Standing in the portico of a deserted bank, their slim figures almost hidden by the high columns, were two boys in their late teens. Despite the shiny plastic suitcases and their flamboyant shoes and jackets — presumably taken from the stores on the outskirts of the city — Halloway was certain that they had come from one of the pastoral settlements. On their Garden City faces was a childlike expectation, an innocent but clear determination to seize the life of the metropolis.
Switching on the loudspeaker system so that he could talk to them, Halloway picked up the microphone. The first of his people had arrived to take their places in his city.
It had been another successful day. On the television monitor in the police commissioner’s office Halloway watched the activity in the avenue below. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and the rush-hour traffic was beginning to build up. The sidewalks were thronged by more than a dozen pedestrians, leaving their offices and workshops on their way to the neighbourhood bars and supermarkets. A hundred yards from the station, six cars were blocking an intersection where the lights had failed. Their horns sounded impatiently above the street noise.
Halloway spoke to the desk sergeant in the orderly room. ‘Get a man over to the Seventh Avenue intersection. There’s a faulty green light holding up the traffic.’
‘He’s already left, Mr Halloway.’
‘Good — if we don’t watch it now there’ll be chaos in an hour or two.’
These minor breakdowns were a pleasant challenge to Halloway. Even now, as one of Stillman’s young men ignored the stuttering red light and the outstretched arm of the police constable, Halloway was in no way annoyed. In a sense, these displays of aggression pleased him, confirming everything he had hoped about the reclamation scheme. The pedestrians in the street below strode along purposefully, pushing past each other with scant courtesy. There was no trace here of good humour and pastoral docility.
In an alleyway facing the station a diesel generator was pumping out dense clouds of sooty smoke. A three-man repair gang recently trained by Olds had emptied the sump oil across the sidewalk, in clear contravention of the local ordinances. But, again, Halloway made no attempt to reprimand them. If anything, he had done what he could to frustrate any efforts to bring in stricter clear-air regulations. Pollution was part of the city, a measure of its health. All the so-called ills that had beset this huge metropolis in its prime had visited themselves with flattering haste on Halloway’s small enclave. Pollution, traffic congestion, inadequate municipal services, inflation and deficit public financing had all promptly reappeared.
Halloway had even been pleased when the first crime was committed. During the previous night several clothing stores had been broken into, and pilfering from the supermarkets went on continuously. Halloway had spoken to Stillman about the light-fingered behaviour of his entourage. Lounging back with his young cronies in his 1920s gangster limousine, Stillman had merely flicked the sharp lapels of his dove-grey suit and pointed out that petty crime helped to keep the economy running.
‘Relax, Halloway, it’s all part of the problem of urban renewal. Do I complain that some of your boys are on the take? You’ve got to increase turnover. You’re working these poor devils so hard they haven’t time to spend their pay. If they’ve got anything left by the end of the week, that is. This is a real high-rent area you’ve set up for them. Any time now you’ll have a housing crisis on your hands, social problems, urban unrest. Remember, Halloway, you don’t want to start a flight from the cities.’
Halloway had taken this friendly ribbing in his stride, though the rapid increase in the size of Stillman’s gang had begun to make him uneasy. Clearly Stiliman relished lording it over this entourage of wide-eyed teenagers and farm-bred youths, fitting them up with their gangster suits and weapons like a corrupt stage-director playing ironic games with a chorus of young actors. At times Halloway felt that he too was part of this sardonic man’s devious entertainment.
However, apart from the stealing, Stillman’s continued ravaging of department store windows in the surrounding districts of the city had turned Halloway’s neighbourhood into an island of light and activity in an ever-larger sea of devastation. Halloway’s plans for expansion had been effectively shelved by this deliberate vandalism, the wholesale destruction of complete city blocks.
