The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “We do.” Brown smiled wearily. “Or we try. We try to work with the cops too—”

  “And that’s another thing,” Nat said. “The plaza’s crawling with cops. I assume that’s because somebody is worried about something.” And, face it, he told himself, that makes you a little more uptight too. “So am I,” he said, “even if I don’t know what.” He was thinking of the blinking elevator lights, the soft whirring of the high-speed cables as somebody moved around in the empty building at will.

  “These days,” Brown said, “with nuts throwing bombs or shooting into crowds for no reason at all, everybody is always worried about everything.” He paused. “Or ought to be.” He sighed. “All right. I’ll see what I can find out. And I’ll see that the building is as well covered now as a building that size can be.”

  The words started up again a train of thought already half-forgotten. “A building that size,” Nat said, and paused thoughtfully. “Despite every safety factor we design into it and every care we take with it and every possible threat we anticipate and plan for—it’s still vulnerable, isn’t it?”

  Brown opened the desk drawer, glared down at the cigarette package, and then slammed the drawer shut again. “Yes,” he said, “your big building is vulnerable. The bigger they are, the more vulnerable they are. You just don’t think about it.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Nat said.

  He walked again, back to the Caldwell offices. Ben Caldwell had already left for the ceremonies at the Tower building. Nat walked into his own office and sat down to stare at the drawings thumbtacked to the wall.

  He told himself that he was being frightened of shadows as when, a time not easily forgotten, backpacking alone somewhere above the thirteen-thousand-foot contour, he had come across the largest bear tracks he had ever seen showing plainly the long front claws that spell grizzly.

  Grizzly bears were extinct, some said; or near enough. Near enough was no consolation. One grizzly bear was more than ample: one grizzly bear was entirely too much.

  Black bears were one thing: you left them alone and, unless it was a mother with cubs, they would not bother you. But the big fellow, Ursus horribilis, played by no rules except his own: what grizzly wanted, grizzly took, and his temper was short.

  He could outrun a horse and he could kill a thousand-pound steer with a single blow of his forepaw. Searching for goodies like marmots or pikas, he could overturn with a flick of a paw rocks that two men together could not lift. When you hunted grizzly, or his cousin the big Alaska brown, you never, never, never fired unless you were above him; otherwise, those who knew assured you, no matter what weight weapon you were firing, he would get to you, and then it was Kitty-bar-the-door. And Nat wasn’t even carrying a gun.

  All of this brought to mind by a few footprints on a windswept mountain slope high above timberline.

  The balance of that afternoon Nat had had the feeling that he wanted to look in all directions at once; and that night after dark, in his sleeping bag, staring up at the stars and at occasional clouds that moved across their patterns, it had been worse: every night sound, every rustle of wind in rocks or stunted Alpine growth, sounded an alarm, and despite his fatigue from the day’s tramping, sleep was a long time coming.

  When he awakened shortly after first light and reluctantly climbed out of the warm sleeping bag into the brisk mountain air, the grizzly was not immediately in his thoughts—until he saw the fresh tracks only feet from where he had slept. The great beast had obviously come to see what this strange animal was; for all his bulk quieter than the night itself, curious, fearless—and in the end, uninterested.

  Nat never saw the bear, but he never forgot it. Now, sitting in his silent office, “I never saw the man in the building either,” he said aloud, “and probably I’ll never see him, and maybe he is harmless too, but I don’t for a moment believe it.”

  He sat up and put through a call to Joe Lewis. “Anything yet?”

  “We’re not magicians,” Lewis said. “Some of those changes we’re going to have to put into the computer and see what happens if: if we have a circuit failure here or an overload there, that kind of thing you don’t expect but you’ve got to consider.” He paused. “You aren’t usually jumpy.”

  “I am now,” Nat said, “and if you ask me why, I can’t tell you. Call it a hunch.”

  There was a short silence. Lewis said, “When did these changes turn up?”

  “This morning. Giddings brought them in.”

  “Where did he get them?”

