More often than not, this city which had once been known as Murder Town was permeated by a yellowish haze. This particular haze was usually so dense that the streetlights of the downtown section as well as the vast, decaying neighborhoods surrounding this area were in operation both day and night. Furthermore, there existed a direct correlation between the murders that took place in the city and the density of the yellowish haze which veiled its streets. Even though no one openly recognized this correspondence, it was a verifiable fact: the heavier this yellowish haze weighed upon the city, the more murders would need to be reported by the local news sources. It was as simple as that.
The actual number of murders could most accurately be traced only in a tabloid newspaper called the Metro Herald, which thrived on sensational stories and statistics. The other newspapers, those which purveyed a more dignified image of themselves, proved to be a far less reliable record of both the details of the murders that were occurring throughout the city and also the actual number of these murders. These latter newspapers also failed to indicate any link between the density of the yellowish haze and the city's murder count. True enough, neither did the Metro Herald draw direction attention to this link—it was simply a reality that was easier to follow in their pages than in those newspapers with a more dignified image, let alone the radio and television sources, which labored under the burden of delivering their information, respectively, by means of either a human voice or by a human head accompanied by a human voice, lending both of these media a greater immediacy and reality than their printed counterparts. The consequence of the heightened reality of the radio and television news sources was that they could not afford to report anything close to the true quantity or the full details of murders that were always happening. Because if they did offer such reports by means of a human voice, with or without the presence of a human head, they would make themselves intolerable to their listeners and viewers, and ultimately they would lose advertising revenue because their audiences would abandon them, leaving only these human voices and heads reporting one murder after another without anyone listening to them or watching them recite these crimes . . . whereas the newspapers with a dignified image were able to relegate a modicum of such murder stories to the depths of their ample pages, allowing their readers to take or leave these accounts as they wished, while the Metro Herald actually thrived upon disseminating such sensational news to a readership eager to consume dispatches on the bleakest, most bizarre, and most scandalous business of the world. Yet even the Metro Herald was forced to draw the line at some point when it came to making known to their readers the full quantity as well as the true nature of all of the murderous goings-on in the city to which the Blaine Company had relocated—the city that was once known as Murder Town.
Of course by the time of the company's relocation the epithet of Murder Town was no longer in wide usage, having been eradicated by a sophisticated public relations campaign specifically designed to attract commercial entities like the Blaine Company. Thus, the place formerly known as Murder Town had now acquired an informal civic designation as the Golden City. As anyone might have observed, no specific rationale was ever advanced to justify the city's new persona—the quality of being 'golden' was merely put forth as a given trait, a new identity which was bolstered in the most shameless manner in radio, television, and newspaper ads, not to mention billboards and brochures. It was something assumed to be so, as though 'goldenness'– with all the associations attending this term—had always been a vital element of the city. Certainly there was never any reference made, as one might have assumed, to the meteorological phenomenon of the yellowish haze that was truly the preeminent distinction of the physical landscape of the city, including the vast and decaying neighborhoods that surrounded it. In radio, television, and newspaper ads, across billboards, and in the glossy pages of brochures that were mailed out on a worldwide scale, the city was always depicted as a place with clear skies above and tidy metropolitan avenues below. This image, of course, could not have been more at odds with the city's crumbling and all-but-abandoned towers, beneath which were streets so choked with a yellowish haze that one was fortunate to be able to see more than a few yards in any direction.
I knew for a fact that a deal had been struck between the local bureaus of commerce and businesses like the Blaine Company, which could not, for the sake of appearances, relocate their offices to a place whose second name was Murder Town but could easily settle themselves in the Golden City. Nevertheless, it was this place—this haze-choked Murder Town—to which the Blaine Company had been attracted and which well suited, as I well knew, its purposes as a commercial entity.
Not long after the Blaine Company had relocated itself, a memorandum went out to all employees from the office of the founder and president of the company, U G Blaine, a person whom none of us, with the exception of some members of senior management, had ever seen and from whom we had never received a direct communication of any kind, at least not since I had been hired to work in its offices. The memo was brief and simply announced that a 'company-wide restructuring' was imminent, although no dates or details, and no reasoning of any kind, were offered for this dramatic action. Within a few months of the announcement of this obscure 'restructuring', the supervisors of the various departments within the Blaine Company, as well as a few members of upper-level management, were all murdered.
Perhaps I might be allowed a moment to elaborate on the murders I have just mentioned, which were indeed unusual even for a city that had once been known as Murder Town. The most crucial datum which I should impart is that every one of the murders of persons holding management positions at the Blaine Company had taken place within the Golden City on days when the yellowish haze had been especially dense. This fact could have been corroborated by anyone who had taken the least interest in the matter, even if none of the local newspapers (never mind the radio and television reports) ever indicated this connection. Nonetheless, it was quite conspicuous, if one only took the time to glance out the window on certain days when the streets outside were particularly hazy or particularly yellowish, what was in the works. Sometimes I would peek over the enclosure that surrounded my desk and look out into the streets thick with haze. On those occasions I would think to myself, 'Another one of them will be murdered today.' And without exception this would be the case: before the day was out, or sometime during the night, the body of another supervisor, and sometimes a member of upper-level management, would be found lying dead somewhere in the Golden City.
