The guy is dressed in this antique forest-green suede sports coat with deep green leather elbow patches, a heavy, thick-ribbed, cherry-red turtleneck sweater, black wool pants, and unlaced Keds high-top sneakers. He has a broad nose that dominates his face and a shock of jet-black wiry hair that shoots over the top of his head and plunges down the opposite slope like a frozen wave.
He touches the microphone hesitantly, as if testing to see if he’ll get a shock, but before he can speak, the mayor’s assistant, Mrs. Gilbert, rises to the mayor’s mike and announces that since the professor did not sign in with her prior to the invocation, the rules of the council will not allow for his address. A wave of audible dissension spreads through the room and immediately the city manager, Maud Kenner, starts to make a statement, without the benefit of her mike, about “high-handed nonsense,” and someone else, Hannah can’t tell who, calls out for a suspension of the rules.
And Welby goes into his gavel-banging mode.
Flynn touches Hannah’s arm.
“Lenore and I had a mutual friend,” he says.
Hannah gives him a shrug.
“A girl, a young woman, excuse me. Hung around the Canal Zone. Hung with the punks down Rimbaud.”
“She have a name?” Hannah asks.
“Her name’s Hazel,” Flynn says. “You know her?”
“Oh yeah,” Hannah says, shaking her head and smiling. “I know Hazel.”
Flynn takes a breath and says, “Lenore used to sort of check up on Hazel for me. You know what I’m saying? She used to keep me informed.”
Hannah looks him in the eye and says, “And what did you do for Lenore?”
There’s a long moment as they stare at each other until Flynn decides it’s a standoff and says, “I took care of her business affairs. That’s what I do for a living.”
The council votes to allow DeMango to speak and the audience again begins to applaud, but their clapping dies out immediately as the professor, without any preamble, launches into a tirade against “a tyrannical and oppressive licensing system” and “the monopoly of the sound waves by fascist radio barons.”
The radio people in the audience switch at once to a chorus of booing and catcalls as DeMango shakes a fist toward them and yells that the jamming incidents “represent a new and barely explored art form, and as such, should be given all possible tolerance.”
At this suggestion, Charles Federman rises to his feet and begins calling for the microphone. DeMango pivots away from the council to face down Federman and screams, “To deny the new frequency poets their voice, to silence the visionary fever of this new wave of artists and thinkers, is tantamount to denying our cultural future.”
Welby signals for the council police and DeMango grasps the microphone with both hands and rants, “You don’t understand. This is a cutting-edge art form. Your attempts to infiltrate and crush the jammers are a walk down the road to barbarism and stagnation and—”
The rest of his words go unheard as two officers pull him away from the mike and lead him, twisting and jerking, out of the chambers. Federman then grabs the mike, turns to Welby, and calls him a “monkey-boy with a pension.” The chamber erupts with angry voices trying to yell over one another. And then the whole room is blasted by screeching feedback that seems to be coming from the cable TV equipment. The cable technicians tear their headsets off and cover their ears with their hands. Welby is up out of his seat, yelling at Bendix to get some cops in here. Maud Kenner is pounding on the council table with a flat palm.
Someone uncouples two electrical cables and the feedback ends. But the yelling and cursing continue. Federman’s mouth is outlined with spittle. He’s screaming, “Let go of me, Vinnie,” to a small, round assistant who’s trying to restrain him. Everyone’s out of their seats and Hannah thinks punches could be thrown at any second.
Flynn says, “You want to get out of here?” and Hannah nods and follows him out of the chamber.
They don’t talk till they’re out on Main Street, standing in the shadow thrown by City Hall.
Flynn is lightly touching his left ear with his index finger.
“Jesus,” he says, “I’m sorry I asked you down here.”
Hannah ignores the apology. She’s not sure what to feel about this guy and wonders how much that has to do with his connection to Lenore.
“Really, I’m sorry about this,” Flynn says again, seeming genuinely flustered. “Would you like to go get a—”
Hannah cuts him off with a shake of her head. She starts to walk backward in the direction of her Mustang. After a couple steps she pauses and says, “I’ll check up on Hazel. I’ll call you in a couple days.”
Flynn seems to be unsure what to say. After a few seconds he says, “Okay, I’m in the book.”
She looks him up and down, from the pricy haircut to the imported loafers. And suddenly she’s wondering if Lenore slept with this guy, and if maybe he was that one concealed, unspoken lover that she let her guard down for.
“I’m sure I can find you,” Hannah says, then turns and starts to walk.
She knows he’s still standing there, looking at her back, watching her walk. Or maybe she’s feeling the eyes of the big marble vulture, resting up on the roof of City Hall, nested and waiting above Quinsigamond, looking down at her and sizing up an abundant meal of surprisingly tender meat.
20
Ten miles outside of Quinsigamond, on a two-lane stretch on the outskirts of Whitney, Flynn pulls the Saab over onto the shoulder of the road and kills the engine.
Ronnie looks at him for a second, then says, “Well, Scooter, if you want to go parking don’t you think we could get a more secluded spot?”
Flynn stares out of the window and says, “Pop the glove box.”
“You used to love it when I was a wise-ass. You want a map or something?”
“Binoculars,” Flynn says.
She reaches in and underneath a pile of small transistor radios, she touches a miniature pair of rubber sports binoculars. She pulls them out. They’re army green and have a brand name, German she thinks, written on the side. She hands them over and Flynn grabs them and brings them up to his eyes without a word.
“A voyeur,” she says. “Great. I’m an expert at this.”
He hands the glasses over to her and says, “Take a look.”
She puts her eyes to the rubber cups, focuses, takes in a large, weathered-shingle farmhouse. The building is three stories high, a mishmash of modified Victorian and French country styles. There’s a wraparound porch moating the front entrance and an attached barn off the back. The whole thing sits a good fifty yards back from the road, at the foot of a rising knoll. Planted in a side yard are volleyball nets and mounted on the barn below the hayloft door is a basketball backboard and hoop.
“The third floor is all open,” Flynn says.
Ronnie continues to survey the property without responding.
“Like this big loft area. All unpartitioned. At least that’s how it was, you know, twenty years ago.”
He shifts in his seat. “They had two dozen steel-frame bunk beds. They were set up in rows. Like an army barracks. You had a locker that went underneath. You’d keep all your stuff in there. We’d be lined up alphabetically. We’d do everything alphabetically. Brush our teeth. Line up in the kitchen. Get in the bus. They used to park the bus in the barn. Can you see it?”
She tries to peer into the barn. The double doors are open, but the position of the sun makes it impossible to see anything inside. She shakes her head.
“They probably got rid of it. The thing was dying twenty year ago. This old Harvester monster. Sister Marietta’s true love. She was a wizard, drove it like a goddamn tank. Always ready for battle.”