Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

It was seven o’clock. On the far side of the oval conference table, Rick DeMann and Rick Crawford peered over their half-glasses, ready to begin.

“Let’s give Buzz another few minutes,” Probst said.

He had called the meeting here at his offices to create an impression of good attendance and to ensure a businesslike atmosphere. The walls were hung with photographs of the major projects he’d worked on over the years, framed exempla of municipal growth: the Poplar Street Bridge, the 18th Street interchange, the terminal at Lambert, the county government building, the Loretto-Hilton complex, West Port, the convention center. The air smelled faintly of electricity and typewriter oil.

P. R. Nilson and Eldon Black, archconservative allies of General Norris, were conferring with Lee Royce and Jerry Pontoon, real-estate-made men. The only remaining banker in the group, John Holmes, was trying to attract the attention of County Supervisor Ross Billerica. Jim Hutchinson, still tan from a holiday vacation, was leaning way back in a chair between Bud Replogle and Neil Smith, nice men, railroad men. An awkward movement at Probst’s right shoulder caused him to turn. General Norris was removing a bug detector from his jacket pocket. Green light. He put it back. “We start?” he said to Probst.

“We can wait a few more minutes.”

“Righty-o.” The General’s head swooped closer. “Don’t look now, Martin,” he said in his 30-hertz voice, “but there seem to be some interesting dishes there across the street, I said don’t look ,” for Probst had turned to see out the window. “It’s conceivable they have direct means of listening. Maybe casually draw the curtain, why don’t you?”

Probst frowned at him.

“Just do what I say, Martin.” The voice was mud — mud baked by a hot sun and cracked into tiles. “Safety’s cheap.”

There had always been communications dishes on the roof of the precinct house. They were antennas, not mikes. Probst shut the curtains, and a draft flattened them against the window: the outer door had opened. Carmen was letting a huffing and puffing Buzz Wismer into the room. Probst nodded to her. She could leave now.

Buzz brushed off his coat and hung it on the rack in the alcove. He took the last empty seat, to Probst’s left.

“I’m glad you made it,” Probst said with feeling. He gently slapped his friend’s bony knee. Buzz nodded, his eyes on the floor.

A week ago Barbara had eaten lunch with Bev Wismer and come home with the news that Buzz was having an affair with Mrs. Hammaker. Probst rejected the possibility out of hand. He was sick of the whole notion of unfaithfulness, of the double standards and the way people talked. He wanted to be left alone.

“Martin,” the baked voice growled.

“Yeah yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

Probst raised his head and saw gray eyebrows, cheeks age-spotted or cold-bruised, eyeglass lenses bending the ceiling’s lambent panels into bows and bars. He saw neckties in cautious colors, raked hair and bald spots, executive hands on the table with executive pens poised. Municipal Growth, waiting. A few smiles had developed like fault lines in the tension.

“I assume we all know what the big news is,” Probst said. “Is there anyone who hasn’t seen a paper today?”

The day before, the lower house of the Missouri General Assembly had begun to consider a bill which, if passed, would authorize a binding referendum to decide if the boundaries of St. Louis County should be redrawn to include the city again.

“We’ll have a lot to say about this,” Probst continued. “But for a while I’d like to stick to the agenda you received yesterday. We can’t afford to spend the whole night bickering like last time. We need to get some work done.”

This drew gestural responses from everyone but Buzz.

Rick Crawford delivered the first report. The city of St. Louis, he said, was living dangerously but doing well. City Hall had met its December and January payrolls by diverting moneys ordinarily spent on servicing the city’s debt. It had prepared for this move by using the city’s new Hammaker stock, in conjunction with the dramatic rise in the value of city-held lands, as leverage for a bond renegotiation. Its rating had improved to AA, and in essence it had taken out a second mortgage on the civic improvements of the past. This maneuver, which required neither voter approval nor tinkering with the Charter, was mainly Chuck Meisner’s work. He and his friends in the city banking circles had effectively guaranteed that the refurbished bonds would find buyers. Everything had happened quickly. Leading up to the “Christmas Announcement” of municipal solvency had been a 72-hour marathon meeting attended by the mayor, the comptroller, Meisner, the budget director, Quentin Spiegelman, Asha Hammaker, Frank Jordan of Boatmen’s, and S. Jammu.

“I guess that makes Chuck’s position with regard to us fairly clear,” Probst said.

“It also makes clear what put him in the hospital,” Crawford said. “The terms of the refinancing run to more than two hundred pages, and they did the whole thing in three days.”

Probst pictured the little group at work. The presence of women in it made him feel particularly excluded. It was a reminder of his high-school days, of the Saturday nights he’d spent throwing rocks in the river in the company of nobody but Jack DuChamp.

The mayor, Crawford said, had made many promises to many different constituencies, and the only cheap promise was to finance good middle-income housing for displaced families. “I needn’t remind anyone how beautifully timed that transaction tax was. She — that is — well, yes, she got it on the November ballot and got it passed with no more than a month to spare. Imagine the resistance if she proposed it now. As for paying for the other promises, we can expect a transformation of the city’s revenue-generating structure, beginning with the elimination of the sales tax and the corporate-earnings tax—”

“Oh, the bastards,” Norris said. Rolling his shoulders, he disencumbered himself of his jacket. Underneath he had on black suspenders and one of those tight shirts by Christian Dior that Probst thought generally looked bad on people. It didn’t on Norris. His formidable rib cage gave it shape. Probst wondered if he himself could carry off suspenders.

“—As well as continuing to waive the city income tax for city residents. This might not be as suicidal as it sounds. Property-tax revenues for the fiscal year will be up at least forty percent on the strength of the North Side boom alone. Of course, once the developments are further along, income will fall again because the city’s going full steam ahead with its tax-abatement program. The way out appears to be twofold. In the first place, a bond issue—”

“To raise general revenues?” Ross Billerica interrupted. Words left his mouth as if expelled for bad behavior. “ That will take a constitutional hamendment, Hi’m afraid.”

“No, it won’t,” Crawford said. “They’ll still have enough tax income for payroll and operating expenses. It’s stretching the law a little, but even routine maintenance, if it’s been postponed long enough, can be written into a bond improvement. The voters will approve and the city should find plenty of takers for the bonds. But the news today is what really counts. If the merger goes through, then the county will have to assume much of the cost of providing services, at a comparatively small cost to the city.”

Crawford concluded his report speculatively. He said the history of the St. Louis area seemed to be a seesaw between the city and the county, as if this site at the confluence of rivers had never been and never would be productive enough to make both halves simultaneously viable. The city’s rise and the county’s fall were the same event, and it was occurring now for two simple reasons: the altered investment policies of a handful of executives, and the drastic drop in the city’s crime rate.