Allen Steele - Jericho Iteration

Geyer Street was empty except for the two gray Piranhas idling at the curb, their turret-mounted water cannons rotated toward the sidewalks on either side of the street. If there’s anything more scary than seeing a couple of armored cars parked at your front door, I hope I never live to see it, but if the ERA had been anticipating a neighborhood riot over the arrest of a deadbeat reporter, they were disappointed. The sidewalks were empty, and no wonder; anyone with common sense was staying inside, peering through the slats of their window shades at what was going on.

A tow truck was parked in front of the two LAVs, its forklift gears whining as the front end of John’s Deimos was raised off the street. They were taking everything that mattered-computers, John’s car, telephones, even the manuscript of an unpublished book. No cops in sight, though, and that was a little puzzling. After all the local talent that had converged on Clancy’s after John’s murder, it was surprising to see that there were no police cruisers in sight, especially since I was apparently being busted for having stolen the micro-CD from the evidence bag …

A cold chill raced down my spine as the realization hit me: this was entirely an ERA operation. Keeping SLPD in the dark about this raid, in fact, was likely a top priority; the squad leader had probably been using a scrambled frequency when he had called back to headquarters to report his team’s success.

A soldier opened the rear hatches of the first Piranha, then the two grunts who had escorted me down the stairs pushed me into the armored car. Two more climbed in behind them; one of them went forward into the narrow driver’s compartment up front, while the other climbed a short ladder to the turret behind the water cannon.

The rear hatches were slammed shut again as the two soldiers sat me down on one of the fold-down seats. One of them sat next to me; the other took a seat directly across the narrow aisle. They rested their G-11s across their knees and said nothing; after a few moments, one of them found a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his flak vest.

“I guess it would be too much to ask if you wouldn’t smoke,” I said. “It’s kinda stuffy in here as it is.”

The two troopers stared at each other, then broke up laughing. Their name badges read B. MULLENS and B. HEFLER. Bob and Bob, the Gestapo Twins.

“No, it’s not too much to ask,” said Bob Mullens as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it off the bottom of the pack. From his voice, I recognized him as the guy who had stuck a gun against the back of my head. “Hell, you can ask for anything you want …”

How about a slow, painful death from lung cancer? I didn’t say anything; Mullens blew some smoke in my direction and favored me with a shit-eating grin, but when that didn’t get a rise out of me he settled back against the padded back of his seat.

“Son,” he drawled, “you are in a world of shit.”

Hefler gave a high-pitched laugh at his partner’s bit of wisdom. “Yeah, man,” he said, “you’re going to hell in a bucket.”

Ask a silly question, get some stupid clichés. I silently stared at the metal floor beneath my feet, trying to figure out what was happening to me. After a minute we heard the driver shift gears; the vehicle lurched forward on its tandem wheels, diesel engines growling as the Piranha began to trundle down the street.

I was going to hell in a bucket, and I can’t say I enjoyed the ride.

(Friday, 12:01 A.M.)

It was a short, bumpy ride from Soulard to Busch Stadium, little more than a sprint down Broadway, but the LAV’s driver seemed hell-bent on finding every pothole in the tortured asphalt and driving through it at top speed. My new pals Bob and Bob got a kick out of watching me try to remain seated with my hands cuffed behind my back. I rocked back and forth, my shoulder muscles aching a little with each unanticipated turn and jar the Piranha took; they thought it was pretty funny.

It’s amazing how little it takes to amuse some people. I suppose they had already chewed up their rubber balls and tug-toys.

The bells in the Old Cathedral down by the riverside were tolling twelve times when the armored car slowed down. Its wheels bumped again, this time as if the Piranha was crawling over a curb, then the vehicle ground to a halt. There was a double-rap against the wall in front of the driver’s compartment. Mullens stood up, grasped one of my arms, and pulled me out of my seat.

“End of the line, buddy,” he said as Hefler unlatched the rear hatches and pushed them open. “Time for you to go see the colonel.”

“Yeah,” said Hefler as he stepped out of the vehicle. “And when he’s through, maybe you can go for another ride with us. Would you like that, huh?”

I kept silent as Mullens hauled me out of the LAV. The vehicle had come to a stop in the middle of the wide plaza in front of the stadium’s Walnut Street entrance. Concrete barricades topped with coiled razor wire had been erected around the elm-lined plaza, surrounding the Piranhas parked in front of the closed-down ticket booths and dismantled turnstiles. ERA troopers were goldbricking against the statue of Stan Musial, stubbing out their cigarette butts against his bronze feet. Stan the Man was probably rolling in his grave.

The walkways winding around the curved outside walls of the stadium were vacant of baseball fans; the World Series pennants suspended from the ceiling of the ground-floor concourse hung limp and ignored, relics of a more innocent age. It had been a long time since anyone in this place had heard the crack of a bat or smelled a jumbo hot dog. That was one thing we had learned from all those two-bit dictatorships in Latin America: how to turn a good sports arena into a hellhole.

Bob and Bob escorted me across the plaza to a pair of boarded-up double doors beneath a tattered blue canvas awning. The doors led into a narrow lobby where two more soldiers were standing guard duty in front of a pair of elevator doors. One of the grunts reached out to press the Up button on the wall beneath a black plaque reading MEMBERS ONLY.

“Hey, wait a minute, guys,” I said as the left elevator opened. “We can’t go up there … we’re not members.”

Hefler actually seemed to hesitate for a moment, confirming my suspicion that he was too stupid even to have held down a job as a busboy when the club had been open. “Shut up, asshole,” Mullens growled as he shoved me into the elevator.

I stifled a grin. Some people have no sense of humor.

We rode the elevator up to the loge level and the Stadium Club. I had been here a couple of times before with Uncle Arnie, who was well heeled enough to afford a gold membership card. In its time, the Stadium Club had been one of the ritzier places in the city: good food, good drink, a great view of the diamond from an enclosed eyrie overlooking left field.

When the elevator doors opened again, my first impression was that the place hadn’t changed since I had last seen it. The oak reception desk was still there, facing a wall lined with photos of players and pennant teams. The barroom still looked much the same; the Budweiser and Michelob beer taps were still in place behind the horseshoe-shaped bar, as was the enormous framed photo of Ozzie Smith, the legendary shortstop’s arms raised in victory as he walked toward the dugout during the final game of the ’82 Series.

Then Bob and Bob led me farther into the long, concave room, and I came to see that the club wasn’t what it used to be. The round tables and leather chairs were now stacked on top of each other at the far ends of the room; the buffet tables had been brought down to the club’s lower deck so that they were now pushed up against the tall glass windows overlooking the field, and instead of rich, happy baseball fans there were now uniformed men and women seated before the windows, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of computer terminals and TV monitors. The voices of KMOX baseball announcers giving play-by-play coverage didn’t come from the ceiling speakers; all that could be heard in the darkened room was the low monologue of flight controllers, droning a police-state jargon of ten-codes into their headset mikes.