“Get out of here!” I grabbed the woman’s hand and dragged her toward the gate. “Move it! Move it!”
We shoved and hauled our way through the mob until we managed to squeeze through the jammed gate. Still clutching her hand, I turned to make a getaway through the parking lot, only to find that we were far from being out of danger.
There was more rotor noise from above, much louder than the MH-6, as gale-force winds abruptly whipped through the parking lot, tearing at the tents and plastic tarps, sending garbage flying in every direction, overturning stolen shopping carts, causing the flames of the trash-can fires to dance crazily. I skidded to a stop and looked up to see a giant shape descending upon us, red and blue lights flashing against the darkness, searchlights lancing through the rain like a UFO coming in for a touchdown.
Flying saucer, no; V-22 Osprey, yes. The big, twin-prop VTOL was landing right outside the Muny, and if that was Elvis I spotted through one of its oval portholes, wearing riot gear and slapping a magazine into his Hecker amp; Koch assault rifle, then the King and I needed to have a serious discussion about his new career.
It was a full-blown ERA raid, and I felt like an idiot for not having seen it coming. Members of the city council had been squawking lately about “taking Forest Park back from the squatters,” and never mind that it had been their idea in the first place to relocate nearly seventy-five thousand homeless people to a tent city in the park. A crackdown had been threatened for several weeks now, and squatters trespassing on the Muny had been the last straw. Steve Estes, the council member whose political ambitions were only slightly outweighed by his ego, was making good on his rhetoric.
No time to ponder local politics now. More Ospreys were arriving. The first one was already on the ground, its rear door cranking down to let out a squad of ERA troopers. The air stank of tear gas; people were rushing around on either side of us, threatening to trample us as they fled from the soldiers. Already I could hear screams from the area closest to the landing site of the first Osprey and the hollow ka-chunng!of Mace canisters being fired into the mob.
Escape through the parking lot was out of the question; already I could hear the engine roar of LAV-25 Piranhas approaching from the roadway on the other side of the hill, their multiple tires mowing down the makeshift barricades squatters had thrown up around the Muny. In a few minutes we’d be nailed by tear gas, water cannons, webs, or rubber bullets.
A steep, wooded embankment lay to the right of the amphitheater. “That way!” I yelled to the woman. “Down the hill!”
“No!” she shouted, yanking her hand free from mine. “I gotta go somewhere!”
“You’ll-”
“Shaddup! Listen to me!” She grabbed my shoulders and shouted in my face. “Tell Tiernan-”
Full-auto gunfire from behind us. More screams. I couldn’t tell whether the troopers were firing live rounds, and I wasn’t in the mood for sticking around to find out. The woman glanced over her shoulder, then her eyes snapped back to me again.
“Tell Tiernan to meet me at Clancy’s on Geyer Street!” she yelled. “Tomorrow at eight! Tell him not to trust any other messages he gets! You got that?”
“Who are you?” I shouted back at her. “What the hell’s going on?”
For the briefest moment she seemed uncertain, as if wanting to tell me everything in the middle of a full-scale riot and yet unable to trust her own instincts. Then she pulled me closer until her lips touched my ear.
“Ruby fulcrum,” she whispered.
“Ruby what?”
“Ruby fulcrum!” she repeated, louder and more urgently now. “Tiernan will know what I mean. Remember, Clancy’s at eight.” She shoved me away. “Now get out of here!”
Then she was gone, turning around to dash into the panic-stricken mob, disappearing into the night as suddenly as she had appeared. I caught a final glimpse of the woman as her jacket hood fell back, exposing a few hints of gray in her short-cropped hair.
Then she was gone.
I ran in the opposite direction, battering my way through the crowd until I was out of the parking lot. I dashed across the sidewalk and down the embankment beside the high concrete walls of the Muny. Few people followed me; most of the squatters had stayed behind to wage futile battle against the ERA troopers, protecting what little they could still call home.
I slipped and skittered and fell down the muddy slope, blinded by smoke and darkness, deafened by the sound of helicopters, my face lashed by low tree branches as I tripped over fallen limbs. As I neared the bottom of the hill I heard the gurgle of a rain-swollen drainage ditch and veered away from it; I didn’t need to get more wet than I already was.
I can barely recall how I escaped from the riot; my flight from the Muny comes to me only in snatches. Falling on my face several times. Grabbing my jacket pocket to make sure that I hadn’t lost Joker, feeling vague reassurance when I felt its small mass. Jogging down Government Road around the lake, passing the old 1904 World’s Fair Pavilion, slowing down to catch my breath and then, in the next instant, spotting the headlights of more armored cars approaching from the opposite direction and ducking off the road into the woods. Hearing monkeys howling in the treetops above me. Crashing through a tent village erected on the fairway of what used to be the municipal golf course, hearing babies screaming, having a clod of mud thrown at me by an old man …
Then I was in the woods again, climbing another steep slope on all fours, my breath coming in animal like gasps as I clutched at roots and decaying leaves, all in an atavistic impulse to flee from danger.
Not the best night I’ve ever had at the opera. Lots of singing and dancing, but in terms of artistic merit the show kinda sucked.
The next thing I knew, I was halfway across the park, my breath coming in wet, ragged gasps as I lay against the base of the statue of Louis XIV, the French monarch after whom the city had been named. His bronze skin dully reflected the light from the distant flames of the tent village that had once existed around the Muny.
From my lonely hilltop perch, I could see the searchlights of helicopters as they circled the amphitheater, hear the occasional echoing report of semiauto gunfire. Up here, though, all was supernaturally quiet and uncrowded, as if I was removed in time and space from the chaos that reigned not far away. The rain had finally ceased. Night birds and crickets made nocturnal harmony in the hilltop woods, undeterred by the paramilitary action not far away.
Somehow, in my mad rush for safety, I had made it to the summit of Art Hill, the highest point in Forest Park. The Sun King sat on his stallion above me, larger than life, his broadsword raised in defiance to the empty sky. The statue had been the symbol of the city long before the Arch had been erected; by miracle, he had not been toppled by the quake, and his eternal courage made me all the more ashamed of my own cowardice.
On the other hand, I had become accustomed to being a coward. It wasn’t anything new to me. Call it an instinct for self-preservation; all us chickenshit types use that term. Just ask my wife. Or my son …
Turning my head to look behind me, my eyes found the half-collapsed stone edifice of the St. Louis Art Museum. Despite being reinforced during the nineties against quakes, the museum had suffered extensive damage. Now its doors were chained shut, its windows sealed with pine boards, its treasures long since moved to Chicago. Inscribed above the bas-relief classical portico, held aloft by five Corinthian columns, were seven words:
DEDICATED TO ART AND FREE TO ALL
“No shit,” I mumbled. “Where do I sign up?”
I caught my breath, then I slowly rose to my feet and began to stagger across the driveway and down Art Hill, following the sidewalk toward the Forest Park Boulevard entrance on the north side of the park.
It was time to go home.