The Twenty-Seventh City : A Novel

7

Monday night, the holiday over. Jammu switched on her flashers when she gained the inner lane of Highway 40. Guardrail posts lurched in the bursts of blue light. She cruised at eighty.

Her day had begun with a call from Nelson A. Nelson, the Police Board president. Nelson had just learned that since September she’d recruited 190 blacks for the force and only 35 whites. “Yes…?” she said. Nelson muttered for several seconds before choking out the question: “Don’t you think there’s an inequality there?” Oh yes, she said. Thirty-five was too many. Whites had accounted for barely ten percent of the applications. “And why,” Nelson wanted to know, “are so few whites applying?” Jammu promised a thorough inquiry. Calls from the rest of the Board followed. Even her supporters were angry, though in August they’d unanimously backed her proposal for the manpower increase. Now that she’d delivered, they treated her like a dumb broad, a naughty girl. It took a real effort to remain disingenuous. A meeting was scheduled for Wednesday.

In the afternoon the Office of Budget and Finance raised its ink-stained veils to reveal, unblushingly, a $2.4 million “oversight.” The Board had transferred jurisdiction over the office to Jammu in late August. Now she saw she’d made a tactical error in assuming responsibility for finances before she’d sufficiently consolidated her control over operations. The accounting officer, Chip Osmond, one of Rick Jergensen’s cronies, had grown reckless in the power vacuum. Rick Jergensen had been hoping to be named chief in July; the “oversight” had overtones of spite. The city comptroller showed up in a blaze of snideness, with budget director Randy Fitch hot on his heels. Osmond wheeled all his books into her office on a cart, and the four of them wrangled and reassessed through the dinner hour and into the evening. Finally Jammu lost her patience and stated, flatly, that the mayor would have to add the $2.4 million to her budget.

The comptroller said, “So much for your good news.”

Osmond called home to his wife.

Randy Fitch giggled.

The comptroller said the mayor wouldn’t do it. Jammu knew the mayor would.

Randy Fitch continued to giggle.

The men were closing their briefcases when Singh strolled into the office. “Who are you?” the comptroller asked. “The janitor,” Singh replied, lighting up one of his clove things. Jammu rebuked him as soon as they were alone. His response: “Your administration lacks arrogance.”

Reaching Kingshighway, she exited past Barnes Hospital. An ambulance streaked by her silently. She radioed the dispatcher. “Car One,” she said. “I’m at home for the night.”

“Roger, Car One.”

She parked Car One in a loading zone and turned up her jacket collar. The sky was an orange urban overcast, the air metallic on her tongue. In the alley behind her apartment two gay waiters from Balaban were screaming at each other.

Inside, she sorted her mail and played her answering machine. Only Gopal had called. He spoke in Marathi confused with English code terms. He said he’d seen a trailer full of apples in a vacant lot near Soulard Market. Would the police please watch out? Apples meant cordite.

From the two-door refrigerator Jammu took a bottle of vodka and the drumstick left over from Thanksgiving dinner with the mayor. A loose pane in one of the bedroom windows buzzed to the beat of a television commercial upstairs. She kicked off her shoes, stretched out on the bed, and ripped open the Federal Express envelope from Burrelle’s, a clipping service in New Jersey. The envelope contained a half-inch pile of clippings, an increase over last week. Fortified with a swallow of vodka, she riffled through them.

ST. LOUIS TO HOST MODEL RRERS CONVENTION

SW Bell Dividends Down

Snow Bunnies, a Musical, to Premiere in Midwest

Dip in SW Bell Dividends

Bottlers Reject Contract Offer

St. Louis Museum to Acquire Two by Degas

Changing Times at Ripleycorp

RIPLYCORP TO DIVERSIFY

Parker Will Head Cheese Commission

She unfolded a long New York Times article by Erik Tannenberg, who’d taken her to lunch at Anthony’s ten days ago.

On the same day, Mr. Hutchinson’s home in suburban Ladue was strafed by automatic fire from a circling helicopter. Two days later, KSLX’s primary transmitting tower was put out of service for five hours by a third attack, this one involving hand grenades…

In the tense atmosphere, attention has focused on St. Louis’s new police chief, S. Jammu, who in mid-July left her post as Commissioner of Police in Bombay, India, to head the St. Louis force.

