The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist)

by Jonathan Franzen

  The punks followed him through the 12th Street interchange and down I-55. In the gloom around him, in the gray constricted streets, blue lights darted like passenger-train windows, and there was a great silence, as of a city gone dead, as if Probst too were dying and sight and balance were the only senses he could still command. Here was the hulking smoking brewery, in the shadow of which he’d misplayed Helen Scott, here the red gleams on its smokestacks, here Broadway, all the side streets which were already dying when he’d left them thirty years ago, here Chippewa, here Gravois, funeral homes and Boatmen’s Bank, here the lot where Katie Flynn’s dry-goods store had stood until her retarded son played with matches, here a gypsy gambling den in what used to be a Polish grocery—

  And here were the police.

  Half a dozen squad cars had parked broadside in the middle of Gravois. Probst stopped. In the mirror he saw that the Chevy had been stopped farther back; it was turning and leaving. Blue lights met white lights, the sky falling and shattering in luminous shards. Sirens and radios, headlights, snow. A policeman was pointing at Probst, waving his finger, mouthing words: Turn around. Probst jumped out. He was safe now.

  “Turn around,” the policeman said.

  “Where can I go?” Probst called.

  “Road’s closed.” Beyond the man, others ran towards a roadblock with rifles and shotguns.

  “What is it?”

  “Turn around.”

  More squad cars pulled up behind Probst, blocking his exit. Farther back, traffic was being diverted onto Morganford. Overhead, a helicopter.

  “Unit Six Unit Six,” the radios squawked. “High rate of speed Kingshighway South. Unit Seven Holly Hills.”

  Probst got back into his car. He really was blocked in. To his left he saw another motorist likewise stranded, his rear wheels on the traffic divider.

  A van with a dish antenna on top was heading the wrong way up the empty northbound lanes of Gravois. It had hardly stopped when the rear door and both side doors opened, splitting the KSLX logos in two. A cameraman jumped out, followed by a reporter Probst recognized. It was Don Daizy. Camera lights ushered him forward to the line of squad cars, and now for the first time Probst picked out the focus of all this activity: in a trench coat, leaning against one of the cars, a megaphone dangling from one hand, a car-radio microphone poised in the other, Jammu.

  Don Daizy approached her with his wire-laden retinue. An officer, pistol drawn, met him and turned him back. They exchanged words. A second officer seized the cameraman and led him away to the van. Daizy donned a headset and listened, squinting and nodding. He tapped a large microphone.

  Probst switched on his car radio and watched Jammu. Night had fallen. The many flashers cast a light that was almost steady, as crickets merge into a single voice. Jack Strom was speaking on KSLX. Jammu was wearing snowboots. She stood motionless by the car, staring into whatever situation lay beyond the roadblock. Two officers alongside her were staring in the same direction.

  “…following an abortive attack on a Bell Telephone installation in the southwest corner of the city. Residents in the area bounded by Chippewa, Gravois, and the River des Peres are urged to stay indoors. I repeat, in the area bounded by Chippewa Avenue, Gravois Avenue, and the city limits, residents—”

  Probst would remember his first glimpse of her. In describing his adventure in the following weeks, he would dwell on her quiet domination of the scene, on how, by saying a few words into the radio every minute or two, by keeping almost completely still as the crisis progressed, she seemed to control every action of the men around her and of all the other men farther off in the darkness. He would remember her manner of dress, the snowboots and trench coat, the impromptu confidence, remember it even when she used her cool, cruel arguments to wring this hour—Sunday, December 10, 4:00 to 5:00 p.m.—for every last drop of its political value…

  “Armed and dangerous. We switch now to Don Daizy, who is at the Gravois roadblock. Don?”

  …Because the roadblocks would serve no purpose. The Osage Warriors, trapped at last, would dump their vehicle, cross the dry river, elude the sadly undermanned and unorganized local police south of it, and escape scot-free. Jammu would testify bitterly in Jefferson City: “We’d been waiting for this, we had the trap planned down to the last detail, and all of it was negated by a force not under my control.” Probst would hear these words, recognize the manipulation in them, and forgive her because he’d seen her during the moment itself, seen her in person, and he knew a professional when he saw one.

  “The arteries are effectively blocked off, and in the distance I can see patrol cars fanning into the streets to the south and west…”

  Daizy was speaking into his microphone.