Most often the murders took place as the victims were walking from their cars on their way into work or walking back to their cars after the workday was over, while some of the crimes transpired when the victims were actually inside their cars. Less frequently was the body of a supervisor, or someone of even higher rank within the company, found dead in the evening hours or on weekends. The reason that far fewer of these murders occurred during the evening and on weekends was blatant, even if no one ever made an issue of it. As I have already pointed out, these murders always took place in the Golden City, and even needed to take place there. However, very few of the supervisors, and certainly none of the members of upper-level management, resided within the city limits for the simple reason that they could afford to live in one of the outlying suburbs, where the yellowish haze was seldom as dense and quite often not even visible, or at least not visible to the unaided or unobservant eye. Consequently the victims had scant motivation to make an appearance in the Golden City after working hours or on weekends, for there was nothing, or very little, to attract anyone to this place—and many things that gave cause to avoid it—other than that this happened to be the location where one was forced to come to work. Yet these persons, who spent as little time as possible in the Golden City, were exclusively the ones, out of the large roster of those employed by the Blaine Company, to be viciously murdered there. Or so it was in the beginning.
On some days more than one supervisor's body would
be discovered exhibiting the signs of the most violent physical attack, which often suggested the work of more than one assailant, although the crime scene otherwise suggested no evidence of a premeditated conspiracy or thoughtful planning. They all seemed, in fact, to be makeshift affairs. Sometimes they were crude assaults with whatever objects might have been close at hand (such as a fragment of crumbling sidewalk or a piece of broken window in a back alley). Often the cause of death was simply strangulation or even suffocation in which lice-ridden rags had been jammed deep into the victim's throat. Quite often it was just a beating unto death that left indications of more than one pair of pummeling fists and more than one kind of savagely kicking shoe. Frequently the corpses of these unfortunate supervisors, and the occasional member of upper-level management, were stripped of their clothing, as well as robbed of their money and other valuable effects. This was typical of so many of the murders in the Golden City, a fact that could be verified by the many detectives who interviewed almost everyone at the Blaine Company in the course of their investigations of these crimes, which, in the absence of any other peculiar facts of evidence, were attributed to the numerous derelicts who made their home in the city's streets.
There was, of course, the salient fact—which did not escape the investigating detectives but which, for some reason, they never saw as a relevant issue—that for quite some time all of the victims who worked at the Blaine Company offices had attained the level of supervisor, if not an even higher position in the company. I doubt that the detectives were even aware that it was in the nature of a supervisor's function at the company to foment exactly the kind of violent and even murderous sentiments that would lead low-level staff to form images in their minds of doing away with these people, however we tried to cast such imagined scenes from our minds as soon as they began to form. And now that all of these supervisors had been murdered, we only had each other upon whom to exercise our violent thoughts and fantasies. This situation was aggravated by the tension that derived from our concern over the likely installation of an entirely new group of supervisors throughout the company.
As most of the lower staff employees realized, it was possible to become accustomed to the violent thoughts and fantasies inspired by a supervisor of long standing, and for precisely this reason these supervisors would often be replaced in their position because they were no longer capable of inspiring fresh images of violence in the minds of those they were charged with supervising. With the arrival of a newly appointed supervisor there was inevitably a revival of just the sort of tension that developed into an office atmosphere in which you could barely see a few feet in any direction whenever you were required to move about the aisleways and hallways of the building to which the company had relocated not long before these events which I have chosen to document transpired. It was therefore welcome news to employees when it was made known, by means of a brief memo from one of the highest members of senior management, that none of the murdered supervisors would be replaced and that this position was to be permanently eliminated as part of the scheme for restructuring the company.
The relief experienced among the lower staff of the various departments and divisions of the Blaine Company that they would not have to face the prospect of newly appointed supervisors—or supervisors of any kind, since they had all been murdered—allowed the tension which had been so severe and pervasive to abate, thereby clearing the air around the offices from its previous condition of a blurry atmosphere of agitation and also clearing our minds of the violent thoughts and fantasies that we had come to direct so viciously at one another. However, this state of relative well-being was only temporary and was soon replaced by symptoms of acute apprehension and anxiety. This reversal occurred following a company-wide meeting held in the sub-basement of the building where the Blaine offices had been relocated.
While the senior officers who called for this meeting readily admitted that a sub-basement in an old and crumbling office building was perhaps not the ideal place to hold a company-wide meeting, it was nevertheless the only space large enough to accommodate the company's full staff of employees and was thought preferable to convening at a site elsewhere in the Golden City, since we would then be required to travel through the yellowish haze which lately had become far more consistently dense owing to 'seasonal factors', according to the radio and television reports of local meteorologists. Thus we all came to be huddled in the dim and dirty realm of the building's sub-basement, where we were required to stand for lack of adequate seating and where the senior officers of the company addressed us from a crude platform constructed of thin wooden planks which creaked and moaned throughout this session of speeches and announcements, their words sounding throughout that sub-basement space as hollow and dreamlike echoes.
