The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  Giddings came straight to the point. “Time to plug you in,” he said, and tossed an envelope filled with change authorization copies on Frazee’s desk.

  Frazee shook them out, looked at one or two, and then looked up at Giddings in mild puzzlement. “I’m not an engineer,” he said. “You’re supposed to be. Explain.”

  Giddings explained, and when he was done, he sat back and waited.

  The big office was still. Frazee pushed his chair back slowly, got up, walked to the window, and stood looking down at traffic. His back to the room, “You didn’t know about the changes,” he said.

  “I didn’t know. I’m at fault, along with Caldwell’s people—Nat Wilson in particular—and Bert McGraw. We’re all responsible.”

  Frazee turned back to the room. “And now what?”

  “We check out each one of these to see if the changes were actually made and what effect there might be.”

  “What kind of effect?”

  Giddings shook his head. “I won’t even guess. It could be trivial. It could be serious. And that’s why I’m here.”

  Frazee walked back to his desk and sat down. “You want what?”

  “To call off that nonsense this afternoon up in the Tower Room.” A big man, serious, forceful. “I don’t want people up there.”

  “Why?”

  “Goddammit,” Giddings said, “do I have to spell it out? The building isn’t finished. Now we know, or at least have reason to believe, that there may be electrical flaws in what is done. We don’t know how serious the flaws are, and until we do know it doesn’t make sense to have an indoor garden party, for God’s sake, when right in the middle of it—”

  “The lights might go out?” Frazee said. “Something like that?” Giddings studied the backs of his hands while he calmed himself. He looked up at last and nodded. “Something like that,” he said.

  “But you can’t be sure, can you?”

  He was no match for Frazee at this kind of thing, Giddings told himself. He was no fluent, smooth business type; he was an engineer, and at the moment, with those pieces of paper lying on Frazee’s desk, he was almost prepared to admit that he wasn’t even a very good, that was to say careful, engineer. “I can’t be sure,” he said. “That’s why I want time.”

  Frazee was thinking of Governor Armitage. “You’re the man in charge,” the governor had said, “which means you get the brickbats as well as the bouquets.” True enough, but why not duck and let someone else take the brickbats?

  “I don’t see how we can call off the arrangements, Will,” Frazee said. He smiled.

  “Why the hell not?”

  Frazee’s manner was patient. “Invitations went out months ago and were accepted by people who might now otherwise be in Moscow or London or Paris or Peking or Washington. They have put themselves to some trouble to appear here for what amounts”—Frazee’s smile spread—“to a launching, Will. When a ship is launched, it is not complete either: months of work remain. But the launching ceremony is a gala occasion, set far in advance, and one simply does not call off that kind of affair at the last moment.”

  “Goddammit,” Giddings said, “you can’t equate a striped-pants cookie-push with the kind of trouble we might have, can’t you see that?”

  Frazee sat quiet, contemplative. He said at last, “I can’t see it, Will. What kind of trouble concerns you so much?”

  Giddings lifted his big hands and let them fall. “That’s the hell of it. I don’t know.” Giddings was thinking now of Bert McGraw’s theory that some buildings were accursed, and while he didn’t believe it for a moment, he had known jobs on which nothing ever seemed to go right, and try as you could, you could find no solid explanation. Then there was that one other thing today, only a little time ago: “Somebody’s running around inside the building, and I don’t like that either.”

  Frazee frowned. “Who?”

  “I don’t know, and we’ll play hell finding out without a floor-to-floor search with an army.”

  Frazee smiled. “Ridiculous. Why is the man even important?”

  Giddings said, “Look, there are too many things I don’t know, and that is just the goddam trouble. I’m responsible to you for that building. I’ve lived with it and sweated over it—”

  “No one could have done more, Will.”

  “But,” Giddings said, “things got by me and by everybody else too, and now all I’m asking is time to find out how serious those things are. Is that too much to ask?”

