Running Dog by Don DeLillo Read Free Book Online

disengaged the single transistor in the oscillator circuit. He looked at Klara Ludecke. She didn’t know whether to be surprised or angry.
    He took out his wallet and showed her a set of credentials linking him to something called U.S. Strike Force, Internal Projects.
    “Special investigative unit.”
    “What is special about me?”
    “Your husband didn’t die under what I’d call normal circumstances, Mrs. Ludecke.”
    “When is murder normal?”
    “Beyond the fact that he was murdered, there were unusual details.”
    “Abnormal, perhaps you would prefer to say.”
    “Words.”
    “Abnormal,” she insisted.
    “Yes, why not?”
    “Anyone would agree. A grotesque death. And it’s interesting that you haven’t spoken a word about the people who killed him. Circumstances so abnormal that this small detail is completely overlooked.”
    “No, wrong.”
    “Perhaps this aspect of the crime isn’t part of your special investigation. You’re not interested? It’s too routine for specialists. You’re bored with that question?”
    “I’d like to discuss the matter of acquaintances.”
    “Would you really?”
    “Your husband’s work took him to Washington on occasion.”
    “This is correct. Washington and the surrounding area.”
    “Washington in particular.”
    “I wouldn’t say that, no.”
    “According to the original police inquiry—”
    “The police,” she said. “The police know nothing. Sex crime, that’s all they know. It’s the people in the special investigation who know what’s important and what isn’t. They know where to look. How deep, how shallow. The police. They photograph the body. They make chalk marks on the floor. They check their files on deviates and the killers of deviates. That satisfies them. They have such experience in these areas. Who am I to complain?”
    Klara Ludecke raised her eyes to an angle level with his.
    “How special can this investigation be if you haven’t even asked about Radial Matrix?” she said.
    Selvy picked up a plastic disk from the coffee table in front of him, a scenic paperweight, three-dimensional vista of rolling hills, and studied it a moment. He watched the woman rise from the chair and walk through the dark parlor and along the equally dark hallway, where she opened the front door and held it, not taking her eyes off the opposite wall as he walked past her into the sun.
    Later that same day he rode an escalator down to the Capitol subway with Lloyd Percival.
    “You’re due at Lightborne’s when?”
    “Tomorrow night,” Selvy said. “Auction.”
    “What, more Guatemalan stuff?”
    “Apparently.”
    “We see nothing but stiff pricks lately. What I wouldn’t give for a single mushy prick. Might be a whole new approach. Jesus Christmas, what happened to the esthetic element? Tell Lightborne. The subtlety, the complexity, the simple charm. All he seems to show us are junkyard pieces.”
    “He knows, Senator.”
    “Just heard from some friends in Amsterdam. Someone’s come up with a plaster-and-polystyrene copy of a Bernini I’ve always admired.”
    “
Saint Teresa in Ecstasy
.”
    “Right, some young Dutch sculptor.”
    “Lightborne’s got a vicar he did.”
    “What kind of vicar?”
    “A vicar with a stiff prick, Senator.”
    “Why did I ask?”
    “Anyway.”
    “Anyway what this Dutch fella’s done is to lift the folds of Saint Teresa’s habit way up around her thighs and to place her knees well apart without changing the original position of the feet. Hell, it was already there. All he’s done is highlight it. Her ecstasy always was sexual.”
    They were the last two people to step onto the small electric conveyance and it started immediately.
    “Bernini might not agree.”
    “Don’t quibble, Glen.”
    “Not to mention Saint Teresa.”
    “Are you a prude?”
    “Possibly.”
    “Interesting fella. You’re an interesting fella.”
    “What about the angel?”
    “He’s changed the configuration of the arrowhead