“Mr. and Mrs. B, I think you’d agree with me that in any system there are bugs. There are inherent, annoying snags. I think bugs is the perfect word. Perfectly descriptive. Maybe it’s part of the nature of things. God’s design, a wrench in the works just to keep us on our toes, keep us from stagnating. Or maybe it’s so we can appreciate normalcy when we manage to glimpse it. I don’t know. I know, very simply, that I’ve been given a job to do. My job is your nightmare. I am an officer of the federal government. I’m a federal cop. My jurisdiction is coast-to-coast. My specialty is search and destroy. Search and destroy bugs in the system of public communications. I’m an exterminator. And you, Wallace, and you, Olga, you are the cockroaches.”
He goes for the long pause, lets the weight of his words settle down on top of them, push them a little deeper into the couch.
“Specifically,” Wallace says, voice on the edge of cracking, “what is it you want from me?”
“Specifically,” Speer says, almost a mimic, but not quite, “I want you to assist me in any and all ways necessary to bring my investigation to an efficient conclusion.”
“You want me to be an informer,” Wallace says.
“I dislike the connotation of the word.”
“You want me to supply you with a list of my associates.”
“Fellow jammers, yeah. That would be a start. I’ll also want their addresses, occupations, where they spend their time, where they purchase their equipment. That sort of thing.”
“And if I don’t assist you?”
Speer pulls in some air, blows it out, shrugs. He takes a handkerchief from a back pocket and blows his nose, refolds the rag, and repockets it.
“Excuse me. Pollen count is murder today.”
“You’ll ruin us,” Olga puts in. “You’ll arrest us, humiliate us. You’ll supply the stations with any information they need for a lawsuit.”
Speer stares down at his wing tips, gives a sheepish grin and a hesitant nod. He says, “Look, you’re bright people. You’ve both been around the block a few times. You don’t need me to explain to you how this life works. You’ve got an above-average imagination. You can envision the consequences. Do you really need me to make a list for you?”
He waits just a second and then, “Of course not. Game’s over. The good guys have won. Say to yourselves, ‘It was fun while it lasted.’ Then do what’s necessary. Protect your way of life, for God’s sake. Look, Wallace, you’re the patriarch, as far as I can see. My files say you’ve been at this since the beginning, early fifties, am I right? These younger jammers, they look up to you. I’ll bet you’re practically a legend in this town, in your little cult. A figure of respect among these people, am I right?
“You’ve seen the whole parade, okay? You started out a young man, solo, maybe even before you met Olga. You started small-time — prank stuff. Maybe you vandalized a small transmitter with a baseball bat. Maybe you knocked out power in the basement of a station building. But the years went by and things got more and more complicated. Technology took the express train, right? And you kept up. You did the work. You kept pace, got to know the new equipment as it came along. Then you start actually broad-casting yourself. Ham. C.B. You get more refined. You get a reputation. You’re knocking the official stuff off the air more and more often. And you even pick up an M.O. — you’re the sound-effects guy. That’s your label, your tag. You knock their signals down with a Spike Jones routine, shotgun bangs, raspberries, Chinese gongs. The younger people love it. Becomes a cult kind of thing. More kids get involved, they seek you out somehow, there’s a network evolving, a way for you to stay safe but branch out, form a little rebel community. And the beauty is, and this is always the beauty, right? The beauty is it’s all done in deep cover. On the surface, all of you guys carry on quote, normal, unquote, lives, right? Anyone can be a secret jammer. Your milkman, your kid’s kindergarten teacher, the candy store owner. Like the gays way back. Like the drug people sometimes. The communists after World War II. It’s a Jekyll-Hyde kind of thing. And that’s what makes it exciting. Am I right?”
Wallace just stares at him.
Speer holds his hands out palms-up.
“Now, I’m not bargain hunting here. I’m ready to be prudent but fair. Basically, as I see it, the more you tell me, the more insulated I can make you. At some point I could even see a way for this to not only secure you from any personal harm but, in fact, profit you to some degree. There’s no reason we can’t all benefit from this relationship. Believe me, no one wants a smooth, quiet ride more than I do.”
Olga and Wallace look at each other. She reaches over and takes his hand in both of hers.
It’s Wallace’s turn to start weeping. His eyes moisten, salt up, start to drip.
Speer takes a cardboard notebook from the breast pocket of his coat. It’s got a spiral wire binding across the top, like a mini dictation pad. He thumb-clicks a long ballpoint and scribbles something. He can’t manage to suppress the smugness that’s spreading on his face.
He moves over, sits down next to Wallace on the couch, and says, “Who knocked QSG off the air tonight?”
But he’s tried to reel his fish just a bit too early. Wallace balls his fists and presses them to his eyes. When he takes them away, desperation has been replaced by outrage. His tongue comes stuttering out of his mouth and licks across his bottom lip, and though his voice has a quaking rhythm, his words are low and clear.
He says, “Up yours, pigboy.”
There’s a classic paralyzed second, then Speer explodes, grabs Wallace by his shirtfront, and yanks him off the couch and onto the floor. He removes a leather blackjack from his jacket pocket, takes a step toward Wallace, stops, blows air out his nose, reaches back without looking, and backhands Olga in the head.
She’s knocked sideways on the couch and Wallace starts to yell. But it’s too late. Speer has turned full-body to face the woman. She’s stunned, sprawled sideways like a small side of pink beef on a cutting table. Speer goes to work with an oldtime bell-ringing motion, right arm pulling downward in alternating cross-arcs. The slap-sound of lead-weighted leather impacting against Olga’s body is horrible: first a high, cracking snap into skin, then a more dulled, unreverberating thud into bone.
All the screams come from Wallace. Olga is hunched into a shocked silence, her face pushed into the cushion. Wallace has crawled to Speer’s feet and latched onto his legs, trying to pull him away. But it’s a futile move. Speer is pumped and ready to do anything. A line of blood has started to flow from Olga’s visible ear.
Speer interrupts the whipping to bring up a leg and stomp at Wallace with his wing tips. He lands two heel blows dead center to the dwarf’s chest, follows them up with a kick that lifts and sails Wallace back to the fireplace.
The dwarf lands on his back, his vision blurring, trying to suck air. And suddenly Speer is above him, holding a limp, unconscious Olga around the waist like a doll.
Speer’s teeth are bared and he spits on Wallace. He’s on the verge of hyperventilating. When his voice comes it’s more a rasp than a scream. He says, “You fuck, look what you’ve done.”
Then he drops Olga to the floor and grabs hold of her dangling arm by the wrist. He stares, unblinking, at Wallace, and begins to turn the arm until a snapping sound fills up the space between the two men. And a random, undersized bone rips loose from its connections and bursts through the skin.
10
For close to a century, the P&C Abattoir was a functioning slaughterhouse run by a French family named Perec. It’s been shut down for well over two decades and there’s probably no one left in the Park who can even remember the last Perec, the small bachelor with the bushy crown of silver hair and the pencil mustache, who was called simply “the Frenchman” and wore the same brown trench coat to work through all the seasons and carried his lunch of an onion and a wedge of cheese in a crumpled white pastry bag.