The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist)

by Jonathan Franzen

  Probst wished he could figure out a way of asking, within the context of this get-acquainted visit, just how much time the Thompsons had spent with her.

  “She talks a lot about you, very positively, although I also understand you’re not on such good terms at the moment, for whatever reasons.”

  “How often do you see her?” Probst asked.

  “We’ve taken them to dinner a couple of times. We try to make an effort to stay in touch. These are difficult years for kids. I know Duane’s going through some re-evaluations, sounding out alternatives, trying to get his act together. We stay in touch. Not that Pat and I have a lot of time these days. Pat’s working, by the way, sorry she missed you. We’ll all have to get together sometime, all six of us.”

  Thompson squinted at a nearby calendar.

  “Not this weekend, though, I mean not the coming one. I guess after Christmas. January. Oh. Or February. You can all come over, we’ll make a night of it. The kids really love Pat’s paella. Fracture?”

  “Yes.” Probst exhibited his finger more completely, and then, for the twentieth time, related the stadium story. The last ten times, he’d told it identically, word for word.

  Thompson nodded at every sentence. He made large swooping nods, smaller horizontal rows of nods, rotational nods of total comprehension and agreement, odd nods in angled planes, singsong windshield-wiper nods. When Probst was done, he said: “As far as Lu and Duane go, it’s hard to tell how serious they are, but I think pretty. She seems very determined to assert her independence.” Thompson flattened the front page of the Sunday Post and read a few lines. “It’s really a matter of values when you get right down to it. The old story, right? There’s not much I can add, personally, beyond the fact that both Pat and myself like Lu very much. What’s more, we respect her.” He looked at his watch.

  It had been two weeks since Buzz Wismer had seen Martin Probst. Much had changed. Martin hadn’t. He looked awake and fit when he arrived, that Sunday afternoon, at Buzz’s office. Even the aluminum splint added. He looked like a brilliant soldier on leave.

  “I thought,” he said, “that you might be able to fill me in on what Rolf Ripley is up to these days. I’m married to his sister-in-law and I know less than nothing.”

  “Well,” Buzz said. “There was the hoopla about his new defense electronics division. From what I hear, though, that’s been in the works for quite some time.”

  “Stop right there,” Martin said calmly. “How did you know it had been in the works?”

  “Well. I guess I would know. We’re in competition for engineers. My people in personnel told me back in March he was recruiting in new areas. More computer, more nuclear—”

  “OK. Fine. What else?”

  “Lately, you mean? Well. There are rumors he’s moving some of his operations back into the city.”

  “But the papers print that kind of stuff all the time.”

  “That’s true. I took this more seriously, though, because my own name was mentioned in the same connection. A lot of stockholders saw the rumor, I think even the New York Times picked up the story, and I got calls from as far away as Boston. I felt we had to ask the Post about its sources, which is like pulling teeth. To make a long story short, it appears that a highly placed officer in Ripleycorp started the relocation rumor, and he said that we were also considering a move.”

  “So it didn’t originate with you?”

  “No and yes.” Buzz explained that while the rumor hadn’t originated with him, it had caused him to direct Finance to look into the feasibility of a change of headquarters. Finance had advised against it but had hedged by suggesting they nevertheless purchase some property in the city before prices rose any further. Buzz had authorized the purchase. It had been routine. But he actually felt his face growing hot as he explained it to Martin, as if he were revealing a guilty secret, something primitive, because the purchase was associated with Asha.

  Martin smiled wistfully. “Thanks for telling me, Buzz. Businesswise, as you’re aware, I need to know what’s coming next, and in some way in the past few months I’ve failed to pay attention. It’s bad leadership on my part, too—I feel a kind of stewardship this year as MG chairman. At the same time, I don’t exactly think it’s my fault. Haven’t the trends around here always been visible to everyone years in advance? Like Clayton, the highways, the waterfront, West County. There used to be an openness, and I don’t see it anymore. This is why I want to know what your sense of things is.”

