Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Jammu dropped the lid from her coffee cup into the wastebasket. “Why does he put up with it?”

“He’s strange. A shy genius.” Singh frowned and sat down on the windowsill. “I started hearing about Wismer jets twenty years ago. Nobody makes a better one.”

“So?”

“So he isn’t the man I expected. The voice is all wrong.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of listening.”

“A hundred fifty hours maybe. What do you think I do all day?”

Jammu shrugged. She could be certain Singh wasn’t exaggerating the amount of time he’d spent on the job. He was studiously beyond reproach. With no distractions (except for an occasional blond boy) and no responsibilities (except to her), he had time to lead an ordered life. A precious life. She, who had a pair of jobs that each took sixty hours a week to perform, was no match for Singh when it came to details. Her foot began to tap of its own accord, which meant the Dexedrine was working. “I’m taking you off the Wismer case,” she said.

“Oh yes?”

“I’m putting you in charge of Martin Probst.”

“All right.”

“So you’re going to have to start all over. You can forget Wismer, forget your hundred fifty hours.”

“That was just the tapes. Try three hundred.”

“Baxti handed in Probst’s file. You start immediately.”

“Is this something you only just decided?”

“No, it is not. I already spoke to Baxti, he already handed in his file, that’s what you’re here for. To pick it up.”

“Fine.”

“So pick it up.” She nodded at a tea-stained folder by her desk lamp.

Singh walked to the desk and picked it up. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Put the file down.”

He put it down.

“Go get me a glass of water and turn up the heat in here.”

He left the room.

Martin Probst was the general contractor whose company had built the Gateway Arch. He was also chairman of Municipal Growth Inc., a benevolent organization consisting of the chief executives of the St. Louis area’s major corporations and financial institutions. Municipal Growth was a model of efficacy and an object of almost universal reverence. If someone needed sponsors for an urban renewal project, Municipal Growth found them. If a neighborhood opposed the construction of a highway, Municipal Growth paid for an impact study. If Jammu wanted to alter the power structure of metropolitan St. Louis, she had to contend with Municipal Growth.

Singh returned with a Dixie cup. “Baxti is looking for new worlds to conquer?”

“Get a chair and sit down.”

He did so.

“Baxti’s obviously only marginally competent, so why make an issue of it?”

He shook a clove cigarette from a caramel-colored pack and struck a match, shielding the flame from a hypothetical breeze. “Because I don’t see why we’re switching.”

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

“Guess so.”

“I assume you know the basics already — Probst’s charming wife Barbara, their charming eighteen-year-old daughter Luisa. They live in Webster Groves, which is interesting. It’s wealthy but hardly the wealthiest of the suburbs. There’s a gardener who lives on the property, though…Baxti terms their home life ‘very tranquil.’”

“Mikes?”

“Kitchen and dining room.”

“The bedroom would have been more telling.”

“We don’t have that many frequencies. And there’s a TV in the bedroom.”

“Fine. What else?”

Jammu opened the Probst file. Baxti’s Hindi scrawl made her blink. “First of all, he only uses non-union labor. There was a big legal fight back in the sixties. His chief attorney was Charles Wilson, Barbara’s father, now his father-in-law. That’s how they met. Probst’s employees have never been on strike. Union wages or better. Company insurance, disability, unemployment and retirement plans, some of which are unique in the business. It’s paternalism at its best. Probst isn’t any Vashni Lal. In fact he has a quote reputation unquote for personal involvement at all levels of the business.”

“An eye to the personal.”

“Ha ha. He’s currently chairman of Municipal Growth, term to run through next June. That’s important. Beyond that — Zoo Board member ’76 through present. Board member Botanical Gardens, East-West Gateway Coordinating Council. Sustaining membership in Channel 9. That isn’t so important. Splits his ticket, as they say. Baxti did some interesting fieldwork. Went through old newspapers, spoke with the man in the street—”

“I wish I’d seen it.”

“His English is improving. It seems the Globe-Democrat sees Probst as a saint of the American Way, rags to riches, a nobody in 1950, built the Arch in the sixties, along with the structural work on the stadium, and then quite a list of things. That’s also very significant.”

“He spreads himself thin.”

“Don’t we all.”

Singh yawned. “And he’s really that important.”

“Yes.” Jammu squinted in the clove smoke. “Don’t yawn at me. He’s first among equals at Municipal Growth, and they’re the people we’re working on if we want capital moving downtown. He’s nonpartisan and Christ-like in his incorruptibility. He’s a symbol. Have you been noticing how this city likes symbols?”

“You mean the Arch?”

“The Arch, the Veiled Prophet, the whole Spirit of St. Louis mythos. And Probst too, apparently. If only for the votes he’ll bring, we need him.”

“When did you decide all this?”

Jammu shrugged. “I hadn’t given him much thought until I spoke with Baxti last week. He’d just eliminated Probst’s dog, a first step towards putting Probst in the State—”

“The State, yes.”

“—although at this point it’s little more than bald terrorism. For what it’s worth, the operation was very neat.”

“Yes?” Singh removed a speck of cigarette paper from his tongue, looked it over, and flicked it away.

“Probst was out walking the dog. Baxti drove by in a van, and the dog chased him. He’d found a medical supply company that sold him the essence of a bitch in heat. He soaked a rag in the stuff and tied the rag in front of his rear axle.”

“Probst wasn’t suspicious?”

“Apparently not.”

“What’s to stop him from buying another dog?”

“Presumably Baxti would have arranged something for the next one too. You’ll have to rethink the theory here. One reason I’m giving you Probst is he didn’t seem to respond to the accident.”

The phone rang. It was Randy Fitch, the mayor’s budget director, calling because he’d be late for his eight o’clock appointment, due to his having overslept. In a sweet, patient tone, Jammu assured him that she wasn’t inconvenienced. She hung up and said, “I wish you wouldn’t smoke those things in here.”

Singh went to the window, opened it, and tossed the butt into the void. Faint river smells entered the room, and down below on Tucker Boulevard a bus roared into the Spruce Street intersection. Singh was orange in the sunlight. He seemed to be viewing a titanic explosion, coldly. “You know,” he said, “I was almost enjoying the work with Buzzy and Bevy.”

“I’m sure you were.”

“Buzz considers Probst and his wife good friends of his.”

“Oh?”

“The Probsts put up with Bev. I have the impression they’re ‘nice’ people. Loyal.”

“Good. A pretty challenge for you.” Jammu placed the file in Singh’s hands. “But nothing fancy, you understand?”

Singh nodded. “I understand.”

In 1870 St. Louis was America’s Fourth City. It was a booming rail center, the country’s leading inland port, a wholesaler for half a continent. Only New York, Philadelphia and Brooklyn had larger populations. Granted, there were newspapers in Chicago, a close Fifth, that claimed the 1870 census had counted as many as 90,000 nonexistent St. Louisans, and granted, they were right. But all cities are ideas, ultimately. They create themselves, and the rest of the world apprehends them or ignores them as it chooses.