The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist) (40 page)

“God damn this country,” Probst said.

The resonance traveled through his skull to his ears. He heard himself from the inside. He heard the country answer, the muffled booms, the thousand reports. Get with the times, Martin Probst. You think she never looked at another man? I’m always rationalizing attractions. Because there’s plenty of pubic parking, Mr. Boabst. Plenty indeed. Women these days, they need that extra—I don’t know. Overtures of a, em, physical character. Are we quits? That region is so healthy, Martin. My game, old chap. This isn’t good and evil, Daddy.

He could see by the clock that it was only 12:30. He was wide awake again. He was lying on his back. His right arm was bent over his ribs, and the curve of his fingers fit the curve of his breast, covering his heart. His left hand lay flat between his legs, resting on his penis and thigh. Had he always lain with his hands in these positions? Or only now that he was alone? A peaceful feeling settled over him. Through his fingertips he felt the hair over his heart and his heart’s amazing labor. He felt the ribs. Hands sent messages via nerves to the brain. He felt the crinkly hair between his legs, and the pliant genital flesh. He was dropping off, into a state woolly and primitive, because now he knew what his hands covered while he slept and the world did not and he was vulnerable.

If he was awake when the missiles fell, there was a chance he could run. He could find shelter, protect his head from falling things. But when he was asleep, his head couldn’t know its importance. Asleep, he protected something else. Asleep, he was an animal. This knowledge warmed him for several waking days, while he was working to defeat the city-county referendum.

“My dear, dear Colonel,” Rolf Ripley said. “You’ve surely heard the story of the chicken and the egg.”

“Chicken and the egg.”

“Well, which came
first
.”

“Yes.”

“Well? Do you get my drift?”

“Don’t waste my time,” Jammu said, her eyes on her wall clock. The sounds of a large and impatient crowd washed against the closed door of her office. “You wouldn’t be moving to the city without everything I’ve done for it. I wouldn’t be making a case for the merger if you and Murphy weren’t moving. That’s understood. But the fact is, the blacks were here before either of us. I think it’s rather childish to try to wish that fact away. In any case, I don’t see what you think
I
can do to help you.”

Ripley raised an interruptive hand and looked at the ceiling with a kind of fondness, as if his favorite song were running through his head. His big hips filled the crook of the leather chair. “I’ve made a perplexing discovery, Colonel.”

Jammu’s intercom buzzed. “Hold on,” she told it.

“It had come to the attention of my purchasing department that certain key pieces of city real estate were in the hands of colored speculators. This seemed right and proper to me until I discovered
that they’d acquired most of these tracts very recently. I was quite taken aback to discover who from. It seems that Mrs. Hammaker has invested between twenty and thirty million dollars in real estate since October.”

“Yes?”

“Well my dear, dear Colonel. I had no inkling she was that wealthy.”

“She is from a royal family, Mr. Ripley.”

“Thirty million dollars, and if you’ll pardon me, she isn’t an only child, and if you’ll pardon me, no one puts all their eggs in one basket, and if you’ll pardon me, I don’t believe her estate is anywhere near as large as it would have to be for thirty million to be only a fraction of it.”

“Naturally I myself have no clear idea,” Jammu said.

“Mm. Naturally.”

“Although I’d venture to guess the capital is largely the Hammaker family’s.”

“The facts would seem to show otherwise. But she’s covered her tracks very well. I daresay we’ll never know for certain.”

“Which makes sense, since it’s none of our business.”

“It’s entirely our business,” Ripley said. “Now this will doubtless astound you—nearly everything I say astounds you—but I and the Ripley Group and Urban Hope are being blackmailed with those very tracts of land. There’s scarcely a block in the entire zone where Cleon Toussaint or Carver-Boyd or Struthers Realty hasn’t somehow acquired a strategically central lot or two.”

“I’d think Pete Wesley could persuade the city to condemn those lots for you whenever necessary.”

“The mayor is more than willing to do so. But of course you aren’t aware that any project where the city condemns becomes a city project with absurd racial quotas for every construction gang from beginning to end.”

“I wouldn’t think the racial composition of the gangs would concern you as long as the work gets done at a fair price.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t think it mattered to a group of businessmen if all hiring and letting of contracts on their own projects were no longer in their hands. You wouldn’t think that.”

“Why not just buy the lots you need?”

Ripley glared at her. “You know bloody well what they’re asking. They want a black majority on Urban Hope. They want written commitments to proportional representation on our respective payrolls—if the city’s sixty percent colored, in five years we’d have to employ sixty percent colored workers. And they insist on a guarantee of an ungodly percentage of colored families in Urban Hope-sponsored developments.”

It was 35 percent—the figure Jammu had suggested. “Low-income families,” she said.