  It wasn’t what Martin said, Buzz thought, or even how he said it, it was the underlying honesty, the almost obtuseness. This man was whole. Evil puzzled him. He hadn’t changed.

  “My…sense of things. I think we’re all right, really.” Buzz blinked. “I’ve had a pretty upsetting week, I guess. And I tend to lose sight of…”

  “What do you think of Asha Hammaker?” Martin asked suddenly.

  For a second Buzz had the distinct suspicion that this was the only question Martin had come to ask him.

  “I don’t mean personally,” Martin added. “I mean as a businesswoman.”

  “As a businesswoman I have no idea.”

  “Have you heard anything about a transfer of stock to the city?”

  “But lest you have heard rumors,” Buzz continued, unwilling to pass up this chance to confess, “I should add that it’s true that Mrs. Hammaker has several times made overtures of a, em, physical character to me and perhaps to others as well, in public, so that there may be rumors to that effect which you may have heard.”

  Martin smiled and shook his head with rhetorical amusement. “Why don’t they ever do that to me?”

  Their eyes met. Buzz felt a laugh drawn out of him like a splinter.

  It was after Probst had left the Wismer complex and turned south again, it was in the very middle of the long day he’d cut out for himself, when his breakfast was spent on the morning and remained only as metabolic by-products and a faint sourness of juice in his mouth—it was then that the weekend’s burden of facts and conjectures, possibilities and risen consciousness became too much for him.

  He experienced a dullness. The low midwinter sun on the land ahead of him was blindingly white, unbelievably bright, and the wet and snowy streets were a catalogue of nonsense. Chunks of every size and every shape obliterated the simple lines underneath. In the brilliance, at traffic lights, he couldn’t see which of the three lights was shining, the red, the yellow, or the green. He slowed for all of them, coasting through the intersections.

  And it was then, as his eyes sought relief in the rearview mirror, in the darker, cooler scenes behind him, that he began to suspect that he was being tailed. The car was a big old Chevy, a white one. He thought he remembered having seen it earlier, in Webster Park, and now it was a hundred feet behind him on Hanley Road. The windshield was a rough-edged bar of reflected sunlight.

  The car followed him into Clayton, and when he made a right turn onto Maryland Avenue the car did too. He pulled into the Straub’s parking lot to buy some fruit for lunch, and the car drove on past, its occupants still masked by the glare.

  In Jim Hutchinson’s living room he performed another stealthy check for bugs and got a green light. Jim returned from his study, where he’d taken a telephone call.

  “I’m aware,” he said, “that the General finds it suspicious that the Warriors haven’t bagged me yet. On the other hand, they shoot real bullets. Have you ever been shot at? It’s not an experience I’m eager to repeat. For your information, the helicopter shot out these windows to your left, because we generally eat dinner in the front room. Contrary to what you’ve probably been told, these windows were not dark. The curtains in the breakfast room were drawn, however, and they’re also screened by trees and the house behind us. As far as the car bomb goes, I’m not sure. There are indications it detonated unexpectedly, an hour ahead of schedule. I was going out at eleven that morning. The grenade at our transmitter found its mark, and was not aimed at soft targets
. Since then, I’ve taken more precautions. The police have also been helpful. Apparently the Warriors have changed their tactics. That’s fine with me. I’d prefer not to get gunned down on the street just to set the General’s mind at rest. It’s also true I’ve changed my mind about Jammu. There’s nothing to prove by stubbornness. I’ve met with her several times personally, and I can assure you that she’s not a terrorist.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Aren’t you the one who’s been arguing against it all fall? And anyway, I have a sense. I was a reporter for twenty years. Jammu isn’t completely straight with me—she has no reason to be—but she’s not that crooked, either. Not as crooked as Norris, for instance.”

  “Is it true he’s buying the Globe?”

  “He’d like to. Whether anyone will let him, I don’t know.”

  “If he’s trying to, why hasn’t it been reported?”

  Jim thought for a moment. “No comment. Let’s just say professional courtesy. At this stage, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Anyway, I’m sure the Post will run a story by the end of the week.”

