The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  Then who was not to a greater or lesser degree involved, responsible? Incredible question, without answer.

  He had welcomed Barnes, the black cop, to the lodge of blame. Now Nat thought: welcome yourself to the human race, friend; maybe now you are beginning to see what it is all about. Maybe—

  “Nat.” Patty’s soft voice, almost pleading.

  He looked down at her sad smile.

  “The list is finished,” she said. “Every name. Every address.” She paused. “Somehow just by the act of writing them down, I’m—part of them. Can you see that? I probably don’t know one of them, and yet I know them all. I’m—” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I am.”

  “Involved?” Nat said. His tone was gentle. “Responsible?”

  The change in her eyes, in her face, was something to see. “You do understand, don’t you? Thank you, Nat.”

  “Maybe I’m beginning to,” Nat said.

  30

  7:02P.M.-7:23P.M.

  Police Lieutenant Jim Potter sat with his captain and the chief inspector in the large quiet office. Potter had his notebook on his knee. He kept his voice purposely expressionless.

  “John Connors,” he said, “Caucasian male, age thirty-four.” He paused. “Widower. No children. Occupation: sheet-metal worker when he worked, which hasn’t been very often recently.” He paused. “A history of mental disturbance commencing three years ago.” He paused again, waiting.

  The captain said, “What happened then?”

  “His wife died.” Potter’s face was that of a poker player in a big-stakes game: totally expressionless. “She died in jail.” Pause. “In the drunk tank.” Again he waited.

  The chief inspector said, “She was a lush?”

  “She didn’t drink.”

  “She was on drugs?”

  “Just one.” Potter took his time. “Insulin. She was a diabetic. They picked her up because she had collapsed and was lying on the sidewalk and they thought she was drunk.” He closed the notebook carefully. “So they tossed her into the drunk tank, and without medication she died.”

  In the silence the captain said, “Didn’t she carry some kind of identification? Something to say she had diabetes?”

  “Maybe.” A little of the sad bitterness showed now in Potter’s voice. “And maybe nobody bothered to look. The investigation after the fact wasn’t very thorough. Connors was the only one who cared much, and he had gone off his rocker.”

  The big office was still. The chief inspector let his breath out in a noisy sigh. “Okay,” he said. The word was without meaning. “But so he did have a grudge, and so he wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards, why the World Tower building?”

  “I’m no shrink,” Potter said. “But the World Tower building was the last real job he had. He was fired. There’s a connection, but maybe you have to be loony to see it. I don’t know. All I know are the facts.”

  In a vague kind of way it made sense. All three men felt it. The Establishment had killed Connors’s wife, hadn’t it? The World Tower building was the brand-new shining symbol of the Establishment, wasn’t it? Well?

  They sat quietly, thinking about it.

  At last, “Sometimes,” the chief inspector said slowly, “I think the whole goddam world has gone crazy.”

  “Amen,” said the captain.

  In slow, almost interminable succession, the women were helped or loaded into the canvas bag, and their legs poked through the twin holes. Almost without exception their eyes were wide with terror. Some cried. Some prayed.

  Paula Ramsay was number twenty-two. “I don’t want to go,” she told the mayor as they waited for her turn. “I want to stay here with you.”

  The mayor was smiling faintly as he shook his head. It was not his well-known campaign smile; this was the real man exposed. “I want you to go, and that is purely selfish.”

  “You, selfish?”

  “I want you to go,” the mayor said, “because I would rather have you safe than have anything else in the world.” The smile spread, even mocked himself. “Including the White House. Jill needs you.”

  “Jill is a big girl now. We agreed on that.” Paula looked around. “Where is Beth?”

  “In the office with Bent. Their little time together.”

  “I thought,” Paula said, “that she was ahead of me.”

  The mayor could not remember when last he had lied to his wife. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, and stared out the window as the breeches buoy began its swaying trip back from the Trade Center roof.

  The secretary general said, “Number twenty-one, if you please.” There was no answer. He repeated the call.

  “Hey,” somebody said, “that’s you. Here’s your ticket.”

  The girl in the bikini briefs dancing in the corner stopped her automatic gyrations. She shook her head as if to clear it. “I thought I was forty-nine.” She giggled. “Funny.” She waved her hand in the air and lurched forward, bare breasts bouncing, toward the loading window. “Here I come, ready or not.”

  “God,” the mayor said. “She goes ahead of—anybody at all? Why?”

  “You are usually kinder than that, Bob.” Paula’s smile was gentle. “The girl is drunk. And frightened.” The smile spread. “The difference between us is that I’m not drunk.”

  “Or naked.”

  “Does it matter now?”