Colonel Jammu, a 35-year-old woman who has maintained her U.S. citizenship, attracted widespread interest in 1975 as the architect of Bombay’s “experiment in free enterprise,” a police-run assault on private-sector corruption.

Initially many civic leaders here expressed skepticism that Colonel Jammu, as a woman and as one unfamiliar with American law-enforcement practices, could adapt to her new role. But with a canniness that has all but silenced such critics, she has set about reinvigorating the police department and transforming the office of chief into a political platform.

Colonel Jammu, who holds a master’s degree in economics from Chicago University, has made high personal visibility her trademark. She has appeared regularly throughout the city and spoken on topics as diverse as family planning and handgun legislation.

In mid-September patrolmen on their beat began sporting sky-blue buttons on their caps, a reference to the “St. Louis Blues,” the force’s nickname, inspired by the popular television show Hill Street Blues. The nickname also appeared on bumper stickers donated by local businessmen and applied to squad cars…

Even before the attacks began, Colonel Jammu asked for and received authority to bolster the force’s manpower by 30 percent. Civic leaders were astounded by the size of the projected increase, but it now appears that Colonel Jammu, for the moment at least, has won her point.

Figures for the third quarter of the year show the city’s arrest rate jumping by 24 percent overall, and 38 percent for violent crimes.

The courts and prosecutor’s office have promised to cooperate, pledging to streamline the justice system and to “substantially reduce” the waiting period between arrest and trial by year’s end.

This has caused the American Civil Liberties Union to file a class-action suit with the Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals seeking an injunction that would freeze the average waiting period at its present rate until such time as the prosecutor can demonstrate that the right to due process is not being violated.

Charles Grady, spokesman for the local chapter of the ACLU, said that “the civil rights establishment in St. Louis is absolutely unable to cope with all that’s happened since Jammu took over as police chief. We’re swamped. We’re scared.”

Addressing a gathering of Washington University students last week, Mr. Grady renewed his call for Jammu’s dismissal, stressing the importance of “Indian justice for Indians, American justice for Americans.”

She stopped reading. She threw the half-eaten drumstick into her wastebasket and drank more vodka. Two weeks ago these clippings had still amused her and edified her; now they made her sick to her stomach. Reporters knew too much. There were treacherous undercurrents of knowledge in Tannenberg’s tone, in the casualness with which he’d tossed off words like “visibility” and “canniness.” Tannenberg knew her type. In New York she wouldn’t be original. The superficiality of his treatment held both her and St. Louis at arm’s length, allowing the possibility that she might dupe these Midwesterners — it takes all kinds of cities to make a nation — while assuring readers in New York that everything was fine, that the nation as a whole was regulated—

A car was idling in the street. A car door had slammed. Jammu went to the living room and depressed a slat in the blinds. Snow was falling, seeming to climb as it fell through the streetlight and through the headlight beams of a taxi. The taxi’s wipers smeared the melting snow. Her doorbell rang.

Lakshmi? Devi? Kamala?

She opened the door, and Devi Madan stepped in. Her hair was tucked under the collar of a full-length red fox coat. “I have a cab waiting,” she said.

“You can send it on. The neighborhood is full of them.”

“No.”

“Go get rid of it.”

Devi slammed the door behind her. Jammu put away the vodka, shaking her head, and turned the gas on under the tea kettle. Devi Madan had made one fundamental mistake in her life, when without her parents’ knowledge she’d answered an advertisement in The Bombayite (“The Fun One”).

Girls!

Are you pretty? Are you liberated-responsible? Earn real good money modeling handsome USA/Japan/France fashion for fully referenced concern.

Devi was rattling the doorknob. Jammu crossed the kitchen and let her in. “I’ll take your coat,” she said.

Devi hunched her shoulders. “No.” She tried to shake back her hair, but it didn’t move; the collar held it close against her head. Her gloved hands trembled and sought relief in touching her face, her very exquisite face, and found none.