  “I don’t know.” Nat paused. “Maybe I’d better find out.”

  There was no answer at Giddings’s telephone at the Tower building. Nat called Frazee’s office. Frazee had already gone to the festivities. “Can’t have a program without the MC,” Letitia Flores said. “My boss man is starting the talkfest right about now.” Letitia was plump, fluent in four languages, efficient as Joe Lewis’s computer. “Anything I can do?”

  “Giddings,” Nat said. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Charlie’s Bar on Third Avenue.” Letitia gave the address. “Next question?”

  “If he calls in,” Nat said, “tell him I’m looking for him.”

  “Shall I tell him why?”

  Strangely, Nat thought, there was no need. On this problem, their previous frequent differences notwithstanding, he and Will Giddings saw eye to eye. “He’ll know,” he said.

  Again he walked, without thought of the exertion, without any sense of physical fatigue, by the turmoil that was building in his mind compelled into activity. This time he noticed his surroundings.

  Just in the years he had known it Third Avenue had changed. He had come too late for the El, which once had rocketed down through the Bowery, a summer-night excursion, he had been told, with open lighted tenement windows showing humanity in most of its usually private activities. But just in the last few years the change in the avenue seemed to have accelerated, and what once had been neighborhood was now impersonal shops and apartment buildings, sidewalks filled with strangers, hurriers-on, passers-through. Like himself.

  Charlie’s Bar was a throwback: swinging doors with the name etched in heavy glass, heavy dark wood bar and booths and tables, the smell of pipe-smoke and malt, and the sound of quiet male talk. It was a bar where customers were known and a man could still while away a quiet afternoon over a few mugs of beer and talk. Zib, for all her Women’s Lib, Nat thought, would come in here and immediately twitch to get back out again though no word of unwelcome would be spoken.

  He found Giddings at the bar, a shot glass of whiskey and a full mug of beer in front of him, and the bartender leaning on an elbow in friendly conversation.

  Giddings was not drunk, but there was a glint in his eyes. “Well, well,” he said, “look who’s here. Wrong side of town, isn’t it?”

  “You can do better than that, Will.” Nat gestured at the drinks on the bar. “I’ll have the beer, but not the shot.” Then, again to Giddings, “Let’s take a booth. Talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Can’t you guess? I’ve talked with Joe Lewis. His people are going to the computers. I’ve talked with a fellow named Brown downtown.”

  “Tim Brown?” Giddings was alert now.

  Nat nodded. He accepted the filled mug of beer, reached for his pocket.

  Giddings said, “No. On my check.” He slid down from his stool. “Charlie McGonigle, Nat Wilson. We’ll be over in the corner booth, Charlie.” He led the way, drinks in hand.

  The beer was good, cool, not icy, soothing. Nat drank deep and set the mug down.

  “Why Tim Brown?” Giddings said. He ignored the boiler-maker in front of him.

  It was beginning to sound like a record too often played or a word become meaningless. Nat wished it were. “Too many mistakes,” he said. “You’re an engineer. You understand that. Something goes wrong. It ought to stop right there because we’ve designed in safety devices that ought to function immediately.” He paused
. “But suppose the safety device has been bypassed? Or it isn’t functioning because the fire department people or the inspectors let it go just for now?”

  Giddings shook himself like a dog on a hearth. “Maybe,” he said. “But if you went to Tim Brown, you’re thinking fire. Why?” Bert McGraw’s mention of jinxed buildings was very much in his mind. He wished he could shake the thought.

  “Electrical changes,” Nat said, “all of them. You can fuse steel with a hundred and ten volts. I’ve done it: a knife blade shorted out in an electric toaster once.”

  Giddings’s nod was almost imperceptible. His eyes were steady on Nat’s face.

  “We bring power into that building,” Nat said, “at thirteen thousand eight hundred volts, not a hundred and ten—”

  “You’re thinking of whoever it was riding the elevators?” Giddings paused. “But why? Tell me, man, for the love of God, why?”

