Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Everyone began to speak at once, but Probst cut them short and nodded to John Holmes. Holmes bore a strong facial resemblance to FDR, but wore modern glasses. His bank had joined with Probst and Boatmen’s and a dozen other creditors in a suit against Harvey Ardmore. “You want to give us the bad news now, John?”

The bad news was county finances. Six months ago, Holmes said, only one of the area’s five largest corporations had been headquartered in the city: Hammaker. Six months from now, three of the Big Five would be there: Hammaker, Ripley, and Allied Foods. Only Wismer and General Syn would be left in the county, and only they would still be within commuting range of most of the county’s newer high- and middle-income housing developments.

Men looked at Probst, who was sandwiched between these two steadfast giants. The General was staring at the ceiling, his lips closed and inflated. Buzz hadn’t moved when his name was mentioned. His thighs spread like flat tires on the seat of his chair. Probst was struck by the contrast between the modesty of Buzz’s figure and the power he wielded. He had direct control over thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars. He had dandruff on his glasses.

Since October, Holmes continued, nineteen other firms had relocated in the city or taken steps in that direction. Eight of them employed two hundred or more people. These were Data-Rad, Syntech, Utility Software, Blanders Electric, Newpoint Systems, Hedley-Carlton, Heartland Control, and — the largest — Kelly Richardson’s Compunow. In other words, the high-tech industries, the new firms, the ones with the highest median salaries. They were leading the way and clustering, as it were, around Ripley’s new research division, which was already operating in temporary quarters on the North Side.

“We could have expected this from Ripley,” Holmes said. “In thirty years in business in St. Louis he’s never once taken a false step.”

In November and December the seasonally adjusted rate of housing starts in the county had declined for the first time since the last recession, and declined by nearly 20 percent. There had also been a slew of highly visible bankruptcies, Westhaven chief among them. Real property values were in steep decline, with West County by far the hardest-hit region; this was especially cruel because the statewide reassessment, just completed in August, had left assessed valuations at an all-time high. In the many new office buildings west of I-270, occupancy was shrinking.

“From a vacancy rate of seven percent a year ago, we’re already up to sixteen and it’s accelerating. I’d guess the March figures will show us above twenty-five percent, and that means we’re hurting, gentlemen, palpably hurting.”

It was true that in many respects the county was unchanged from a year ago, with retail and service enterprises substantially unaffected. To look at Webster Groves or Ladue or Brentwood you would never guess what was going on. But the poor performance of the economic indicators was creating self-fulfilling prophecies. A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal had glowingly described the city’s efforts to attract new business, darkly delineated the county’s consequent problems, and forecast more of the same, only better, only worse.

“We’ve been able to count no fewer than five middle-sized firms from out of state who had planned to locate in the county, or at least were seriously considering it, but are now committed to a city location. And they’re building, not renting, in the city. The city may ultimately go bust, but it’s rigged things so those companies can hardly afford to pass up the inherent tax advantages in building. As for why the county didn’t ever provide similar incentives, the answer is because there was never any local competition until this year.”

Probst was watching the county supervisor’s reaction to the report. Ross Billerica was a few years younger than Probst. His hair was Greek black and he wore it in a long crewcut, a short pompadour, with the ends of the hairs all diving for cover at once, uniformly, glistening. A lawyer by training and a millionaire by inheritance of his family’s liquor-store chain, he had a (HA!) belligerency that led many people to think him highly able. But if he was so marvelous, you had to wonder why he was also (HA! TAKE THAT!) so highly dislikable, and why after twenty years of being hailed as senatorial or even presidential material, he was still just the county soup and had to campaign hard before every election.

“Stop right there, John!!!” Billerica, as if he could stand no more inaccuracy, was correcting Holmes. “For your information, we’re still hrunning a neat surplus. Maybe you’re forgetting that neither the tax rates nor the hassessed valuations have changed.”

Holmes turned patiently to Billerica. “What I’m saying, Ross, is that with real property values and profitability making a sharp downturn — especially in your unincorporated areas, which have always been your mainstay revenue-wise — I don’t see how you can avoid lowering taxes at some point. You’re talking about maintaining current revenue levels. I can guarantee you that will send a number of firms either into bankruptcy or into the city. If you want to keep the default rate down — and I sure hope you do — and if you want to keep businesses in the county, I think that you and most of the municipalities are going to have to make deep cuts in services in the next year or two. In the county’s case, I’d recommend as soon as possible.”

Billerica smiled as if conceding a technical point.

Bud Replogle reported on hospitals. Suddenly, he said, the chief of police had become a leading advocate of improving the two city hospitals. Bud stressed the word “two” and got a round of smiles, because for twenty years the revival of City Hospital Number Two, renamed Homer G. Phillips, had been a matter of burning concern to the city’s black community. For twenty years mayoral and aldermanic candidates had promised action, and for twenty years the hospital had sunk into ever worse disrepair, losing first its accreditation and then its ties with the medical schools. Municipal Growth’s own study had concluded that Homer Phillips was unsavable. But now Jammu was using that very study as the basis for her own, more ambitious proposals. Foremost among them: the preservation and revitalization of Homer Phillips.

“What in God’s name,” Eldon Black said, “is the police chief doing in hospital planning?”

“What she’s doing,” Replogle answered, “is she’s liquidating our assets. She’s making a public show of what we’ve been doing privately for years.”

Lee Royce’s report on black politics reached a similar point: “Here for twenty years we’ve been cultivating a relationship with the urban blacks, and then she waltzes in here, with no personal affection for them, and proceeds to buy them off. They’ve let themselves be bought, for a new Homer Phillips, for tax concessions and a hundred favors to black property owners. For a political stake. It’s a buyer-seller relationship. When they dealt with us, it was as equals.”

“Emotion aside, Lee…?” Probst prompted.

“We based our relationship on the fact that since the city has a large black population, a majority even, they should be given our support in every responsible effort to improve the quality of life there. They’ve been happy with this. It is their city, regardless of the color of the mayor’s skin.”

“Yeller, last I checked,” the baked voice told Probst. “With a long streak of red.”

“Jammu has worked them into a position where they’ll vote pro-merger, I believe, and if she succeeds in creating a more regionally oriented government, it’s the blacks who’ll lose the most in terms of political say-so. But she’s telling them a different story.”