The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “And?”

  “He said it was a mistake, that probably he ought to have paddled my patrician ass.” Like a little girl, she thought, a spoiled little girl given her way too long.

  “As the British say,” Paul said, “the cat seems to be amongst the pigeons.”

  Would she have laughed at the phraseology before? No matter. “This isn’t really a time for witticisms.”

  “What is it a time for? Lamentations?” Paul glanced again at the screen, the tiny silent moving shapes. “There’s nothing I can do down there. Nothing.” He faced Zib again. “What’s done, as Shakespeare might have said, is already done and not to be undone.”

  “You could try. They’re trying.”

  “That,” Paul said, “is the kind of platitude we’re raised on. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ And they cite David the Bruce and his goddam spider. I think it was W. C. Fields who put it much better. ‘If at first you don’t succeed,’ he said, ‘give up; stop making a fool of yourself.’’

  Zib said slowly, “Have you any idea what has happened? Is that it?”

  “How would I have an idea?”

  “What you said about what’s done.”

  “A figure of speech.”

  “I don’t think it was. I think—”

  “I don’t give a tinker’s dam what you think.” Paul’s voice was cold. “You’re decorative and sometimes amusing, and you’re very good in bed, but thinking isn’t your forte.”

  Oh God, Zib thought, dialogue straight out of the magazine! Unreal. Escape fiction come alive. But the words were like a slap, not a blow. Where was real hurt? “You flatter me,” she said.

  “We agreed at the beginning—”

  “That it was fun and games,” Zib said. “Yes.”

  “Don’t tell me you began to take us seriously?”

  The bastard, she thought; he is actually pleased. “No,” she said. “There was never anything about you to take seriously.” She paused and glanced at the screen. “There is even less now.” She faced Paul squarely. “You were the man on the job. I know that much. Paul Simmons and Company, Electrical Contractors. Did you skimp the work?” She was silent for a moment, thinking, remembering. “Once you told me that Nat was going to do you favors, only he wouldn’t know it. Was that what you meant?”

  “Silly questions,” Paul said, “don’t deserve even silly answers.” He walked to the television set and switched it off. “Well,” he said, “it’s been nice. Don’t think it hasn’t.” He walked to the door. “I’ll miss this hotel and its cozy atmosphere.” His hand was on the knob.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I think I’ll go see a couple of men,” Paul said. “And then I think I’ll go home.” He opened the door and stepped through. The door closed quietly.

  Zib stood motionless in the center of the room. Unreal, incredible: those were the words that came to mind. She tucked them away for later examination and walked to the bed, plumped herself down, and picked up the telephone.

  She had no need to look up the number; after all these years the construction office telephone number was familiar enough. And Nat was there. Zib kept her voice calm, expressionless. “I gave Paul your message.”

  “He’s coming down?”

  “No.” Zib paused. “I’m—sorry, Nat. I tried.”

  “Where is he going?”

  There was in his tone a quality Zib had never encountered. Call it strength, force, whatever; it dominated. “He said he’s going to see a couple of men,” she said, “and then he thinks he’ll go home.”

  “Okay,” Nat said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Have him picked up. Objections?”

  Zib shook her head in silence. No objections. “He saw the television,” she said. “And I told him what you had said.” She paused again. “He said, ‘What’s done is already done and not to be undone.’ Does that mean anything?”

  Nat’s voice was quiet but unhesitant. “Entirely too goddam much,” he said, and hung up.

  He turned from the telephone and looked around the office trailer. Assistant Commissioner Brown was there, and two battalion chiefs, Giddings, Patty, Potter, and himself. “Simmons,” he said, “apparently has seen all he wants to see on the tube. I don’t know if we can use him or not, but I think we want him.”

  “If you want him, we’ll get him,” Potter said.

  Giddings said, “More important, if Lewis has done his figuring, let’s get some men on the job and see if we can get power to at least one of those express elevators.”

