The Twenty-Seventh City. Jonathan Franzen

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СКАЧАТЬ aren’t hurting people yet. We want to scare them. In this case, scare Hutchinson. But we’ll go as far as we need to.”

      “I must confess I don’t see the point.”

      Last night, he’d failed to see the point of her strategy with North Side real estate. It was simple, she’d told him. Since even Maman didn’t have enough cash to start a legitimate panic, Asha’s men were buying up little lots throughout the area, from the river to the western limits, creating the impression of many parties acting on inside information. And they magnified the impression by buying only property owned by local banks. This left as much land as possible in the hands of local black businessmen—politically, this was vital—while leading the banks to believe the sum of these investments was much greater than the fourteen million dollars it actually was. Because who would suspect that someone would make a point of buying exclusively from banks?

      Bhandari’s fingertips floated over the stains on his shirt pocket. The real problem was his innate inability to comprehend ideas voiced by a woman; he retreated into a mental closet which seemed to grow the more asphyxiating the longer Jammu spoke. She decided to torment him further. “Formalisms,” she said. “You know. Real-estate speculation is a formalism, Karam. Essentially ahistorical. Once it gets going—once we set it in motion—it works by itself and drags politics and economics along after it. Terror works the same way. We want Hutchinson in the State. We want to strip his world of two of its dimensions, develop a situation that overcomes all the repressions that make him think in what the world calls a normal way. Do you hear me, Karam? Do you hear the words I am speaking to you?”

      Bhandari refilled her glass. “Drink, drink,” he said. His own glass he brought to his lips awkwardly, as though pouring, not sipping. Seemingly as an afterthought, he raised the glass. “To your endeavor.”

      Jammu was going to have to speak with Maman. She was sure that if Maman had known how Bhandari would behave she would have sent a more competent spy. Or would have come herself. Jammu raised the cuff of her cardigan. Two o’clock. The day was evaporating. She took a deep breath, and as she let it out, Bhandari, from behind her, inserted his hands beneath her arms and placed them on her breasts. She jumped away.

      Bhandari straightened his back, an attorney again, a trusted family advisor. “I assume,” he said, “that the proper security measures have been taken vis-à-vis our Negro liaisons.”

      Jammu turned back to the river with a smile. “Yes,” she said. “Boyd and Toussaint weren’t any trouble. They had plenty to hide already. But Struthers, as I said, was expensive. He was the obvious choice—a broker and a politician too, a popular alderman, even something of a crusader. But we managed to dig up a dirty secret, a mistress he’s been keeping for nearly a decade. It was clear that he’d racked up a number of conflict-of-interest violations on behalf of the woman’s family, which is quite well off. So I had some leverage when I approached him, enough to protect me if he wasn’t interested. Which he wasn’t, until we came to the money part. Maman cleared the bribes personally, by the way. We don’t skimp when my own neck’s on the line.”

      Jammu felt Bhandari’s breath on her neck. His face was sifting through her hair, seeking skin. She twisted around in his arms and let him kiss her throat. Over his slicked-back hair she saw the hotel room’s “luxurious” bedspread, its “contemporary” art print, the “distinctive” roughcast ceiling. He unbuttoned the top of her blouse, snorting intermittently. Probably the best metaphor for the State was sexual obsession. An absorbing parallel world, a clan-destine organizing principle. Men moved mountains for the sake of a few muscle contractions in the dark.

      The phone rang.

      Bhandari made no sudden motion. He was unaware that it had rung. Jammu arrested the fingers working at her bra and disengaged herself. She moved to answer the phone, but stopped, reconsidering. “You’d better take it,” she said.

      Bhandari stretched his neck muscles carefully and seated himself on the bed. “Hello?” He listened. “Why yes!”

      From his condescending tone, Jammu guessed it was Princess Asha. Another postponement? She buttoned her blouse and fixed her hair. They’d be missing her at the office.

      “Was it an open coffin?” Bhandari tittered. He’d been tittering for twenty-four hours. Late last night their talk had turned to JK Exports, Maman’s wool business and her primary cash conduit between Bombay and Zurich. Bhandari had described a recent incident. “Some Sikhs got in one of your mother’s warehouses last week.” He’d made Sikhs sound like little moths.

      He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said to Jammu: “Asha can’t come until this evening. Shall we make a date?”

      “I’m busy tonight. Tell her after midnight. Say one o’clock.”

      KSLX general manager Jim Hutchinson rode home that night with his wife Bunny, who, as chance would have it, was downtown when the bomb went off. She was a comforting presence. When she showed up at his office, an hour after the blast, she was not the bundle of nerves another woman might have been. She looked glum, almost peeved. She wrinkled her nose. She paced. She didn’t kiss him. “Good thing you weren’t in the car,” she said.

      “Damn good thing, Bunny.”

      Having satisfied herself that he was unharmed, she left again to shop, returning only at 5:30 to take him home. He let her drive. As soon as they were tucked into traffic on Highway 40 she said, “Do they know who did it?” She turned on the wipers. Rain was falling from the prematurely dark sky.

      “No,” he said.

      “Good thing we’ve got a police department we can trust.”

      “Are you talking about Jammu?”

      Bunny shrugged.

      “Jammu’s all right,” he said.

      “Is that so?” A band of red lights, a lava flow, flashed on in front of them. Bunny braked.

      “You may object to her nationality,” Hutchinson said, remembering as he spoke that Jammu was an American, “but she’s turned the entire Bomb and Arson Squad loose on the case.”

      “Isn’t that what anybody would do?”

      “That’s the point, my lovely wife.”

      “What have they found?”

      “There’s not much to go on. Somebody tipped off the police at six this morning, but it wasn’t much of a tip.”

      “Mm?”

      “Are you even listening to me?”

      “Somebody tipped off the police at six this morning but—”

      “They didn’t know what to make of it. Somebody called up and said: When it happens, that’s us. The fellow at the switchboard had the presence of mind not to hang up. He asked who was calling, and the caller said, Ow! The fellow asked again. The caller said, Ow! And that was the tip.”

      “Some tip.”

      “And it’s not as if I have enemies. I told the detectives it almost had to be a random thing, except—”

      “Except there are a lot of cars parked downtown.”

      “So СКАЧАТЬ