The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “So,” Nat said, and his smile was without amusement, “nobody else had any good reason to issue change authorizations—and my name is on them. Dandy. Will you have that list made out for me? First things first, no matter how deep we have to go. It’s got to be right.”

  Again he walked; it was the automatic reaction. Up Park to Forty-second, across to Fifth, and again uptown. He saw none of those who passed him; he saw only traffic lights and automobiles that might threaten. And he saw his thoughts.

  The change orders were real. That was point one.

  Either they had been acted upon—substitutions had been made and work avoided, with substandard performance the result—or they had been ignored. That was point two.

  Computers, using binary numbers, break a problem down the same way—either/or, yes/no—at each step. The method is almost foolproof—assuming that the right questions are asked, the right steps taken—but the difficulty is that the steps multiply exponentially, and the simple harmless-looking 1,2,4, series rapidly turns into a horror whose possibilities run into the millions.

  And that, he thought almost angrily, is precisely why they have computers, which did him no good at all. It was the kind of random thinking that frequently interfered when you tried to concentrate.

  He crossed Fifty-ninth Street into the park, and at once for him everything changed. His pace slowed and lengthened, his mind seemed to ease, and he began to notice his surroundings. Here there were trees and grass and bare rock, and even the sky seemed different, bluer, less tortured by civilization. Oh, there were no vistas such as he had once known, no distant mountains perpetually snow-capped, no clear dry air to breathe, no real silence. But it was better, and his thoughts ran more easily.

  If the change orders had never been acted upon, then there was no reason for their existence—true or false?

  Not necessarily true, because they could have been issued, could they not, for a different purpose from the obvious one of cutting corners? Such as? Such as pointing a finger of suspicion at one Nat Wilson. How about that?

  Why? Nat had no idea. As far as he knew, nobody would want to go to that length merely to discredit him.

  Was he so sure of that?

  He stopped at a vending wagon and bought a bag of peanuts. Then he walked on, away from the zoo area, into the depths of the park. He sat down on a rock and waited with a mountain man’s patience until one of the park squirrels came over to check him out. “Here you are,” Nat said and tossed a peanut. “You’re welcome,” he added as the squirrel dashed off with his loot.

  Was he so sure that nobody would try to booby-trap him? It was, he told himself, a pretty damn big assumption.

  He had come, in effect, out of nowhere, the mountain West, with no friends here in the big time, no letters of introduction, no handles to grasp for leverage. And he had walked in with his portfolio and waited until he could see Ben Caldwell—it took four days—and had walked out with a job any number of young brushed-up well-recommended architects would have given their eyeteeth for. Seven years ago, the preliminary thinking just beginning on the World Tower.

  The squirrel was back. He sat up and studied Nat. Nothing happened. Cautiously, he lowered his forepaws, rushed forward eighteen inches, and sat up again.

  “Okay,” Nat said, “it’s a good act. Here.” Another peanut.

  “Did I step on toes then?” Nat asked aloud. “Have I stepped on toes since?” And the answer was: probably, even if he hadn’t realized it. So the possibility existed that the change orders had been issued merely to point a finger at him. Uncomfortable thought.

  But suppose they had been acted upon, something he could not know until work of investigation actually began.

  Then, of course, the immediate inference was the profit motive: reducing the quality of material and workmanship, thus increasing the profit margin between cost and payment for someone. Who? Paul Simmons was still the obvious candidate. But if Simmons had all going for him that Joe Lewis had mentioned, why would he take the chance of exposure? Nat had no answer.

  There was a third possibility. Suppose the orders had been issued (by whom?) and acted upon, but innocently? What if Paul Simmons or his people had thought that these change orders represented an actual change in thinking on the part of the architects and engineers, and, theirs not to question why, they had gone ahead without any taint of avarice? That kind of thinking led in different directions.

