Bugsy and Cameo crossed in front of a slow-moving delivery truck and went into the museum. The place smelled like old french fries and mildew, but it looked like the best secondhand shop ever. Display cases were filled with oddments and curios. A waxwork Peregrine stood in the corner in the same pose and outfit as the copy of Aces framed behind her. The joker at the counter could have been a man or a woman. The long face was something between a melted candle and road rash. Thick, ropey arms spilled out of a Yankees jersey. “Cameo!” it said.
“Jason,” Ellen said, smiling. “It’s been a while. How’s Annie?”
“The same,” the joker said, spreading his splayed, tumor-budding hands in a gesture that meant Women. Whatcha gonna do? “What can we do you for today?”
“My friend here is doing some research. People’s Park riot.”
“The what?”
“Apparently there was a riot in People’s Park in 1969,” Bugsy said.
“Could have been,” the joker agreed. “I was two, so chances are I wouldn’t remember.”
“Thomas Marion Douglas was there,” Ellen said.
“The Lizard King? Oh, fuck yeah. We’ve got crates of stuff on him.” The joker squinted, scratched himself, and nodded. “None of that’s on display anymore. The whole sixties rock thing we don’t put up unless there’s a revival or something going on. But… yeah. I think we’ve maybe got something back in the newsreels, too.”
“Anything you’ve got would be great,” Ellen said.
The joker held up a disjointed finger. One minute. He disappeared into the shadowy back of the museum. Bugsy walked around slowly, taking in the hundreds of small items and pictures. A poster for Golden Boy, the movie where the ace had gotten his name back before he got tangled up with McCarthy. Weird to think it was the same guy Bugsy had seen in Hollywood two years before. He looked just the same. Still pictures from the Rox War. A cheesy pot-metal action figure of The Great and Powerful Turtle, the grooves in the top making it look like a hand grenade cut along its length.
“I love this place,” Ellen said.
A dress Water Lily had worn. A copy of an arrest warrant for Fortunato. A metallic green feather off one of Dr. Tachyon’s hats. A solid two dozen pictures along one wall, each of them different, and all of them Croyd Crenson. “It’s a trip,” Bugsy said.
The joker stepped out of the shadows and motioned them in. The dim back office was stuffed to the ceiling with cardboard boxes and piles of paper. A ten-inch color monitor perched on the desk. It showed an image of a newscaster in the pale, washed-out colors that Bugsy associated with 1970s television.
“That’s the footage I was thinking about,” the joker said. “I’ve got a wash towel from his last concert in the box there. We got it off eBay a couple years ago, so it might be bullshit, but it’s the only thing I’m sure he’d have worn after the People’s Park thing.”
“You’re great, Jason,” Ellen said.
“I try,” the joker said with a sloping, awkward grin.
Bugsy squatted down, found the remote, and started the video playing. There he was. Thomas Marion Douglas. He was shouting at a crowd, exhorting them. A line of National Guardsmen stood shoulder to shoulder, facing him. This was before the advent of the mirrored face guard, so Bugsy could make out the nervous expressions on the soldiers.
Something loud happened. The reporter ducked, and the camera spun. A Volkswagen Bug was in flames. The camera pulled back to an armored personnel carrier, Thomas Marion Douglas on the upper deck, twisting the barrel as if it were nothing. The Browning came off the APC, and Douglas held it up over his head, bending it almost double.
“Watch this part,” the joker said. “This is great.”
The Lizard King bent down and hauled someone in a uniform out of the carrier. The poor nat kicked his legs in the air, and the Lizard King went down.
“Wait!” Bugsy said, poking at the buttons on the remote. “What happened?”
The joker lifted the remote from his hands and the images streamed backward. Frame by frame, they went through it. The burning car. The broken APC. The captain plucked out like the good bits of an oyster. And then the blurred arc of something moving fast. Thomas Marion Douglas’s head flew forward and to the right, and he went down like he was boneless.
The man who stood where the Lizard King had been wore work overalls and a hard hat. A long iron wrench was in his hand. The guy was huge, but seemed to be shrinking. “Go home!” the previous generation’s Hardhat called. “Go home now. Is over. You must not fight no more.”
It looked like the big guy was weeping. Someone shouted something Bugsy couldn’t make out, and the previous Hardhat went from maudlin to enraged in under a second.
“That’s not good,” Jason the joker said. But just as the guy with the big wrench was about to start in on the crowd, he went down too, tripped by Thomas Marion Douglas. The Lizard King got up as Hardhat regained his feet. The picture was jumping back and forth now, the cameraman torn between a great story and the threat of becoming collateral damage. Bugsy leaned forward. The Lizard King, blood running down his forehead and into his eyes, took a solid swing straight to the ribs and went down again. Hardhat stood over him, ready to crush the man’s skull. The wrench rose, and then something-a chain, maybe-wrapped around it and spun Hardhat to face a new enemy.
Tom Weathers. Bugsy stopped the frame.
He looked familiar, but not quite the same. Slender, with blond hair down to his shoulders, wearing only a pair of blue jeans and a saucer-sized peace medallion on a chain, but this was absolutely unquestionably the Radical. The man who had threatened New Orleans, who had killed enemy and ally alike for almost two decades.
But Bugsy couldn’t help thinking that the Tom Weathers on the screen looked… not younger, precisely. Softer. Kinder. Less ravingly homicidal.
He started the tape again. Hardhat, the Radical, and the Lizard King carried on their battle until it ended with Hardhat on the ground, reduced to merely human size and weeping, the Radical and the Lizard King in a victory embrace that was almost sexual.
“That’s all we’ve got,” Jason said.
“Okay,” Cameo said. “Ready to meet the Lizard King?”
Bugsy nodded. Cameo took the old grey terry-cloth hand towel from Jason the joker’s outstretched hand, settled it around her neck like a prize-fighter, and closed her eyes. Bugsy could see the change almost at once. She slouched into her chair, the angle of her shoulders changing, her head slipping back on her neck like a petulant schoolboy. He knew that Thomas Marion Douglas would be the one to open her eyes.
Apparently Ellen spent the two or three silent minutes prepping the Lizard King, because he didn’t seem surprised.
“I have risen, man,” Tom Douglas said in a slow, theatrical drawl. “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange eons, even death may die.”
“Yeah, okay. So my name’s Jonathan,” Bugsy said. “I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the Radical. From the People’s Park riot?”
Tom Douglas shook his head as if he expected his hair to be longer and leaned even farther back and lower in his chair. Arrogance and contempt came off him in waves. “He’s still fighting the good fight, is he? Cool for him, man. He was righteous.”