Allen Steele - Jericho Iteration

“C’mon, Pearl-”

“And don’t gimme me that ‘Pearl’ shit or I’ll have you over in copyediting faster than you can say Oxford English Dictionary.”

Translation: shape up or ship out. Unless I wanted to end my career at the Big Muddy proofreading pasteups and checking the grammar of the stuff sent in by the freelancers, I had better content myself with writing about squirrels and pretend to like it.

I didn’t say anything, because anything I was likely to have said would probably have had me at the copyediting desk by Monday morning. Bailey gave me one last sour look, then picked up his jacket. “See you tomorrow, gentlemen,” he said. “Don’t forget to lock up behind you.”

Then he strode down the center aisle between the cubicles, heading for the front door, where his son was waiting to drive him home.

“He’ll get over it,” John whispered. “Just lie low for the next couple of weeks and let him chill out.” He opened his desk drawer, pulled out Dingbat, checked the battery LED, and slipped it into the wallet pocket of his trenchcoat. “If it’s any consolation, I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“Forget it,” I said, waving him off. “It’s my fault, not yours.” I paused. “The offer’s still open. If you want me to go with you to Clancy’s …”

He shook his head. “Better not. I think I ought to do it alone this time.” He tapped the proof shoot with his fingernail. “Your friend might get leery if she sees both of us.”

I nodded. He was right; the story was the most important thing, not who covered it. I began to turn off the rest of the lights. Since I lived just upstairs, it was my job to close down the office on the way out the back door. John picked up his gray fedora and walked past me as he headed toward the front door, then abruptly stopped as if a thought had just occurred to him.

“Do me a favor, though,” he added. “Let me know how this bit with the squirrels turns out.”

I tried not to be irritated by his seeming condescension. My friend was attempting to take an interest in my work, making me feel as if it was something that really mattered. He was on the trail of a murderer, and I was stuck with some silly-ass story that would only wind up as a small piece in the front section, if it saw print at all.

“Sure, man,” I mumbled. “I’ll let you know.”

“Could be interesting,” he said hesitantly, realizing that he had said the wrong thing. “You never know …”

“Right …”

He turned around again. “See you in the morning.”

“Catch you later,” I said.

I set the office phone so that it would ring upstairs, shut off the lights, made sure all the doors and windows were locked, then climbed the back stairs to my apartment. It was a warm and humid night, so I cracked open the windows and warmed up a can of SpaghettiOs on the hot plate while I caught a rerun of some old cop show on TV. Robert Urich and his wisecracking buddy caught the bad guys after a car chase; such a surprise. I had no idea what the story was about, but it made me forget how awful my dinner was.

I was out of beer, but I was still suffering alcohol fatigue from last night’s bender, so I didn’t go out to buy another six-pack from the grocery on 12th. It had begun to drizzle outside, and all I really wanted to do was to stay home and stay dry.

After I dumped my plate in the sink and turned off the tube, I sat down at the computer and tried to get some real writing done. After spending an hour rewriting the same boring paragraph several times, though, I realized that my muse had gone on vacation in Puerto Rico and, besides, the Great American Novel still sucked lizard eggs. I switched off the computer without bothering to save the few lines I had written, shucked my clothes, and curled up in bed with a secondhand paperback spy novel.

I fell asleep while reading, not even bothering to turn off the lamp over the bed. Rain gently pattered on the fire escape, city traffic moaned, and helicopters clattered overhead. The night world moved on around me; I vaguely heard the sound of police sirens from somewhere nearby and rolled over in my sleep, dreaming of nothing I could remember.

A countless time later, I was awakened by the buzz of the phone. That did for me what the familiar urban noises outside the window could not; I opened my eyes and, squinting in the glare of the lamp, fumbled for the handset beside me.

“’Lo?” I said, expecting it to be Marianne, calling to nag me again about Uncle Arnie.

A male voice on the other end of the line: “Is this the Big Muddy Inquirer office?”

Shit. I should have turned on the answering machine. “Yeah, but we’re closed now. Can you call back tomorrow …?”

“Who’s this?” the voice demanded.

“Who wants to know?”

A pause. “ This is Lieutenant Mike Farrentino, St. Louis Police Homicide Division. Is this one of the staff?”

Homicide division? What the fuck was this? I woke up a little more. The clock on my dresser said it was 9:55 P.M. “Yeah, it is,” I said. “Why, what’s-”

“What’s your name?” When I didn’t answer promptly, the voice became stronger. “C’mon, what’s your -”

“Rosen.” A cold chill was beginning to creep down my spine. “Gerry Rosen. I’m a staff writer. Why are you-?”

“Mr. Rosen, I’m at Clancy’s Bar and Grill, just down the street from your office. We have a dead person here whose personal ID says that it is the property of one John L. Tiernan, a reporter for your paper. Would you mind coming down here to verify the identity of the deceased, please?”

(Thursday, 10:05 P.M.)

Blue lights flashing in a humid night in the city, veiled by dense evening fog. The distant hoot of a tugboat pushing barges down the Mississippi River. The sound of boot soles slapping against a brick sidewalk …

This is the aftermath of murder.

Clancy’s Bar amp; Grill was crawling with cops by the time I got down there: three blue-and-whites parked on Geyer with a couple of unmarked cruisers sandwiched between them, and out of them had emerged what seemed to be half of the St. Louis Police Department, most of them standing scratching their asses and trying to look as if they knew what they were doing. It figured that a poor black dude can get shot in the head in broad daylight down in Dogtown and nobody gives a shit, but a middle-class white guy gets killed in a Soulard barroom and most of the force shows up, looking for trouble.

The bar was almost empty. Given its usual clientele, though, it only made sense that the regulars would have cleared out as soon as the cops arrived on the scene. A big, burly policeman was standing beneath the front awning, listening to his headset as he watched the sidewalk; he blocked my way as I approached the door.

“Sorry, pal, but you can’t go in right now. Police business-”

“Outta my way,” I muttered as I tried to push past him, “I gotta get in there-”

And found myself being shoved backward so fast I lost my balance and fell against two more cops who were standing on the sidewalk. One of them, a thin Latino cop, snagged the back of my jacket. “Hey, sport,” he said as he began to usher me away, “find another place to get a drink, okay? This is-”

“Fuck off.” I shrugged out of his grip, headed for the door again. “My friend’s-”

The Latino cop grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back. I yelped as I was forced to my knees, and all of a sudden I saw nothing but shiny black cop shoes all around me as a riot baton was pressed against the back of my neck, forcing my head down while yet another officer grabbed my left arm and pulled it behind me.