  Nat snapped his fingers. “Simmons’s foreman—what’s his name? Pat? Pat Harris.” He was looking at Giddings, and he saw that Giddings understood. To Brown, Nat said, “We need him and some men. Maybe they can do some good and maybe they can’t, but we’ll try.” He paused. “But we need Harris for another reason. Simmons didn’t put those changes in with his own hands. Harris had to know about them.”

  Patty cleared her throat. She was alone, a trifle diffident, but quite at ease in this man’s world. To how many jobs had she ridden with Daddy? In how many construction trailers just like this one had she sat and twiddled her thumbs, waiting for technical discussion to end and a hooky afternoon’s excursion to begin? How much knowledge had she absorbed unknowingly? “There is somebody else who would have had to know about the changes,” she said. She paused. “The inspector who signed them off. Who was he?”

  In the silence Nat said again, “Good girl.”

  Giddings said, “We’ll damn well find out and get the son of a bitch down here. I know his face. His name—” He was silent for a moment. “Harry,” he said. “Harry. I don’t know his last name, but we’ll find it.”

  16

  5:01P.M.-5:11P.M.

  Mayor Ramsay came out of the office in search of his wife. He found her alone at the Tower Room windows, looking out over the broad shining river. She smiled as he came up.

  “So solemn, Bob,” she said. “Is it really as solemn an occasion as Bent indicated?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You will think of something.”

  “No.” The mayor shook his head. “Any thinking will have to be done by the technical people—Ben Caldwell, his man at the other end of the phone, or Tim Brown.” He paused. His smile was wry. “And any orders will come from Bent, not from me.”

  “It is your city, Bob.”

  Again denial by headshake. “There comes a time,” Ramsay said, “when you have to admit that others are better men than you are. I’m not in Bent’s class.”

  “That is nonsense.” Paula’s smile was gentle. “And you will only make me cross if you persist in thinking it. You are the finest man I have ever known.”

  Ramsay was silent for a little time, staring almost as if hypnotized at the river. “Bent threw something out this afternoon. He called this building just another dinosaur stable.” He smiled at his wife. “There is the germ of truth there. Maybe I’ve been too busy running here, running there, patching this or that to see it.”

  “I don’t understand, Bob.”

  “Where is the merit,” the mayor asked, “in building the biggest anything? The biggest pyramid, the biggest ship, the biggest dam, or the biggest building? The biggest city, for that matter. The dinosaurs were the biggest and it was their size that finished them. That is Bent’s point.” He shook his head. “No,” he said, “quality and need ought to be the criteria, and need ought to come first. Do we need it? Is it possible? Those two questions ought to be asked at the beginning, and the answers written down in indelible ink in large letters so they won’t be forgotten.”

  “Where have you strayed from that?” Paula said.

  “I let the city stray from it. Is a building like this necessary? The answer is no. We have all the office space we can use. More. And I could have stopped it. Instead, I gave it every bit of help City Hall could give it. One more piece of—vanity, a building all the world would admire.” />
  “And will, Bob.”

  The mayor opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again in silence. In the end all he said was, “Maybe.” There was no point yet in crying doom.

  Paula said, “Thirty-five years is a long time, Bob. People get to know one another well.” She paused. “I’ve been thinking while I stood here with you, knowing what was in your mind.” She smiled. “There are telephones. I think we might use one, don’t you?”

  The mayor frowned.

  “I think we might call Jill,” Paula said. “She was going to watch on television. She will be worried.”

  “Good idea.” All at once the mayor was smiling again, the boyish smile the voters knew so well. “We’ll reassure her.”

  “That,” Paula said, “wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

  “Now wait a minute.” The boyish smile faded, disappeared. “There’s no need to panic.”