  “What about the Hammaker stock deal?”

  “Now, that. That you’ll hear about on the news—nationally, I’d guess. It’s a good example of one of the ways Jammu isn’t playing straight. Asha Hammaker, née Parvati Asha Umeshwari Nandaksachandra, is not just another Asian glamour girl. For one thing, she’s forty-one years old—”

  “Wow.” Probst’s head wagged. He would have guessed twenty-five.

  “She has three advanced degrees, Berkeley, London School, and somewhere Indian, she spent five years working for the Tatas, rose to the equivalent of vice president, and then in 1975 underwent a political and perhaps religious conversion, completely unexplained, spent two years in jail, worked for three years in Bombay as a marxist agitator, and then, most surprising of all, embarked on yet another career, as a professional stage actress, at which again she was highly successful. Maybe you didn’t hear how young Hammaker met her?”

  “I didn’t think anyone knew.”

  “She was filming in Mexico, I think her first sizable film role. Hammaker was vacationing down there. This was February or March. April at the latest.” Jim paused, as if waiting for Probst to see something.

  At length he did. “Jammu wasn’t invited here until July. In April she wouldn’t have known she was coming.”

  “Couldn’t have known,” Jim amended. “Bill O’Connell could have stayed on as chief for another fourteen months, or Jergensen could have replaced him. She couldn’t have known she’d be coming here.”

  “Unless Asha had something to do with—”

  “With both the retirement and the replacement fight? Impossible. She hadn’t even moved to St. Louis, and she wasn’t a Hammaker yet.”

  “Jim, why don’t you fill the General in on some of this?”

  “It’s pointless. You know he isn’t rational. And there are certain coincidences he could exploit if he knew about them. Evidently Jammu and Asha were well acquainted in Bombay. How do I know? I asked Jammu. If I told the General, the facts would show that not only have two extraordinarily talented women from Bombay shown up in our unremarkable St. Louis within three months of each other, but they also happen to be friends. Clearly Jammu expressed interest in the job because Asha was on her way to St. Louis already, and it’s a fact of immigration that groups tend to cluster in one city. Jammu’s no exception. But the coincidence remains, and I don’t care to nurture the General’s illusions any more than I can help it.”

  “So what about the stock?”

  “I think Jammu and Asha engineered the deal. As far as Jammu goes, it’s a power play. You help rescue a city financially, you get to ask some favors in return, and it will be interesting to see in the next few months just what kind of favors she asks. She also has a much-expanded payroll to meet, and she’s very unwilling to lay off all the men she’s added in the last three months. As far as the Hammakers go, this won’t bankrupt them. I imagine she looks at it this way: she and Sidney are the only heirs to all those assets, there aren’t any children in the offing—although if Sidney doesn’t know her age he may not be aware of this—so what’s the point in hanging on to assets that are irrelevant to their present lifestyle? They cut it loose, send it to the city, get all the public credit, plus they have something valuable to add to their already-monstrous marketing arsenal: Hammaker is such an institution, it’s even owned by the city it’s made in. They lose none of their control of the corporation, and if Asha’s half as smart as she looks I bet they can take those shares back whenever they need to. Which will give new meaning to the term Indian giver. For now, the city will be putting the whole lump up immediately as collateral for a loan arranged by—”

  “Chuck Meisner,” Probst said.

  “The Felix Rohatyn of St. Louis. Is what he wants to be. Chuck’s OK, though. I think he’s overextended, but that’s partly because the city is overextended. I take it you’ve seen him recently?”

  “This morning. It didn’t even occur to me to ask about the Hammaker thing. He’s not well, you know.”

  “Insomnia.”

  “You know everything.”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you know more than I do. You should put out a newsletter. I’d pay a lot for a subscription.”

  Jim smiled. “My position never strikes me as that unusual. If you want what I’ve got, you have to come ask for it. The same goes for Jammu. I wish some men like you would go and see her, instead of speculating.”

  “I’d need a pretext,” Probst said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of this himself. “But tell me what you know about Rolf Ripley.”

