The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “I see,” Paul said, and that was all.

  “He didn’t get to talk to Wilson,” Harris said. “He had an accident instead. He fell in front of an IRT express at rush hour.”

  In the silence, “I see,” Paul said again. “But why tell me? Is your conscience bothering you?”

  Harris’s smile this time was real and meaningful. “You might stand up at that,” he said. “And if I back you up, I got to gamble that you won’t fold and try to put it all on me.”

  “I’m not going to fold,” Paul said. He sipped his whisky. It tasted better.

  “Just one more thing,” Harris said. “What’s in it for me?”

  “You’ve already had yours.”

  Harris shook his head. “Uh-uh. I got paid for doing a job. I did it. This is something else.”

  Had he expected this kind of shakedown? Paul asked himself. Probably, he thought, because he felt no sense of outrage or shock, merely determination that the bargain would be a good one. He had no doubt of his ability to out-haggle this little man. “How much?” he said.

  Harris was smiling again. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Paul went up the stairs alone. Down in the game room the television set was again turned on, Harris engrossed in the unfolding tragedy. To Mrs. Harris, who had taken out her blue hair curlers and now smiled fetchingly, “You have a lovely home,” Paul said.

  “Why, thank you, thanks a lot.” There was genuine pleasure.

  “Pat,” Paul said, “is a lucky man.”

  As he drove away, a black-and-white police cruiser turned the corner toward the Harris house. Paul watched it in his mirror. It parked at the curb facing the wrong way, and two uniformed policemen got out and walked up to the Harris’s door.

  Paul drove on.

  19

  5:13P.M.-5:23P.M.

  Within the building’s core, as in a chimney, heated air rising created its own draft, which sucked fresh air in through open concourse doors.

  Outside the city’s tallest fire ladders maneuvered uselessly; the problem was within, not without.

  On floor after floor, above and below street level, sweating, panting, coughing, and sometimes vomiting firemen wrestled hoses and hurled water, tons of water, at the sometimes seen, but usually hidden enemy—fire.

  In a thousand points within the walls of the building, ten thousand, material smoldered or burst into hesitant flame, grew in force and fury, or faded into mere glow and then nothingness from lack of oxygen.

  But where, for example, plastic-foam insulation had melted, flues were formed and in them a new chimney effect reached down and out into open halls and corridors for fresh air to feed the blaze, and the growing flames themselves added strength to the draft.

  Firemen Denis Howard and Lou Storr paused on the sixtieth floor. They stood for a time gasping, merely existing, while their lungs poured oxygen into their blood and strength gradually returned to their bodies. They looked at each other in silence.

  It was Howard who approached the fire door, tried it, and found it free. He opened it cautiously and, as a blast of furnace air enveloped him, had a look inside. Then he shut the door quickly. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Storr opened his mouth. He shut it again. Slowly he nodded. “Might as well.” He paused. “Excelsior and all that jazz.”

  In the trailer Patty turned from the telephone and held out a slip of paper to Lieutenant Potter. “John Connors,” she said. “He worked on the job months back. A sheet-metal man.” She paused. “He was fired.” She paused again. “The union made no protest.”

  The last sentence said a great deal, Nat thought. The firing was clearly justified or the union would have been up in arms. But what did that mean, except that John Connors had obviously been found wanting in some respect? There was no point in probing further into the circumstances of the firing; Connors himself had to be the answer to the question of why he had come to the building today and done what he had.

  Potter saw it the same way. “A sorehead?” he said. “Maybe. You never know how deep resentment goes.”

  Patty was looking out the trailer windows at the plaza, the dirty shimmering water now covering almost the entire area, the hoses like spaghetti, the pumping engines, and the crowds watching. “But,” she said, “to do what he did?” Her tone was incredulous. She turned to face the two men.

  Potter shrugged. “You never know.” He tucked the slip of paper in his pocket. “We’ll try to find out.”

  Patty said, “Why?” Her chin was up. “It’s done. It can’t be undone. And the man is dead.”

  “Let’s say,” Potter said, “that we like things neat and tidy.”

  Nat, watching Patty, found himself thinking that there was bulldog in her, more than a trace of her father’s stubborn pride. He thought of Bert McGraw and the mobster forty-five floors above the street, a showdown just as relentless and irrevocable as any scene in a Western. There was no give in Bert; there was none in Patty either.

  “There has to be more to it than that,” Patty said.

  Potter sighed. “There is, of course. From each of these—things we try to learn. Maybe some day we’ll know enough to stop crimes before they get started.” His smile was deprecatory, aimed inward at his own foolishness. “That will be a day.” He walked to the trailer door, opened it, and started out. Then he stopped and turned. “Luck,” he said, and was gone.

  At the far end of the trailer a walkie-talkie came to life. “Seventy-fifth floor,” a tired voice said, “and it’s getting hotter than the hinges, Chief. No smoke up here yet, but I hate to think what’s happening beyond these fire doors.”

  “Play it cool, boy,” the chief said. “If you can’t make it, you can’t make it.”

