Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“Thanks.”

“But if you pardon my saying, it’s not enough. Including that little attack on the tower, there’ve been four separate scenarios and no one even nicked by a bullet. To me it smells like somebody mighty squeamish is at work. Smells like a lady. It smells like Jammu.”

“She hasn’t struck me as particularly squeamish.”

“Sure, but that’s all show.”

“Come on,” Probst said. “You can’t have it both ways. If the terrorists are squeamish, if they’re just trying to disrupt things, with credible threats, then we’re OK. But if they’re serious, and nitrogen tanks sound pretty serious to me, then Jammu’s doing a good job and they’re running scared.”

“That’s dead wrong. That’s god- damned wrong.” The General balled up his towel, threw it into the steam, threw himself to his feet and began to pace in a tight square. “It ain’t just disruption. Too much money in it, too much foreign equipment, too much know-how. But it ain’t exactly serious either. It’s Jammu, Martin. It’s the oldest trick in the book. You create the illusion of terror, then you get credit for stamping it out; you get funds, you get power. And that’s exactly what’s going on. Jammu’s riding high. Look at Jim Hutchinson, would you. Nobody can figure out why the Warriors went after him and his station. And nobody asks why he’s still alive. It makes me weep it’s so obvious. Hutchinson backs Jammu . He didn’t two months ago. Now he’s her biggest fan, and there ain’t no talking to him anymore. That’s why he ain’t been killed. KSLX is just one editorial after another in favor of the police, in favor of the funding increases, in favor of Jammu personally, and you know as well as I do every dinkhead thinks KSLX is the voice of St. Louis. But it ain’t, it’s the voice of Jim Hutchinson, and look what’s happened!”

“But,” Probst said. The sweat was running now, a thousand shallow worms. “It seems to me that nothing much has changed. Hutch was always a liberal. Jammu’s a liberal, at least partly, to read the paper. Hutch supports her now. He’s still a liberal. You were thinking about conspiracies three months ago. You’re still thinking about them. You knew it before it started. You haven’t changed. All I see is coincidences. Indians and Indians. A princess, a policewoman, both from Bombay. The first Big Red game I’ve been to in years happens to be the fateful one. Coincidence, nothing else. I could make something of it, but why bother. ‘God is Red.’ You probably think that means communist.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I don’t see any compelling reason for them to give hints like that. I see some reasons not to. I don’t see any compelling reason for Jammu to start planting bombs when she’s doing just fine the way she is. I don’t think she’s even capable of it. I don’t think real people act that way. I don’t think one person by herself — remember she’s new to the force — I don’t think she even has time to do much more than her job. Obviously I haven’t changed either. I was saying this three months ago.”

There was a pause. Dark gaps in the light steam writhed and rose, closed and opened. Then the General said, “You haven’t been paying much attention, Probst.”

The remark hurt. Its vagueness.

“Do you even read a newspaper?”

He was distracted by a flare of pain in his broken finger. Sweat and condensation had soaked the green sponge of the splint. “I, uh.” He clenched his teeth to clear his head. “Usually.”

“Know anything about North Side real estate?”

“It’s — what? Doing pretty well?”

“You better find out. Know anything about the Hammaker Corporation?”

“Like what?”

“Like the announcement they’ll be making on Tuesday—”

Tuesday was Probst’s birthday.

“—that the City of St. Louis will own twenty-one percent of its common stock, in other words a third of the stock now in the hands of the Hammaker family.”

“That’s outrageous,” Probst said. “What are you talking about?”

“Facts. Granted, it’s a special arrangement, no voting privileges. Granted, it’s hush-hush. But it’s a gift. To the city. Which is heading for a financial crisis.”

“They can’t do that. It’s not granted in the Charter.”

“They can so.” The General’s teeth gleamed in the steam. “That paragraph they voted in when they thought they’d have to buy the Blues to keep ’em here. They can own part or all of any enterprise, I quote, that’s manifestly a civic institution. And Hammaker plainly qualifies as a civic institution.”

“That’s outrageous,” Probst repeated.

“Facts. After all, who’s really running Hammaker these days? The royal bimbo, is who. The one who’s also coming on to Buzz Wismer.”

“Coincidence.”

“Conspiracy. Now I don’t mean this quite as unkind as it may sound, but. You’re the chairman of Municipal Growth — you’re supposed to pay attention.”

“I have been paying attention, General. I’ve paid attention to the hospitals. I’ve paid attention to desegregation. To the bond renegotiations.”

“Fiddling while the city burns. While the Reds hire ninety percent blacks for the city police. While a pair of bitches nationalize a private industry. While your brother-in-law double-crosses Municipal Growth. While somebody perverts your own daughter.”

The sauna seemed to spin, Norris filling it centrifugally, in tangents, a bodily swastika. There was a leg in front of Probst, an arm in one corner, another against the opposite wall, trunk, neck, head vaulting over him, and dangling in the focus of his vision was a somber white-haired scrotum. “I’ve had enough sauna,” he said.

“I haven’t.”

“My private life is none of your business.”

“Martin, I know it ain’t. But people talk. People hear things. You ought to know what people say.”

“I’d rather not.”

“God Almighty. I never seen so many ostriches.” The voice shook with emotion. “Haven’t you ever met somebody whose guts you hated but everybody else thinks she’s the hottest thing this side of the sun? And you know you’re right, you know you see something. How’s it make you feel? Everybody cheering, and here she’s putting fifty thousand innocent folks in danger. You think it’s a thrill to get your legs blown off? People don’t think. And Buzz Wismer? Sure, he’s getting a little soft around the edges, but he still manages to keep that company in the black, year in, year out. And I see this phony Asian princess rubbing up against him, and him interested. I try to do something, all right? I see my city in trouble. I try to shore up. You and me ain’t friends. Our paths wouldn’t ordinarily cross. But I had this pitcher, when I heard you bled, I had this pitcher, and it got me hoping again. We’re at the center of things, you and me.”

Probst felt calm. The danger was past. He could handle abstractions. He raised his glass, but only a single drop reached his tongue, watery sweet.

“It ain’t the blacks that get me,” Norris said. “It ain’t even the Reds so much. It’s these Asians, the industrial Japs and these Injuns here. They got no morals, it’s me me me me me. Me win, me first. You know they don’t even go to movies in Japan?”

“It’s funny you say that.” Probst smiled. “Because that’s probably what the British thought about the Americans fifty years ago. No culture, everything for business. Not playing fair. It feels bad when you’re not on top anymore. We can’t compete with Japanese industry. Or — or communist athletes. So we turn to finer things. Movies. Ethics.”

“So you’re saying sour grapes.”

“Sure.” He didn’t mean this. He was an optimist. He tried to think of something optimistic to say. “Jammu is…Did you bring that bottle?”