“But that’s the tr-truth,” Gabe says, too loud.
“Quiet down,” Ronnie says. “Okay, let’s assume it is. Maybe I believe you. Maybe I believed it from Flynn and there was no need for you to even call me …”
She pauses, steps forward, and gives Gabe a soft push to the chest with her fingertips. He thinks she might be teasing him but there’s no smile on her face.
Her voice gets even lower and she says, “But you’re asking for a lot, kid. You’re asking that I believe the words of a bunch of strangers. And you’re asking that I believe these particular strangers never lie to each other.”
“What’s that s-supposed to mean?” Gabe asks.
“It means,” Ronnie says, “how the hell do you know that Flynn isn’t behind the jams? How do you know Flynn isn’t playing O’ZBON? He sure as hell has the equipment and the brains, right?”
“Oh, c-c’mon,” Gabe says, shaking his head.
“Yeah, fine,” Ronnie says, giving an annoyed smile. “You’re convinced. To doubt each other means the whole thing starts to fall apart. But this is what pisses me off, kid. Like I just said, maybe I really do believe Flynn. And beyond that, maybe I don’t care whether it’s him or not. No one’s jamming my show. Whoever it is keeps hitting Ray Todd, the station scumbag. I think it’s a riot, okay?”
“Then what’s the pr-problem?”
“The problem,” Ronnie says, “is that you’re all presumptuous bastards. You get hold of my phone number somehow. You call me up at the crack of dawn. You ask me to meet you here on Venus, right? And I show up like an idiot. And you want to ask me to lay off big daddy Flynn, the fat wallet behind the whole Wireless cult—”
“It’s not a ca-ca-cult.”
“Shut up for a second and let me finish. I understand. Flynn’s the center cog. Flynn’s the one you need to keep it going. He does all the favors. He wipes all the noses and gives all the pep talks. He’s the voice of reason. I can see it. He’s slick. I like the guy. A lot.”
She pauses for Gabe to say something. He seems to think for a second, to weigh something. Then he says, “You d-don’t know how it is. W-Wireless is deeper than you think, all right? It’s like, not everyone is at the sa-same level. There are different, I don’t know, sa-sa-circles. Different groups. Things are ch-changing. We’ve g-got … W-w-we …”
He seems to be having some problem choosing his words. “We’ve got d-d-different people supplying different info to different groups. There’s a lot of fighting right now, okay? There are these hackers who aren’t exactly inside yet. They keep spreading rumors. And no one knows for sure, but everyone feels like something b-big is coming at us.”
“The problem is,” Ronnie says, speaking slowly, “I don’t like you assuming I’m the enemy. For people so concerned with image, you’re pretty careless how you look at others—”
“Nobody na-knows I ca-called you. I da-did it myself. They’d be ba-ba-bullshit.”
“I don’t like you assuming I’m some sleazy errand boy who’d rat out you people for the employer. I don’t like you assuming I’d play up to Flynn just to find out his secrets and turn him in. I think it sucks. You don’t like the accusations coming your way, but you’ve got no problem asking me down here to call me a liar and a phony and an informer—”
“N-n-no. No wa-way. That wa-wasn’t—”
“You piss me off, you know that?”
“La-la-look, I da-didn’t ma-mean—”
“You’re over your goddamn head, junior. I’m the last person in the world you should get angry.”
“Pa-pa-please,” he says, and he sounds sufficiently contrite, so Ronnie stops and breathes and looks him up and down.
After an awkward minute, Gabe says, “I da-didn’t know what to do. Everybody’s so ta-tense. I didn’t want Fa-Fa-Fa …” and he trails off.
“Yes,” she prods.
Gabe shrugs. “I don’t want to la-lose Flynn,” he says, and turns back to the magazines.
Ronnie stares at him a second longer, then turns to the bin in front of her and slowly starts to flip through the old pulps.
“How old are you, Gabe?” she asks.
“Fa-Fa-Fifteen,” he says without looking up.
There’s a few seconds of silence, then Ronnie says, “I’m not some cop for QSG, I swear to you.”
Gabe nods and says, “And Fa-Flynn isn’t the one hitting the st-station.”
Ronnie raises her eyebrows and suddenly, without thinking, gives Gabe a playful punch on the arm.
“The thing is,” she says, “we both have to take it on faith.”
18
The Anarchy Museum was the brainchild of a Canal Zone artist and radio freak known only as Throttle who has since disappeared. It’s housed in what once passed for a workers’ lunch room on the second floor of Wireless. It’s in the rear of the building, partitioned from a storeroom loaded with liquor cases and broken radio housings that Ferrie can’t bear to part with. The Anarchy Museum was completely underwritten by G.T. Flynn.
The permanent exhibit is a half-finished mishmash. No one knows what Throttle’s final plan for the museum was and so it’s left in this half-completed state, waiting for his unlikely return. The room is filled with what the creator termed evidence of disorder, turmoil, lawlessness, and general chaos. The brick walls are hung with caricatures of terrorists, of both the political and the artistic kind. There are display cases filled with broken china soup tureens that contain the black ashes of the King James Bible, the compact edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, Robert’s Rules of Order, Black’s Law Dictionary, Hoyle’s Rules of Games, and A Layman’s Guide to F.C.C. Regulation, by Brink Johnson.
And there’s an enormous, spinnable Wheel of Chance mounted on a sidewall, a big wooden roulette-style wheel that makes that nervous ticking sound whenever anyone gives it a spin. Flynn paid a carnival barker a ridiculous sum of money for the thing, then scratched the roof of the Saab transporting it to the club.
These days, the jammers are the only ones who go into the museum. They’ve claimed it as an unofficial clubhouse. Lately the room has seen nothing but loud and spiteful feuding. Flynn thinks he can change that this morning. He’s whistling as he walks into the Anarchy Museum, carrying two dozen fresh Danish from the best bakery in town. He realizes he should bring a more sober tone to these proceedings, act semidour and contemplative. But he feels like he’s ten years younger and six inches taller. He’s wearing his favorite gray-pin double-breasted suit and the new Bally loafers. He spent the morning at the barber’s, then stopped by the florist on his way to the meeting. He had a dozen roses sent to Ronnie with a card that read: To Lulu, With Love, Sir Syd.
He thinks it’s possible his upbeat attitude could be helpful, that his general demeanor could be more harmonizing than any speech he could make. Isn’t it always best to lead by example? He could just let them all take in his mood, drink it up. He could get a firm arm around Wallace’s shoulder, another around Hazel’s, bear-hug them into understanding, walk them a full, bouncing circle around the museum like some choreographed trio from a forties movie—For Christ’s sake, people, look how sweet life can be. Twenty-four hours back, I’m busting my hump like everyone else, kissing surly ass and hawking policies no one wants to buy. And then, bang — the voice of my dreams takes me waltzing in the fog at the top of the city …