Jericho Iteration (17 page)

“Hey, who is this? … hello … who’s there? … hello
…”

It was my own voice.

Now the head and shoulders of a person appeared on the screen, but his/her features were in constant flux: eyes, nose, lips, brow, chin, cheekbones, hairline, all changing more rapidly than my eye could follow. Sometimes the face looked like my own, and then it would be me as a woman, then as a bearded woman, then as a black man with a beard, then as a new face entirely.

“Who is this?” I demanded. “Who … hey, Jah, if this is you fucking around, I’m going to unscrew your head and shit down your—”

Throughout all the changes, the face’s lips moved, yet my voice coming from the speaker no longer sounded quite like my own. It had a scrambled, surreal quality:
“Jah … if you’re fucking around … hey, Jah, I’m going to shit down your head and unscrew your … who is this? … Jah, I’m going to unscrew your shit and fuck down your
…”

The face’s permutations began to slow down, becoming distinctly male, getting younger. Again there were beeps, chirps, and a sound like a tape being fast-forwarded, and then:

“Rosen, Gerard … Gerard Rosen … Gerry Rosen … Can I talk to you, Daddy?”

A new face appeared on the screen.

I slammed down the receiver.

The face stared at me for another instant, then vanished entirely, leaving behind only a blank screen.

For a long time I simply stared at the phone. A soft nocturnal wind whispered outside the window like a ghost asking to come in. I felt my heart pound against the inside of my rib cage, smelled the acrid tang of my sweat. After five minutes my computer’s screensaver switched itself on; bright, multicolored fractals began to undulate across the screen, Mandelbrot equations casting impermanent algorithmic sandpaintings, the black magic of higher mathematics.

And still I stared at the phone, unwilling to accept the face and voice I had just seen and heard.

God help me, it had been Jamie.

A sharp knock at the apartment door brought me back to the present.

“Who’s there?” I called out. No reply; I thought I had been hearing things when there came another knock, a little harder this time.

Probably Chevy Dick, coming over to see if I wanted a beer or something. He had a keycard and knew the codes to disable the front door alarms. I wasn’t in any mood for drinking, but I needed some company right now, so I stood up from the chair and headed for the door. “Okay, hold on,” I muttered. “I’ll be there in a—”

The door slammed open, its lock broken by the force of a violent kick, and four soldiers in riot gear swarmed into the loft.

“Freeze, asshole!” one of them yelled, crouching next to the door, his Heckler & Koch G-11 leveled straight at me. “ERA!”

A second later the fire-escape window was shattered by the impact of a rifle butt; I whipped around to see two more ERA troopers coming in through the window.

“Hey, what the fuck are—”

I didn’t get the chance to complete this line of inquiry, as one of the grunts who had charged the front door tackled me from behind. The air was punched out of my lungs as I hit the wood floor face-first; I gasped, fighting for breath, and tried to raise myself on my elbows, only to be forced down when a heavy boot landed against my back.

“Stay down, asshole …!”

I was about to twist out from under the boot when I felt the blunt muzzle of a G-11 press against the nape of my neck.

“I said, stay down!”

I managed to nod my head and lie still, choking on the dust from the floor as I gasped for air, while I heard a cacophony of voices around me:

“Okay, we got him.”

“Check the bathroom!”

“Somebody find a switch! Get some lights on in here!” A second later the room was flooded with light from the ceiling fixture.

“Bathroom’s clear, Sarge! He’s alone.”

“Bell, check the desk. Look and see if he’s got it.”

Sounds of papers been rifled through on my desk, then the snap of the disk drive being ejected. “Right here, Sarge. He’s got it on his screen now.”

“Good deal. You and Todd pack up the CPU. Take all the disks you can find … grab all those papers, too. Find a box or something.”

“Right, Sarge …”

“Romeo Charlie, this is Golf Bravo, do you copy, over …”

“Stay down, buddy. Just stay cool …”

My arms were yanked behind my back as, for the second time that night, a pair of plastic handcuffs were slipped around my wrists and tightened. The boot lifted from my back, but the rifle stayed in place.

“Man, this place smells like shit …”

“Belongs to a reporter, what do you expect?”

Laughter. “Shaddup, you guys … ten-four, Romeo Charlie. Premises secured, no one else present. Ten-fifteen-bravo, Charlie, over …”

I lay still on the floor, but I turned my head to see what was going on at my desk. A couple of troopers were dismantling my computer, one of them holding the CPU in his hands as the other disconnected the cables. A third soldier had found an empty carton and was shoving the manuscript of my novel into it; when he was done, he grabbed the cord of my telephone, ripped it straight out of the wall jack, and threw the phone into the box. Can’t be too careful about these subversive telephones.

“What are you guys doing here?” I demanded. “Why are you—?”

“Shut up,” the trooper behind me said.

I ignored him. “What am I being charged with? What’s—”

“Shut up.” The boot returned to my back, pinning me flat against the floor. “When we want you to talk, we’ll tell you, okay? Now shut your mouth.”

“Ten-four, Romeo Charlie. Ten-twenty-four and we’ll be seeing you soon. Golf Bravo over and out … okay, guys, let’s get out of here before the neighbors catch on.”

The boot and the gun muzzle rose from my back, then two pairs of hands grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet. “Okay, dickhead,” one of the troopers murmured, “let’s go catch a baseball game.”

If I had any doubts about where I was headed, they were laid to rest by that comment.

I remained silent as I let them march me out the front door of my apartment. Another ERA soldier was standing on the second-story landing, his rifle propped against his hip. The sheet-metal door leading into the newspaper office was still shut; whoever had ordered this raid had apparently drawn the line at breaking and entering the
Big Muddy Inquirer.
Afraid of the adverse publicity, I suppose.

I was still wondering how they had managed to enter the building without triggering the alarms when we got down to the first floor. Another trooper was standing next to the alarm panel, the PT in his hands hardwired to its innards. He had managed to decode and disable the security system. He barely glanced at me as I was pulled out onto the sidewalk.

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.

I
T 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.