JAMMER’S wAS u~ twelve more flights of dead escalator and occupied the rear third of the top floor. Aside from Leon’s place, Bobby had never seen a nightclub, and he found Jammer’s both impressive and scary. Impressive because of its scale and what he took to be the exceptional quality of the fittings, and scary because a nightclub, by day, is somehow inately unreal. Witchy. He peered around, thumbs snagged in the back pockets of his new jeans, while Jackie conducted a whispered conversation with a long-faced white man in rum- pled blue coveralls. The place was fitted out with dark ultrasuede banquettes, round black tables, and dozens of or- nate screens of pierced wood. The ceiling was painted black, each table faintly illuminated by its own little recessed flood aimed straight down out of the dark There was a central stage, brightly lit now with work lights strung on yellow flex, and, in the middle of the stage, a set of cherry-red acoustic drums. He wasn’t sure why, but it gave him the creeps; some sidelong sense of a half-life, as though something was about to shift, just at the edge of his vision . “Bobby,” Jackie said, “come over here and meet Jammer.” He crossed the stretch of plain dark carpet with all the cool he could muster and faced the long-faced man, who had dark, thinning hair and wore a white evening shirt under his cover- alls. The man’s eyes were narrow, the hollows of his cheeks shadowed with a day’s growth of beard.
“Well,” the man said, “you want to be a cowboy?” He was looking at Bobby’s T-shirt and Bobby had the uncomfort- able feeling that he might be about to laugh. “Jammer was a jockey,” Jackie said. “Hot as they come. Weren’t you, Jammer?” “So they say,” Jammer said, still looking at Bobby. “Long time ago, Jackie. How many hours you logged, running?” he asked Bobby. Bobby’s face went hot. “Well, one, I guess.” Jammer raised his bushy eyebrows. “Gotta start some- where.” He smiled, his teeth small and unnaturally even and, Bobby thought, too numerous. “Bobby,” Jackie said,”why don’t you ask Jammer about this Wig character the Finn was telling you about?” Jammer glanced at her, then back to Bobby. “You know the Finn? For a hotdogger you’re in pretty deep, aren’t you?” He took a blue plastic inhaler from his hip pocket and inserted it in his left nostril, snorted, then put it back in his pocket. “Ludgate. The Wig. Finn’s talking about the Wig? Must be in his dotage.” Bobby didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask. “Well,” Bobby ventured, “this Wig’s up in orbit somewhere, and he sells the Finn stuff, sometimes…~” “No shit? Well, you coulda fooled me. I woulda told you the Wig was either dead or drooling. Crazier than your usual cowboy, you know what I mean? Batshit. Gone. Haven’t heard of him in years.” “Jammer,” Jackie said, “I think it’s maybe best if Bobby just tells you the story. Beauvoir’s due here this afternoon, and he’ll have some questions for you, so you better kno~v where things stand….” Jammer looked at her. “Well. I see. Mr. Beauvoir’s call- ing in that favor, is he?” “Can’t speak for him,” she said, “but that would be my guess. We need a safe place to store the Count here.” “What count?” “Me,” Bobby said, “that’s me.” “Great,” Jammer said, with a total lack of enthusiasm. “So come on back into the office.”
Bobby couldn’t keep his eyes off the cyberspace deck that took up a third of the surface of Jammer’s antique oak desk It was matte black, a custom job, no trademarks anywhere. He kept craning forward, while he told Jammer about Two-a- Day and his attempted run, about the girl-feeling thing and his mother getting blown up. It was the hottest-looking deck he’d ever seen, and he remembered Jackie saying that Jam- mer had been such a shithot cowboy in his day. Jammer slumped back in his chair when Bobby was fin- ished. “You wanna try it?” he asked. He sounded tired. “Try it?” “The deck. I think you might wanna try it It’s something about the way you keep rubbing your ass on the chair. Either you wanna try it or you gotta piss bad” “Shit yeah. I mean, yeah, thanks, yeah, I would . . “Why not? No way for anybody to know it’s you and not me. right? Why don’t you jack in with him, Jackie? Kinda keep track.” He opened a desk drawer and took out two trode sets. “But don’t do anything, right? I mean, just buzz on out and spin. Don’t try to run any numbers I owe Beauvoir and Lucas a favor, and it looks like how I’m paying it back is by helping keep you intact.” He handed one set of trodes to Jackie, the other to Bobby. He stood up, grabbed handles on either side of the black console, and spun it around so it faced Bobby. “Go on. You’ll cream your jeans. Thing’s ten years old and it’ll still wipe ass on most anything. Guy name of Automatic Jack built it straight up from scratch He was Bobby Quine’s hardware artist, once. The two of `em burnt the Blue Lights together, but that was probably before you were born.”