  “Not panic, Bob, but isn’t it time that we stopped pretending there is nothing out of joint? Those helicopters out there—what good can they do? The firemen Bent says are coming up the stairs—” Paula shook her head. Her smile was gentle, unreproachful, even understanding, but it asserted denial. “The last mad dash to the top of Everest—why? What are they even hoping to accomplish?”

  “Damn it,” the mayor said, “you don’t just—give up.”

  “I am not giving up, Bob.”

  “Maybe I misunderstood you,” the mayor said slowly. “Just what were you thinking to tell Jill?”

  “Mostly little things.”

  “Adding up to what?”

  Paula smiled, mocking herself. The smile was quickly gone. She said slowly, “Adding up to ‘au revoir.’ I want to hear her voice again. I want her to hear ours. I want to tell her where in that big house she will find our own silver—Grandmother Jones’s. I want her to know that there is some jewelry of mine, some you gave me, some that has been in the family for generations—that it is in the safe deposit box at the Irving Trust branch at Forty-second and Park and that the key is in my desk. I want to tidy up as many loose ends as I can.

  “But aside from things, I want her to know that we don’t think she has failed, even with her divorce. I want her to know that we understand that we heaped too much on her because there were always cameras and reporters and microphones, and that it has been hard enough for us, you and me, adults, to retain some kind of perspective, and that from the beginning it was probably impossible for her, a child, to see the world as anything but sugarplum candy—and all hers before she had earned any part of it. And you have to earn it or it is never really yours.

  “I want her to be happy, to find her own happiness, and in that sense it will be a good thing if we are—no longer around because then she will have no shelter in which to hide and shiver and feel sorry for herself.

  “But most of all, Bob, I want her to know what is true and has always been true—that she is very precious to us, wanted; and that now that we’re up here in this ridiculous predicament, it is she we are thinking of, no one else. Maybe that will give her a little support, a little more—strength than she has so far managed to develop.” Paula paused. “Those are some of the things I want to say, Bob. Are they—wrong?”

  The mayor took her arm. His voice was gentle. “Let’s find a phone,” he said.

  Cary Wycoff found Senator Peters leaning against a wall, watching the room. “You’re taking it calmly enough,” the congressman said. There was accusation in his voice.

  “What do you suggest?” the senator said. “A speech? A committee hearing? Should we draft a bill or a minority report?” He paused. His voice altered subtly. “Or should we call the White House and lay the blame squarely on this administration, and then call Jack Anderson and give him the inside story?”

  Wycoff said, “You and Bent Armitage—you both treat me as if I were still a kid, wet behind the ears.”

  “Maybe, son,” the senator said, “that’s because sometimes you behave that way. Not always, but sometimes. Like now.” He looked around the big room. “There are a lot of silly people here who haven’t the faintest idea what is going on. Have you ever seen panic? Real panic? A crowd gone wild with fear?”

  Wycoff said, “Have you?” He ought to have known better, he told himself: Jake Peters never waved an empty gun in discussion or argument.

  “I was in Anchorage in sixty-four,” the senator said, “when the earthquake hit.” He paused. “Have you ever been in even a small earthquake? No? The fright, I think, is like nothing else. You think of the earth as solid, unchanging, secure. And when even it begins to move under you, then there is no security left anywhere.” He made a small impatient gesture. “Never mind. I have seen panic, yes. And I don’t want to see it again. Particularly here.”

  “All right,” Wycoff said, “neither do I. What do you suggest?”

  “That I move away from this wall,” the senator said, and did so.

  Wycoff opened his mouth in anger. He shut it with a snap.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” the senator said. “I’m not having you on. Feel the wall. Hot, isn’t it? I’ve been leaning there feeling it heat up. It’s come along pretty fast. That probably means that heated air, maybe even open fire, is climbing up some of the shafts in the core.” He glanced at his watch and smiled without amusement. “Faster than I thought.”

  “You ought to have been a scientist.” There was disgust in Wycoff’s voice.

