Jack O'Connell - Wireless

“Take this thing off or I’ll start screaming—”

“Margie—”

“I mean it, asshole. Get it off now.”

He holds the key up in the air for her to see and says, “Please, Margie. I’ll let you go anytime you want. You know that. But I’ll pay you double your rate if you relax and stay. I always have. I’m a man of my word.”

He suddenly doesn’t seem very dangerous to Mina, just an intricate kink with some cash to burn.

“Let me hold the key,” she says.

He places it gently on her stomach. She picks it up and holds it in her free hand.

“I want triple time,” she says. “These things are uncomfortable.”

“My money is your money, Margie. Have I ever denied you anything?”

Mina slowly settles back on the bed and he stands over her, brushes her cheek again like a lover, and says, “Now close the eyes and ask me.”

He starts to move to the foot of the bed and Mina realizes this could be over in three short minutes, so she closes her eyes and takes a breath and says, “Tell me the story again.”

There’s a pause. He gives a dry cough and says, “If you insist—”

She interrupts and says, “I insist. Right now. I want the story. Give it to me.”

She hears him take a deep, halting breath and she spreads her legs, but he doesn’t move from his spot at the foot of the bed.

And then he begins.

“Mr. Hoover was born on January first, 1895, in Washington, D.C.”

What the hell is this shit? Mina wonders, and starts to open one eye. But Speer yells, “Don’t you dare, Margie. You asked and now you’ll have to hear the whole story. You asked for this. You did.”

With one hand, Speer is grabbing the foot bar at the end of the bed. And with the other, he’s grabbing himself.

Mina closes her eyes before she bursts out laughing. She bites down on the inside of her cheeks to keep silent and thinks, Rosalita won’t believe this .

“Mr. Hoover went to law school at night, attending George Washington University. He graduated in 1916 and went on to, to …”—there’s some hesitation, some deep breathing, then he continues—“achieve a master of law degree the following year, whereupon he entered in service to the Department of Justice as a file reviewer”—the voice speeds up just a bit—“and within two years was appointed special assistant to the then Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. In May of 1924 he was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation”—a pause for breath, a swallow, the pitch gets higher. “Disgusted with the scandals of the Harding administration, Mr. Hoover devised his own rigorous methods of recruiting and regimenting new personnel.” The end of the bed lifts off the floor slightly, then bangs back down, and Mina almost convulses with laughter, but manages to dig her nails into her thigh to short-circuit the attack. “Mr. Hoover established the world’s largest fingerprint file, brought practicing scientists into the world of law enforcement and built, built”— the bed lifts and bangs again—“the National Academy where,” and again the bed slams up and down, “officers from all over the country could come, come, and train and”— this is it , Mina thinks, el fin grande —“and he retained his post until his death at, his death, on May second, 1972, his death am-amid vicious rumors about his loyal and trusting, he brought order to, he brought, he saved, he ordered, hunted the agents of chaos and anarchy that, he, he …,” and the rest turns into a groaning yell and the bed is shoved back against the wall and Mina opens her eyes to see only his hand still grasping the foot bar. The rest of him is crumbled down on the floor below her eye level.

Mina shakes her head, allows herself a small giggle, and starts to unlock the handcuff. At the sound of this, Speer climbs to his feet. His face is flushed and he’s got a scowl on that tells Mina it’s time to grab her money and leave. She swings her feet over the edge of the bed and says, “Listen, next time it’s Hip Sing Street, okay? They got shit down there …”

She starts to gather her clothes together and Speer approaches her holding the One Day at a Time coffee mug and says, “I’m glad you’ve come home, Margie—”

Mina starts to pull the halter over her head and says, “Yeah, I’m glad too. Now you owe me a hundred and fifty. Let’s go.”

Speer acts as if he hasn’t heard her. “But there has to be some penance for leaving.”

Mina looks up at him and says, “Listen, dickhead, this is getting old. I’m done being Margie, okay? Now, get my money.”

“There has to be some atonement,” Speer says. “There has to be some regret. Some contrition. There must be some compunction. There has to be a balance, Margie. I’ve explained this before.”

Mina says, “Look, asshole,” and starts to stand up, but Speer shoves her back down on the bed and before she can move, he’s on top of her, straddling her and pouring the contents of the coffee mug over her head. And as she smells the gasoline, Mina begins to scream.

Speer clamps one meaty hand over her mouth and uses the other to search his shirt pocket. Mina bucks, jerks her head enough to free her mouth, and instead of screaming, bites down on Speer’s thumb, sinking teeth into skin and drawing a rush of blood. Speer screams and Mina manages to slide one leg up and rams a knee into his groin. His air cuts off and he falls sideways on the bed.

She jumps up, leaves the rest of her clothes on the floor, and is out the apartment door before Speer can get to his feet.

She runs two miles, her bare feet getting bruised and cut, through alleyways and between buildings, completely disoriented until she comes around a corner to Granada Street. She cuts down Voegelin and runs in a rear entrance to the Penumbra. She huddles inside the charred remains of Club 62, tries to catch her breath, tries to wipe the sting of the gasoline from her eyes.

She backs up against a wall, suddenly freezing in the cool November air. She squats down, hunches over her knees, thinks, I’ll get Bedoya and he’ll get the Popes and they’ll find the mother —

And then the thought breaks off, derailed by her vision of her first glance at his face behind the wheel of that boxy car. The face that told her, in that first instant, I’m a cop .

A gust of wind blows through the broken windows of the nightclub, whistles into the burned-out and gutted cavern, begins to sound, in Mina’s freezing ear, like a word. Like a name.

Margie .

The bath is filled with steaming hot water and a generous dose of the French raspberry oil. Hannah sits on the edge of the bathtub, naked, the bathroom door locked, Lenore’s notebook, once again, sitting in her lap like a small animal of some kind whose greatest asset is its deceptive coloration, the bland and boring outer skin that causes most predators to ignore it.

Hannah runs her hand down the spiral binding, then over the cardboard cover. It isn’t fair, Lenore , she thinks, and that’s typical of you. This is a one-way conversation. A monologue. There’s no way for me to object or maybe even agree. I don’t even know where you are. Why did you do this to me? Why did you have to choose me?

Given the chance, she wonders what she would say to Lenore.

She could just pivot, right now, right this second, turn on her behind and drop the notebook into the water. She could watch the pages start to turn to a mushy pulp, watch her mentor’s rigid printing begin to dissolve, begin to bleed into a curling stream of thin blue waves, contaminating the water with all this scrawled craziness. What if she drowned the notebook, then she stepped into the bath, slid down and let the ink-infected water engulf her body, course up around every curve and bend of her anatomy, wash over her, this full-bodied, blue-tinged baptism? What would happen? Would the madness seep into her through her pores? Would Lenore’s bent words penetrate through the skin, her lunatic worldview jump into the bloodstream and make a dash for the brain stem?