“How are you?” Jammu said.

Devi dropped onto the sofa and dug her wet heels into the cushions. She peeled off her gloves and balled them into wads. “You know.”

“You’re very early.” She got no answer. “Wait here.”

The safe was under the counter in the kitchen. Her spare safe and the uncut heroin she’d brought from Bombay were buried in Illinois. What was here was cut to 6 percent. She punched in the lock combination, released the latch, and rolled out the drawer. The gas elements were visible through the mesh the drugs and passports rested on, ready to burn if the safe was tampered with. Sick of Devi’s frequent visits, Jammu did not bother measuring out the usual amount but returned with a 50-gram bag.

The living room was chokingly perfumed. Devi snatched the bag from her fingers and locked herself in the bathroom.

While the teapot warmed, Jammu parted the curtains on the tiny kitchen window and raised the shade. Snow had collected on the outer sill. In the alley, glass clattered. A Balaban employee had dropped some bottles in a dumpster. Standing on tiptoe, he reached in after them. His shoulder jerked. Something smashed, tinkled, smashed. He was breaking the bottles on each other.

Devi came out of the bathroom with her coat over her arm and her purse in her hands. “I want to stay here tonight,” she said.

Jammu sat down on the sofa and poured tea. “I get up at five-thirty.”

“I can sleep on the divan. Do you have a cigarette?”

Jammu nodded at the kitchen. “On top of the refrigerator.”

“Do you want one?”

“No.”

Devi’s youth was showing. She was twenty-two. In Bombay Jammu had been thrifty with her labor force, mothering her girls instead of just using them until they wore out. She’d regulated Devi’s habits, handled her money, given her an allowance, and paid for monthly medical checkups. Now, in St. Louis, she was trying to wean her.

Devi returned French-inhaling and swinging her hips. “These are stale.”

Jammu laughed. “Where are yours?”

“I quit yesterday. I’m a Sagittarius.” She flicked her ash into the rug. “What are you?”

“Leo, I suppose.”

“What’s your birthday?”

“August nineteenth.”

“You’re almost a cusp. Mine’s next week. Tuesday.” She saw the tea and made a face. “Do you have anything else?”

Jammu nodded again at the kitchen and gloomily regarded the cup and saucer on her lap. She wanted to be asleep. In the kitchen a beer bottle gasped. Devi came back with an Amstel Light and a cigarette in one hand, a jar of olives in the other. She drank from the bottle and Jammu winced at how close to her eye she brought the coal.

“This is ninety-five calories, but it’s all carbohydrate. I was under a thousand until this.” She tried to remove a boot using her other foot, stumbled for balance, and finally got it off by wedging the heel against a sofa leg. She smiled and blinked at Jammu. “I’d rather have thirty olives than a martini. It’s the same amount of calories. I found out the other day how they tell how many calories food has? It’s called a calorimeter. Rolf’s company makes them.”

She paused. Don’t answer, Jammu told herself.

“They burn food. They burn it and they see how much extra heat it gives off.” Devi propped her beer dangerously on the seat of the rocking chair and yanked off the other boot. “So I said, How do they burn milk? I thought I had him. He said they heat it until it boils and then they boil it until it burns. I had a picture of scientists in white coats standing around watching milk burn, and I don’t know what came over me, I started laughing, and then he spanked me.” She frowned at the smoked-out butt in her hand.

“Tell him to cut it out.”

Through a smile, Devi mouthed a sentence.

“What?”

“I’m going to shoot his wife.”

Jammu closed her eyes.

“I’m only joking.”

“It isn’t funny.”

“I said I was only joking.”

She heard Devi open the refrigerator. She looked and saw her digging in the yogurt carton with a spoon. “Right between the eyes, Audreykins!”

“Don’t eat that,” Jammu said.

Startled, Devi turned, her eyes wide. “Why not?”

“Because I said.”

Devi stood frozen with indecision, the loaded spoon poised above the carton. Jammu set down her tea. She shut the refrigerator door, took the spoon from Devi and tapped the glistening yogurt back into the carton. “Listen,” she said. “You’re probably exhausted. I’m going to call you a cab, and you can go back and get lots of sleep, and I’ll tell you what. We’ll see if you can fly home to Bombay for your birthday.”