  “Chief Jammu is standing ten yards to my left and is directing the operation in conjunction with officers in the police chopper…”

  Daizy’s voice spoke from Probst’s radio.

  “From what I’ve been able to gather, the police received indications of the whereabouts of the terrorists several hours ago, and in the last twenty minutes they’ve been able to follow their movements with a high degree of precision…”

  Daizy was gesturing while he spoke to his invisible audience, his lips moving in the patchwork light while his words, in perfect sync with the lips, beat like rain against the windows of Probst’s car.

  9

  Titus Klaxon and his Steamcats, local men who’d made the big time and beat it to LA, were playing an exclusive gig at Shea’s Lounge on Vandeventer Avenue, an event of a must-see nature. RC and Annie left their son Robbie with Clarence and Kate’s kids and let Clarence drive the four of them through a white-out winter storm and park in a vacancy whose identity and ownership (a lawn? a lot? a street?) were concealed by a foot of snow. This was the second storm in two days and still the sky was not exhausted. Passing the mute bouncer, RC watched Annie’s glasses grow foggy and blind her. She removed them and smiled, and he kissed her and squeezed her shoulders. On the darkened dais somebody was playing a fast beat on the high hat, which meant the show was nowhere close to starting. Ernie Shea, a friend of Clarence’s, ushered them all to a well-situated table and personally fetched a pitcher of Hammaker. The highhatter ceased. RC and Clarence, Kate and Annie all talked for a while about everything and nothing, like in the old days, a double date, except there hadn’t ever been old days like this. RC was ten and Annie two when Kate and Clarence married.

  Soon enough Clarence walked his chair back a couple feet for a one-on-one with RC. “So, Off-sir,” he said. “How’s life?”

  RC reflected. The main thing in his life right now was that he and Annie were getting squeezed out of their apartment by their landlord Sloane. There were new ordinances to keep the rent halfway reasonable, but Sloane was charging fees, doing noisy nighttime renovation in vacant apartments, and offering a tidy sum to anybody willing to move out. Already there’d been a lot of takers.

  Clarence sniffed up a cigar and clamped down. “Not a hundred percent wonderful?” How bloodshot his eyes were was visible even in the low orange light and smoke. “What could be bad, Off-sir?”

  “You interested, Clarence, or you just making fun of me?”

  “I’m interested, Off-sir.”

  “Then stop calling me that.” These Q&A sessions made RC nervous when Annie was right there in front of them. Clarence had an ulterior concern, as in, How’s life treating my little sister? “I’m fine,” RC said. “Except we’re getting squeezed out of our place.”

  “That a fact?” Clarence puffed.

  “Sloane was up on Saturday talking to Annie. He said supposedly he couldn’t afford not to.”

  “Sloanes’ll be Sloanes.” Clarence’s eyes looked like it hurt for them to see. “What else is new.”

  It wasn’t a question, but RC answered it. “Annie got that job, you know. I aced my communications test.”

  “So you two all set to pay that nice high rent.”

  RC drank his beer. The players
moving at the back of the dais wore fishnet shirts and tank tops, while outside it was blizzarding to kill derelicts. It was no fun, RC thought, to hang around with a pessimist who was seeing his predictions confirmed, and that was what Clarence was, exactly that. It made RC want to apologize for the world, for all the bad things in it. He could live with the troubles and expenses of his life, but watching them match up with Clarence’s low expectations just killed him.

  Yesterday RC had actually called up Struthers, Alderman Rondo, to ask what could be done about Sloane. Smooth, smoother, smoothest, Struthers said there was replacement housing in the works, but RC asked who’d want to live in a project if they could help it, even it was a “good” project for “good” folks, like Struthers said, which was probably a lie, one way or another, knowing projects and knowing Struthers. Struthers said the new replacement housing fund would pay three months’ rent, not until February or March, but you could borrow on the chit. And RC said, “So what? We live three months in a motel. Then what? There be places to live in this city three months from now if everybody like us is in the same boat?” And Struthers said, “It’ll all work out in the end, brother. Nobody’s getting permanently shafted anymore.” Struthers, the exact opposite of Clarence, made RC hope the worst would happen. Everything was shiny as a dime in the world of Ronald Struthers, now the richest man RC knew or had ever met.