  “You know more than I do. I assume he’s approached you about the development he’s planning—”

  Probst saw black. “Development?”

  “What I’ve heard is basically outline, North Side, twelve blocks. Executive offices, rental space, his research wing, and maybe ultimately some manufacturing as well, and of course the obligatory apartment units. No towers, I guess. What—eight, nine stories max?”

  “We hadn’t really discussed it yet,” Probst said.

  “Well.” Jim glanced at him shrewdly over his glasses. “Once you’ve worked things out with Harvey Ardmore—”

  “Ardmore?”

  “Martin.” Jim’s voice dropped practically to a whisper. “You do know, don’t you, that he’s filing for bankruptcy?”

  By now it must have been clear how little Probst knew.

  “I hope he doesn’t owe you anything,” Jim added.

  Ardmore, the Westhaven developer, owed Probst a quarter of the total bill. Probst had paid the subcontractors in advance, but Ardmore’s payment wasn’t due until this week. “Bankrupt?” Probst said.

  “Very possibly. He’s been making the rounds, but no one’s listening. The suburban banks are all plenty strapped as it is. This boom is knocking the bottom out of West County speculation. It has the makings of by far the largest set of developments in the history of the area. Not acreage-wise, naturally. But definitely dollar-wise. And this is only a prophecy, of course, but I believe the result is going to be the re-entry of the city into the county, and on the city’s terms, not the county’s. You wait. Remember who said it first.”

  Probst got a phone call from Buzz soon after he’d arrived at the mayor’s office. He walked the telephone to the windows and looked down at the grimy snowbanks along Tucker Boulevard, and beyond, across the Mall, to an Arch that was golden in the failing sun. “Go ahead, Buzz.”

  “Well,” Buzz said. “Ed Smetana—you’ve met Ed—he was in for a while, and we had a look at your gadget. The battery and circuit are American; local, in fact. It’s a General Syn Power Seed and a Ripleycorp chip, not made exactly for this function but obviously close enough. I’d guess it’s something he makes for the CIA. As for the mike and housing, which are really the deftest part of the construction—I couldn’t tell you. No idea. It would take a forensi
cs lab. The only other interesting thing is that the transmitter has a maximum range of no more than three hundred meters, which would mean there’s a receiver very close to where you found this.”

  “All right. Thanks very much, Buzz. I’ll talk to you again soon.”

  “Do. Do, Martin.”

  Probst started to return to his seat, but something he’d glimpsed subliminally on Tucker brought him back to the windows. A large white Chevy was parked directly below him, idling. The driver was screened by the top of the car and shaded by City Hall.

  “Something down there?” Pete Wesley asked.

  “Snow,” Probst replied. He went back to his seat, a leather chair with cracks. The phone had interrupted a murky monologue of Wesley’s, an upbeat message as far as Probst could tell, real Chamber of Commerce talk. Probst had never cared for Wesley. It seemed to him that American mayors fell into two distinct physical classes: sprawling endomorphs with loud personalities who could roll right over any opposition, and bland men or women with small, narrow builds well adapted to wriggling out of difficulties. Pete Wesley belonged to the latter class. His face was like the face of generic Homo sapiens in encyclopedias.

  “As I was saying, Martin, it’s very gratifying to see you here.”

  Probst closed his eyes. Impolite. He opened them.

  “Because for a man born and raised in the city, and based here—don’t think I don’t know your business address—dare I say we haven’t been seeing enough of you lately?” Wesley paused. “Let me upshot here for a moment. Let me toss out a couple of questions. I’ve been thinking about your situation lately, trying to feel my way under your skin. Having been in business myself I’ve got a pretty good handle on the central questions. For instance: What are the limits to growth in an enterprise like yours? Have you given any thought to the theoretics here? I have, and now stop me if I’m totally off the wall—The limits to growth for you, Martin Probst, must number one be the uncertainty of the market, number two the resulting inability to go on mustering capital indefinitely, and number three the internal considerations, such as the need for tight and centralized control of operations. How’m I doing?”