The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist) (22 page)

Probst felt calm. The danger was past. He could handle abstractions. He raised his glass, but only a single drop reached his tongue, watery sweet.

“It ain’t the blacks that get me,” Norris said. “It ain’t even the Reds so much. It’s these Asians, the industrial Japs and these Injuns here. They got no morals, it’s me me me me me. Me win, me first. You know they don’t even go to movies in Japan?”

“It’s funny you say that.” Probst smiled. “Because that’s probably what the British thought about the Americans fifty years ago. No culture, everything for business. Not playing fair. It feels bad when you’re not on top anymore. We can’t compete with Japanese industry. Or—or communist athletes. So we turn to finer things. Movies. Ethics.”

“So you’re saying sour grapes.”

“Sure.” He didn’t mean this. He was an optimist. He tried to think of something optimistic to say. “Jammu is…Did you bring that bottle?”

“No.”

“Jammu’s tackling problems. She’s doing a fine job, completely apart from the terrorist investigation. Nobody thought it was possible. She’s doing it. Crime’s dropping. We’ll discuss the figures at the next MG meeting. I think you’re jealous of her. I think we’re all a little jealous.”

“I don’t deny that she’s a ruthless cop,” Norris said. “But what you can’t deny is that there weren’t any terrorists before Jammu came to town. I see no accidents.”

“I do. Where does that leave us?”

“I’m saying grant me the possibility. Don’t work against me, don’t cast aspersions. I was sorry Jammu got the nod in July but this ain’t personal. I didn’t know nothing in July. So do me a favor. Take my signal detector and sweep your house and your office and your car. Do it today, before they know you got the technology. Then call an emergency MG meeting. Talk to Hutchinson, Hammaker, Meisner, Wesley, and for God’s sake talk to Ripley. Wake up. Get the facts. We need you.”

“I’m glad you think so, General.”

“Sam, if you want.”

“Sure. Sam.”

Few men were invited to use the General’s first name; it was said to be an honor.

Later, when he and Probst left the health club, everything was changed. Three inches of snow had fallen and more was coming down, whole airborne valleys, white peaks, blue forests and gray fields. It was 10:30. The car Probst had dented must have left just moments earlier. There was a black, snowless oblong on the pavement, an exhaust smudge to the rear, fresh tire tracks, and footprints. Probst stared through the falling snow at the footprints. They were nondescript.

“Have to beg off, old chap. Sorry, but. P’raps in January.” Rolf stuck the old pegs into his trousers and zipped up. He viewed his timepiece with mock dismay. “Blast. How’d it get to be so late?”

“You insisted on another set,” Martin hissed. “That’s how.”

“Carried away, what. Manly competition.” Rolf chuckled, and donned his overcoat.

“Cut it out, Rolf,” Martin said. Still in his shorts, he advanced predatorily. “You weren’t in any hurry half an hour ago.”

“But I was, old chap. I was. I just didn’t let on. ’Twas politeness pure and simple.”

“Don’t give me that.” Martin took another step, and Rolf was obliged to issue a cough, of high denomination, in self-defense. Martin recoiled. “Cover your mouth, why don’t you.”

“Came too quick.”

“One hour, Rolf.”

“Would if I could but I can’t.”

Martin’s hand clutched his arm. He brushed it off, coughing, gave his scarf a jaunty flip, and turned to leave.

“Look, Rolf. I don’t know what kind of lies you’ve been spreading—”

“Ignorance is bliss, old boy. Must run. Business calls. Cheerio!”

And away he went down the warm and paneled hallways of the Club. Only at the door did he remember the Sno. It was still falling from a tarnished afternoon sky. He plunged into it. His steps
were chopping, oblique, as he fought his way up the drive to the garage. All this Sno. He liked Sno even less than he liked Petz.

Lies? What could Martin have had in mind? Surely not the little anecdote about the brat. He’d merely embellished the facts handed him by Audreykins. Scarcely much point in scampering off like this if that was all the trouble was. But probably there was more. Martin seemed frightfully queer today. First he’d rung to break their date. Then at noon he’d rung to insist they play after all. His game was queer, too. Usually he played like a robot—“Heh! Heh! Your! Point!”—but today, the broken finger perhaps ruining his backhand, he’d become a lunger. And then in the dressing room he’d charged at Rolf like a fist-shaped doggie. “I wanna tawk to yew.” Seemed to have got wind of something. Tee hee. Wonder what. Tee hee.

Rolf tobogganed merrily in fourth gear up Warson Road, his shoulders hunched, his nose at the windshield. He wasn’t going home; Martin might track him down there.
Thump!

An object had struck the back window. Sno-ball?

Thump, thump!
Two of them hit the car broadside. They’d come from the school, Ladue High.
Thump!
He was losing control of the car.
Thump!
Gad, he detested this substance. He slid through an intersection. There was no braking. More Sno-balls landed in the brown slush to his left.

But he reached the Marriott without further travail. He had a key to her suite, and he entered softly. She sat in underthings, a collection of rounded angles draped across an armchair, reading a magazine. She looked up. “Who is it?”

“It’s Rolf.” He winked.

While she changed he noted the room’s untidiness, the inside-out laundry and scattered Tarot cards, the Tab cans and ashtrays. An aroma of curry. Badly out of character. Later he would have to discipline.

She came back in a green wool business suit and low-heeled shoes. “So what brings you here, on—?” She frowned a bit.

“On such a yucky day?” he prompted.

“On such a yucky day.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” he said. “Thought I’d stop in. Martin isn’t here?”

“No, he’s at a football game. Let me take your coat.” She
flicked Sno off the collar. He pinched her fanny. “Oh, you
prick!
” she whispered, close to his ear, as she moved to the closet. He grabbed her hand. She dug her thumbnail into his palm and wrenched free. “How dare you?”