“So-called low income.”

“What, are there no poor whites in the city? Let me repeat, Mr. Ripley, that I can’t be expected to intercede between you and the black leadership of the city. My role is limited. I’m in law enforcement.”

“But you’re so
resourceful
. There surely must be ways. Because if all I get in return is badgering from the coloreds, I shan’t contribute to your merger crusade, and your support from the rest of Urban Hope will be precious tepid. And without a merger, many of us might find it pointless to stay in the city. You’ll have your chance to see which came first—”

“Naturally,” Jammu said, as the voices outside her door grew even louder, “I’d appreciate the aid of Urban Hope in a campaign for the common good of all St. Louisans, city and county. From informal talks with some of your fellow members I’ve gained the impression that the merger is viewed very kindly. Yes, the blacks want a majority membership of Urban Hope. Currently they’re a minority of zero. Yes, they want a commitment to equal-opportunity hiring. Currently your own payroll is eleven percent black. Above the median income it’s two percent. We’re living in the 1980s, Mr. Ripley, and your corporation is now based in a city nearly two-thirds black. And yes, they want 35 percent low-income units in Urban Hope projects. Currently the plans I’ve seen call for levels between zero and ten percent. Meanwhile the office and luxury-housing developments your group is sponsoring are displacing black families at a rate of eight per day. Your refusal to take Mr. Struthers seriously seems less than fair. Perhaps I’m not attuned yet to your American way of thinking, but this strikes me
as a golden opportunity for St. Louis businessmen to actually do substantial good for the urban black community.”

Ripley was nodding and smiling at this lecture. “If I believed it,” he said, “your naïveté would appall me. But I’m confident I’ve made my position clear.” He stood up. “Cheerio.” He opened the door, revealing a cluster of eager faces, and vanished in their surge.

“Wait,” Jammu snapped. “Wait five minutes. Can you
wait?
”

Randy Fitch, the lead face, said, “It’s—”

“Five minutes. For God’s sake. Please shut the door.”

The door wavered and retreated. Someone pushed on it again, but the latch had caught.

Jammu dialed a number. “Listen,” she said. “I’ll get this to you in writing soon, but I wanted you prepared in case you see Rolf today. He was just here making threats. Tell him I’m taking the threats very seriously. Tell him I’m scared. But I still have to make a pretense of helping out Struthers. They’re making three demands of Urban Hope. Rolf should grant the first two. He’ll know why I couldn’t afford to tell him so myself. The black majority on Urban Hope—”

“Yes,” Devi said.

“He should grant it. That’s a transition group anyway, and we can replace it with a smaller board when we need to.”

“And the proportional hiring?”

“That’s the second one to grant. He should let Struthers pin him to the quota Struthers wants—the same percentage of blacks as are living in the city. Struthers doesn’t realize this will be an all-white city in another ten years.”

“You’re double-crossing Struthers.”

“You can suggest as much. The concessions needn’t be total. Urban Hope can knock the figures down. I told Struthers to make them high and hope to compromise. Say forty percent of Urban Hope and full quotas in ten years, not five. Rolf will still have bargaining power for the housing demand. That’s the key to a white city. I think Struthers will back down if Ripley tells him the projects simply won’t attract financing with more than fifteen percent low-income units.”

Devi repeated it all back.

“Good,” Jammu said. “I really don’t take his threats too se
riously. His investments here started out as tax shelters, and if he pulls out now, capital gains will murder him. I think a move is unlikely. On the other hand, he hasn’t made a firm commitment to the Ripley Center yet—”

“He hasn’t?”

“No. Once he does, he can’t pull out. So what you need to do is leave him alone on the issue—just don’t ever even mention it. Let him assume I think he’s committed.”

“Easy enough.”

“The other thing is the State. I think Rolf’s Probst animus is one of the main reasons he’s gotten to be so central in Urban Hope. We have to keep developing that situation. Are you still in it?”

“Very much” was the reply.

“Good. We need it, and it’ll work for us as long as Probst is in charge of the resistance. You understand? Develop that situation.”

“I understand.”

Jammu turned the key in her desk, put her coat on, and opened the door. “Joe Feig, I’m sorry,” she said. “You must hate me but we’ll have to say four o’clock now. Drop in, and I’ll give you what you need. Randy, talk to Suzie. I don’t have time to look it over now, Suzie, but Randy needs it and I’ll take your word for it. Go ahead and get the signatures. Rollie, tell Farr he’s got to come and see me today. Say eight o’clock, and if I’m not here, that’s his problem. Annette, is it life and death?”