  Annie and Kate were looking at snapshots out of Kate’s purse.

  “We knocked down a building on Biddle on Tuesday, RC,” Clarence said, putting on his anecdotal face, the narrowed eyes, the lingering cigar. “Tuesday and Wednesday. Place was stripped as they ever is, pipes, fuse boxes, hardware, doors, and a lot of the brick. Some nice old doors, I suspect. Anyway, we made sure there wasn’t a thing worth taking or leaving, and we let loose with the ball, and what do you know if there ain’t a little basement we overlooked. One of these real old setups, dirt floor, used to keep potatoes and pickles and coal down there, turn of the century. I mean, just a little nothing hole, and what should come crawling out but a family of three.”

  Clarence gave RC the awful smile he’d been smiling lately, that no-surprise-to-me. “Little lady not much older than Stanly, got a three-year-old, and a baby on her tit, sucking right while we talked.” He paused again to assure himself of RC’s attention. “These things affect me, RC. They still affect me. I backed off with the ball for a sec and talked to her. She come up in August from Mississippi, town called Carthage, never been to St. Louis for more than visits, but looking for the father of her kids. One thing leads to another, and come December she’s living in a coal cellar and eating soup-line, too dumb or too shy to do any better, and living, at the present, in a coal cellar. I said I’m real sorry, little girl, but we got a job here, and where you people gonna go? She didn’t know. She didn’t know. Off-sir. Now, not that people should be living in coal cellars. It’s that I was tearing down to make room for office space. It’s people like this exist, and there’s a winter coming on.”

  RC knew Clarence. “She back in Carthage?”

  “I can only vouch as to her getting on the bus.” Suddenly Clarence sat up straight, like a pointer. “Lookee here.” He nodded, and across the room, speak of the devil, was Ronald Struthers. He was wearing turtleneck and corduroy and his gold chain with the big clenched-fist medallion, and stood talking with Ernie Shea. Both faced the dais. Behind the curtains a preliminary quiet had fallen. Points of light gleamed on the waiting trap set, on stands holding saxes and trumpets without the mouthpieces. The lounge was full and restless, the smoke so thick it would have to rain tar pretty soon.

  “Ooooo,” Clarence said, very unimpressed. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Maybe come for the music,” RC answered, with sarcasm but also a little apprehension, caught as he was in a feud that was not of his making. Struthers and Shea moved towards the dais on a political assembly line, pausing at each table to let Struthers cop a handshake, grin and flatter. They ducked behind the curtains and became two lumps with feet. RC moved his chair back to the table and touched Annie’s shoulder.

  “Mm?” she said, smiling at a remark of Kate’s.

  “You see Struthers?”

  “Should I want to?” She turned back to Kate.

  RC filled his glass, he filled the ladies’ glasses, reached and filled Clarence’s too, and winked at a waitress for a fresh pitcher. He’d pay for this drinking at 6:00 tomorrow morning when he caught the bus to the Academy. Annie needed the car now. He’d be parched and shivering, and the new snow sharp as filings.

  Steamcats parted the curtains, taking their places. The drummer, a bare-chested Rastafarian or Rastafarian look-alike, knocked off a few self-important fragments of rhythm, adjusted his chair, flipped a stick, and played a rustle on the snare, building to a roll. Out came Titus, fatter than ever, in a silver sequined tunic and a feathered headdress, Indian. He bobbed to the assembled guests, to scattered applause. But then, with a cautionary wink to the crowd, he stepped back and lunged behind the curtains again.

  “He’s the cool one,” Annie whispered.

  Clarence was chewing his cigar and looking ill.

  Making their way through the players now were Ernie Shea and Ronald Struthers, Ernie leading Ronald by the elbow, a guide in hostile untracked territory. They stopped at the mike and surveyed the crowd. Steamcats crossed their arms, hunched their shoulders, and stared at Struthers as if he were a white bank president. The houselights were dimming. The light retreated to the dais, coalesced in a purple bath in which the Steamcats sidled and licked their lips. Shea tapped the mike. “It’s always a great pleasure,” he said, “to welcome home these gentlemen who bring back such fond memories to me and I’m sure to you. Now our star just spoiled a climax by entering and withdrawing a little hastily…”

  Laughter all around.