  Frazee picked up a gold pencil and studied it thoughtfully. Suppose things did happen during the reception in the Tower Room? What if there were some kind of electrical failure, what harm? Would it not, by showing up flaws within the building, in a sense take the monkey off his back, give him more time to find tenants, by following the governor’s cut-rate suggestion if no other way; in a sense, by shifting blame to McGraw and Caldwell, contractor and supervising architect, would he not place himself in the position of saying that circumstances beyond his control delayed the rush to occupy the splendid facilities of the brand-new World Tower communications center?

  Giddings said, “At least you’re thinking about it. That’s something.”

  Frazee put down the pencil. “But I’m afraid that’s all it is, Will.” He paused. “We cannot cancel the arrangements. I’m sorry you don’t see that, but you’ll have to take my word for it. We cannot make the building a laughingstock right at the beginning.”

  Giddings sighed and stood up. He had, really, expected no more. “You’re the boss. I hope to hell you’re right and I’m wrong, seeing things, shadows, thinking about a big Polack who walked off a steel beam for no reason at all—no, he doesn’t have a goddam thing to do with this, it’s just the kind of thing that sticks in my mind and I don’t know why.” He walked to the door and paused there, his hand on the knob. “I think I’m going over to Charlie’s Bar on Third Avenue. I think I’m going to get drunk.” He walked out.

  Frazee sat on at his desk, motionless, thoughtful. His own thinking was sound, he was convinced, but another opinion was frequently a good idea. He picked up the phone and said to Letitia, “Get me Ben Caldwell, please.”

  The telephone buzzed. Frazee picked it up and spoke his name. Ben Caldwell’s quiet voice said, “Something on your mind, Grover?”

  The papers were strewn on the desk in front of him. “These—things,” Frazee said. “I don’t even know what to call them—papers changing design—you know about them?”

  “I know about them.”

  “Your man seems to have signed them.”

  “He says no. For the moment I believe him.”

  “Are they important, Ben?”

  There was no hesitation. “We will have to see.”

  No trace of anxiety, Frazee thought, and found relief in the concept. “Will Giddings wants me to call off today’s opening.”

  Caldwell was silent.

  Frazee, frowning, said, “What do you think?”

  “About what?” This was the unworldly side of Caldwell.

  “Should I call off the opening?”

  “Public relations is not my line, Grover.” There was a hint of asperity in the quiet voice.

  “No,” Frazee said. “Of course not.”

  There was a short silence. “Was that all?” Caldwell said.

  “That was all.” Frazee hung up and reflected that of all the men he knew, the governor included, only Caldwell had the power to bring back boyhood memories of leaving the headmaster’s study after an unpleasant interview.

  Well, one thing was settled: there was no need to change plans for the afternoon.

  7

  2:10P.M.-2:30P.M.

  The governor was of two minds, but as usual his practical side prevailed. There was nothing that said that he, governor of the state, must check in with the city’s mayor when he came to visit. On the other hand, why raise hackles unnecessarily? And Bob Ramsay’s hackles were notoriously easy to raise. “I’m still at the Harvard Cl
ub,” the governor said on the phone to the mayor. “Is that turf neutral enough for a Yale man? If it is, come up. I’ll buy you a drink. We can go over to Grover Frazee’s hoedown together.”

  Mayor Bob Ramsay was fifty-seven years old, in splendid physical shape, in his second term as mayor of the great city and loving every minute of it. In the mayor’s lexicon the word challenge was set in capital letters.

  Deep in a leather chair in a corner of the club lounge, a snifter of cognac at his elbow, “What are you going to talk about?” the governor said. “Brotherhood of man as symbolized by the World Tower?”

  It was a favorite theme of Ramsay’s. But Bent Armitage had a way of souring even the most lofty thoughts, and the theme immediately lost its savor. The mayor sipped his black coffee. “I haven’t thought much about it,” he said. It was a mistake.

  The governor’s grin appeared. “That’s crap, and you know it, son. Like Mark Twain, you spend a great deal of time preparing your impromptu remarks. We all do. Why not admit it?”

