. Hamburgers overcooked by hours under the warming lights. There was no coating to hold in the succulent grease. And to make matters worse, the display units had screened floors that allowed the dripping fat to fall out of sight, and out of reach, into collectors somewhere below the counter.
As Chiz started in on the second quart of chicken gobs, he was no longer thinking about Puma wasting away in a jail cell. With a luxuriant glow in his expanding muscles, he was thinking about dessert.
About rows and rows of half gallons of full-fat ice cream waiting for him in the dairy case.
"Mister sir," said a reedy voice at his elbow. "No. No. You no can do that...."
Chiz looked around at the SpeeDee Mart clerk, who was in a most agitated state. The man was literally hopping from one entry-level jogging shoe to the other. The plastic name tag pinned to his red-and-white-striped shirt pocket said Hi! I'm Bapu.
"I weigh chiggen before you eat," protested Bapu. The movie star tipped his skinny sunglasses down his nose. "Do you know who I am?" he demanded, reaching for another gob.
Evidently not.
The clerk blinked at him, then, seeing another golden crusty nugget vanish between the big man's shiny lips, he moaned. "Oh, mercy me. You will stop, please. You will stop now, mister."
"Where do you keep the butter?" Chiz asked him as he licked the inside of the foam container.
Bapu answered automatically, "Aisle three, dairy case." Then, snapping out of robot-clerk mode, he clutched his curly mop of hair in both hands and said, "Oh, my, oh, my, you've eaten them all! What am I to do?"
Chiz rolled his cart toward the back of the store. There was considerable congestion around the wall of glass cases at the rear. The teenagers were huddled around the whipped cream and cottage cheese and had the refrigerator door standing open. The three fat women were jammed elbow to elbow as they comparison-shopped the quart prices of Ben nd Haagen-Dazs. The sales rep was examining the rows of shrink-wrapped, maxi breakfast burritos while sipping at his steaming mug of Irish Mint Mocha.
Over the infectiously cheery Muzak-"Hey, Little Cobra" as performed by the Vienna Philharmonic-came the sound of angry reptiles.
A chorus of hissing.
And the unmistakable smell of aerosolized animal fat.
If the teenagers had had the price of a huff between them, everything might have turned out differently. Chiz might have filled his cart, paid his bill and left for the police station without incident. But as it was, imminent disaster rode the minimart's air-conditioned air.
Chiz locked on to the source of the sweet and creamy aroma.
"What are you doing?" Bapu cried as, peering around Chiz's bulk, he saw the teens huddled around the discharging canisters. Whipped cream was all over their faces, the glass door, the floor. "Oh, please, please, let me by!" he told Chiz.
The clerk made the mistake of not only touching the movie star, but of trying to get between him and the mounds of delightful white fluff. To all outward appearances, Bapu was trying to beat him to it.
Without taking his eyes off the huff party, Chiz reached out casually and snatched hold of Bapu's neck. His hand completely encircled it. And when Chiz squeezed, it made the clerk's eyes bug out.
Seeing what was happening, the sales rep dropped his coffee mug and tried to back away. He bumped into the teenagers and the fat ladies, who completely blocked any path of quick retreat.
With a seemingly effortless flip of the wrist, Chiz both snapped Bapu's neck and flipped him in an arc over aisles three and four. Out of sight, he landed with a soft thud on the floor.
The sales rep opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked to the other customers for help, but they were all too focused on what they were doing to pay attention.
On the other side of the teens, one of the fat ladies hefted a quart of Haagen-Dazs and, peering through granny glasses on a beaded cord, said, "Well, the label says the flavor is the same, but how do we know the taste is the same?"
Another woman held a quart of Ben and was likewise reading the ingredients. She shook her head. "I can't tell them apart from this," she complained.
The third woman took a quick look over her shoulder. Not seeing the clerk, she turned back to her friends. "There's only one way to find out," she said, grabbing for the lids.
The fresh scent of fat set Chiz to drooling. Profusely. Great ropy strands of saliva swayed from his chin. His breathing became short and ragged. Whatever the smell was coming from, he wanted it.
All.
The movie star reared back his cart, then rammed the front of it into the sales rep's shins, making him fall forward into the basket. Before the guy could cry out, Chiz had him by the throat. He likewise snapped the man's neck and sent him flying, out of sight, over the rows of shelves.
His muscles popping from the two quarts of gobs he'd just consumed, Chiz rammed the front of his cart hard into the mass of teens.
"Hey, butt-fuck!" said one in a knit cap and superbaggy plaid shirt. "Watch it! You're messing with our high." He had liquid white stuff all down his shirtfront.
Chiz backhanded him against the refrigerator case, driving his head and shoulders through the glass door. The teen bounced off the steel racks inside and flopped forward over the side of the cart. Chiz dumped his limp form off onto the floor.
The other five kids gawked at him, red eyed, foam nosed, propellant brained. As they did so, they lowered their Reddi Wip cans.
The fragrance was maddening. Fat without substance.
It was worthless to Chiz, and that infuriated him.
The movie star couldn't have stopped himself even if he'd wanted to. He jerked the steel cart over his head and brought it crashing down on the petrified youths. They had nowhere to run. Bellowing his rage, Chiz used the cart like a hammer to pound the huffers into the black-and-white acrylic tile. Brains and blood flew in all directions as the cart crashed into them repeatedly.
The three ladies, their granny glasses and caftans spattered with gore, just stood there, clutching the opened ice-cream containers to their bosoms. Each of them had an ice-cream finger and mustache.
Now, there was fat as fat was meant to be. An entire wall of it.
Like a knacker man in a slaughterhouse, Chiz brought his balled fist down on the closest woman's head. She dropped in the aisle, instantly dead. The other two suddenly found their feet and scooted around the corner, heading for the SpeeDee Mart's front exit.