The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “Then beat it,” Giddings said. “We’ll finish it off.”

  In the smoke and near-darkness Nat saw Lewis raise an arm and let it fall in a gesture of defeat. His coughing was deep, wracking. He turned away, stumbled, fell, tried to raise himself, and failed.

  Giddings said, “Goddammit—”

  “Stay at the job,” Nat said. His voice was sharp. “I’ll get him out.”

  He knelt beside Lewis, turned him over on his back and raised him to a sitting position. Slowly, heavily, he levered the man over his shoulder and into a fireman’s carry, took a deep breath, and managed to heave himself to his feet.

  His legs were weak and even through the mask the taste of smoke filled his lungs, usurping areas of tissue that ought to have been filled with oxygen, creating a dizziness that would not go away.

  He leaned forward against the burden on his shoulder and, half-walking, half-stumbling, headed off into the murk.

  Lewis’s body was limp, a dead weight. Nat could not tell whether the man breathed. He stumbled onto the first stairs and slowly, laboriously began to climb. One, two, three . . . there were fourteen steps to each level—why would he remember a thing like that now?

  Thirteen, fourteen . . . level floor and then more stairs, and the smoke was in no measure diminished.

  The next step would have to be his last—and he knew that it was not so. As in the mountains on a steep trail, the only thing to do was put your head down and concentrate on setting one foot in front of the other in slow rhythm. Ignore your breathing—if you can. Ignore the coughing that chokes you. Thirteen, fourteen—another level floor, and more stairs.

  Once he stumbled over a hose and went painfully to his knees, was tempted to drop the body that hampered him—and managed to withstand the temptation. Get up, goddammit, get up!

  He heard voices and knew them to be nothing more than sounds within his own head.

  He stopped in the middle of a flight of stairs to cough and cough again, and then lurch on.

  Ahead there was only blackness and smoke. And here was a door, closed—was it, for God’s sake, locked as well? If it is, Nat thought, then I’ve taken the wrong stairs and we’ve both had it.

  He lurched up the last two steps, and felt with his free hand for the doorknob. There was none.

  The dizziness was near-nausea now, and thinking was almost impossible. No doorknob—why? Goddammit, you know the answer—what is it? You’re the architect, aren’t you? He leaned forward, pushing Lewis’s limp body against the door. It opened suddenly and Nat almost fell through—into the smoke-filled concourse.

  Out at last into the unbelievably sweet air of the plaza, freed from the claustrophobic mask—and here came two men in white to take the body from his shoulder, and someone else saying “Breathe this” and slapping a rubber mask over his nose and mouth.

  He breathed deep of the oxygen and gradually the plaza came back into focus, the dizziness receded. Nat freed himself from the mask and went stumbling toward the trailer. His legs were weak as he climbed the steps.

  One of the battalion chiefs grinned at him. “Like to join the Department?” he said. “We can offer smoke-filled outings almost every day, if that’s the way your pleasure runs.”

  “Thanks much,” Nat said. He made himself smile. It was a grimace. “But from here on I fight my fires in forests.”

  “Are you all right?” This was Patty, whom Nat had not even noticed.

  He noticed her now, small, bright, at the moment concerned, genuinely concerned. Why? “Fine,” Nat said. “Soon as I get my breath.”

  “You look,” Patty said, “as Daddy used to say, like something dredged up out of the East River.” She showed him an unsteady smile.

  Brown said, “What about the elevator?”

  Nat gestured wearily. “It may work. They’re going to try it.” There was no other way. Unless—“The Coast Guard is taking its time,” he said.

  Giddings came up the steps. Seeing him, Nat got some idea of how he himself looked. Giddings’s face was freckled white where the mask had been. His forehead was black and soot colored his hair. His corduroy jacket was sodden and streaked. “What’s funny?” Giddings said.

  “A couple of chimney sweeps,” Nat said, grinning still.

  “And sweeps,” Patty said, “are lucky as lucky can be. We’ll hold that thought.” And pray for luck in all directions, she told herself. Wherever you are, Daddy, Godspeed!