  “What I intended to convey,” the mayor said stiffly, “is that I haven’t yet decided exactly what remarks are called for.”

  The governor switched the subject smoothly. “What do you think of the building?”

  Ramsay sipped his coffee again while he examined the question for booby traps. “I think we are all agreed,” he said, “that it is a lovely structure, one of Ben Caldwell’s best, if not his crowning achievement.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” the governor said.

  “And it brings additional space—”

  “—which the city needs like a broken head.”

  Ramsay finished his coffee deliberately. He set the cup down. “Not fair and not true. What the city needs is all the fine facilities it can have—and this is one—together with the kind of aid that every large city in this country must have or perish.” It was a matter of faith with him. He looked at the governor in challenge.

  “Maybe,” the governor said. He looked at his watch. “We have a little time. Let’s kick it around a bit. Suppose I offer the idea that cities of over-a-million population are as out of date as the dinosaur? What do you say to that?”

  The mayor breathed hard and said nothing.

  “I’m serious,” the governor said. “What about an abundance of one-hundred-thousand-population cities, each containing all the necessary services and surrounded by the necessary industries and enterprises to provide employment, but without the helpless slums and the gigantic welfare rolls and the crime problems that come out of them? Would you go along with that concept?”

  “And you,” the mayor said, “are the one who is always accusing me of seeing visions, looking for pie in the sky.”

  “A little different,” the governor said. “You’re looking for manna to keep your pet dinosaur alive. I’m looking for a new kind of livestock we can live with.” He paused and grinned. “That’s a piss-poor analogy, but maybe you’ll see what I mean. Call it a modern-day version of Jefferson’s ideal bucolic civilization, to replace the monster-city environment we’ve created in which nobody’s happy.” He paused again. “Except maybe Bob Ramsay.”

  The mayor had been doing his arithmetic. “We would have to break this metropolitan area up into a hundred and thirty separate cities, each going its own way—”

  “Independent as hogs on ice,” the governor said. He nodded. “There’s nothing wrong with tug-and-haul. That’s what it takes to hammer out policy.”

  “I rarely know,” the mayor said, “whether you are serious or your tongue is pushing hard at your cheek. Do you know yourself?”

  Again that grin, directed inward at the governor’s own foibles. “This time,” he said, “I am perfectly serious. Your city is breaking up anyway, new poverty is moving in and solid middle-class support moving out. In not too long you’ll have left only people living in penthouses and riding in limousines, and people living in slums mugging each other in the streets and subways.” The governor paused, unsmiling. “Can you deny it?”

  The mayor could not. “But you make it sound hopeless, and it isn’t. Give us back some of the taxes the state takes from us, the federal government takes from us, and—”

  “And,” the governor said, “you’ll provide more low-income housing, more welfare, more indigent hospital care, more slum schools.” He paused for emphasis. “And you’ll simply attract more people who need those things. So you’ll be digging your hole deeper and compounding your problems, and that means you’ll need more police to cope, and firemen, and courts, and, inevitably, more low-income housing, more welfare, more indigent hospital care, more slum schools—ad infinitum.” He paused again. “You’re beyond the point where you can even hope to catch up.”

  The mayor was silent, depressed.

  “What I’m saying,” the governor said, “is that our brand-new shining beautiful World Tower isn’t a sign of progress at all; it’s a sign of retrogression, just another dinosaur stable.” He finished his cognac and sighed. “So let’s go down to it and tell everybody that the building we dedicate today is a symbol of the future, man’s hope, the greatest thing that has come along since the wheel.” He stood up wearily. “What the hell else can we say?”

  8

  2:30P.M.-3:02P.M.

  Assistant Fire Commissioner Timothy O’Reilly Brown was tall, redheaded, and intense, with a low boiling point. He did not know Nat, but he knew Ben Caldwell by soaring reputation, and if there was anyone in the entire city who did not know of the World Tower building, Tim Brown had no idea who it might be, so he was not on entirely unknown ground. Nevertheless, “What you’re telling me,” he told Nat now, “is a purely internal matter. I’ve no desire to mix into it. You and Bert McGraw and the owners can straighten it out between you.”

