The Twenty-Seventh City

Luisa hardly heard the words. It was just pathetic bleating to her. She felt evil and she wanted Duane. She was glad she’d lied. She was sorry she’d been caught.

“Imagine how I felt,” her mother said. “Imagine me standing there trying to smile and hold up my end of the conversation while this woman Idon’t even know is telling me—”

She flushed the toilet a second time, for noise, and unlatched the window. Fortunately it didn’t stick. She raised it and eased up the storm window. The toilet bowl gurgled as it emptied. She planted one foot on the tiled sill, squeezed through the window, and jumped into the yews outside. Her mother was still talking to her.

6 (#ulink_5547e5b5-830a-5e33-b85a-b0891a67e8e7)

Singh was all smiles; like a boy inventor, he’d used the word “results” a dozen times in half an hour. Blinking the eternal clove smoke from his eyes, he pressed the Rewind button on the tape deck, puffed, and tapped his ash onto Jammu’s office carpeting. With a lazy toe he smeared the ash to dust. He had just played, for Jammu, the scene of the arrival of Luisa Probst at the apartment of her boyfriend Duane Thompson, and then the recording of a phone call shortly following her arrival: an exchange between Thompson and Barbara Probst. “Tell her I called,” Barbara had said. “She does have our number, I believe. And if you change your mind about tomorrow, just come on over. We’d like to have you.”

Jammu had bitten off so much thumbnail that it seemed only a single layer of cells kept the red flesh from bleeding. Though not intense, the pain was like an itch, inviting aggravation. She pressed the rough end of the nail into the exposed flesh and felt the pressure far away, in her anus.

She’d never heard Barbara Probst’s voice before, or any local voice that sounded so aware of the wiretap and so contemptuous of its presence. The voice was controlled and dispassionate, its tones unmelodious but pure, as if in the woman’s throat there were a low-pass filter that eliminated the overtones, the rasp and tremor, the nasals, flutter, fear. The clarity made Jammu anxious. Not once in five months had she considered that there might be hidden elements of control in St. Louis, that behind Martin Probst there might stand not a twangy Bunny or a vapid Biz but a woman with a voice like her own. How could a voice like Barbara’s restrict itself to speaking only on domestic issues? It was impossible. In the recorded conversation Jammu could hear the workings of an undercover operation dedicated to the preservation of order. The girl wouldn’t come to the phone, but the mother assured the boyfriend, in phrases lulling and impersonal, that everything was fine. It was clear that St. Louis had Thought Police, and that Singh, with bizarre blitheness, had flushed out the voice of a master agent.

“Get any sleep last night?” Singh asked.

“Don’t ever play that voice for me again.”

The tape ran off the take-up reel. “Barbara’s? You should have heard her before she—”

“Never again, do you understand?”

It was Thanksgiving morning. At three o’clock Jammu was due at the mayor’s brownstone for dinner, a tête-à-tête for which she’d planned to spend these hours preparing. Already she could see that she wouldn’t have time even to brush her teeth beforehand, let alone pick out clothes. No doubt she’d end up going in her stretched cardigan and a drab wool skirt.

Singh cleared his throat. “As I was about to say—”

“What’s the Bonfire?”

He sighed. “Not important.”

“Who’s Stacy?”

“Last name Montefusco. A little friend of Luisa’s. She’s been lying for her.”

“Where does Thompson live?”

“University City.”

“How will she get to school if she stays with him?”

“Bus, I guess.”

Jammu nodded. “You guess. The director of Bi-State owes me one. If you think she needs a bus line to the high school, just tell me.”

“Thanks. There’s a good connection. She’s been taking a bus at night to sleep with him. Since the twenty-second of October they’ve had intercourse eleven times. On five of those occasions she was able to spend the night. Once outside during the daytime, the remaining five times in the evening, in his apartment.”

“Thank you for counting, Singh. I respect your thoroughness. But why didn’t she tell Barbara to begin with? If she’d told her, she wouldn’t have had to sneak around, or run away. How did you manage to set it up this way?”

“How did I set it up?”

“Yes.”

“The deceptions started slowly,” Singh said. “There was a conversation—November eight. Evening. Luisa, and Barbara, who tried to draw her out and overdid the ‘cool’ bit. I could understand the girl’s response.”

“Which was?”

“Heavy sigh. As if it were too late to start explaining. So she lied. Only-children sometimes feel oppressed and very often they’re duplicitous. They have no sibling rivals. Luisa doesn’t have to worry about losing favor, so she goes ahead and takes exactly what she wants. She’s also going through a typical adolescent rebellion.”

“So the family is less happy than it looked.” Jammu smiled wanly. “Who is Duane Thompson?”

“You don’t know?”

“You haven’t told me, I’ve been busy, how should I know?”

“But surely you’ve seen his pictures?”

“Don’t treat me like a baby, Singh. I’ve seen his pictures. But who is he? How well do you know him?”

Singh rolled a chair up against Jammu’s desk, sat down, and looked across the papers at her. “Not at all. Never met him. He has no connection with us—‘no taint.’ Luisa knew him from school. It came as a rude shock, because I’d spent an entire week setting her up to meet me—”

“For you to seduce.”

“Correct.”

“Good.” Jammu liked to see her employees planning in accordance with their capacities. Singh was seductive, and she was glad he knew enough to exploit it.

“I lured her to a bar, and she came alone, which was gratifying. Unfortunately I’d stepped into the bathroom when she arrived. When I came out she was talking to Thompson. They stuck together. I had no chance. And forty-eight hours later they—”

“Were having intercourse, yes. Why did you step into the bathroom?”

“It was an error.”

Interesting. Singh didn’t usually make errors like that. He had bladder control. “I ask again,” Jammu said. “Who’s Thompson?”

“A youth. Unrelated to us, apart from the fact that I got him his photo job.”

“When?”

“The same night they met.”

“Why?”

“When a man wins a million dollars, he kisses the first person he sees.”

“So I take it you weren’t opposed to their liaison.”

Singh smiled. “I wasn’t looking forward to the mechanics. Your dictum, Chief. Nothing fancy. An affair with a local boy was clearly preferable. A matter of verisimilitude. If I take credit for the results, it’s only because I did get her to the bar. And she met him there.”

“If you didn’t know him before that night, how did you know he had pictures to sell the Post?”