  The mayor made an almost angry gesture. “I am stuffy enough or square enough to believe that some values—” He stopped suddenly. “No,” he said in some surprise, “it doesn’t matter, does it? We’re down to basics.”

  “And my basic wish,” Paula said, “is not to go but to stay—with you.”

  “You’ll go,” the mayor said. There was a new tone of command in his voice.

  Together they watched the half-naked girl being lifted into the canvas sack. Someone tossed her dress into her lap. She stared at it in bewilderment, and then, as if only that moment realizing her nakedness, she crossed both hands over her breasts and began to cry. “What am I doing?” Her voice was almost a scream. “I—can’t—!”

  “Lower away!” This was the fire commissioner, in command of the operation. “Hang on, sister, and you’ll be home free before you know it.”

  The girl’s shrieks were lost in the whistling wind.

  The mayor took his wife’s arm and walked with her toward the loading window. “Like airplanes and ship sailings,” he said, “there’s never anything to say, is there?”

  They stood quietly, holding hands, watching the breeches buoy near the Trade Center roof, reach it. They watched the chief lift the girl out of the canvas sack as if she were weightless. Her dress fell to the roof. The chief held her upright with one hand and picked the dress up with the other. Then he gestured toward the Tower Room and the breeches buoy began its return journey.

  The mayor’s wife watched it approach. “Bob.”

  “Yes?”

  Paula turned to look up into the mayor’s face. Slowly she shook her head. “You’re right. There is nothing to say. You can’t put thirty-five years into words, can you?” She closed her eyes as the breeches buoy swung through the window and halted, swaying gently.

  “Number twenty-two, if you please,” the secretary general said.

  Paula opened her eyes. “Goodbye, Bob.”

  “Au revoir,” the mayor said. He was smiling gently. “Your words to Jill, remember? Give her my love.”

  The senator knocked and walked into the office. The governor was in the desk chair. Beth was perched on a corner of the desk, long slim legs crossed and swinging gently.

  “Come in, Jake,” the governor said. From the big room outside the mixed sounds of rock music and song blended in cacophonous counterpoint. From the bar came a sudden burst of laughter. “Sit down,” the governor said. “I don’t cotton to the bacchanalia either.”

  “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Nonsense.” The governor paused. “You came in with a purpose, no?”
r />   He had always seen deep, this Bent Armitage, the senator thought, which probably at least partly explained his success in public life. You did not go as far as he had gone without knowledge of your fellow man.

  The senator sat down and stretched his legs wearily. “A long lonesome road,” he said, and smiled. “The youthful bounce is long gone.” He gestured toward the telephone. “Anything new?”

  “I phoned down the lists,” the governor said. “And then”—he paused, smiling—“I indulged myself by calling my daughter, Jane, in Denver.” The smile spread. “I charged the call to the executive mansion telephone. That will give the auditors pause. Anyone you want to call, Jake? I’ll let the taxpayers pick up your tab too.”

  The senator shook his head. “No one,” he said. He stood up suddenly. “Do you ever doubt yourself, Bent? Do you ever wonder just what in hell use you have been to anybody?”

  The governor grinned. “Frequently.”

  “I mean it,” the senator said. He took his time. “When you’re a kid just starting out—for me that was back in thirty-six, just elected to my first term in Congress—you look around and see the big ones, the important ones, the man in the White House, the Cabinet officers, names you’ve read about ever since you could remember—” He paused and plumped back down in the chair. He waved one hand. “You study their style because they’re what you want to be.” His smile was wry. “It’s in today to talk about a search for your identity. That implies that there is already a you and all you have to do is be yourself.” He shook his head. “What you’re really doing is hunting for the character part you’re going to play for the rest of your life, a very different thing indeed.”

  I have always doubted myself, Beth thought suddenly, but I was sure the reason lay in my own shortcomings. She watched the senator in wonder.

  “So,” the senator said, “you find the role you want and you learn it letter-perfect.” He paused. “And it works. It’s convincing. First you’re a bright young fellow. Then you’re a comer in his forties, beginning to carry some clout. You reach fifty, sixty, and you’ve come a long way, but you aren’t there yet. Do you know what I mean, Bent?”

  The governor’s smile was sad. “You’re never there,” he said. “There’s always something just over the next hill, and the next. And when you reach it, it has changed too.” He spread his hands in a gesture of dissolution. “What looked so bright and shiny from a distance up close is just sunlight on smoke.”