  “You know better than I do, of course,” Nat said, “but aren’t fire regulations sometimes relaxed or maybe overlooked when a special event has to go through on schedule?” He was being as tactful as he knew how. It was uphill work.

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  “You heard me.”

  Tact be damned. “That,” Nat said, “is horseshit, and you know it. Most firemen, fire inspectors, are honest, just as most cops and building inspectors and most contractors are honest and most mistakes that are made are honest mistakes.” He paused. “But some aren’t, and you know that too.”

  Tim Brown said, “The door is right behind you. I don’t know what kind of shenanigans you’re trying to pull, but I’m not even going to listen to the pitch. Out.”

  Nat made no move. “Suppose,” he said, “just suppose—”

  “I said out!”

  “I don’t think you’re big enough to put me out,” Nat said, “and think of the stink there’d be if you tried and something did happen at the Tower building.” He paused. “It would look like Assistant Commissioner Brown had his fingers into something, wouldn’t it? Or don’t you even care about that?”

  Tim Brown had half-risen in his chair. He sat down now. The nightmare of every public official, of course, was the possibility of merely being accused of misprision whether innocent or not. He hesitated.

  “I’m not accusing anybody,” Nat said. “I’m not hankering for a slander suit. But what I am saying is that apparently changes in electrical design have been made, and maybe those changes reduce or even eliminate the designed safety factors, and if certain leniencies in fire regulations were allowed in order not to stop this scheduled opening, then if anything were to happen in that building, there might be hell to pay and no pitch hot.” He leaned back in his chair. “I may be jumping at shadows. I hope I am. Then you can call me a fool and I’ll apologize for taking up your time.”

  Brown was silent still, thinking hard. He said at last, “What do you want me to do?”

  “It’s your department, but—”

  “That’s no help. You come in here shouting ‘Fire!’ and then wash your hands of all knowledge. You—”

  “If and w
hen you climb down off your high horse,” Nat said, “maybe we can make some kind of sense, but not before.” He stood up. “I’ve tossed it in your lap.” He started for the door.

  “Hold it,” Brown said. “Sit down.” His face was suddenly weary. He took a deep breath to regain control. He said slowly, “I’ve got a sick wife and an ulcer and an understaffed fire department in a city full of people who don’t give a shit about the kind of protection we try to give them, who think alarm boxes are for games—do you know that I lost two men this last week, two men killed answering false alarms?” He shook his head. “Never mind. My problems.” He opened a drawer, got out a pack of cigarettes, shook one loose, broke it in half and threw it angrily into the wastebasket. He tossed the package back into the drawer and slammed the drawer shut. “That’s fourteen today I haven’t smoked,” he said. He made himself sit quietly. “Now let’s talk sense.” He paused. “What exactly have you got?”

  Better, Nat thought, and ticked items off on his fingers. “First,” he said, “a batch of copies of design-change authorizations with my name on them that I didn’t sign. We’ll have to assume somebody wanted the changes made. Joe Lewis, the electrical engineer, is checking the changes now to see how deep they go.”

  “How do you know they were even made?”

  “We have to assume they were. Isn’t that how you people think? You assume the worst can happen and you try to prevent it? Not all oily rags ignite spontaneously, but you call all oily rags fire hazards.”

  True enough. Brown, calmer now, nodded affirmation.

  “It’s out of my field,” Nat said, “and I’m just guessing, but I can think of a dozen things your people might have overlooked, knowing that the building isn’t really occupied and knowing too that today’s doings were planned months ago and can’t be postponed.” He paused. “Pressure in the stand-pipes, floor hoses actually in place, fire doors operable and not blocked, sprinkler systems checked out, standby generators checked and ready—how much is your department’s job, and how much belongs to building inspectors, I don’t know; you’ve always seemed to work together.”