  Nat cracked, opened, and ate a peanut. It tasted good. It occurred to him that he had had no lunch. He ate another peanut and then was aware that the squirrel was back, with a friend, and both were sitting almost at his feet, watching, waiting. “Sorry, fellows,” Nat said, and tossed down two peanuts, left and right.

  One more possibility, he told himself, and this one he had apparently tried to push down into the ooze of his subconscious in order to forget it, but here it came bubbling to the surface. What if the changes were aimed not at him and not at profit, but at the building itself? Did that make any kind of sense? Unfortunately, nauseatingly, it did. Or could.

  Without calculations, which Nat could make but Joe Lewis and his people, the experts, could make faster, there was no telling how vital, or lethal, the changes were.

  Buildings were not designed, as aircraft or space vehicles were, right down to the ultimate tolerances of their materials. Rather, because weight was not the basic problem, there was a safety factor calculated into every structural member, every cable, every wiring specification. Programmed right into the design calculations were remote contingencies such as winds of 150 miles an hour, far in excess of anything the city had ever known, or massive surges of electrical power almost impossible to conceive.

  Because of the Tower’s height, lightning strikes were accepted as normal; the mammoth steel skeleton would carry the charge harmlessly into the ground, as it had already done often enough during construction.

  Earthquakes were the remotest of possibilities: no fault area lay nearby. Nevertheless, the foundations of the building went down to bedrock, that tortured schist that is the city’s backbone, and with its firm grip on the solid base and its strong flexible structure, the building could ride out a quake of more than moderate intensity without damage.

  In short, every menace that could be imagined had been anticipated, and defenses prepared. Computerized calculations had been made. Models had been built and tested. The great building, as designed, was as durable as man’s ingenuity could make it.

  AS DESIGNED.

  But change a little here, a little there in the wrong places—and durability, function, even safety can become mere illusion.

  Why would anyone threaten a building’s integrity in that fashion? Nat had no idea, but in a world where violence seems to be the norm and irresponsibility is exalted, mere sabotage of a building seems far from impossible.

  The two squirrels were back again, and here came a third, zeroing in on the easy human mark. “There are times,” Nat said, “when I think we ought to give the world back to you fellows. Like lemmings, we could walk into the sea. Here.” He emptied the bag of peanuts at his feet and stood up.

  4

  12:30P.M.

  Bert McGraw was in his office high above the street with all those windows looking out at the city’s buildings, a number of which he had had a hand in constructing. Usually he enjoyed the view. Right now he was not sure, because sticking up in the center of the skyline was the World Tower, and what Giddings had been telling him and showing him about that structure was enough to curdle a man’s enthusiasm even on as bright and shining a late-spring day as this.

  McGraw glared at the copies of the change authorizations on his desk. He looked again at Giddings. “Just what do we know ?” he demanded. He had a deep-seated feeling that his hope was forlorn; that if examined carefully, the unpleasant appearances would not go away. But all a man could do was try. “Pieces of paper,” McGraw said, “and not even originals at that.”

  “You’re fancy-footing,
Bert,” Giddings said, “and it isn’t like you. Those are honest Xerox copies of hanky-panky that’s been going on under your nose—and, yes, I admit it, under mine as well. How many of the changes were carried out I don’t know yet. How serious they are I don’t know yet. Why the changes were issued I can only guess.”

  McGraw heaved himself out of his chair and went to stand at the windows. Time was when he might have taken a thing like this in stride, or near enough. Now it was like a sneak punch to the kidney, and the world he looked out at tended to blur. It was not the first such experience, and it worried him.

  “You’re overweight,” his Mary had told him, “and overworked and you aren’t as young as you were, and that’s what’s the matter with you, Bert McGraw. Once upon a time, you could spend all night drinking and being a terrible grand fellow and come home bright as a daisy, almost. But you aren’t that young any more. Neither am I, more’s the pity. So stop your worrying.”

  The world swam back into focus. McGraw turned away from the windows. “Young Nat Wilson’s name,” he said. “Did the damn fool actually sign them?”