  “I don’t know.” Simple truth, but the hunch that was almost conviction remained. “You’re a big man,” Nat said. “You ever been in a bar fight?”

  Giddings smiled faintly, without amusement. “One or two.”

  “Has it ever been because some little man was liquored up and looking to show what a ring-tailed wonder he was and he picked on you because you were the biggest man in the bar?”

  Giddings was silent, thoughtful. “Go on.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Nat said. “I’m an architect. I also know horses and I know mountains and I know skiing and—and things. I don’t think I know much about people.”

  “Go on,” Giddings said again.

  “I’m no shrink,” Nat said. “But if somebody can’t get anybody to pay attention to him even when he goes around like a freak, and decides that, say, a bomb is the only answer, where does he plant it? In an airplane gets lots of attention—but they don’t plant bombs in little airplanes, do they? It’s always a big shiny jet. Or it’s at a crowded airport that’s known around the world—it isn’t at Teterboro or Santa Fe.”

  Giddings picked up the shot glass and set it down again untouched. “You’ve flipped,” he said. And he added, “I hope.”

  “I hope so too.” Nat felt calmer now, almost resigned, which was strange. “That building of ours,” he said, “is the biggest. And today is the day everybody is looking at it. Look there.” He pointed to the color TV set mounted behind the bar.

  The set was on, the volume turned down. The picture was of the World Tower Plaza, the police barricades, the temporary platform now partially filled with seated guests. Grover Frazee, a carnation in his buttonhole, smiled and extended his hand as more guests mounted the platform stairs. A band was playing; the music reached only faintly across the barroom.

  “You didn’t want the opening,” Nat said. “Neither did I. Now I want it even less and I can’t say why.” He paused. “Look there.”

  The television camera had swung from the platform and the guests to the crowds behind the barricades. Here and there a hand waved at the lens, but it was on scattered handheld signs that the camera focused. “STOP THE WAR!” one sign read. “STOP THE BOMBING!” urged another. The signs waved angrily.

  The camera moved on, paused, and then zoomed in to focus on a new sign: “MILLIONS FOR THIS MONSTER BUILDING! BUT How ABOUT WELFARE ?”

  “All right,” Giddings said. “The natives are restless. They always are these days.” He picked up the shot glass and knocked the drink back, his good humor restored.

  The camera had returned to the platform steps where the governor and the mayor paused to wave at the crowd. Watching, “I always have the feeling,” Giddings said, “that politicians will gather to dedicate a whorehouse if there’s publicity to be had.” He was smiling now. “But, then, whores vote too, same as anybody else.”

  Nat said quietly, “Where did you get those change orders, Will?” He watched Giddings’s smile disappear.

  “Are they real, do you mean?” Giddings said. There was truculence in his tone.

  “You’ve shown me copies,” Nat said. “Where are the originals?”

  “Look, sonny—”

  Nat shook his head. “I told you: not that way. If you’re afraid to answer the question, just say so.”

  “Afraid, hell.”

  “Then where are the originals?”

  Giddings turned the empty shot glass around and around on the tabletop. He said at last, “I don’t know.” He looked up. “And that’s the stupid simple truth. What I got in the mail yesterday was an envelope of Xerox copies.” He paused. “No return address. Grand Central Station postmark.” He spread his large hands. “No note. Just the copies.” He paused again. “It could be somebody’s idea of a joke.”

  “Do you think that?”

  Giddings shook his head slowly. “I don’t.”

  “Neither,” Nat said, “do I.”

  9

  3:10P.M.-4:03P.M.

  Watching the arriving guests and the still orderly crowds behind the barricades, considering the waving signs in all their shades of meaning or non-meaning, Patrolman Barnes said, “Security. Ten years ago, Mike, did you ever hear the word?”

  “The name of the game,” Shannon said, as if the cliché explained everything. He was a fine figure of a man and conscious of it. In front of the barricades he did not exactly strut, but neither did he try to make himself inconspicuous. “You not only read too much, Frank, you think too much.”