Devi’s head shook no. “He’s my only friend,” she said.

“He’s a rotten spoiled bastard.”

The slap caught Jammu off guard. She spun into the sink, and the pain sprang like an answering hand from within her cheek. She looked back with lidded eyes.

Devi had sunk to her knees. “He’s in love with Barbie.”

There was something wrong here. Normally Devi was a lamb after a fix. “Did you just shoot up or didn’t you?”

“Please let me stay here.”

“No.” Jammu pulled her to her feet by the hair. A single tear had rolled a black track down her cheek. Jammu called a cab and then wiped the mascara away with a dishcloth.

Devi frowned. “What time is it?”

“Put your boots on.” Jammu followed her into the living room. “You said Rolf was in love with — another woman?”

Devi nodded, pulling on her boots with underwater indolence. “Barbie.”

“Barbie who?”

“You know. The sister.”

Jammu felt sicker than ever to her stomach. It took a conscious effort not to run to the refrigerator and grab the vodka. “Barbara Probst?”

“We played Martin and Barbie.” Devi had unzipped her corduroys and was plucking on the black fabric of her underpants. “See we—”

“Zip up your pants,” Jammu said.

A car honked in the street. Devi allowed her coat to be pulled onto her. Jammu placed her purse in her hands. “Don’t lose this.”

Devi shook her head obediently.

“You’ll be all right.”

It was the subcontractor’s fault. The concrete was like gluey oatmeal. It was the subcontractor’s fault. Probst was running across the freshly poured foundation at Westhaven. He was following a trail of footprints, trying to catch the man who’d made them. (Was it the subcontractor?) A skin of rainwater covered the concrete, mirroring the blue sky, but the sky wasn’t blue; it was the color of concrete. A purple bird flew across it, heckling and jeckling in its spiny tongue. Probst ran on and came to the crest of a concrete hill overlooking a concrete valley. The footprints, gouged into the slope, led to a figure far down in the basin. It was Jack DuChamp. The purple bird circled in the slaggy sky. Martin! The cry came from Jack, but it sounded like a bird. The footprints tugged Probst downwards. As he approached he saw that Jack had sunk into the concrete up to his waist, and that his eyes were crusted over with blood. They were cracked, swollen sockets. The eyeballs had been pecked out. Probst stopped, and Jack said, “Martin?” in a voice ragged with fear. Probst couldn’t speak. He grasped Jack under the shoulders to lift him up, but when he raised him he saw that Jack had no legs. Probst set him down again and Jack whimpered: Am I going to die? Probst couldn’t speak. He laid his hands on Jack’s forehead and inadvertently brushed the crusted eyes. They were soft. They felt like breasts, and Probst began to stroke them. Nipples came to life beneath his palms.

“You can’t park here, man. Nobody parks without a sticker.”

He was trying to park in the KSLX parking lot downtown. For fifteen years he’d exercised weekend parking privileges here. Jim Hutchinson had encouraged him to. The lot was generally empty, and if the attendant ever asked who he was he only had to mention Hutch’s name and he could park. He set the brake. “Do you think I have a bomb in my trunk?”

“You said it, not me.” The attendant had a pimply shady face, the face of a small-time counterfeiter or smut dealer. He picked his nose and molded the pickings.

“What seems to be the problem here?” A black policeman had appeared.

“Bozo thinks he can park here,” the attendant said.

“Now look—” Probst began.

“Oh he does, does he?”

“He’s making ‘jokes’ about bombs.”

“He is, is he?” The officer brushed the attendant aside and bent down so close that Probst could smell his coffee breath. “Who are you?”

“Martin Probst, I’m a good friend of Mr. Hutch—”

“Afton Taylor, first precinct,” the officer drawled, his mouth moisture clicking. “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Boabst, now if you could just move your car out of this lot…Parking’s restricted by order of the police chief, I’m sure you’re aware of the circumstances.”

Probst closed his eyes.

