The Silver Bear Read Free

reasons caused the air to be sucked from my lungs. I have killed powerful men and relish the chance to do so again. There is more to the story of Abe Mann.
    Twenty-nine years ago, Abe Mann was a freshman congressman with a comfortable wife and a comfortable house and a comfortable reputation. He attended more sessions of congress than any other congressman, joined three committees and was invited to join three more, and was viewed as a rising star in his party, enjoying his share of air time on the Sunday morning political programs. He also enjoyed his share of whores.
    Abe was a big man. Six-foot-four, and a one-time college basketball star at Syracuse. He married an accountant’s daughter, and her frigid upbringing continued unabated to her marriage bed. He stopped loving her before their honeymoon ended, and had his first taste of a prostitute the Monday after they returned from Bermuda. His weekdays he spent at the state capitol as a district representative; his weekends he spent anywhere but home. For five years, he rarely slept in his own bed, and his wife kept her mouth sealed tight, fearful that intimate details of their marriage would end up sandwiched between the world report and the weekend weather on the five o’clock news.
    Once elected to serve in the nation’s capital, Abe discovered a whole new level of prostitution. There were high-quality whores in New York, mind you, but even they paled in comparison to the women who serviced the leaders of this country. The best part was, he didn’t even have to make polite inquiries. He was approached before he was sworn in, approached the first night of his first trip to Washington after the election. A senator, a man he had seen only on television and whom he had never met in person, called him directly at his hotel room and asked if he would like to join him for a party. What an incredible time he had had that night. With the stakes higher, the women so young, so beautiful, and so willing, he had experienced a new ecstasy that still made his mind reel when he thought of it.
    Later that year, after he had settled, he grew fond of a hard-bodied black prostitute named Amanda B. Though she argued against it, he forced her to fuck him without a condom, satisfying his growing thirst for bigger and bigger thrills. For about six months, he fucked her in increasingly public locations, in increasingly dangerous positions, with increasingly animalistic ferocity. Each fix begat the next, and he needed stronger doses to satisfy his appetite.
    When she became pregnant, his world caved in. He crawled to her in tears, begging for forgiveness. She was not frightened of him until she saw this change. This change meant he was more dangerous than she had anticipated. She knew what would happen next: after the tears, after the self-flagellation, after the “why me?” and the self-loathing, he would turn. His internal remorse would eventually be directed outward; he would have been made to face his own weakness, and he would not like what he had seen. And so he would destroy that which made him feel helpless. Even in the altered state cocaine had made of her mind, Amanda B. knew this as surely as she knew anything.
    But she liked the way the baby felt inside her. She liked the way it was growing, swelling her stomach, moving inside her. Her! Amanda B., formerly LaWanda Dickerson of East Providence, Rhode Island, formerly inmate 43254 of the Slawson Home for Girls, her! Amanda B.! She could create life as well as any uppity wife of a congressman, any homemaker in a big house on a big lot next to a big lake. Her! As good as any of them.
    So she decided to hide. She knew he would come for her, and when he did, she would be gone. She had a friend back home, a john who had proposed to her when she was fourteen. He still called, long-distance and not collect either! He would take her in, would hide her from the congressman when he came looking. If she could just get to him. . . .
    But she