Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“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 forensics 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?”

Because it was abstract, Probst found himself engaged by the question. He shifted his legs. “Well, to those limits I might add that the market is finite as well as uncertain, and that unlimited growth is of far less importance to me than quality work, a fair situation for my employees, and in particular a sane workload for my executives.”

Wesley nodded through this. “Right. Absolutely. The market is finite. But so is the universe! It’s still very large, right? Let me give you a present-day scenario. Say suddenly a whole lot of new office buildings are going up, and to build one you’ve got to have a big crane. I wouldn’t know for sure how many big cranes you have, but let’s say two.”

“One, actually. If you’re talking about the derrick we—”

“One. Fine. Even better. So even if six big projects are going up simultaneously, you can still only bid on one of them. You could bid on more, but you’d have to figure in the cost of renting or financing more cranes, which could make you uncompetitive. Am I right?”

“You’re not altogether wrong.”

“But now let’s say that tomorrow something happens that will make it a whole lot easier to finance a crane. Something — whatever, all right? And let’s also say that because you’re hoping to do a number of very similar projects, all in the same area, not miles apart but blocks apart, five hundred feet, you’ll be able to work more efficiently, and you’ll be able to knock enough off your bids so that even with extra financing costs you’re still competitive. Isn’t it possible that you could land all six contracts and quintuple the revenues you’d otherwise expect?”

“That would depend entirely on the terms of the financing,” Probst said calmly. In the simplicity of Wesley’s scenario, the feigned naïveté, he sensed the imminent proffering of an illegality, and he had always been skillful at leading men on into self-incrimination.

“Say the terms were good,” Wesley replied. “Say it was in the best interests of certain extremely influential citizens to involve you, with your stature, your leadership, your whole history, to involve you in the rejuvenation of the city, in a set of projects that no matter how you look at it is in the best interests of the people of St. Louis, all of the people, all of the city. Your city.”

“You’re referring to the North Side.”

“North Side, South Side, West End, whatever. I ask hypothetically.”

“I don’t care for hypotheses,” Probst said with an air of cool criminality. “I like facts.”