“There’s plenty of public parking, Mr. Boabst. Plenty indeed. Where do you think the rest of the world parks?” Officer Taylor stepped back and motioned with his nightstick towards the street. The attendant waved a sissy good-bye with his fingers. Neither had recognized Probst, not even his name.

He’d gotten a late start this morning. He’d waited forever in line at Mr. Gas in Webster (the line at the other pumps had moved right along) after tarrying too long at home. Barbara had affected puzzlement. “You’re going with Jack DuChamp?”

“Yes.”

She grimaced. “Jack DuChamp?”

“Yes. I’m actually thinking it’s going to be pleasant.”

“It’s fine with me,” she said. “But I thought he’d fallen by the wayside.”

“Well.” He never knew what to say when she discouraged a generous sentiment of his. “We’ll see.” He didn’t mention the dream to her. If he had, she probably would have drawn the same conclusion he himself had reached, namely, that he felt guilty about Jack. He did feel guilty. And yet it was the memory of the breasts that lingered.

On Market Street he took a parking space in front of a hydrant, figuring he could pay the ticket. They wouldn’t tow him on a Sunday.

The sky spat a few drops of rain as he approached the stadium. Jack was standing in his wool coat and beige muffler by the statue of the Baseball Star, as agreed. He was rocking on his heels, beaming amiably at the indifferent world. When he caught sight of Probst his expression didn’t change in the slightest.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Probst said.

“Nooooooo problem. No problem, no problem.” Jack chuckled in his salesman’s baritone. “You think they’d start without us?” He handed Probst a ticket and then followed him to the gates, a quarter step behind him. The arm of a turnstile pushed across Probst’s groin. “All the way up,” Jack said.

Though high, the seats weren’t bad. Behind them, the wind cut through the rim of the stadium, through ornamental arches modeled after the primary Arch, the top of which was looming across the field from them, dark gray and proximate. With its legs obscured, it seemed to be standing not six blocks away but on the plaza right outside the stadium, creeping up and looking down on the bluish Astroturf, where the Cardinals and Redskins were locked in combat. “Missed the kickoff,” Jack said. “Second down.”

Probst crossed his arms and leaned forward. The Big Red had the ball on their own 17. An auspicious beginning. The Redskins in their crimson pants and white jerseys kicked at the turf with casual confidence. They’d already clinched the Eastern Division title, whereas the Big Red—“Give it to Ottis for a change, why don’t you,” Jack muttered — the Big Red, for the second year running, were stalwartly defending fourth place.

“Bumber Brarkty-Bee, Bardkdy Brarkerbark, bicking for the Brarkinals,” the loudspeakers boomed. Acoustically these seats were inferior.

“Way to go,” Jack said savagely. “Gimme a break?” He shook his head as the Cardinal punter lofted a good kick that bounced out of bounds at the Redskin 40. Then he turned to Probst, waited for their eyes to meet, and smiled. “How’s Barbara? She come down here with you?”

The fiction was that Probst had been unable to ride down with Jack because he was going out with Barbara after the game. He was prepared for the question. “No,” he said. “She decided not to. I’m going to meet her in Clayton. She—”

“What’s she up to these days?”

Barbara wasn’t the kind of person who was “up to” things.

“She gets around,” Probst said. “How’s—”

“She’s doing great,” Jack said. “Just great. I tell you she went back and finished her degree at St. Louis U.?”

“Really.” (Elaine, of course. Elaine.)

“She liked it so much she kept right on going. She’s going to get her master’s in June.”

“Kerking na tackle, Bumber Berky, Bork McRukkuk…”

“Economics. The good Lord only knows what she’ll do with it. Remember we had an agreement she could go back to school soon as the kids were in high school? I’d honestly forgotten all about it, but she really got into it. She was doing homework? I’ve even ironed a few shirts since she started. It’s done us a lot of good, a hell of a lot of good, Martin. Women these days, they really need that extra, that extra…that extra, I don’t know, ego boost, now that’s a play I’d like to see ’em run more often.” The crowd roared significantly for the first time. “You see the right linebacker move up?”

