Free Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon

portly gent in a
slouch hat and a yellow duster, why?”
    “Amazing.”
    “Not really. Just, nobody ever asks.”
    “You had breakfast?”
    In the cafeteria next door, the early
crowd had been and gone. Everybody here knew Lew, usually, knew his face, but
this morning, being transfigured and all, it was like he passed unidentified.
    His companion introduced himself as
Nate Privett, personnel director at White City Investigations, a detective
agency.
    In the near and far distance, explosions,
not always to be identified in the next day’s newspapers, now and then sent
leisurely rips through the fabric of the day, to which Nate Privett pretended
to be listening. “Ironworkers’ Union,” he nodded. “After enough of ’em, a man
begins to develop an ear.” He poured syrup on a towering stack of pancakes out
of which butter melted and ran. “See, it’s not safecrackers, embezzlers,
murderers, spouses on the run, none of the dimenovel stuff, put all that out of
your head. Here in Chi, this year of our Lord, it’s all about the labor unions,
or as we like to call them, anarchistic scum,” said Nate Privett.
    “No experience with any of that.”
    “You appear qualified, I should say.”
Nate’s mouth went sly for a second. “Can’t believe you haven’t been approached
about Pinkerton work, pay over there’s almost too good for a man not to
sign up.”
    “Don’t know. Too much of the modern
economics for me, for there’s surely more to life than just wages.”
    “Oh? What?”
    “Well, give me a few minutes with
that one.”
    “You think working for the Eye’s a
life of moral squalor, you ought to have a look at our shop.”
    Lew nodded and took him up on it.
Next thing he knew, he was on the payroll, noticing how every time he entered a
room somebody was sure to remark, ostensibly to somebody else, “Gravy, a man
could get killed out there!” By the time he got that pleasantry all
decoded, Lew found he was more than able to shrug it off. His office and field
skills weren’t the worst in the shop, but he knew that what distinguished him
was a keen sympathy for the invisible.
    At White City Investigations,
invisibility was a sacred condition, whole darn floors of office buildings
being given over to its art and science—resources for disguise that
outdid any theatrical dressing room west of the Hudson, rows of commodes and
mirrors extending into the distant shadows, acres of costumes, forests of
hatracks bearing an entire Museum of Hat History, countless cabinets stuffed
full of wigs, false beards, putty, powder, kohl and rouge, dyes for skin and hair,
adjustable gaslight at each mirror that could be taken from a lawn party at a
millionaire’s cottage in Newport to a badlands saloon at midnight with just a
tweak to a valve or two. Lew enjoyed wandering around, trying on different
rigs, like every day was Hallowe’en, but he understood after a while that he
didn’t have to. He had learned to step to the side of the day. Wherever it was
he stepped to had its own vast, incomprehensible history, its perils and
ecstasies, its potential for unannounced romance and early funerals, but when
he was there, it was apparently not as easy for anyone in “Chicago” to be that
certain of his whereabouts. Not exactly invisibility. Excursion.

    ate showed up at Lew’s desk one day with a thick folder that
had some kind of royal crest on it, featuring a twoheaded eagle.   “Not me,” Lew edging away.
    “Austrian Archduke is in town, we
need somebody to keep an eye on him.”
    “Fellows like that don’t have
bodyguards of their own?”
    “Sure do, they call em ‘Trabants’
over there, but have a lawyer explain civil liability to you, Lew, I’m just an
old gumshoe guy, all’s I know is there’s a couple a thousand hunkies down to
the Yards come over here with hate in their hearts for this bird and his
family, maybe with good reason, too. If it was just the wholesome educational
exhibits on the Fairgrounds