  “‘Free the Russian Jews,’” Barnes read from a nearby waving sign. “The last time I saw that sign was in the UN plaza.”

  “With today’s prices,” Shannon said, “you save what you can to use over and over again. At the ballpark you see the same banners game after game.”

  “Not quite the same,” Barnes said. He was smiling. He and Mike Shannon got along fine, and if there was disparity between them in education or even quickness of intellect, well, what of it? Other factors, like ease, rapport, and loyalty, were far more important. “Have you been inside this building at all, Mike?”

  Shannon had not. It was not exactly that a building is a building is a building, although some of that concept did color his thinking; it was rather that in the city there are so many buildings, as there are so many neighborhoods, that a man could drive himself daft trying to keep up with them all and did best to mind his own business in his own familiar areas. He said as much. “But you,” he said, and shook his head, “you take in too much territory, Frank. It isn’t healthy.” He paused. “What about the inside of this building? What sets it apart?” He paused again and looked heavenward. “Aside from its size?”

  “A central security desk,” Barnes said. “There is that word again. It’s a command post in touch with every floor. There’s a computer center that controls temperature and humidity and heaven knows what-all throughout the whole building. The fire doors to the stairwells are locked electronically, but if there is an emergency, they automatically open from the stair side. There is a double fire-alarm system that can be activated from any floor.” He was silent, smiling faintly.

  “And what is funny?” Shannon said.

  “I heard a story once,” Barnes said. “The airplane of the future. It takes off from Heathrow Airport near London. It tucks up its flaps and gear and swings its wings into supersonic position. Then a voice comes on the loudspeaker: ‘Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen,’ the voice says. ‘This is Flight One Hundred, London to New York. We will fly at an altitude of sixty-three thousand feet, at a speed of seven hundred twenty miles an hour, and we will arrive at Kennedy Airport at precisely three-fifty-five New York time. This is the most advanced aircraft in the world. It is entirely automated, and there is no pilot aboard. All operations of the aircraft are handled electronically, all contingencies have been anticipated, and nothing can possibly go wrong go wrong go wrong . . . wrong.’”

  Shannon shook his head. “I don’t know where you get them,” he said.

  Grover Frazee, that fresh carnation in his buttonhole, waited hatless an
d smiling at the foot of the platform steps in the Tower Plaza, as automobile after automobile drew up in the cleared street lane to discharge its passengers. Every one of them wore, Frazee thought, the expression that is reserved for weddings, parliament or legislature openings, or dedications. Oh, yes, and for funerals. Now where did that thought come from?

  He stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Mr. Ambassador,” he said, “how generous of you to take the time to come here today.”

  “I vould not have missed it, Mr. Frazee. This huge beautiful building dedicated to man’s communication with man—” The ambassador shook his head in admiration.

  Senator John Peters had shared a taxi from LaGuardia with Representative Cary Wycoff. They had flown up from Washington together on a shuttle, and part of their conversation stuck in Cary Wycoff’s mind. The conversation had begun idly enough while they were still on the ground at National Airport.

  “Time was,” the senator had said as they fastened their seat belts, “when it was the railroad or nothing. Back before the war. You don’t remember that, do you?”

  Cary Wycoff did not. He was thirty-four years old, in his second term in Congress, and even the Korean War was before his time, let alone World War II, which obviously Jake Peters was referring to. “You are pulling rank on me, Senator,” Cary said.

  The senator grinned. “Pure envy. I’d like to be your age again, just starting out.”

  “Now,” Cary asked, “or then?” He had never thought of it before in quite this way, but was the wish for renewed youth pure nostalgia or simply a desire to stick around and see what came next? Sheer selfishness or intelligent curiosity?

  “Now,” the senator said with emphasis. “I have no hankering for the past. I went down to Washington in thirty-six. Depression is only a word now. It was a pustulating sickness then, and no matter how much we told ourselves we were making progress in curing it, actually all we were doing was feeding the patient aspirin and putting Band-Aids on his open sores and hoping to God he wouldn’t die on our hands.”