  Nat saw Assistant Commissioner Brown open his mouth and then close it again in silence. The battalion chief saw it too, and his jaw set in rising anger. “I’ll not deliberately throw good men away in a lost cause,” he said, “no matter who is up in that building.”

  Commissioner Brown nodded wearily.

  Nat said, “Are you sure it’s a lost cause?”

  “No, I’m not, and neither can you be sure it isn’t. Inside the fire doors of that building we’ve worked men up twelve floors with hoses.” The chief paused. “Near as we can tell there are a hundred more floors, each with their own fires, before the top is even in sight. I’ve spent twenty-five years learning my trade—”

  “Nobody questions that you know it well, Jim,” the assistant commissioner said, and there was temporary silence.

  “Another thing,” the battalion chief said, speaking still to Nat, “that electrical genius of yours. Drawing pretty pictures about how you string a wire here and a wire there and, lo and behold, an express elevator suddenly works.”

  “You don’t think so?” Nat said.

  “No, I don’t think so!” It was almost a shout. Then, in a weary quiet voice, “But I’m willing to try rockets if anybody thinks they’d have the chance of a snowball in Hell.”

  The chief was silent for a few moments before he turned to look at the assistant commissioner, “You haven’t said it yet, Tim, but you’ve been thinking it and I can’t blame you. My district—just how in hell could a thing like this happen? We’ve got a building code. It isn’t perfect, but it’s too good to let this happen. For five—six years this building has been under construction in front of God and everybody, with inspectors and my people and heaven only knows who else watching every step.” He stopped and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

  The assistant commissioner looked at Nat. “You seem to know more about it than anybody else,” he said, and left it there, implied accusation plain.

  His first reaction was resentment; with effort Nat stifled it. He said slowly, carefully, “I’m beginning to find out some things about it, maybe put some of them together, not that that helps what you’re trying to do.”

  Brown walked to the trailer windows and looked out, up. “
If you didn’t build them so goddam big,” he said. There was anger in his voice, the anger of helplessness. He turned from the windows. “What in hell are you trying to prove anyway?”

  “That,” Nat said slowly, “is a good question. I don’t know the answer.”

  “I think we’ve outsmarted ourselves,” Brown said. “You know what I mean?” He walked to a chair and plumped himself down, a sad, helpless, angry man. “Look. I was born and grew up in a little town upstate. Tallest building in the county was two stories not counting widow’s walks—no, the four-story Empire State Hotel over in the county seat. We had streams. With fish in them. And I can still taste the water that came out of our well.”

  Nat nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  “My grandfather took sick,” Brown said. “He was in his eighties. The doctor came in the middle of the night, stayed until noon the next day. By that time Grampa was dead.” He spread his large bony hands. “That was how it was. You were born, you lived, you died. Oh, maybe there were accidents, sure there were, and illnesses we can cure today we couldn’t even touch then. But there weren’t any hundred-and-twenty-five-story buildings and there weren’t a lot of other things too.”

  Giddings came up the trailer steps. His face was smoke-stained and his blue eyes were angry.

  “My wife’s uncle,” Brown said as if Giddings had not appeared, “he’s pushing ninety. He’s in a hospital. Never mind what it costs. He can’t hear and he can’t see and he doesn’t know anything that’s going on. They feed him through a tube and he lies there, still breathing, his heart still beating, and his kidneys and bowels still functioning. He’s been like that for three months. The doctors know how to keep him alive, if that’s the word, but they don’t know when to let him die decently. We’re too goddam smart for our own good.”

  “I’ll go with that,” Nat said. He looked at Giddings and waited.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Giddings said. “Personally, I think no. We haven’t any idea what’s happened in the upper elevator shafts. There’s plenty of heat up there, too goddam much heat, we know that. The rails could be distorted—” He shrugged. “You name it and it could have happened by now. We should have told them to take the stairs—”

  Brown said, “The doors wouldn’t open.”

  “Break the goddam doors down.”

  Nat said, “I don’t know. It was a judgment call and maybe I called it wrong.”

  “You didn’t,” Brown said. “Fire’s broken out into one stairwell. Chances are the other will get it too. Then where would they be, out in the open, halfway down?”

  “Maybe better than where they are,” Giddings said, “trapped. And all because—”

  “Because of what?” Nat said. He shook his head. “No one thing. Not even two or three things. A lot of things which shouldn’t have happened, but did, all together. You and I ought to have caught on to what Simmons was doing, for one thing.”

  “He was too smart for us, he and that little bastard of a foreman.”

  “And the inspector,” Nat said. “But a supervising inspector ought to have caught the changes too, and either didn’t or let them go. That’s another thing.” He looked at Brown.

  Brown nodded angrily. “And apparently we let some things get by we shouldn’t. There are standpipes up there, but there’s no hose, and by now there isn’t any pressure either, because some of the pipes have burst from heat and generated steam.”

  “You didn’t want this reception,” Nat said to Giddings. “Frazee ought to have called it off, but you couldn’t tell him why, so he didn’t.” He paused. “And nobody counted on a maniac getting past the cops and down into the mechanical basements to do God only knows what kind of damage before he killed himself. We knew somebody was inside. Maybe we ought to have insisted that the building be searched—”

  “Floor by floor with an army?” Giddings said. “You know better than that.” His temper had cooled.

