Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“Hey there—”

“Hey—”

A rattling black Continental was passing through the intersection. She ran right in front of its headlights. It swerved and screeched. She let herself glance back. The four men were standing in a line, their faces inexpressive as they looked at her. The car started to drive away, but she grabbed the mirror on the driver’s side. The window unrolled. A pair of white men in polyester jackets and pastel sport shirts were sitting in the front seat. The driver looked out the window at the men behind her. “Need a lift, honey?” The voice was sedated, confident.

“Yes. Please.”

The driver consulted his companion, who gave her the once-over, shrugged, and unlocked the back door. As Barbara got in she saw a station wagon slowing to a stop halfway up the block behind the car. It was the same station wagon that had followed her away from John’s building. The four men crossed the intersection, waving through the rear window, receding swiftly.

“Where to?” the driver said.

Nashville music whispered in the stereo speakers behind her. “Anywhere,” she panted. “I’m lost. Police station.”

“I don’t know about that. How about our place instead?”

“Nigs givin’ you shit?” his companion asked her.

“I was just scared,” she murmured. The air smelled of aftershave and engine heat. At her feet were Burger King bags and two aluminum suitcases. To make room for her legs she started to move one of them aside.

“Don’t touch,” the companion said.

The driver turned the steering wheel hand over hand, languidly, and looked back over the headrest. “We’re nice boys, honey, but fair’s fair. I reckon you owe us one gratis. Those nigs wouldn’t of been gentle.”

He returned his attention to the road. They were driving fast, but Barbara closed her fingers around the door handle anyway. The side of the driver’s hand slammed down on the button of the lock, his fingertips trailing on the window. His companion was kneeling on the front seat, smoothing back his straight hair with both hands. He grabbed Barbara’s wrist as she lunged for the other door. He started to climb into the back seat but dropped his head to peer out the rear window. He frowned. “That company we got?”

The driver turned around to look. His face hardened. “You bitch, what is this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Just let me out.”

Red light filled the car. She turned. The station wagon was still following her. On the roof, above the driver’s window, a flasher had appeared.

The Lufthansa woman in Chicago rested her fingers on the computer keyboard. “Mit Film oder ohne, Herr St. John?”

“Was für ein Film?”

Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, Flight 619 nonstop service to Frankfurt will begin boarding in—

“Ein Clint Eastwood.”

“Ohne.”

“Ja, dann haben Sie mehr Ruhe. Gepäck?”

“Die Aktentasche nur.”

RC and Sergeant Luzzi had chosen to spend the last half hour of their shift parked under the I-70 overpass at the head of the Martin Luther King Bridge, while they listened to the force’s own account of this St. Louis Night. A grill fire at one of the booths on Chestnut. Disorderly parties trying to crash the invitation-only Election Night Ball. An escort for Bob Hope’s limo. A detail to keep spectators away from the fireworks barge in case spectators showed up.

The big display would be starting in twenty minutes, and RC and Luzzi would have a primo view out over Laclede’s Landing and Eads Bridge. RC couldn’t figure out, though, why there weren’t more people heading for the waterfront. On the Fourth of July this intersection always swarmed with pedestrians, all tromping to the Arch. Tonight the traffic, what there was of it, was confined to cars, mainly VIPs arriving for the Ball. They’d seen Ronald Struthers drive up Broadway in a Caddy decorated for a wedding getaway, with crepe paper and tin cans and the words Just Hitched on a soggy cardboard plaque, meaning city and county. RC guessed the Chief was already at the Ball, playing hostess. Luzzi had dryly predicted she wouldn’t be with the force much longer, to which RC had replied that that might be so but she’d never forget where she got her start. When it came to Jammu, even RC and Luzzi could be civil to each other.

Out over the Mississippi on the MLK a couple of cars were heading towards them. One of them had a flasher, which probably meant it was the East St. Louis force, since the dispatcher hadn’t mentioned any chases, and anyway not too many of them lasted across the river and back. RC turned to Luzzi, who’d already switched on their flashers and made contact with the dispatcher. “…Over the MLK. We’ll take appropriate action to stop the vehicle.”

They pulled square across the exit lane and looked at each other in the light of the Seagram’s billboard by the Embassy Suites. “Better draw,” Luzzi said. He took the rifle and got out of the cruiser, crouching behind the left front fender. RC unholstered his revolver. All at once this looked like action as real as any he’d been through yet. The lead car on the bridge had picked them up and was weaving in its lane as if trying to make up its mind. But the tail car had slowed down, stopping in the middle of the bridge. A station wagon. There were no official markings on it.

The lead car hit. It squealed and jumped the curb onto the lane divider, right in front of RC. Luzzi was standing up. A muzzle flashed twice as the car skidded sideways across the length of the divider.

“Tires, hit the tires,” Luzzi shouted, diving back inside. He’d taken a bullet in the right shoulder. RC got out and scrambled up to the right front fender. The car had stopped moving not more than twenty feet from him. There were three people in it, two of them struggling in the back seat. RC fired twice at the rear tire and hit the hubcap twice. Luzzi’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “Come out with your hands high.”

Tires bit pavement. RC took aim again, raising the gun and bringing it down as the car gained speed and distance, twenty, thirty, fifty feet, heading up Third Street. The back door opened and a female jumped out headlong just as he pulled the trigger. He plainly saw her head jerk as the bullet entered. Luzzi was shouting incoherently. RC dropped his revolver and howled.

Leaving the Arch, turning off Lucas, Jammu heard Luzzi’s voice on her radio. She wheeled around the corner and saw traffic piling up on Third Street. A black officer knelt clutching his head. Luzzi leaned against Cruiser 217 with his arms crossed, one hand pressing on his wounded shoulder, the other hand holding a microphone on the end of a stretched spiral cord. In the middle of Third Street, all alone, a woman lay in faint headlight beams.

Jammu heard herself walking. Her knees bent into view beneath her as she crouched by the woman, whose eyes were wide open. A crumpled slip of paper had fallen from her open hand, and from a flaring oval hole where her nostrils had been, blood fanned down her cheek and collected, orange and oily, on the weathered white paint of a lane line. A crowd was gathering around her at a respectful distance. Press badges were pinned to most of the lapels and purses. “Oh God,” a woman said. Behind her Jammu heard the sobbing of the black officer, evidently the one who’d fired. He’d just guaranteed himself a series of promotions. She pocketed the slip of paper. With her index finger she touched the warm blood streaming from the woman’s nose. “Stand aside,” she told the reporters. Fresh officers were arriving from every direction. They pushed back the crowd, and no one noticed when Jammu, turning to confer with them, put her bleeding finger in her mouth and drew it out clean.