Probst made a circular yes-no with his head.

Jack covered his square chin with his hand and studied the field. The score? Zero-zero. Probst stole a series of glances at Jack, whose next question had begun to gather like a squall, his eyes darting, shoulders rolling, fingers knotting, until it broke: “Luisa must be starting college soon.”

“Forkty-rork, Dwight Eigenrarkman…”

“She’s applying.” Probst hoped he wouldn’t have to mention where.

“It’d be great to see her all grown up. You know the last time I saw her she couldn’t have been more than four or five. It’s like yesterday, isn’t it? I remember you used to take her on walks, and the time I asked her if she liked walking with her daddy? Remember what she said? ‘He’s too slow.’ In that kind of voice. I’ll never forget that. ‘He’s too slow.’” Jack slapped Probst’s knee. “But now she’s got her own share of admirers, huh?” Jack smiled at the playing field. “Yes sir.” His face went serious. “She have a boyfriend?”

“She…”

“Ten of ’em! Ain’t that the truth. And a different one every week. She’ll — John-son! What in tarnation is he doing? The entire play’s going left, what’s he doing?”

Probst took off his coat and folded it across his lap, baring his shoulders to the wind. “Well yes,” he said. To his right a quiet man and woman, both sixtyish, were carefully pouring coffee from a thermos into styrofoam cups, the woman peering down as if the cups held something more precious than coffee, her eyes brimming with a sweet purity of concern. It had been a long time since Probst saw such a pretty older woman.

Penalty flags were flying, whistles blowing. The crowd rumbled with disappointment.

“Ladies engentlemork, the palark deparkbark has issued—”

Silence fell in the stands.

“Laurie’s been going steady with the same—”

Probst clutched Jack’s arm. “Shh!”

“…the stadium officials. Thurkiss nork—”

“She’s been going with—”

“Shhh!”

The stadium was holding its breath, the players in disarray, the field a jostled chessboard.

“What is it?” Jack whispered.

“Securicle. Woorpeat. Do. Not. Panicprosurdlenerst gate.”

It was the end. Still as death, Probst felt his body detach from his soul and billow into the sky, leaving the soul a cold lump in the pink plastic seat to await the firestorm he knew from long anticipation. Behind him a woman moaned. The stadium began to buzz. Murmurs. Voices tightening and rising. Sirens chirruped in the streets, echo on echo on echo. People were standing up. “Come on,” Jack said.

Flight was pointless. Nowhere to run.

“Come on.” Jack pulled him to his feet.

“It’s a hoax,” a man growled. “Just a goddamn hoax.”

Probst turned to Jack. “What is it?”

“Bomb threat.” He nodded down the aisle. “Let’s go.”

Bomb threat? Probst shut his mouth, embarrassed. He’d thought it was something worse.

“Ladies engenitoll, we rorpeat to thar palark deparkspark information concernk appossiblomp athorken reorgort the disrupture today’s game between a Warninghorn Rorskins and your St. Louis Brarkinals…Please prosurdle the nearest hexit floor the structionork the stadium officials.”

The official clock showed 7:12 remaining in the first quarter, 7:11, 7:10, 7:09. They’d neglected to stop it. On the main scoreboard a message was flashing on and off:

Fans in the aisles above and below Probst were laughing. Several imitated the explosive action of a bomb with their arms and added phlegmy sound effects.

6:54, 6:53, 6:52…

If the bomb was set to go off at a specific time in the game?

Silly.

On the field a few Redskins tossed footballs, made diving catches, pointed at disturbances in the stands. Whole sections had grown pink, the color of the seats, as the fans drained into the exits. The Cardinals themselves were long gone.

Through a gate behind the Visitors’ end zone blue squad cars were pouring onto the field — six, eight, ten, a dozen of them, silent but flashing. Foot patrolmen brought up the rear. A halt was put to the game of catch. The Redskins trotted to the sidelines, lateraling the balls back and forth.

6:25, 6:24, 6:23…

His attention on the clock, Probst walked right into the woman who’d been sitting next to him. “Excuse me,” he said.