  Brown said, “Well?”

  “If it goes,” Giddings said, “it won’t stop until the Tower Room unless—” He shrugged. “Oh, hell, unless almost anything. But the point is that we won’t even know it’s gotten there unless they tell us. Better get on the horn.” He and Brown and the two chiefs moved toward the telephone.

  Patty said softly, “Nat.” What compelled her to this? Mere loneliness? She had no idea, but neither had she the strength to resist. “He’s gone, Nat. Daddy. As big and strong as he was, he’s—”

  “I’m sorry.” Nat took both of her small clean hands in his own. He looked at the results in dismay. “I’m sorry about that too.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Patty made no effort to take her hands away. “Mother called. She saw him, but—he—didn’t—know—her!”

  Nat squeezed the small hands. “Easy. Easy.” What else was there to say? I’m no good at this kind of thing, he thought; all I know is things, not people. “I’m sorry,” he said again. The words were inane.

  Patty had caught her lower lip between her teeth. Her eyes were closed. When she opened them, they were bright but not tear-filled. “I’m okay.” She paused. “Paul,” she said then in a different voice.

  “What about him?”

  Patty drew a deep unsteady breath. “I told Daddy at lunch about Paul and Zib. I’m sorry, but I told him I was leaving Paul and I had to give a reason.”

  Nat squeezed the small hands again. “Of course.” But where was pain in the knowledge, the concept that he had been cuckolded? Hadn’t he cared to begin with? All along had he been fooling himself that he and Zib had what he had always thought of as a marriage when all the time it was merely a legal shackup, no strings attached?

  “Paul saw him after that,” Patty said. “Paul was there when he had his attack.” She was silent, watching Nat’s face.

  At the far end of the trailer the four men were clustered around the telephone. There were voices, words unintelligible. Here in a little area of isolation there was silence. Nat said slowly, “What are you saying, Patty?”

  “Daddy being Daddy,” Patty said, “he braced Paul with Zib. Isn’t that how it had to be? Isn’t it?” She paused. “And what do you think Paul would have said?” She paused, and then gave her own answer. “That you and I were rolling in the hay too. Just to get even. Being Paul.”

  The silence surrounded them and time seemed to stand still. “I don’t know,” Nat said. But he did know. Paul being Paul—there was the operative phrase. “I don’t know much about people,” Nat said. “Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?”

  Patty’s head was shaking slowly. Her chin was set. “If that is how it was,” she said, “then he killed Daddy.” She paused. Her hands in Nat’s were tensed. “And if I get the chance,” she said, “I’ll kill him. So help me.”

  Nat said quickly, “Patty—” He stopped.

  Brown’s voice was saying into the telephone, “You’re sure? Goddammit, man, make sure!” He spoke to Giddings and the two battalion chiefs. “He thinks the elevator has gotten there. Thinks!” And then, again into the phone, “It is sure? Yes, Governor? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” A pause. “Yes, sir. We’ll hang on.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “The elevator got there. They’re working the doors open now. How about that?” He looked the length of the trailer at Nat. “Now we can forget that breeches buoy nonsense.”

  Nat hesitated. Here, at least, he thought, he was dealing with a matter he could judge with some competence. “No,” he said. “If the elevator works, fin
e. But let’s have a backup, just in case.”

  21

  Windows in the northeast quadrant on the sixty-second floor of the building were the first to shatter from heat. Heavy shards of the tempered tinted glass sprang out from the building as if from an explosion, glistened like icicles in their long fall, and crashed into the plaza. The crowd squealed and shrieked in its excitement.

  “Move those barricades back!” a bullhorn shouted. “Back, goddammit!”

  Patrolman Shannon put his hand to his cheek and stared unbelieving at the blood that instantly covered his palm and dripped between his fingers.

  Barnes whipped out his handkerchief. He wadded it against the long clean cut. “Hold it tight, Mike, and head for that ambulance. You’ll need stitches.”

