Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist

He’s missed the dime again. This time it bounces and jets off to the left of the desk. He crouches again, asks, “Who do you think was behind your accident last week? United. Chancre might have done the dirty work, but only at United’s direction. Those are Arbo elevators in the building. Then there was that incident at the Follies, when Chancre fell on his ass. Had to be Arbo dealing out payback for Fanny Briggs.”

“It wasn’t them.”

“Then who was it? The ghost of Elisha Graves Otis?”

He doesn’t know everything. “You said Arbo broke your fingers,” Lila Mae says. “Why would they try to stop your article from coming out? If they’re backing the Intuitionists — and Fulton’s box is most assuredly an Intuitionist creation — then why wouldn’t they want the truth to come out? It doesn’t make sense. The Guild hears about it, they vote for Lever, and Arbo has their man.”

“They’ve won the hearts and minds?”

“They’ve won the hearts and minds, yes.”

Still looking on the floor. “You want to give me a hand here?”

She ignores him.

“Let me ask this, Miss Watson: who has the blueprint?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they don’t have it, they don’t control it. Suppose it’s not Intuitionism-based. Suppose, for the sake of argument, it’s Empirical. Or it’s Intuitionist but Chancre finds it first with his Shush and United muscle and keeps it under wraps. Destroys it. Where does that leave Arbo?

“I’ll tell you where,” he says, “with their peckers swinging in the wind. Pardon my French. My article announces to the community that the Intuitionist black box is coming and that it’ll be found soon. Build up the hopes of the inspector electorate, that bunch of bitter bastards, and then it doesn’t show up. They’ll show their displeasure on Tuesday, in the polling booths. Here it is,” he says, standing again. To the dime, as he returns to the light: “Trying to hide from me, little buddy?”

“They have to do what they can to keep your story under wraps until they have it.”

“Otherwise they’re screwed. Chancre can spin it any way he wants. Even from his hospital bed. The rumor escaped anyway. ‘Another Intuitionist hoax.’ My sources tell me he’s already got a press conference scheduled for Monday. ‘If my opponents have the black box, let them show it to us.’ Put up or shut up.”

“Where is it?”

“Exactly.”

“Your hand.”

“They nabbed me right outside the office,” Ben Urich says, wincing for a moment in recollection. “I put up a fight, I did my darndest but the next thing I knew they had me in the back of a car. They started to break my fingers one by one. It was two guys, two blockheads. Trying to come off like mob guys, but I knew they weren’t mob. Could tell by the shirts. They were corporate boys, wore the downtown uniform right down to their cotton oxford shirts. Mob guys, Shush’s boys, they got their own style. Buy the same expensive suits their bosses wear, with the same tacky lapels, and their shirts are cheap blended fabrics. Get them all from the same store — Finelli’s on Mulberry.”

“They broke your fingers.”

The pink fingertips at the end of the cast wiggle. “Last Saturday. They got me right outside this office and got tough, telling me to lay off the story or else. Messed up my hand — my writing hand, mind you — and dropped me off at my apartment like I was their prom date. To send me a message. But then I remembered the shirts and started doing some legwork.”

“You found out they were Arbo.” Of course, of course.

“I got out some old surveillance photos I took a few years back. When they started selling their new undercarriage brakes to overseas firms, bumpkins who didn’t know that they hadn’t been approved in the States yet.” He places the dime on the desk and rummages through another drawer. “The pictures are here somewhere,” he says. “Here they are.” He flips through a stack of glossies. “I found the men pretty quickly. That’s them leaving the office with the rest of Arbo’s muscle. Right there.”

She is afraid to look. It is a grainy black and white photograph capturing one minuscule segment of city. Five solid men stand around a dark sedan. She angles the photo beneath the lamp, sees her hands are shaking and commands them still. “Jim and John,” she says.

“You know them?”

“They were in my apartment last Friday. Searching it.”

“Makes sense, considering what’s in the Fulton pages our anonymous mailer sent to them.” He juggles the dime in his good hand, gathering his courage for another go at his favorite pastime. “Jim Corrigan and John Murphy. On the Arbo personnel files, they’re listed as ‘consultants,’ but the police have jackets on them. Breaking and entering, aggravated assault, industrial espionage, what have you. United has Shush’s boys and Arbo has these guys. Jim’s even got a murder charge under his belt, but Arbo’s lawyers got him off. You remember the LaBianco case a few years back?”

“Who’s this?” She taps the photo. Her hands do not shake.

“That’s Raymond Coombs. Another ‘consultant.’ Mostly does strongarm work for them because he’s a big colored guy and intimidating. Wait a minute — I think I have a better shot of him.” He shuffles through the photos. It is a head shot. The man’s eyes look off to the left, soft and lost. “You know him?” Ben Urich asks.

“He told me his name was Natchez.”

“Wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, from what I’ve read. One tough customer. Guess he’d have to be — a colored man working in a white outfit. Like you, I guess.” The dime is in his hand, inviting, taunting. “But I don’t know why I have to tell you all this. With what you appear to know, I would think this old news.”

She can’t think. Asks Natchez’s photograph a question.

“Because your name is in his notebooks. You’re the link.”

“I don’t …”

“Look back in the drawer. From my photos of the Fulton pages sent to Arbo.”

Underneath the pinup calendar are more photographs. She holds them under the lamp. Her head hurts.

Ben Urich decides to go for it: tosses the dime into the air. “Wasn’t easy getting these, let me tell you. It’s on that page, in the margin,” he says. His hand darts. It snatches the dime.

She sees her name.

“Heads,” Ben Urich says.

Lila Mae Watson is the one .

“Now maybe you can tell me what that means,” Ben Urich says.

“Hey, can we get in on this?” John Murphy asks. “Or do we need, like, an engraved invitation?” Jim and John stand behind them, just a dime’s throw away. Jim leers at them, John has his hands on his hips as if mildly vexed. He says, “Because we’ve come a long way and it would be downright rude for you to turn us away.”

She runs. Jim lunges for Ben Urich, who has been jerked out of his suave recline. As he falls back on the desk, he aims one foot at the back of his chair and launches it, skidding on its wheels, at the legs of John, who stumbles in his pursuit of Lila Mae and smashes his head into the corner of a desk. Which leaves Ben Urich pinioned on his desk with Jim’s fingers on his neck. Ben Urich takes his lumps. Ben Urich always takes his lumps.

The elevator’s door opens, conjured from tranquil quiescence, the vehicular ether, by Lila Mae. She slams her palm against the Lobby button (black mottled with gray, sure and firm plastic, Arbo Floor Button, Motley Black, City Series #1102), sees John emerge, rubbing his head, from around the partition, she reaches for the Door Close button (initiating a signal to the selector in the machine room a hundred feet above through the amiable copper of the traveling cable inside the Arbo Router, City Series #1102) and leans against the dorsal wall of the Arbo Executive. John does not pick up the pace. He sees the black rubber lip of the elevator door start its progress across the entrance of the cab. He nods at Lila Mae and pivots towards the fire doors.