“Sort of, yes. Strachey was on the front page this morning—”

“Write a memo with a guarantee. Word it strongly, and I’ll check it over tonight and Pete will sign it.
No
city employees will lose jobs in a merger. Zero. At worst they might be moved to different positions. If you can work in something subtle about patronage, so much the better. And the rest of you get out of my way, I’ll be back at two-thirty and free until four. My apologies to everyone, I’m eternally grateful.”

The Corvette was waiting at a hydrant on Tucker Boulevard. Jammu got in with a word of apology to Asha, who peeled off her reading glasses and stepped on the gas pedal. She was wearing sable and emeralds. She dodged a U.S. Mail truck and headed up the ramp onto Highway 40. Practically, this engagement was the least
important of the day for Jammu, but as she saw less and less of Singh she was coming to rely heavily on her weekly lunch with Asha.

The cars they passed looked stationary, bouncing in place on the winter-stained surface of the road. Beyond them, buildings lumbered backwards through a cold haze. Asha’s hands left the wheel to rearrange her hair, and the Corvette steered itself into the innermost lane. She was at home in speed—in love with it. She was licensed to fly, she rode horses, she bet avidly. She was one of the terrible people who used speedboats on Dal Lake in Kashmir. She was speeding now, and when they passed the city limits, into the jurisdiction of other forces less willing to fix her tickets, Jammu made her slow down.

“Ripley?” Asha said.

“Yes.”

“Would you have guessed in July how important he’d turn out to be?”

“Not exactly. He was a maybe. They were all maybes.”

Jammu remembered July, the intimate and air-conditioned days. She’d spent her mornings with the Police Board; her early afternoons at the circulation desk of the St. Louis Library watching her book and magazine orders sucked down by the pneumatic tubes to the stacks; her late afternoons in one of the library’s musty ground-floor tunnels feeding dimes to xerox machines; her evenings in motion with Asha in the county, with Asha downtown among little boats of hollandaise, with Asha and bourbon on her hotel balcony; her nights reading the day’s photocopies. Would she have guessed? At the head of every discussion of civic decision-making were two words: Municipal Growth. In every list of influential locals were the names Wismer, Hutchinson, Ripley, Meisner, Probst, Murphy, Norris, Spiegelman, Hammaker…And Asha pumped Sidney, relayed more names to Jammu. All maybes, but the sum a sure thing.
In few American cities is fundamental policy determined by such a small and tightly knit nonpartisan group. In few American cities has the mode of policy-making survived unchallenged from the early nineteenth century to the present. Though the names have changed, the pattern of rule by a handful of established families with a romantic vision of westward progress has successfully replicated itself…
Political
science, pregnant words, summer thoughts, engorged with possibility. Miss Jammu, we’ve decided, Asha, they’ve decided, Maman, I’ve decided. A city to ravish, in July.

Asha shook her coat off her shoulders. “How’s Devi?”

“She’s done very well. But it’s rather a weakness of our approach that she’s turned out to be important because Ripley has.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing that’s visible to me. Nothing exactly wrong, I mean. She’s as bright as anyone and she’s too dependent on me, substancewise and otherwise, to blow things open. But I wish we had another agent in her spot. I guess I wish you could do it all for me.”

“I would if I could.”

“It was easy enough to move Baxti off Probst in October. But we can’t ask Ripley to switch sex partners at this stage.”

“It sounds like you think something’s wrong.”

“I don’t know. Ripley is surprisingly demanding. I feel a loss of contact. With Devi. With—Well, you’re about the only one who’s maintained a complete perspective.”

Asha was accustomed to collecting Jammu’s anxieties. She kept her eyes on the road. Brentwood spread to allow the highway through, the walls of its low square buildings as dirty as if road salt had splashed all the way up to them. Jammu saw nothing new. “Isn’t this the exit?”

She was thrown forward as Asha took the Corvette what seemed like sideways across four lanes and onto the ramp. Asha’s gold bracelets floated on her wrists. “Norris?” she said.

“He’s warm but he isn’t hot. He isn’t making any new friends or converts.”

“Buzz says he and Probst have gotten friendly.”

“Probst doesn’t have the loser’s ethic it takes to believe in conspiracy. He found that bug in Meisner’s place and made nothing of it. His daughter found a bug in her boyfriend’s apartment and the boyfriend gave it to his landlord.”

“God’s on your side, Ess.”

Jammu looked into the tire, deeply recessed, of a towering dump truck. All at once the Corvette seemed squashable. The dump truck was black. Written in red on the driver—side door were the words
PROBST
&
CO
. The driver, a black man in a baseball cap,
glanced down at the Corvette’s hood and then at Jammu. He winked. Asha passed him.

“The Warriors are doing a bridge on Sunday,” Jammu said.

“What fun.”

“Tell me about Buzz.”