  “Do you think,” Shannon said, irrepressible, “that there’ll be a Purple Heart in it, Frank? I’ve always longed to be a wounded hero.”

  “You have your wish.” Barnes set about helping to move the crowd back out of apparent range.

  The signs had disappeared from the plaza, but in the building’s torment the Reverend Joe Willie Thomas saw opportunity for a message:

  “It is the will of the Lord!” he shouted in that revivalist voice. “It is just retribution! Wickedness and waste, hand-in-hand, cheek-by-jowl, Sodom and Gomorrah repeated—repeated, I say!”

  There were those who thought the comparisons apt.

  In the plaza air there was a taste of ashes. Puddles of water on the pavement had spread into ponds, their surfaces dull with soot.

  High up, impossibly high, near the building’s gleaming tower, smoke roiled into the sky. Lower, on the opposite side of the building, more smoke oozed out and, wind-driven, curled around the structure like a smothering cloak.

  Smoke still poured out of the concourse doors, but its quantity was lessened. Many in the crowd thought that the fire was being contained. It was not.

  “Sooner or later,” a Pine Street insurance underwriter in the crowd said, “it had to happen. I don’t want to be quoted on that, but there it is. And, thank Heaven, we are not involved.”

  “Rates will have to go up.”

  The underwriter nodded. “No question. Losses have to be covered.”

  “What about the people up there?”

  “That,” the underwriter said, “is a good question. I don’t know the answer. We insure things, not people.”

  22

  5:32P.M.-5:43P.M.

  The office off the Tower Room was again the command post, and the governor dominated the room. “What is the elevator capacity? Maximum? Even overloaded?”

  Ben Caldwell said, “Fifty-five persons is the rated load. Another ten, perhaps, could be squeezed in.”

  “They will be,” the governor said. He paused. He smiled then, without amusement. “Traditionally,” he said, “women and children are first. Does anyone see a reason to flout tradition?”

  “I do,” Beth said, and there was silence. “You are the important people,” she said then. “You are the ones who need to be—saved. Stop this silly chivalry and be practical.”

  Grover Frazee said, “Hear, hear.”

  “Shut up, Grover,” the governor said. His tone was angry.

  Senator Peters said, “All right, my dear, let’s be practical. We’ve had our time. We’ve made what waves we could make, influenced what events we were capable of influencing.” The habit of oratory was strong. He made himself stop elaborating the matter. “The point is,” he said, “that the tradition isn’t just from silly ideas of chivalry. It’s grounded in that practicality you demand. You, not we, are the future of the human race. We manage its affairs while we live, but you see to it that there are those to replace us and you care for them until they are ready.”

  The governor said, “You are overruled, Beth.” He smiled fondly. He looked around the office. “All the women,” he said. “You, Pete,” he said to the fire commissioner, “see to it. The rest of you help him. And hurry!”

  Beth waited until only they two were left. “I’m not going, Bent. Not without you.”

  “Oh yes you are.” The governor walked to the inner wall of the office. “Come here.” He watched her approach slowly, wonderingly, and he took her hand and placed it flat against the wall’s surface. She drew it away. “Hot, isn’t it?” the governor said. “Not much more time, and I want you safe.”

  “I told you—”

  “But I’m telling you.” He lifted her chin with a bent forefinger and kissed her lightly. “I’m not going to make any speeches,” he said. “For once in my life I don’t have any words to cover what I think and feel.” He was smiling gently. “And if that sounds unbelievable, well, this entire situation is unbelievable, but it has happened.” He put his arm around her waist. “Come along. I’ll see you off.”

  Still she held back. “Will there be a second load? You? The others?”

  “We’ll count on it. First we’ll see you safe.” Together they walked to the door and there they stopped.

  Outside someone shouted, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  There were other voices raised, and the sound of running footsteps.

  “Wait here,” the governor said and hurried out into the big room.

  The scene had altered suddenly, drastically. Like ants around an uprooted nest, the governor thought, everyone seemed to be in haphazard frantic motion.

  “Hold it!” the governor shouted. “Hold it!”

