Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

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.”