Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Rumor also had it that a private detective agency was compiling a massive dossier on Chief Jammu and her allies, with evidence suggesting that the Chief’s rise to power owed less to her popularity and more to crass horsetrading than was generally supposed.

Barroom cynics maintained that the incorruptible Martin Probst had switched sides on the referendum solely in exchange for sexual favors from a certain somebody in whose cruiser he had been seen to ride.

And then there were the Osage Warriors, those local terrorists who had made the national news repeatedly in the fall and winter. Now their attacks had simply ceased, and investigations by the police and the FBI had turned up no substantial leads. If their sudden appearance had been surprising, their disappearance was even more so. What had it all meant? County conservatives were beginning to wonder why an armed revolutionary group should have tailored its battle plan to suit so neatly the political needs of Jammu and the pro-merger forces.

But the fourth estate heard none of this. It was Saturday, March 31, and the only sounds in the city were the applause and calliopes of special events and the clamor of the fêtes to which the major media representatives had been treated.

Late Saturday afternoon a hostage situation developed at a Pizza Hut in Dallas. Many of the reporters decamped for Texas. But many remained. There was nothing to do but see the sights and praise them. On the streets, in the seductive spring twilight, phrases whispered provocatively. The new spirit of St. Louis…Farewell to the blues…Arch-rivals no more…A great Indian chief…A classic example of wise urban planning…The cardinal virtues…Delightful mix of old and new…First truly modern city in the Midwest… And then from a hundred hotel rooms, later in the evening, came the impassioned sounds of typing. A new city, a new national image, was being conceived in the night.

Why us?

Those who might once have asked the question, in the rubble of their late great city, now saw the prospect of a more satisfactory fate, the elimination of the political split which for over a century had halted St. Louis’s progress towards greatness. St. Louis had stepped into the limelight. It had cured its ills. Against the odds and contrary to expectations, it was making something of itself.

The local prophets were in twenty-seventh heaven.

But the city? Its self-pitying, self-exalting essence? That part of the place which would not forget and which had asked, Why us?

It was dead. Prosperity, Jammu, and national attention had killed it. St. Louis was just another success story now, happy in the one-dimensional way that all thriving cities are. If it had ever had anything extraordinary to tell the country, anything admonishing or inspiring, it would say it no more.

Oh, St. Louis. Did you ever really believe that Memphis had no history? That citizens of Omaha considered themselves unexceptional? Were you ever really so vain that you hoped New York might one day concede that, for all its splendor, it could never match your tragic glory?

How could you have thought the world might care what became of you?

Herb Pokorny had laid off all his extra help and driven his family out for a weekend of relaxation at Lake St. Louis. He didn’t stay there. Sam Norris had gone to Lambert with a briefcase chained to his wrist and caught a plane to Washington. He, likewise, didn’t stay there. By noon on Saturday they were both in St. Louis, with all the pertinent files and instruments stored in the back of Herb’s souped-up station wagon, the color and plates of which had been changed on Friday night.

Herb had cracked the last nut, the mystery of where all the Indians were concealing themselves, their weapons, their receivers and their records. The break had come very late, by process of elimination. After wasting upwards of four hundred man-hours engaging in surveillance on the residences of all the likely aliens and tailing the likeliest ones to see where they’d lead, he’d realized that once again Asha Hammaker was the key. The Indians could only be hiding in Hammaker-owned properties.

Sam and Herb now had a complete catalogue of those properties. The list was long, but not too long. In three days, four days max, they’d be able to scout and search every one of them.

Sam gave no thought to sleep. Every hour counted, what with Jammu already beginning to bail out. To date, she’d sent home five of her operatives and had tried to send a sixth, the girl, Devi Madan.

Herb had photographs of the two men with Madan at the airport, and would have had the girl herself if she hadn’t, as he told Sam, pulled a gun on him.

So Sam knew Jammu was sending them home. But he also knew his quarry’s psychology. She wasn’t secure enough to let go of everyone and all her tools. Maybe on Wednesday she would be. But on Wednesday the game would be up. They’d have worked through the list of properties.

On Saturday afternoon they scored on item one, an eleven-acre tract along the Meramec River in Jefferson County. Searching the wooded ground methodically, they turned up the trace of an old road. Fifty yards from the river, by the side of the trace, they found three crates of cordite and a box of caps under a heavy tarpaulin. The explosives matched the description of those used in the stadium scare. It was a cold scent, but a scent nonetheless. Herb figured there might be other evidence on the property, but it would have to wait.

The next stop was in St. Charles County. Four and a half acres. Developed. This turned out to mean a secluded farmhouse set into a hill off a gravel county road. Dusk fell while they watched it. In an hour, one vehicle came by on the road, an old man on a tractor. They moved in. Sam had a heavy outer heart, his pistol in its shoulder holster.

They observed fresh tire tracks on the driveway, but the garage was empty. They broke into the house and found a smell of fried onions and cumin. The only furnishings in the place were mattresses and blankets. The refrigerator was running. Vegetables in it. Herb pulled open the fruit drawer and let out an uncharacteristic gasp. There was a machine pistol in the parsley.

A car was coming up the driveway, flashing blue lights in the kitchen windows. Too late, Sam and Herb noticed the blinking red eye in the living-room thermostat and realized the place was burglar-proofed.

It took them two hours to talk themselves out of the St. Charles police station, with a Thursday court date. A St. Charles squad car escorted them to the county limits. But it was only a small delay. When the squad car turned around, they doubled back to the house on the hill, found it unguarded, clipped the power line where it entered on the side, and went back in.

Probst hadn’t slept well. Upset by the humid, changing weather, he’d tossed in the grip of a dream that felt like awakeness, interminable variations on the concept of opinion polls in which each part of his body had a percentage attached to it, meaninglessly, his legs 80 percent and stiff, his back a knotted 49 percent, his swollen eyes coming in at 22 percent each, and so on through the unraveling of the night.

At sunrise the bells at Mary Queen of Peace had rung in Easter and proceeded, all morning, to repeat the announcement. Trees were budding in a green fog. It was also April Fools’ Day. The blasphemy of the coincidence had been shooting little spitball-like jokes into Probst’s head. The tomb is empty? Oh. April Fools’.

He wasn’t a churchgoer, of course, but he’d long allowed the Resurrection a certain margin of credence, maybe 37 percent in a random sampling of his mind’s constituents. Faith was a ticket, and he split his. An event like the creation of Eden scored a zero, while the parting of the Red Sea polled a solid 60 percent, carrying easily. The sea had parted for Moses but swallowed the chariots. The idea of a people being Chosen had the ring of truth, as did the entire Old Testament, whereas the New had the flat clank of the robotic young men and women with leaflets who bothered people on the streets downtown. Probst didn’t believe in God. Fortunately a comfortable silence on the matter had surrounded him for all his adult life. Men might discuss politics at Probst & Company, but never religion. At home, Barbara was the warden of the silence. “God?” she wouldn’t say. “Don’t be silly,” she wouldn’t add.