  Some of the movement stopped. Faces turned in his direction. There was near-silence.

  “What’s going on?” the governor said. “We’re supposed to be grown people, responsible people. Just what in blue blazes has changed that?” His tone flayed them all. “They’ve worked a miracle down below,” he said, “and sent us an elevator. It—”

  “That is the problem, Bent,” Senator Peters said, his working-class big-city accent more marked than ever. “The elevator is gone, on its way down, and there’s no way to stop it.” He paused. “It has a passenger. One. Can you guess who?”

  The big room was still, and all eyes watched him. I don’t have to guess, the governor thought, I know. Aloud he said, “You tell me, Jake.”

  “Paul Norris,” the senator said, “who else? J. Paul Norris.”

  The governor nodded slowly. Slowly he turned and walked back into the office past Beth as if she did not exist. He sat down at the desk, picked up the telephone, and flipped the desk-speaker switch. “Armitage here,” he said. “The elevator is on its way down. It has one passenger. I want him held.”

  Brown’s voice said, “Yes, sir.” And then, incredulously, “Just one passenger?”

  “That is what I said.” The governor paused. “I want the district attorney apprised of the fact that the man deliberately stole the elevator. If the district attorney can see his way clear, I should like the man to be charged with attempted murder.” The governor paused again. “Witnesses,” he said, “may be hard to come by. Tell him that too.”

  Brown said, “We’ll send the elevator right back. If we can.”

  The governor nodded. “If you can,” he said. “I understand.” He paused. “You’ve done a superlative job, all of you, against apparently impossible odds. I want you to know that we appreciate it, all of us.” He was staring thoughtfully at the telephone. “How long the telephone will last,” he said, “is anyone’s guess, I should imagine. I’m sure that somewhere up here there is a transistor radio. There always is. You can reach us with any information through the city’s radio station. We’ll stay tuned to it.” He looked up then.

  The mayor stood in the doorway. He was nodding. “I’ll find a transistor,” he said. And then, “Will they get the elevator up for another trip?”

  “Governor?” Brown’s voice on the desk speaker.

  “Right here.”

  “The elevator is down, Governor. The man inside—” Brown paused. “He’s dead, Governor. Burned pretty bad.” His voice shook.

  Nat Wilson’s voice
came on, weary but strong. “The heat in the core. There must be a blowtorch effect.”

  Ben Caldwell moved in past the mayor. “Masks, Nat?” he said. “Asbestos suits? Spray the inside of the car to cool it off—”

  “No,” Nat said. “One chance, and we blew it. We won’t get that car up again. It’s badly damaged and off its rails, so the rails must have distorted. We’ll try another, but—” He left the sentence unfinished.

  Caldwell blew his breath out slowly in a silent whistle. “I understand.”

  Brown’s voice came on again. “We’re still working the inside of the building,” he said. “Floor by goddam floor. Sorry, Governor. Eventually—” The voice paused. “If only they didn’t build them so big.” Another pause. “What’s left now,” Brown’s voice said, “is that wild idea of Wilson’s.”

  The governor’s face was expressionless. “Keep us posted,” he said, pushed back his chair, and stood up wearily. “Time for another report.” He started for the door.

  “Do you have to, Bent?” This was Beth.

  “My dear,” the governor said, “if there is one thing I have learned in a long career, it is that people behave at their worst when they are kept in the dark. In the face of unpalatable truths they sometimes react unpleasantly; but when they aren’t told anything, rumors start and panic is not far behind.”

  As before, the governor stood on a chair in the center of the big room. He waited briefly until all conversation had stopped. Then, “The elevator reached the concourse,” he said and waited.

  There was a low angry murmur.

  “The man in it,” the governor said, “was dead from the intense heat in the core of the building.” He paused again.

  This time there was silence. He had his audience now.

  “They are attempting to send us a second elevator,” he said, “and if they are successful, there will be insulated clothing and breathing masks for those who ride in it.” He raised one hand. “If they are successful in sending that second elevator. It is by no means sure that they will be.”