  “But we’ve got all night and we’ll try it again. Let’s do it right this time. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Romans, countrymen, I give you Saint Louie’s own—Titus Klaxon!”

  Titus came back less jaunty. Face down, he walked to Shea and Struthers and dwarfed them with his musical bulk. He stood between them. He hugged them to his sides like dolls. “Thank you,” he said when the clapping began to subside. “Thank you very much.”

  People dying in that blizzard outside. Every blizzard, people died.

  “I’d like to say a word if I may,” Struthers told the mike.

  Silence fast. The crowd embarrassed.

  “I know we’re going to give Titus the welcome he deserves,” Struthers said. “I know this because I know Titus Klaxon, I know him for a man who won’t forget his roots, and I know the same of every man and woman in this room…”

  Someone snickered at RC’s right shoulder; at his left, Clarence was chewing his thumb now, not the nail, the thumb itself.

  “I remember when these cats were just getting started, playing the—”

  CRACK. The drummer hit a rim shot and Struthers jumped. The Steamcats looked at the ceiling.

  “Well.” Struthers cleared his throat. “It sounds as if we’re all itching to get on with it, we’ll all cherish the memories tonight brings, so without further ado—” Draping an arm around Shea and an arm around Titus, he cast his smile across the room like he was fishing for photographers, and then, in a blue flash, he was photographed. Were cameras even allowed here? RC craned his neck, looking for the source of the flash. He found it. Pressed against the wall three tables over was a kid, curly-haired and white, with a camera and a girl. Young, suburban-looking. Types.

  “That’s the kid took the picture of Benny Brown,” Clarence whispered.

  Struthers had vanished and Shea was swimming through the tables to the photographer. They spoke. The girl looked worried. The kid took out a card and Shea nodded, but not happily.

  While Steamcats screwed in mouthpieces and plucked strings, Titus took the mike. “My good friend Ronald Struthers here,” he said, “just asked me to dedicate a song to a little lad
y I guess a lot of you know, and this first number’s as good as any.” Titus stretched his stomach and took a huge breath, as if keeping some bad food down. “This is a brand-new song. It’s been a while since we saw the old streets and it may be—I want you all to consider—it may be that being an outsider now I can see things you all can’t. If that’s the case, I don’t apologize, because I’m glad, real glad, to be with you tonight. My rule is blues is truth, and so, my men, let’s show these wonderful people which blues I’m talking about.” The drummer snapped to. “Here’s a song for the lady in blue, it’s called”—his voice dropped down to a deep bass—“Gentrifyin’ Blues.”

  Probst was sick. He had a bad cold, the worst in several years, complete with chills and sizzling headaches, a sore throat, and a general sense of injury and injustice. The usual drugs hardly helped. Over the weekend he had touched some surface, or some surface had touched him, and then he’d touched his eyes or nostrils and the viruses had entered. It could have been any surface. Every thing had surface, and active germs were waiting, hopping eagerly into the air, on an indeterminate number of them—on pens and seat cushions, on shoes and sidewalks, streets and floors, on tumblers and towels and parking meters. Telephones crawled with viruses. Quarters taken as change were warm, a swarm. Elevator buttons were pustules glowing with received virulence. Rolf Ripley had wiped wads of living goo on his sleeves and Probst had grasped them. There were secretions of Buzz all over his office. Hutchinson had taken Probst’s coat, Dr. Thompson had shaken his hand, Meisner had had a runny nose, and the General—Sam—had handed him doughnuts. In retrospect he trusted no one.

  It was 3:00 in the afternoon, December 12. Bundled in his overcoat, a scarf beneath his chin, he pushed through two sets of doors in Plaza Frontenac, his and Barbara’s shopping center of choice. The people entering with him had empty hands and a bounce in their steps. Those leaving had packages, Saks bags swinging at shin level, wrapped books or records in the crooks of arms, the serrated tops of small paper bags poking from coat pockets. Probst stopped to orient himself. Malls were never executive-friendly, and he felt especially unwanted at this hour on a weekday afternoon. Normally even a bad cold would not have kept him from going in to the office. But he’d also come down with a birthday, which was likewise the worst he’d had in several years. He was fifty. A boy in a green loden coat chased an errant red balloon right up to his toes, and he sneezed down onto the boy’s whorled blond hair.