I was just glad that Joker hadn’t been damaged during the events of the evening. If I had broken the little Toshiba, Pearl would have eviscerated my liver and deep-fried it, with onion rings on the side. Joker was far more than a semiretarded palmtop word processor; its neural-net architecture enabled it to answer questions posed to it in plain English, and its cellular modem potentially allowed it to access global nets if I cared to pay some hefty long-distance bills.
The train began to slow down again as it prepared to come into my station. The Clown Prince of Crime abruptly vanished from the screen and Joker came back on-line.
No reference to the phrase “ruby fulcrum” has been located. Do you wish me to continue the search?
Rats. It had been a long shot, but I had been hopeful that Joker could turn up something. The train’s brakes were beginning to squeal; glancing through the windows, I could see the streetlights of I-55 coming into view. My stop was approaching.
No thanks, I typed. Discontinue search. Logging off now.
Logoff. Good night, Gerry.
I switched off the PT, folded its cover, and slipped it back into my jacket as Busch Station rolled into sight. It had been a long night, and I was ready to go back to what now amounted to home. I stood up and made my way toward the front of the car, ignoring the train’s admonitions to take my seat until it had come to a full stop.
“Repent, sinner,” the old man hissed at me as I walked past him toward the open door. I was too exhausted to make another smart-ass reply.
Besides, if I had any sins to repent, it would be those against the ghost of a small boy who still rode these narrow-gauge rails.
4
(Wednesday, 10:45 P.M.)
Despite the late hour, my regular ride home was waiting for me at the station. Tricycle Man sat astride his three-wheeled rickshaw at the cab stand beneath the platform, reading the latest issue of the Big Muddy Inquirer. He barely looked up as I climbed into the backseat.
“Did you see this one?” he asked.
“Which one?” I didn’t have to ask what he meant; it was the same question each Wednesday when the new issue came out. There was only one section of the paper to which he seemed to pay any attention.
“‘SWF,’” he read aloud. “‘Mid-twenties, five feet eight, blonde hair, blue eyes, good natured, looking for SWM for dancing, VR, poetry readings, and weekends in the Ozarks. Nonsmoker, age not important. No druggies, rednecks, or government types ….’” He shrugged. “Guess I qualify, so long as I don’t mention my Secret Service background.”
Tricycle man was a trip: a fifty-five-year-old hippie, right down to the long red beard, vegetarian diet, and vintage Grateful Dead stickers on the back of his cab, whose only real interests in life seemed to be sleeping with a different woman each week and telling grandiose lies about himself. At various times he claimed to be a former Secret Service agent, an ex-NASA astronaut, an Olympic bronze medalist, or a descendant of Charles A. Lindbergh. I didn’t know his real name, although I had been riding in the back of his homemade rickshaw ever since I had moved downtown eight months ago. Nor did anyone else; everyone in Soulard simply called him Tricycle Man.
I searched my memory, trying to recall all the women I had spotted visiting the personals desk in the last week. “Yeah,” I said, “I saw someone like that.” Trike’s face lit up until I added, “I think she had an Adam’s apple.”
His face darkened again. “Damn. Should have figured.” He folded up the paper and tossed it on the passenger seat next to me, then pulled up the hood of his bright red poncho. “Going to the office or do y’wanna head home?”
I shrugged. “Home, I guess.” It didn’t make any difference; they were one and the same, and Trike knew it. He laughed, then stood up on the pedals and put his massive legs to work, slowly hauling the rickshaw out from under the platform and onto rain-slicked Arsenal Street, heading northeast into Soulard.
As we crossed the I-55 overpass, an ERA Apache growled low overhead, following the traffic on the interstate’s westbound lanes. Another helicopter. My city had been invaded by space aliens, and they rode helicopters instead of flying saucers. Trike glanced up at the chopper as it went by. “Heard there was some kinda riot in the park tonight,” he said. “Lot of people got their heads busted. Know anything about it?”
“A little,” I said. “Enough to know it’s true.” It didn’t surprise me that Trike had heard about the ERA raid at the Muny; word travels fast on the street, especially where the feds were concerned, but I wasn’t about to contribute to the scuttlebutt. Besides, everything I had to say about the Muny riot would be in my column in next week’s issue, and a good reporter doesn’t discuss his work in progress.
Trike glanced over his shoulder at me. “Not talking much tonight, are you?”
“Too tired.” I settled back against the seat, letting the cold drizzle patter off the bill of my cap. “All I want right now is a cold beer and a hot shower.”
“Okey-doke.” He turned left onto 13th Street. “I’ll have you home in ten minutes.”
We passed by the front of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, a compound of giant factory buildings which, like almost everything else in the city these days, were surrounded by scaffolds. Even at this time of night there was a long line of men and women huddled on the brick sidewalk outside the entrance gate, braving the weather and the curfew for a chance to be interviewed tomorrow morning for a handful of job openings. The brewery had reopened just four weeks ago, following a long effort to rebuild after the extensive damage it had suffered during New Madrid. Through the wrought-iron fence, I could see one of the replacements for the gargoyles that had adorned the cornices of the main building before they toppled from their perches during the quake: a wizened little stone man with a beer stein in his hand, sitting in the parking lot as he waited for a crane to hoist him into place. His saucy grin was the only happy face to be seen; everyone else looked wet and miserable. This Bud’s for you …
As he pedaled, Trike reached between his handlebars and switched on the radio. It was tuned to KMOX-AM, the local CBS affiliate. After the usual round of inane commercials for stuff no one could afford to buy, we got the news at the top of the hour.
U.S. Army troops continue to be airlifted to the northern California border, following the formal announcement last week by the state governments of Washington and Oregon that they are seceding from the United States. A spokesman for the newly established government of Cascadia, based in Seattle, says that former National Guard troops have sealed all major highways leading into Washington and Oregon. No hostile actions have yet been reported from either side, but White House press spokesperson Esther Boothroyd says that President Giorgio does not intend to recognize Cascadia’s claim to independence.
Just past Anheuser-Busch, Tricycle Man paused at the three-way intersection of 13th, 12th, and Lynch. A half-block away on 12th Street was the Ninth Ward police station; across the street from the cop shop, in what used to be a parking lot, was SLPD’s south end helicopter pad. A big Mi-24 HIND was idling on the flight line, getting ready for air patrol over the Dogtown neighborhoods in the southern part of city. Beneath the blue-and-white paint job and the familiar TO PROTECT AND TO SERVE slogan could still be seen, as ghostly palimpsests, the markings of the Russian Red Army. ERA got American-made helicopters and LAVs, while the local cops had to settle for secondhand Russian choppers and rusty old BMP-2s left over from Afghanistan, sans armaments and held together by baling wire and paper clips. A couple of officers hanging around outside the police station waved to Tricycle Man and he waved back; he was harmless and familiar, so the cops didn’t bother him.