She turned. “That’s all right.” Her teeth were perfect, pearly, tiny. Her eyes dipped demurely. “Trudy Churchill,” she said.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Jack said in his ear.

Probst looked into the twinkling eyes. “Martin Probst.”

Mrs. Churchill continued to smile. “I know.”

He took her arm in his fingers, finding her muscles to be firm. “The line is moving,” he said.

“Oh!” She glanced over her shoulder.

Something blew.

It was a sharp boom. She was in his arms, her face in his sweater. He felt the explosion in his chest cavity. His organs rattled. A flash had lit the arches in the rim of the stadium. There were crashes, distant thuds and screams. Black smoke rose in a pillar from a point outside the stadium.

“Move it, goddamn it!” a man squealed.

Awkwardly Probst stroked Mrs. Churchill’s hair, his eyes on her husband, who turned, just then, and gave him a vacant look.

“Move it.” The squeal was despairing.

There was no place to go. A sharp chin, Jack’s, cracked into the back of Probst’s head. He held Mrs. Churchill tight.

“Fifty thousand friggin people,” Jack said, his gimme-a-break voice at Probst’s ear. “And we’re gonna be the last ones out.”

Three helicopters descended on the stadium, darting and halting like dragonflies, the blades blurred against the low cloudbanks.

“Shit, oh, SHIT!”

People above Probst were screaming. He turned, loosening his grip on Mrs. Churchill—

5:40.

“My neck—”

A wave of bodies swept down from above him, a mass loss of balance, engulfing him and the woman he held and Jack and everyone else, and—

Uhhh—

They tumbled headlong into the seats further down. A fat leg wrapped itself crushingly around Probst’s neck. His eyes bugged, and the pink plastic seats approached him swiftly, driving into his rib cage. His left pinkie got caught on an armrest. It snapped back and broke. Bodies huffed, groaned, puffed. The fat man, kicking wildly, vaulted over into the next row of seats. Through tears Probst could see the open sky above him, wisps of angry smoke and birds.

Jack was sitting upright in a seat, drawing deep breaths. Not many people had landed in this aisle. Mrs. Churchill lay next to Probst on the Coke-spattered concrete. He started to sit up but pain in his hand forced him down. He leaned over Mrs. Churchill. Blood was gathering in a raw spot on her jaw. He put his finger on the spot. “Anything broken?” he said.

“Yes.” Her voice cracked. “I think my leg.”

He looked at the trim leg in plaid slacks. It lay at an unnatural angle to her hips, her ankle pinned by the seat Jack was sitting on. Behind her, the husband struggled to his feet and patted himself down with age-spotted hands.

3:47, 3:46, 3:45…

The heads of other dazed fans popped up all around. The thickest clot of bodies was three rows up, where a pair of policemen waded among the scraped and bruised limbs, helping people to their feet and waving them towards the exit. The press at the exit had diminished.

“Those who can,” one of the policemen shouted, “keep moving towards the gates. Keep right on moving. Please. We can take care of any injuries, so just keep right on moving.”

“Shall we?” Jack said.

“This woman is hurt.” Probst spread his coat over her. The husband was wiping the blood off her jaw with a napkin. “Trudy,” he said. “Can you walk?”

She managed to shake her head. The husband, pale, his white hair pointing every which way, looked up at Probst and Jack. “Let’s let her rest for a second. I’m going to need help.” He began to work her foot free from the seat.

Overhead a helicopter approached. Probst was surprised to see the logo of KAKA-TV, KSLX’s chief rival, on the side of the machine. He’d assumed it was the police. A video lens poked from the left portal.

Jack shouted something. He was pointing at the main scoreboard.

The police on the field had seen it, too. A cluster of men in blue were looking up at the scoreboard, and several ran to their cars. More than twenty cars now occupied the field, half of them circling the perimeter. Most of the stadium was pink.

2:36…2:36. The clock had stopped.

Probst stared at the glowing time. His address. 236 Sherwood.

“Let’s try and move her,” Mr. Churchill shouted.