  “He says no.”

  “And what do you say?” There was force in the old man yet.

  “I don’t see why he would,” Giddings said. “What does he gain? He can stand by the drawings and say no changes allowed and be well within his rights. So why would he stick his neck out?”

  McGraw walked to his chair and dropped into it. “All right,” he said. “At the least what we’ve got is confusion. On the face of those pieces of paper, the building, that great goddam beautiful building isn’t up to specifications, and that puts a foot in the door for all sorts of trouble—even, God help us, legal trouble.”

  “And work,” Giddings said. “Walls are going to have to be opened up. Circuits are going to have to be checked out.” He shook his head.

  “We’ll do what has to be done,” McGraw said sharply. He paused, and the belligerence disappeared. “It isn’t that I’m thinking of.” Was he being mystical, even superstitious, as Mary, bless her, sometimes said he was, the bog Irish in him coming out? “You’ve seen it yourself,” he said. “Little things go wrong on a job, accidents happen, shortages hold you up, weather turns bad, you’re caught by a strike—” He spread his hands and rolled them into fists, studied them as if they were enemies. “And sometimes,” he said at last, “the string of bad luck doesn’t end. It’s as if, God help me, some kind of bad spell has been laid on and not even a priest’s blessing can lift it.” He paused again. “Do you know what I mean, Will?”

  Giddings was thinking again of Pete Janowski walking off the steel at the sixty-fifth floor for no reason at all. “I know what you mean,” he said.

  McGraw sighed heavily. “I hate to admit it,” he said, “but there are two buildings in this town—I won’t put a name to either one but I built them both—I wouldn’t even walk into, let alone ride an elevator in.” He shook away the thought. “Let it go. It’s neither here nor there.” He sat up straight in his chair and his voice turned brisk. “Why the changes were issued you can only guess?” he said. “All right, guess away.”

  “You aren’t going to like it,” Giddings said.

  “Be damned to that.” It was honest anger the old man felt now, solid and deep and strong. “We’ve been diddled, you for the owners, me for myself. By God, I want to know who and why.”

  Giddings shrugged. “The changes are all electrical.”

  “So?”

  “With what I’ve seen,” Giddings said, “all the changes call for lesser material or simplified circuitry.” He paused. “What does that say to you?”

  There was no hesitation. “That somebody was trying to save money,” McGraw said. He heaved himself out of his chair again and walked to stare at a blurred world through the windows. Over his shoulder he said, “And the man who saved money, you’re saying, are you not, is the man who holds the electrical contract?” As before, the world swam slowly back into focus. McGraw turned. He kept his hands behind his back lest they demonstrate the tension that was in him. “Paul Simmons—it’s him you’re pointing the finger at, is it?”

  “I told you I was just guessing.”

  “So you did.”

  “And,” Giddings said, “I told you you weren’t going to like it.”

  “No,” McGraw said in a new, quiet voice, “I don’t like it. I don’t like you thinking it, and I don’t like thinking it myself.” He brought his hands into view at last, fingers spread and hooked, and he studied them for a long time in silence. When he looked at Giddings again, his face was almost gray. “We’ll find out, Will,” he said. “If I have to pick him up with these two hands and bend him until he breaks, we’ll find out. I promise you. In the meantime—” The words stopped suddenly as if the old man had forgotten what he was going to say. He rubbed one hand wearily along his jaw.

  “In the meantime,” Giddings said as if he had seen no lapse, “I’ll try to find out what has to be done.”

  McGraw lowered himself into his chair. He nodded. “You do that, Will. And let me know.” He took a deep breath. His voice was strong again. “We stand behind our jobs. We always have.”

  “I never doubted it,” Giddings said.

