Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“Glad to meet you,” Probst said.

Pokorny looked at Norris.

“Looks like a tasty breakfast you have there,” Norris said. “Herb and myself were just talking about a little hole here in your yard, Herb, you show him the little hole?”

Pokorny took a step and pointed with a duck-booted toe at a patch of snowless, freshly turned earth between two azalea bushes.

“You want to show him the footprint?”

Pokorny pointed out a footprint in the snow to the left of the azaleas.

“That your foot, Martin?”

Several smart cracks occurred to him, but he said, simply, “No.”

“It ain’t your gardener’s either.”

Probst looked into the slowly churning sky. Four crows launched themselves from a hickory tree, their wingbeats wrenching out caws.

“You been using that detector like I told you, Martin?”

“I can’t say I have,” Probst said. “The novelty wore off after the first few months.”

Pokorny scowled at this mild joke.

“When’s the last time you swept your house?” Norris said.

“Maybe three weeks ago,” he lied.

“That’s very interesting. Because there’s been a receiver-transmitter buried in this here hole until last night about two-thirty a.m.”

“We heard the thignalth.”

“Oh really,” Probst said.

“Yep. Digitized and coded, or we’d have been able to tell you what exactly they picked up. Not that we can’t guess.”

“So there was a transmitter in what you’re calling this hole. It was transmitting coded messages. Now it’s gone.”

“We only tuned in yesterday. They had one hell of a little processor buried there.” Norris nodded at the loose dirt. “Received signals from your house, digitized ’em, compressed ’em by a factor of a hundred or so, and sent ’em off in a burst every two hundred seconds at a variety of very high frequencies — that is, when it was active. Not a peep until you came home, I’d guess voice-actuated. So give Herb some credit. That ain’t a easy thing to discover.”

“Very impressive,” Probst told Pokorny. “But then someone came in the night, dug it up, left one single footprint, and ran away.”

“Bingo.”

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t believe any of this.”

“Show him the list, Herb.”

Pokorny knelt in the snow and opened a cracked leather satchel. He handed Norris a folder from which Norris took a pair of dot matrix printouts, stapled together. He gave them to Probst.

Ahmadi, Daud Ibrahim

* Asarpota, Mulchand

Atterjee, T. Ras

* Baxti, V. L.

Benni, Raju

* Bhandari, Karam Parmanand

“Yes?” Probst said.

“Suspects.”

He yawned. “I see. What kind of suspects?”

“All persons of Indian origin and Type Q profile known to have been in St. Louis between July 1 and — how up-to-date are we, Herb?”

“Tuethday.”

“Tuesday the, uh, twenty-seventh of February.”

“What do the stars mean?”

“They’re the ones that either we or reliable witnesses have seen meeting with Jammu. Now, have you—”

“You’ll pardon me if this makes me a little ill, Sam.”

The General’s eyelids twitched. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve raised no objections to your looking into something illegal like the stadium bombs, but this is something else entirely. Some kind of McCarthyesque stunt, if you ask me. This is guilt by association, by place of birth.”

“You can spare us the editorial. I want you to read through this and tell me if you heard of or know of any of the persons on it. Do me that favor?”

Nand, Lakshmi

Nandaksachandra (Hammaker), Parvati Asha Umeshwari

Nanjee, Dr. B. K.

Nissing, John

Noor, Fatma

Patel, S. Mohan

Pavri, Vijay

Probst gave the printout back to Norris. “Apart from Mrs. Hammaker, I can’t help you.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Norris exchanged a glance with Pokorny. “Well now, that’s interesting. Because from what I understand this one here — John Nissing — took some pitchers of your house.”

“Oh did he.” Probst could see that Norris knew Barbara had left him. But how much more did he know? Had Pokorny seen her with Nissing? Snooped in New York? Probst saw no reason to discuss his private life here in the back yard with Pokorny making faces at him. “I never met the photographers,” he said truthfully. “Barbara dealt with, uh, them.”

“And how is Barbie?”

Norris knew. The whole world knew. Probst’s eyes wandered across the twig-strewn snow, up the walls of the garage to Mohnwirbel’s windows. “Fine. She’s in New York.”

“Oh yes?”

“With relatives.”

A wind whispered in the azaleas. Probst’s arches were cramping in his tennis shoes, in the snow.

“Okey-doke,” Norris said. Pokorny nodded, snapped his satchel shut and walked to the driveway. “I suppose I’m a little sorry about this, Martin.”

“Sam—” Probst’s voice cracked; he realized he was angry. “Sam, I’d say that if you want to mess around with this kind of thing you’re going to get what you deserve.”

“But don’t moralize with me.”

“Private investigators deal in dirt. You give them enough time and money—”

“Damn it, Martin, don’t moralize with me.”

“I’ve been as good a listener as you’ve got. When you want help with a legitimate project, you know where to come. But an episode like this is what I’d call an abuse of—”

“You do me a disservice. I apologize for disturbing you, but you do me a disservice. I already told you I could care less what goes on in your family. I told you that and—”

“I want that little weasel off my property.”

“I’ll let that pass. I’ll let that pass. Now listen. I’ve apologized for any embarrassment. Will you accept my apology.”

Norris’s fingers dug almost desperately into Probst’s elbow. He couldn’t help feeling flattered. “All right.”

“Thank you. Now just two things before you eat your breakfast and spend your day in Clayton, just two things. Will you listen?”

Probst sighed.

“One. You got to believe there was a device buried in your yard here. This ain’t conjecture, I can play you our tape if you like. Now I don’t guess you’d allow Herb — he’d do a neat job, of course — and it’d be very beneficial if he could do a search in your house right now—”

“Not a chance.”

“But you do believe me about the device.”

“I suppose. I believe there’s a South Pole. I haven’t seen it and I don’t care, but I believe it’s there.”

“You oughta work on your attitude — but but but but. The second thing is, just a simple yes or no. Was Mrs. Hammaker honest to God the only element on the list you’ve heard of?”

“Quite frankly,” Probst said, wondering what he’d say. He found he didn’t care. “Yes, she was.”

“All right. Sorry to bother you.” Norris walked to the driveway and kicked his feet clean of snow pellets. He turned. “You understand I believe what you say. You understand that.” Then he was gone.

Probst went inside, finished his cold breakfast, and paced the kitchen trying to walk away his shaking, as he had over the years in the wake of various Sunday morning quarrels. He placed his cup and saucer on the Rubbermaid mat in the sink. A few days ago he’d turned over the mat to discover yellow patches of slime, clouded like the chicken fat in cooling soup.

He went upstairs to his study, heaved a pyramid of second-class mail off his chair, and began to work through the three-inch stack of résumés his personnel director Dale Winer had given him. There were applicants for four new positions, one managerial, three clerical. His practiced eye homed in on misspellings, patterns of instability, overqualification, North Side high-school diplomas (affirmative-action-wise, they could really use two black women), wanton preening, irrelevant experience. Not that most of these applicants couldn’t have handled the jobs. But you had to pick and choose.