  “That’s the trouble,” Nat said, “I do know better than that. We could have insisted until we were blue in the face and nobody would have paid a goddam bit of attention.” He looked again at Brown. “You have a big point,” he said. “We have more knowledge than judgment.” He gestured wearily to Giddings. “Let’s go see whether they’re ready to give it a try with an elevator.”

  “I want you here when the Coast Guard comes,” Brown said. “It’s your idea.”

  Nat nodded wearily as he walked out.

  In the office off the Tower Room, “Sooner or later,” the governor said, “we’re going to have trouble, maybe panic.” He spoke to the fire commissioner. “Just in case,” the governor said, “I think we might round up four or five of those waiters, the young husky lads, and have them standing by.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” the commissioner said. He left the office.

  “Grover,” the governor said to Frazee, “why don’t you go out and mingle with your guests.” He paused. “And, goddammit, smile!”

  “I’ll go with him,” Ben Caldwell said. The two men left together.

  “And now,” the governor said to Beth, “do you see how crafty I am? We’re alone.”

  Beth said slowly, “Will there be a tomorrow, Bent?”

  The telephone rang then. The governor put the phone on the rest and flicked on the speaker switch. “Armitage,” he said.

  “One stairwell is untenable, Governor,” Brown’s voice said. “The other may hold, but it may not too. My men aren’t very optimistic, but they’re still trying to reach you.”

  “And then what?” the governor said.

  There was hesitation. “Get the door on that side open.”

  “And?”

  More hesitation. Brown said at last, “I don’t know what to advise, Governor.”

  “All right,” the governor said, “let’s look at the odds. One stairwell is already out. What are the chances—opinion, man; I’m not expecting anything else—what are the chances of all the fire doors on the other side holding long enough to get us down—to get any of us down?”

  Brown’s voice was reluctant. “I’d have to say almost nonexistent, Governor.” He paused. “There are two other possibilities that seem to me better. Maybe Wilson and Giddings and the electrical engineer can get an elevator running.” He paused again. “And the other is that somehow we can get the fire inside the building under control before—” He stopped. “Under control,” he said.

  The governor’s face was expressionless. He stared, unseeing, at the far wall. “Then our chances are better staying here?”

  “I—would think so.” Brown hesitated. “There is one other chance, but it’s wild. Wilson’s idea. If the Coast Guard can get a line to you from the north Trade Center tower, and rig a breeches buoy—” The voice stopped, skepticism plain.

  “We’ll go for anything,” the governor said. He paused, straightened. “Call your men back.”

  Brown said nothing.

  “Did you hear me?” the governor said.

  “Maybe,” Brown said slowly, “maybe we’d better let them go on to you, Governor. Just in case. I’m only guessing about the odds.”

  “Call them back,” the governor said. “There’s no point in expending them in a lost cause.”

  It was, Brown thought, precisely what the battalion chief had said. He nodded weary, automatic acquiescence. “Yes, sir,” he said. And then, “Two of them—they can’t come back, Governor. There’s fire beneath them.”

  “We’ll let them in,” the governor said. “We’ll give them a drink and some snacks. That’s the best we can do, and it is damn little.” His voice changed. “All right, Brown. Thanks for the report.” He hung up the phone. With no change of expression, “You asked a question,” he said to Beth.

  “I withdraw it.”

  “No.” The governor shook his head. “It deserves an answer.” He paused. He said at last, “I don’t know if there’s going to be a tomorrow, but I doubt it.” There—it was spoken. “And I’m sorry about that for many
reasons.”

  Quietly, “I know, Bent.”

  “How can you know my reasons?”

  Her smile was faint, but real: the ancient all-knowing smile of Woman. “I know.”

  The governor stared at her. Slowly he nodded. “Maybe,” he said. His broad gesture took in the office and the entire building. “I’m here,” he said, “out of vanity, and that you always pay for. I love the hurrah. I always have. I might have been an actor.” He smiled suddenly. “At any rate, there I am.” The smile spread. “Exposed,” he said.

  “I like what I see.”

  The governor was silent for a few moments. “Maybe,” he said at last, “with someone like you, the White House might not have been out of reach.” He paused again. “What might have been.” He straightened. “I’d far rather stay right here, but as I said, you pay for your vanity. I belong outside, moving around—” He shook his head in faint apology.

  “May I come with you?” She was smiling still as she stood up.

  Together they walked into the Tower Room, and there on the threshold paused to look around. The room was as before: groups forming, flowing; waiters and waitresses passing trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres; conversation, even occasional sudden laughter, perhaps a trifle overloud. But now there was a difference.

  It is, Beth thought, like one of those party scenes on stage, in an opera, perhaps, or a ballet, an animated but patently false gathering designed to hold the audience’s attention until the principals come out of the wings.

  She wondered if the governor had the same impression, and she saw from his smile that he did.

  “Here we go on stage,” he said.

  The network president stopped them first. “It’s getting hot in here, Bent.”

  The governor smiled. “Think of last summer when they closed down all power to three hundred thousand people at a time who had to do without their air-conditioners.”