What we were told, in essence, was that the Blaine Company was positioning itself to become a 'dominant presence in the world marketplace', in the rather vague words of an executive vice president. This declaration struck nearly everyone who stood crushed together in that sub-basement as a preposterous ambition, given that the company provided no major products or services to speak of, its principal commercial activity consisting almost wholly of what I would describe as manipulating documents of one sort or another, none of which had any great import or interest beyond a narrow and financially marginal base of customers, including such clients as a regional chain of dry cleaners, several far-flung restaurants that served inexpensive or at most moderately priced fare, some second-rate facilities featuring dog races that were in operation only part of a given year, and a few private individuals whose personal affairs were such that they required—or perhaps only persuaded themselves out of vanity that they required—the type of document manipulation in which the Blaine Company almost exclusively specialized. However, it was soon revealed to us that the company had plans to become active in areas far beyond, and quite different from, its former specialization in manipulating documents. This announcement was delivered by an elderly man who was introduced to us as Henry Winston, the new Vice President of Development. Mr Winston spoke in a somewhat robotic tone as he recited to us the radical transformations the company would need to undergo in order to make, or remake, itself into a dominant force in the world marketplace, although he never disclosed the full nature that these transformations, or 'restructurings', as they were called, would take. Nor did Mr Winston specify the new areas of commercial activity in which the company would be engaged in the very near future.
During the course of Mr Winston's address, none of us could help noticing that he seemed terribly out of place among the other members of senior management who occupied that rickety wooden platform constructed especially for this meeting. His suit appeared to have been tailored for a larger body than the bony frame that now shifted beneath the high-priced materials which hung upon the old man. And his thick white hair was heavily greased and slicked back, yet as he spoke it began to sprout up in places, as if his lengthy, and in some places yellowed locks were not accustomed to the grooming now forced upon them.
As murmurs began to arise among those of us pressed together in that dim and dirty sub-basement, Mr Winston's mechanical monologue was cut short by one of the other senior officers, who took the spotlight from the old man and proceeded to deliver the final announcement of the meeting. Yet even before this final announcement was made by a severe-looking woman with close-cropped hair, many of those among the crowd huddled into the confines of that sub-basement had already guessed or intuited its message. From the moment we descended into that lowest level of the building by way of the freight elevator, there was a feeling expressed by several employees that an indefinable presence inhabited that place, something that was observing us very closely without ever presenting a lucid image of itself. Several people from the lower staff even claimed to have glimpsed a peculiar figure in the dark reaches of the sub-basement, a shape of some kind that seemed to maneuver about the edges of the congregation, a hazy human outline that drifted as slow
ly and silently as the yellowish haze in the streets of the Golden City and was seen to be of a similar hue.
So by the time the woman with the close-cropped hair made what might otherwise have been a striking revelation, most of the lower staff were beyond the point of receiving the news as any great surprise. 'Therefore,' continued the severe-looking woman, 'the role of those supervisors who have been so tragically lost to our organization will now be taken over by none other than the founder and president of the Blaine Company—Mr U G Blaine. In an effort to facilitate the restructuring of our activities as a business, Mr Blaine will henceforth be taking a direct hand in every aspect of the company's day-to-day functions. Unfortunately, Mr Blaine could not be present today, but he extends his assurance that he looks forward to working with each and every one of you in the near future. So, if there are no questions'—and there were none –'this meeting is therefore concluded.' And as we ascended in the freight elevator to return to our desks, nothing at all was said about the plans revealed to us for the company's future.
Later that day, however, I heard the voices of some of my coworkers in conversation nearby the enclosure that surrounded my desk. 'It's perfectly insane what they're doing,' whispered a woman whose voice I recognized as that of a longtime employee and a highly productive manipulator of documents. Others in this group more or less agreed with this woman's evaluation of the company's grandiose ambition of becoming a dominant force in the world marketplace. Finally someone said, 'I'm thinking of giving my notice. For some time now I've been regretting that I ever followed the company to this filthy city.' The person who spoke these words was someone known around the office as The Bow Tie Man, a name granted to him due to his penchant for sporting this eponymous item of apparel on a daily basis. He seemed to enjoy the distinction he gained by wearing a wide variety of bow ties rather than ordinary straight ties, or even no tie at all. Although there were possibly millions of men around the world who also wore bow ties as a signature of sartorial distinction, he was the only one in the Blaine Company offices to do so. This practice of his allowed him to express a mode of personal identity, however trivial and illusory, as if such a thing could be achieved merely by adorning oneself with a particular item of apparel or even by displaying particular character traits such as a reserved manner or a high degree of intelligence, all and any of which qualities were shared by millions and millions of persons past and present and would continue to be exhibited by millions and millions of persons in the future, making the effort to perpetrate a distinctive sense of an identity apart from other persons or creatures, or even inanimate objects, no more than a ludicrous charade.