The New City
Page 49
“Well,” Wooten announced as he opened a cold Miller for Swope. “I do believe we just inaugurated the Newton Volunteer Fire Department.”
Just when he was about to start feeling something suspiciously like remorse, Swope yanked himself out of this unwelcome reverie. There was no use in thinking such thoughts. Especially now. Wooten had played his hand and lost. If something good had been destroyed in the process then it was his own fault. Swope was only doing what he’d taught himself to do since the beginning, when he dragged himself out of frozen, impoverished Grand Rapids or spent those long nights by his son’s hospital bed or moved to Newton. Claim what was his. Claim it, and protect it.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye. Another blue light. It took him a moment to realize that this one was different from the others. It was in the wrong part of town, racing down Merlin’s Way, straight for his house. Swope stepped over to the east-facing window to chart its progress. Dread moved through his guts as it approached Prospero’s Parade. He’d relaxed his guard too soon. Something had cracked. The truth was out. But the fear vanished the moment the prowler passed his street and moved on toward Wooten’s end of the neighborhood. It was nothing. Just the cops, mopping up.
And then the phone began to ring. That would be the papers, wanting to know what it felt like to be the man in charge of the new city. After one last look at the darkening plain below him, Austin Swope took a deep breath and went to answer his future.
acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to Gerry Howard, whose acute editing made this novel better than it should have been; Henry Dunow, whose passionate agency placed it where it was supposed to be; Sarah Westcott, whose keen British eye added much-needed perspective to the whole enterprise; and the sublime, ever-calm Rachel Calder, who believed from the first and for some reason has never stopped.
But most of all my wife, Caryl Casson, who continues to make it all possible.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 2001
Copyright © 2000 by Stephen Amidon
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, as are those fictionalized events and incidents that involve real persons.
Map and illustration by Laura Hartman Maestro
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Amidon, Stephen.
The new city : a novel / by Stephen Amidon. —1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48079-8
I. Title.
PS3551.M52N48 2000
813′.54—dc21 99-25619
www.anchorbooks.com
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