Probst tried to flex his injured finger. He couldn’t. Jack and Mr. Churchill slipped their arms under Mrs. Churchill’s shoulders and raised her into position for a fireman’s carry. She didn’t make a sound. Probst’s coat hung precariously from her waist. He felt useless, but his finger was killing him.

In the cavernous concession area there were radio speakers. They’d been installed to let fans buying refreshments hear KSLX’s play-by-play, but Jack Strom was speaking from the studios now. His tones were low and earnest. “…Eighty, ninety percent of the fans have left the stadium, although there are still a good many in the immediate vicinity. The surrounding streets, particularly Broadway and Walnut, are solid masses of humanity, as the police have directed people to simply keep moving as far as possible from the threatened area. Traffic has been blocked off entirely, except on Spruce Street, which the police and fire departments are using for access to the stadium. For those of you who just joined us, there has been a bomb threat directed against the football stadium in downtown St. Louis, where a game was in progress. A small explosion has already occurred on the plaza outside the stadium. The police appear, uh, were apparently warned in advance about that blast, which was felt throughout the downtown area, and there were no serious injuries. Let me repeat that elsewhere as well there have been no serious injuries reported thus far, and the evacuation of the stadium should be complete within the next five to ten minutes. We — one moment…We’ve received confirmation that it is indeed the group known as the Osage Warriors that is responsible for the situation — We’re going to switch over now to Don Daizy, who is outside the command post at police headquarters. Don?”

“Jack, it appears the situation is under control. I spoke moments ago with Chief Jammu, who is at the command post here, the explosive charges beneath the stadium have been located, and it appears that we’re looking at enough explosives to do what was threatened, namely, to kill all of the fans — at — the game. Now, it’s by no means certain the charges are in fact authentic, the Bomb and Arson Squad is at work defusing the charges, but the estimate I got from Chief Jammu is — that — the threat is real. There have been several serious disturbances in the stands, as the fans move towards the exits, but as you say, the police force has kept Spruce Street relatively clear, so it appears that ambulances are reaching the stadium in sufficient numbers to deal — with — the problem. The police were able to mobilize very quickly, they’ve done an excellent job so far, the evacuation has proceeded as well as could be expected, and…”

In the hot breath of the mob Probst felt his knees give way. He grabbed for the pipes beneath a drinking fountain and hit the ground, unconscious of everything but a deep unhappiness.

Words crowd together single file, individuals passing singly through a single gate. The pressure is constant, the flight interminable. There is plenty of time. Born in motion, borne by syntax, stranger marrying stranger, they stream into the void…

Probst came to. The throng in front of him was thinning, the fans on their toes in their hurry, their fingertips resting on the shoulders of the fans ahead of them. He looked up at the rusty porcelain underside of the drinking fountain. Mineral cysts had formed at the pipe joints.

Sitting up he saw a glowing word revealed, eclipsed, and revealed again by the heads in the crowd. The word was INFORMATION. There was an information office across the hall.

“We are going to break for the two o’clock network news, we’ll be back immediately following with the latest on the situation at the stadium, I’m Jack Strom, Information Radio, KSLX, St. Louis, it’s — two o’clock.”

“Here! You son of a gun.” Jack raised a leg for balance and took a drink of water.

“I guess I passed out,” Probst said, wiping a drop of water off his forehead.

“Jesus, Martin, that’s a nasty gash.”

Jack was looking at the back of Probst’s neck. Probst reached and felt under his collar. His hand came away dripping. Now he could feel the blood pooling at the waist of his pants, but he couldn’t feel the wound. “Where’re the Churchills?”

“I got ’em on an elevator. But let me take a look at you. Why didn’t you say something?”

Probst let him probe the back of his neck. “Yi!” Jack said. “Tsk.” Probst still couldn’t feel anything. His finger was throbbing, twitching. Jack’s shoes gritted on the concrete. “Tsk. Oooo. Martin. Tsk.”

“What is it?”

“Tsk.”

“I think we better go.”

“Tsk. You have a handkerchief?”

Probst realized his handkerchief had gone the way of his coat. As had his car keys. Barbara would have to drive down with the other set. She’d have to drive down anyway. Her husband was bleeding.