Suddenly he coughed, shaking his head to deny validity to the interruption.

“Pneumonia,” she said.

He sighed. “Do we have to start all over again?”

“I’m sorry.” She blinked. “It’s such a yucky day.”

“Isn’t it, though. You must be lonely here.”

She turned and reached up to hang the coat, and with one sharp tug he had her skirt down.

She squealed very convincingly. “Rolf Ripley!” She backed into the empty, swinging hangers, tangled her feet in the skirt, and fell against the back wall of the closet. He knelt. “At last,” he said.

“Oh Rolf. Oh Rolf. Here?”

He made ready. “Here.”

She took his fingers into her mouth and nibbled. She frowned. “But what if Martin—”

“He’s at the game. The game just started.”

She relaxed. A hanger fell, belatedly, and bounced off his shoulder. He bore down with his Eveready. She cupped the glans and began a slow, beckoning stroke with the flat of her index finger. “Oh,” she said. “I’ve wanted you.”

Probst was awake at dawn the next morning and frying himself breakfast by 7:15. Mormons chorused on KSLX. Barbara was still sleeping. He’d tied his laces in square knots, using his teeth.

He made phone calls, appointments, slots in the day ahead of him. He was wearing a black suit with narrow lapels, a red tie, and a white button-down with fine gray stripes. In the bathroom mirror he looked diplomatic, upper-echelon. His hair was definitely going gray, and his face was narrower than usual, more of a prominence, less of a plate. Its heat felt unvanquishable when he walked out the back door into the icy air. The engine caught at once and roared.

Driving this morning was like boating, the dips and sprays,
with every surface equally navigable. The roads were empty. Under snow the city looked nineteenth-century.

Probst was still trying to process the information the General—Sam—had given him yesterday. It took longer when he had to do it by himself, without Barbara’s help. He’d come home from the health club with an almost physical need to divulge and discuss, but the need died when he saw her, the simmer of resentment in her eyes, the dark fire. Even sweeping the house gave him no joy (it didn’t turn up any bugs, either) when she paid no attention. She sat reading and smoking until the den smelled like Canadian bacon.

“Entrez-vous,” Chuck Meisner said, holding open the storm door. Probst entered stomping, scuffing snow into the rug. Even on a Sunday morning the Meisner living room seemed freshly vacuumed, freshly dusted, the cushions freshly plumped. Chuck was wearing shapeless country clothes, corduroy and wool.

“Can I get you something? Coffee? Bloody Mary?”

“Nothing, thanks, Chuck.” His body was primed. He needed nothing.

“Is this—something you want to talk about upstairs?”

“Yes. That would be good.”

Probst and Barbara had seen quite a lot of the Meisners this fall. Chuck was president of the First National Bank and a director at First Union and Centerre. If people had been withholding facts from Probst, for whatever reason, then Chuck was likely one of them. Of course in private Chuck had always been as tight-lipped about professional matters as a funeral-home owner. And Probst did all his banking at Boatmen’s, the Hammaker bank, which, his regard for Chuck notwithstanding, he’d long felt was the best managed in St. Louis. He didn’t believe in socializing with bankers. Pure money, like pure sexuality, was an evil demon in friendship. Other contractors in St. Louis tended to bank incestuously with brothers or brothers-in-law and they often had highly flexible credit lines, which were legal but rather unethical; Probst did not. He enjoyed seeing Chuck because Chuck was a Democrat, and Probst liked oddities, men who ran against the grain a little. A Democratic banker—it was a mild sensation, like fresh papaya.

Chuck planted himself behind the massive antique desk in his study and indicated the correct chair for Probst. Outside the win
dow, a cloud of windborne snowflakes, marvelously tiny, a heavenly host, swirled in the sunlight. The walls creaked in the wind. Probst hoped Chuck assumed he’d come for personal advice, an investment question, a tax shelter, a sewage bond. He didn’t like to mislead a friend, but the confrontation with Rolf yesterday had made him leery of stating his business prematurely. Now he was ready to come straight to the point. He began by taking a good look at his friend, and he got no further than this.

Chuck looked terrible.

He knew it, too. He met Probst’s eyes expectantly, with the guilt, the sad candor, of a man detected engaging in a vice. His eyelids were puffed and folded, the whites a solid pink. There was a purple crack in his upper lip. His hair was lifeless.

“I don’t look so great, do I?”

“Have you been sick?”

“I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in over two months.”

Probst recognized the controlled fury in Chuck’s voice.
Over two months
. The phrase was cruel self-propaganda, a complaint spoken silently again and again, an inner goad (You know, that den smells like Canadian bacon) until the complaint became so meaningful, so powerful, that voicing it could only lessen it, and having it was defeat.

“I don’t remember you seeming that tired,” Probst said.

“Sometimes I’m OK.” Chuck closed his eyes. “You think you’re getting by. And then one bad night.” He shook his head.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes. I have pills. And amino acids. Last week I saw a hypnotist. Bea has me started with an analyst. And the result is, I slept about twenty minutes last night. On Tuesday I got six hours. The next night, zero.” It seemed to tax Chuck to speak at any length. It took an ugly effort.

“Do they know what the problem is?” Probst said.

“I tried cutting out booze, coffee. I didn’t eat meat for a while. I went all-protein for a while. I switched beds, which actually helped, but only for one night. I did all right at the ABA conference in San Francisco, but that was only three days, I came back, and wham. I tried meditation. Yoga, jogging, no jogging, hot baths. Warm milk, bedtime snacks, lots of Valium. I’m totally uncon
scious, I’m in a stupor, but the sleep part of me, Martin—” He raised his hands and, with his fingers, caged what he was describing. “The sleep part of me is wide awake.”