  “Aren’t we, you and I? Practicing social scientists, that is?” The senator smiled, this time with amusement. “Not very damned scientific, I’ll grant you, but we do try to measure the pulse and the blood pressure of the people we represent—and then act accordingly.”

  “And sometimes, maybe most times,” Wycoff said, “not act at all.”

  “That in itself is activity. Which,” the senator said, “is something it apparently takes a long time to learn, and some people never learn it. ‘Don’t just stand there, do something!’ That’s the usual reaction. Instead, sometimes, ‘Don’t do something, just stand there!’ would be a far more sensible dictum. Do you remember when Mowgli falls into the nest of cobras and they don’t want to hurt him, but they tell Kaa, the rock python, in effect, ‘For Christ’s sake, tell him to stand still and stop prancing around and stepping on us!’ Hell’s fire, boy, I don’t like this situation a damn bit better than you do, but I can’t think of anything to do about it, and unless or until I can think of something helpful, there is nothing to do without making things worse. So relax and watch the people. Where do you suppose Bob and Paula Ramsay are headed so purposefully? For the Johns?”

  Wycoff smiled. “As good a guess as any.”

  “Probably better than most,” the senator said. “Right in the middle of a debate that has raised hackles on both sides of the aisle and filled the galleries with press and radio and TV people and just plain interested people, partisan people convinced the nation’s future is at stake and maybe it is—right in the middle of it, the senior senator from Nebraska or Oklahoma or, yes, New York, leans over to his colleague and whispers something in his ear, and the press gallery takes careful note that something is about to happen. And it is. What the senior senator is saying is, ‘George, I’ve got to pee or bust. It was all that coffee plus the bean soup. I’ll be back before the windbag is even close to done.’ And he stands up and walks solemnly out of the chamber. Everybody in the gallery thinks he’s headed straight for the White House to have it out with The Man.”

  Wycoff smiled again. “What do you want for an epitaph, Jake? ‘Exit laughing’?”

  The senator shook his head. His expression was serious. “No. I’d like to feel that I had earned the proudest epitaph of all: ‘With what he had, he did the best he could.’ I think we might as well have a drink, don’t you?”

  Joe Lewis the electrical engineer said, “We can’t know what’s happened. Maybe the motors are burned out. Maybe the cable carrying power to them is gone. All we can do is bring in ano
ther cable from the substation, splice it in, and hope that there’s enough of the rising cable left to carry power to the elevator motors.” He lifted his hands and let them fall. “That’s the best we can do.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Giddings said. “Con Edison will give us all the help they can.” He paused and stared at the sky where the great buildings seemed almost to come together. “Will you give me one good reason,” he said, “why we thought we had to build the goddam thing so big?”

  “Because,” Joe Lewis said, “somebody else built a big one and ours had to be bigger. Simple as that. Let’s go.”

  17

  5:03P.M.-5:18P.M.

  Zib was back at her desk at the magazine and unable to concentrate. It was late, but there were piles of manuscripts before her, all of which had been read and passed along as possibilities for purchase, and usually she found the reading of them at least an interesting exercise in judgment. Today, now, she found them pointless, even silly—what was the current phrase?—without relevance.

  And yet that was not true. Without even looking at the pages, she knew that a good share, even most of the stories would deal with young women and their problems, and if that was not relevant, what in the world was? Because she was a young woman, wasn’t she? And God knew it was plain enough at last that she had problems like everybody else.

  Like everybody else. That was the phrase that hurt, because always she had considered that she was not like anybody else.

  She had grown up as Zib Marlowe, a name that had meaning, and now she was married to rising young Nat Wilson of Ben Caldwell’s firm. Those two facts alone were sufficient to set her apart. But there was more.

  There was her job here, as fiction editor for one of the few remaining national magazines, and she did the job well. There was the fact of her looks and figure, and an educated intelligence far above average. There was—oh, you name the criteria, and whatever they were you would find Ms. Zib Marlowe Wilson crowding the upper limits.