The Twenty-Seventh City. Jonathan Franzen

one another. The first green floated far and uncertain in the par-four distance, like a patch of fog that the foursome was trying to stalk and pin down.

      Clarence was wagging his hips like a pro. He was RC’s wife’s oldest brother. He’d given RC his old set of golf clubs two Christmases ago. Now RC had to join him in a game every Saturday.

      “You go on and hit,” RC said.

      Clarence addressed his ball and drew his driver back over his head with a studied creakiness. Everything by the book, RC thought. Clarence was like that. When he was fully wound up, he uncoiled all at once. His club whistled. He clobbered the ball and then nodded, accepting the shot like a personal compliment.

      RC planted tee and ball, and without a practice swing he took a swipe. He staggered back and looked skyward. “Shit.”

      “Sucker’s a mile high,” Clarence said. “You got great elevation, say that for you.”

      “I got under it. Under it is what I got.”

      The ball landed sixty yards from the tee, so close that they could hear its deadened impact. They slid their drivers into their bags and strode off the tee. It turned out Clarence had caught a bunker. Good with his irons, RC reached the green in three. They had to kick sycamore leaves out of the way before they could putt. Already RC’s feet were soaked. When he putted, his ball resisted with the hiss of a wet paint roller, throwing spirals of water droplets off to either side.

      On the next hole they played through the kids ahead of them and took bogies. Finding a fivesome camped on the third tee, they sat down on a bench. The hole, a par three, required a long drive over a creek and up a steep, bald hill. The fivesome was pounding ball after ball into the hazard. Clarence lit a cigar and observed them with a very eloquent suppression of a smile. He had drooping, kindly eyes, skin about the color of pecan shells, and eyebrows and sideburns dusted with gray. RC admired Clarence—which was a way of saying they were different, a way of excusing the difference. Clarence owned a demolition business and had plenty of contracts. He sang in a Baptist choir, he belonged to the Urban League, he organized block parties. His wife’s brother was Ronald Strut hers, a city alderman who one day would be mayor; the connection didn’t hurt Clarence’s business any. His oldest boy, Stanly, was a star high-school halfback. His wife Kate was the prettiest lady RC knew, prettier than his own wife Annie (Clarence’s kid sister) though not half as sexy. Annie was only twenty-six. In the three years since RC married her, Clarence had been “making an effort” with him. Sometimes, like when he gave RC his golf clubs, his friendliness seemed premeditated, a little too aware that RC had lost his only real brother in Vietnam. But Annie told RC not to flatter himself, because Kate would have vetoed new clubs if Clarence still had his old ones.

      “Hear about Bryant Hooper?” Clarence puffed serenely on his cigar.

      “What about him?”

      “Got shot in the head,” Clarence said. “Thursday morning.”

      “Aw, Jesus.” Hooper was a police detective. Drug squad. “Dead?”

      “No, he’ll make it. Lost a cheek and teeth, ugly ugly wound, but it could’ve been worse. I was by the hospital last night.”

      “How’d it happen?”

      “Oh, very routine, RC. Very routine. Some dealer dude with a weapon. Some ex-dude.”

      “Yeah?”

      “They slaughtered him.” Clarence shut his eyes. “And there was seven others in the building. This a place just north of Columbus Square. An ex-place.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Owner requested a raid, and after Hoop got hit his buddies fired tear gas. Place burned to the ground before anyone quite noticed.” Clarence turned to RC. “You wonder what the point is?”

      RC shrugged.

      “The point is Ronald Struthers owned that building.”

      “He got insurance?”

      “Naturally. Good deal for him. Something for nothing.”

      “Sounds like an accident,” RC said, finishing his beer.

      “Sure. It was an accident. But part of a pattern, brother. Part of a pattern.”

      The group on the tee beckoned to Clarence. He laid the cigar on the bench, picked up his 7-iron, and thanked them. After a few gentle practice swings he lofted a perfect shot up onto the green.

      The image of smooth Alderman Ronald Struthers in a three-piece disturbed RC’s control. He shut his eyes on his downswing and—under it, baby—hit a line drive. But the ball cleared the hazard and bounded up the hill. Clarence sank his putt for a birdie. RC missed his first putt by a mile. He missed his second putt. He missed his third. Clarence stood with the flag pin clutched to his breast, his expression as sad and abstracted as if he were watching another man drown puppies. Members of the fivesome cleared their throats. RC felt lawless. The rising sun was in his eyes, and his beer buzz made his arms feel about eight feet long. He topped his fourth putt. Once he was on the wrong side of par, once deep in bogey country, he started rushing, pressing, choking, and he cared less and less. When Clarence got in trouble he bore down. RC just said bag it.

      His ball was still two feet from the hole when Clarence said, “I’ll give you that one.” RC kicked it off the green.

      No fewer than eight golfers were standing around on the fourth tee. Clarence led RC off behind some overgrown evergreens. “RC, man,” he whispered. “You’re closing your eyes.”

      RC closed his eyes. “I know.”

      “Head down, eye on the ball. That’s standard.”

      RC spat. “I know. I just gotta settle down. You wait.” With a tee, he scraped strings of hardened grass pulp out of the grooves on the face of his driver. Shouldn’t be any grass on a driver.

      “Head down. It’s worth twenty strokes a round.”

      “So what about Struthers?” RC said.

      Clarence relit his cigar and inspected it professionally. Tiny pearls of sweat hung on his sideburns. “Ronald,” he said, “is much changed.”

      “He’ll never change.”

      “He’s changed,” Clarence said. “He belongs to our new chief of police.”

      “Where do you get that from?”

      “From the way he talk and the way he be. He’s like a robot, RC. He’s a hollow man. He’s got money from somewhere. The little office on Cass? Gone. He rented a whole floor in that place by the Adventists. He’s put on nine new employees since the first of October, and he ain’t making no secret about it. And I say to him, Hey there, Rondo, you win somebody’s lottery? And he get all stiff and say to me, It’s just commissions, Clarence, I’n breakin’ no laws.”

      RC nodded.

      “That’s right,” Clarence said. “As if I was accusing him of something. That’s OK, though. I got thick enough skin. But then I say, you know, your standard polite question: Who’s buying what property? All right? And he give me this look.” Clarence, demonstrating the look, squinted meanly. “And he go. Certain parties. Like I’m from the IRS, not from his own extended family. So I go, OK, Rondo, be seeing you, but he go, Wait a minute there, Clarence—and this is not the Ronald Struthers that’s trying to save Homer Phillips Hospital—he go: They be razing buildings something fierce next month. I go: That so? And he go: Yep. And I go: Who’s they? And he go: Folks that don’t like questions. And I go: I don’t like working for that kind. And he go: You’ll learn to love ‘em before this year is out.”

      “Tell him to shove it,” RC said.

      Clarence shut his eyes and licked his lips. “I hesitate, brother. I hesitate. I got four growing kids. And you didn’t ask me about Jammu.”

      “Jammu.” RC had