  McGraw sat motionless in his big chair long after Giddings was gone. He felt old and tired and reluctant to do what had to be done. Time was when he would have gone roaring out of his office at the merest whiff of suspicion that someone had been doing the dirty, whoever it was, in-law, kin, saint, or devil. But age changes a man, some of the certainties become less sure, the boundary lines blur, and McGraw’s temptation was to refuse to believe that someone near, someone in the family had transgressed.

  The old man was proud of Paul Simmons, his son-in-law. For one thing, Simmons was what used to be called a gentleman—Andover, Yale, that kind of thing, not McGraw’s breed of alley cat at all. And Patty fit right into Paul’s circle too, and that was further cause for pride.

  McGraw and Mary lived still in the house in Queens that McGraw had bought with the earnings from his first sizable construction job thirty years and more ago. Paul and Patty lived in Westchester, only a few miles but an entire culture away from the McGraw house. You cherish the American Dream that your children will have it better than you ever did. And when it happens, you get down on your knees and thank the good Lord for His favor.

  Now, McGraw told himself, pick up the phone and call your grand son-in-law a cheat and a thief. Bitter thought.

  The copies of the change authorizations were still on his desk. He pushed at them with one big hand. They rustled like dry dead leaves.

  It couldn’t have happened, McGraw thought, not on one of his jobs, not under Giddings’s nose, or Nat Wilson’s. And how about the inspectors? Bought? Or simply diddled by the bogus engineering changes?

  But it had happened. He knew that in his bones. Oh, it wasn’t the first time on a big construction job that somebody had thimblerigged his part of the work, shifted things around like the man at the carnival with the half-shells and the pea that is never where you thought it was.

  Invoices and bills of lading, work orders, specifications, even drawings themselves can all be altered or faked and work signed off that was never done, money passed under the table or left sticking to somebody’s fingers—there are tricks galore, and at one time or another McGraw had encountered them all, and somebody had left the job at a stumbling run with his ass kicked right up between his shoulder blades and maybe a few teeth loosened in the bargain.

  The telephone on the desk roused the old man, and he stared at it with distaste for a moment before he picked it up.

  “Mrs. Simmons is calling,” his secretary said.

  Patty couldn’t know, McGraw told himself. And, goddammit, neither did he know yet for sure that Paul was the kind of scum who would foul up an honest job of work. That, like they said, remained to be proved, and a man was innocent until the proof was in. The hell he was. “Hi, honey,” McGraw said into the pho
ne.

  “You wouldn’t like to buy me lunch, would you, Daddy?” Patty’s voice, like Patty herself, was young, fresh, enthusiastic. “I’m at Grand Central, and Paul’s all tied up with a business appointment.”

  “And none of your friends are available,” McGraw said, “so finally you think of your old man, is that it?” Just the sound of her voice brought a smile to his mind to counteract some of the mental pain.

  “That will be a day,” Patty said. “You know I would have married you myself if it hadn’t been for Mother.” And I almost wish I could have, she thought, but left that part unsaid. “Don’t be stingy.”

  “All right, honey,” McGraw said. “I have a couple of phone calls to make.” One, anyway. “You get a table at Martin’s. I’ll be along shortly.”

  “I’ll have a drink waiting.”

  McGraw hung up and buzzed for his secretary. “Get me Paul Simmons, Laura.” He made himself wait quietly.

  The secretary came back on the phone almost immediately. “Mr. Simmons is busy on the phone. I’ll try again in a few minutes?”

  Reprieve? McGraw thought. Nothing of the goddam sort. It can’t be put off, he told himself. “No,” he said, “let me talk to his secretary.” And when the new pleasant voice came on, “Tell Paul,” McGraw said, “that I want to see him here in my office at one-thirty sharp.”

  The secretary hesitated. “Mr. Simmons has a rather full schedule, Mr. McGraw. He—”

  “Honey,” McGraw said, “you tell him to be here.” He hung up, hoisted himself out of his chair and started for the door. A short pleasant time with Patty, he thought, and then—what was the current word that was so popular?—confrontation. So be it. He squared his shoulders automatically as he walked through the doorway.