Jack O'Connell - Wireless

Wallace closes the ‘door behind him and relocks a single dead bolt, then starts to feel his way through the outer reception room toward Flynn’s office. He’ll sack out on the couch till G.T. gets home and they can talk. Flynn was raised a Catholic and he’ll understand the need for confession. He’ll feel compelled to forgive the sins of a fallen dwarf, fall into the role he plays so well — the gracious benefactor . Wallace doesn’t like this kind of cold analysis, but he’s spent a lifetime sizing people up in this way, looking for the telling inflection in the voice, the pattern in small, unimportant behaviors. There’s a way to find hidden motivations. It’s a method Wallace has honed for so long that now it’s simply reflex. He couldn’t shut it down if he wanted to. Who needs who more? Does the father require the son or is it the other way around? And suddenly he flashes on that image of Flynn as the runaway orphan, fifteen years old and gobbling down Olga’s meatballs like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, like he was some skeletal refugee, a displaced person from a vague and distant borderland, desperate not only for the spatzle and the rye bread but for the words of the deformed missionary, the dwarf in the cardigan, this mutated mirror image of the shining television dad dispensing the words of a new religion called jamming.

It’s not even a contest , Wallace thinks. The boy’ll be weeping the tears of absolution before morning. And then he can find a way to eliminate our new problem .

He steps into what Flynn calls the deal room, the place where he sells all the papers that fund the family. Wallace starts to move for the desk when he hears a small whine, the sound of a tight hinge, and he squints and stares forward to see the swivel chair behind the desk begin to turn.

“Jesus, G.T.,” he says, “you scared the crap out of me.”

There’s no response for a second. And then there’s a small, rumbling laugh, and Wallace knows it’s not Flynn.

A voice says, “Sit down,” and Wallace stays motionless in the doorway. A flashlight beam clicks on and shines in his face, runs down the length of his body. After a second, it reverses itself and shines up into the face of the speaker. Wallace wants to run, but he’s terrified to make a sudden move. It’s like having a wasp land on your arm and not knowing whether to slap it or to freeze and wait for it to fly.

Speer turns off the flashlight and comes forward in the chair, plants his forearms on the desk, and leans on them. In this new position, patches of his face become visible from the dim light outside the window. But his eyes are kept in shadow. Speer takes a clogged breath in through his nose and says, “You’re late for my dance lesson, Mr. Browning.”

Wallace stays silent, but his heart launches into its most violent pulse, as if it were hurtling toward an imminent and horrific car crash, as if it were being lanced with the longest and fattest hatpin in the world.

Speer begins to barely rock in the swivel chair, his body just slightly tilting back and forth.

“I think,” he says, “you came here to tell Mr. Flynn about me.”

Wallace shakes his head in the darkness and feels the trembling begin along his jawline.

“You need to know,” Speer says, the voice overly controlled, like a bad actor always aware of his own deficiencies, “that even if you were to be rid of me, there are others. Your kind of behavior …” He fades as the anger builds, begins again. “The disorder won’t be tolerated. Anarchy is regression. It’s weakness. We will not tolerate it …”

There’s the sound of fingers being drummed on the desktop, a rolling beat. Then Speer says, “Why don’t you sit down there on the couch and we’ll both wait for Mr. Flynn? How would that be?”

Wallace moves one foot a step backward.

There’s the sound of a long, dry swallow, then the voice is lower, more threatening. “Sit down on the couch.”

Wallace pivots and bolts. He bangs an elbow into the secretary’s desk but keeps moving, gets to the front door, turns the knob and pulls, but he’s forgotten about the dead bolt. And then Speer is behind him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, throwing a jab into the small of his back that drives him down on his knees.

Wallace falls on his side, tries to cover up, but Speer has a blackjack out and begins whipping it across his arms and side, and then he rolls Wallace onto his stomach, plants a knee on his back, and begins to pummel the back of the head until it’s clear the dwarf has lost consciousness.

Speer stands up and repockets the sap. He’s breathing hard and he takes a second to hunch down, hands on his knees, head lowered like he’s just finished a set of wind sprints. He sucks air for a full minute until his lungs quiet, then he reaches down and grabs Wallace by the wrists and drags his body back into Flynn’s inner office. He lifts him onto the couch, holds on to one wrist, feels for and finds a racing pulse. Then he drops down on one knee and the trunk of his body hangs over Wallace.

Speer reaches into a back pocket and pulls out the silver flask, hesitates, then brings the curved metal of the container up to his cheek and touches it to his skin for a few seconds, as if trying to cool himself down.

He puts the cap end of the flask in his mouth, bites down with his teeth, and begins to rotate the bottom slowly with his left hand. As he turns, he blesses himself, makes the sign of the cross, his right hand reverently touching his forehead, breastbone, left and right shoulders. Then he spits the cap to the floor, places his thumb over the mouth of the flask, and tips it slightly until his thumb is wetted with the contents.

He sets the flask on the floor carefully, leans in closer over the body, brings his thumb to Wallace’s forehead, and, again, traces the sign of the cross. As he moves his thumb, he mumbles, ancient and foreign words, sounds from the past.

“ Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris .”

He brings his hand behind Wallace’s head, gently cups the neck, and lifts the head to an angle. He reaches to the floor, picks up the flask, brings it to Wallace’s mouth, and pours a long swallow of benzine down the open, sleeping throat.

Flynn does something he’s never done before. He shows up at the mediation drunk. He’s killed most of a bottle of Glenlivet, not entirely to ward off the pain in his hand. He thinks he looks the part of a drunk, a classic white-collar Scotch man from the last generation. A guy with a regular after-work hangout, a place where you could eat a blood-red steak at the bar. A place with heavy wood and some brass.

He’s dressed for the part, a good example of the word disheveled . His shirt won’t stay completely tucked in his pants. His tie seems to be unraveling on its own. His hair, the showcase of his grooming habits, is winging out behind his ears, strands uniting into tufts that follow no plan of parting.

He’s playing with the TV-chassis diorama in the middle of the Anarchy Museum. No one is speaking to him. In fact, the whole room is held in a field of silence. Wallace’s old boys sit on their crates and folding chairs. They act like the place was a lazy barbershop, that they’ve assembled simply for the free copies of True Detective . Their leader has absented himself from the proceedings and Flynn takes this as a personal slap in the face and the biggest and best sign of how total a fool he’s become.

Flynn doesn’t completely understand why the old boys bothered to show up. It’s the reverse of what he expected. He assumed Hazel and the gang would come, just for the sake of one last argument, one final blast of adrenaline and namecalling and polemic.