Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Below on Tucker, Martin Probst was unlocking his car, wrenching open the door, looking as angry as he’d sounded. Should be more careful with those doors, Singh thought. “He saw Duane Thompson’s father, a short meaningless conversation, then Wismer, then Hutchinson. When I could, I took the liberty of eavesdropping with a directional mike. The sound left much to be desired, but I got the gist. You might tell Gopal, incidentally, that Bunny Hutchinson has been detected in her adultery.”

“He knows,” Jammu said. “He arranged the detection. Would you—”

“Of course. Busy man. How unsophisticated of me. But would I—? Yes. I will. It can now be safely said that Probst is no longer in a state of suspended animation.”

“In the State, you mean. You said that was the State, you said he was in it three weeks ago. Now he isn’t.”

“On the contrary. He is. A textbook dialectic, really. Absolute freedom, absolute terror, the French Revolution à la Hegel. It’s the proof, not the refutation.”

“Would you get to the point? I have two minutes at most.”

“And you’ll be busy all night.”

“This is a major object lesson.”

“Fine,” said Singh. “I believe that nothing has changed. We expected Probst to awaken at some point, and he has, by way of Norris. But to be awake is hardly the same as to be aware. Have you read my abstract of his meeting with Norris yesterday?”

“No.”

“I urge you to. It’s one of my best. Norris — and now Probst — knows more about the stadium incident than I ever did. But even Norris, who thinks about it constantly, cannot see the point of the warning the Warriors gave.”

“I should hope not.”

“He can’t, and won’t, though it was implicit in the entire conversation. Likewise Hutchinson. He seems to know quite a bit about Asha—”

“I helped him with his research,” Jammu said. “I wanted him to know exactly when she and Hammaker met.”

“He does. And I don’t guess he’ll figure out how—”

“Of course he won’t. Nobody knows but Asha.”

“Although if you have a moment—”

“I don’t,” Jammu said. “But what?”

“Norris’s private eye?”

“The man’s name is Pokorny. Bhise stung him on a whiskey violation, put him in the holding pen for sex criminals. Three days, and when the consul got him out, Birjinder set up an auto accident.”

“Fatal?”

“No, but he took a taxi from the hospital to the airport.”

“Pokorny. What is that — Hungarian?”

“The point, Singh. I have five seconds.”

“Four, three, two, one. I’m waiting. Well. Yes, the point. No one, not even I, can judge what effect these revelations will have on Probst. But he has the facts. Hutchinson told him about Harvey Ardmore and Westhaven. When he cools down, he may reconsider much of what he’s said today.”

“Doubt it.”

“No harm in waiting until Thursday. Municipal Growth.”

“No harm, but it’s four days. What if the girl comes home?”

“Won’t happen. In any case, I need the time.”

“For.”

“Getting Barbara.”

“Set it in motion tomorrow, Singh. You can always back out.”

“Is what I’d planned to do. But I have your leave?”

“To get Barbara?”

Singh nodded.

“Yes, if you keep it simple. Yes, if you think it will help.”

“I will, it will.”

The phone rang. Singh leaned and looked down on Tucker. Probst’s car was gone. It left an empty slot at the curb, the vivid absence that remains when an object has vanished between glances, blinked away: living history, the departure that precedes the connection.

The phone rang a second time. Singh turned. Jammu was already gone, the door of her outer office falling shut. Her chair was empty.

A white sedan appeared in Probst’s mirror when he crossed the railyards on 18th Street. It followed him lazily, hugging the snowpiles in the gutters, low to the ground. Was it the same car he’d been seeing all day? Whose hoodlums would these be? Wesley’s? Norris’s? He eased up on the gas, hoping the green light ahead would turn yellow. He wanted the Chevy to stop right behind him. Visibility was good now. But the light didn’t change. He floated on through the intersection, hardly glancing at the empty street in front of him. The Chevy was weaving from one side of its lane to the other. A week ago, two days ago, Probst would not have believed it was actually tailing him, but his credulity had stretched. They were following him, somebody interested in his movements. They thought they could do whatever they pleased. They’d spread while he slumbered, people plotting, not working, sneaking to avoid the real work, the real tests of merit, seeking to circle in together to protect their stupidity and nourish their stinking lazy greed…

At Chouteau Avenue a light changed for him. He stopped dead, well in advance of the stop line, surprising the Chevy, which surged and filled the mirror. Its tires screeched. He popped open the door and leaped out, and immediately he knew he’d made a mistake.

There were five youths in the car, two up front, three in back. All four doors opened. The youths had high cheeks that seemed to force their eyes half closed, red complexions and yellow crewcuts, huge arms. They held Hammaker cans.

“Hey, motherfucker,” the driver said, slamming his door and advancing on Probst.

Probst backed away a step. The fifth youth, a skinny guy with thick glasses, climbed from the Chevy. Probst looked from face to face. No one said a word. No cars passed. Sunday late in a non-neighborhood, upwind from I-44: it was pretty desolate.

“Dick-in-mouth,” the driver said. The other four grouped at his shoulders. They wore jean jackets, army jackets. Probst saw a tattooed Stars and Stripes. The driver hawked and spat on the Lincoln. No one knew who Probst was. Never had, never could.

The driver hit him in the ear.

He staggered into the Lincoln. “Watch that,” he said huskily.

“Watch that!” Falsetto.

“Dickface.”

“Fairy.”

“Watch that!”

The skinny guy began to urinate on the trunk. The others whooped. The driver grabbed Probst and spun him around, and Probst, lucid at last, said:

“Here come the cops.”

While everyone turned, he jerked free and jumped back in the Lincoln, locking the door. The youths began to pound on the roof and windows. Gobs of spit hit the windshield, and Probst accelerated through a red light. There was a thud on the roof and a Hammaker can skittered off to his left. Behind him the last of the four doors closed. The Chevy’s windows sprouted arms, four arms, all of them giving Probst the finger.

Soon he was in the innermost lane of I-44, and the Chevy was tailgating. He could imagine them plowing right into him. His wipers smeared the spit into opaque arcs. He was doing 85. At this rate he’d be home in ten minutes. But so would they. His ear rang. He couldn’t lead them home. They’d stone his house. Where were the police? For once he wished they were out prowling with their radar guns. He thought of his office, his citadel, and the precinct house across the street.

Quickly he exited. He ran a yellow but didn’t shake the Chevy. Right on his tail, it barreled back up the opposite entrance ramp onto the expressway. Four hands continued to give him the finger. This was terrible. Where were the police?

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—