  “And so you wonder,” the senator said, “just when you’re going to make the final step that puts you where you’ve always wanted to be so you can relax and enjoy it and know that you’ve fought the good fight, done the job well, earned your rest and your place in the sun, lived out whatever crappy platitude you choose.” He shook his head. “The answer is—never. That’s why they don’t retire, those old men in Washington and other places. They keep hoping that the time is going to come when they’ve done it all and they can rest content. And it isn’t going to come ever, but you don’t realize that until you face something like—this. And then suddenly you wonder why you ran so hard all your life, chasing something that never existed. Don Quixote, Galahad chasing the Grail—it’s so damn futile!”

  “But fun,” the governor said. “Admit that, Jake. You’ve had just a hell of a time outsmarting, outarguing, outstaying the rascals who got in your way. Would you change it?”

  “Probably not. And that’s the stupidest part of all. We don’t even learn.”

  The governor leaned back in his chair and laughed.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “Your lament,” the governor said. “It tucks its tail in its mouth and rolls like a hoop. Of course you’d do it all the same way. Because you’re you, Jake Peters, sui generis. You fought and scrambled and bit, yes, and butted in the clinches when it was necessary—as I did—and you enjoyed every minute of it, wins, losses, and draws. You’ve been your own man, and how many can say that?”

  “He wrote fiction in college,” the senator said to Beth. “Bad fiction.”

  “And,” the governor said, “you have the gall to admit that you enjoyed it all, but still find it futile? What more can a man ask than to be able to look back and say it was fun?” The governor paused. “You’ve probably left some things undone. We all have. But when you leave the restaurant filled to the brim with a good meal, do you spend your time regretting that you couldn’t eat everything?”

  “That,” the senator said to Beth, “has always been his special touch: the homely analogy.” He stood up. “As a philosopher, Bent,” he said looking down at the governor, “you’re no Santayana, but you may have made a point or two worth considering. I’ll ponder them outside.” He paused in the doorway to flip his hand in a vague gesture. “By the way, number twenty-one just went off.” He spoke directly to Beth. “It was the naked chick. She thought—”

  “I’m number forty-nine,” Beth said, and made herself smile.

  The senator hesitated, and then waved again as he walked out. “And that,” the governor said, “leaves us alone again for a moment at least. He smiled up at Beth. “So pensive?”

  “All the things you said to him,” Beth said slowly, “could apply as well to you, couldn’t they?”

  “Probably.” The governor smiled again. “But the difference is that when you say them to yourself, you don’t necessarily believe them.”

  “I think I understand, Bent.” She was smiling too. “I hope I do.”

  “There have been times,” the governor said, “when I have done things I am not particularly proud of, or allowed them to be done, which is the same thing, in order to achieve an end I thought worth the compromise. I know I am capable of deluding myself—at least temporarily. I think everyone is, and some not temporarily.”

  “I think you are a good man, Bent, in the best sense of the word.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think you are a better, stronger man even than you believe. You are the one they come to. You are the one they listen to.”

  “Easy on that buildup, even if I love it.”

  Beth shook her head. “He said it, the senator. He said ‘until you face something like this’ you keep on—fooling yourself.” She paused. “I am not fooling myself any longer. I hate what’s happening. I don’t want to die.”

  The governor took her hand. “Fair enough,” he said. He was smiling gently. “Now tell me: what number did you draw? Was it twenty-one?”

  31

  7:23P.M.-7:53P.M.

  To the west the sky had darkened and evening thunderheads were beginning to build. Giddings stood in the doorway of the trailer, watching. “A cloudburst now,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at Brown, and shrugged. “A miracle? The Red Sea rolling back?” He shook his head and wiped the back of his hand wearily across his forehead. It left a black smear.

  One by one Chief Oliver had called down the names of those safely across, and Patty had found them on the listings and checked them off.

  Now, “This one,” the chief’s voice said on the walkie-talkie “doesn’t know who she is, and I sure as hell don’t.”

  Nat said, “Doesn’t she have identification in her purse?”

  “Purse?” The chief’s voice was a roar. “She doesn’t even have any clothes on!” Then more gently in an aside, “All right, sister, it’s all over now. You go with these cops. They’ll take care of you.” And to the trailer again. “We’ll get you a name somehow.” The walkie-talkie was silent.

  Patty said, “Whoever she is, she’s number twenty-one.” She smiled up at Nat. “Thanks to you.”

  Nat pushed himself away from the desk suddenly and walked to the doorway to look up at the tops of the great buildings. Squinting, he could make out the breeches buoy, filled again, on its catenary journey down to the Trade Center roof.

  Inside the Tower Room, he knew, three or four men would be cautiously paying out the guiding line lest the canvas bag careen madly down the slope, frightening it
s passenger even more than it now did, perhaps even throwing one clear to fall screaming the quarter of a mile to the plaza. Idly he wondered who was in the breeches buoy on this trip.

  He turned and walked back inside to stand again near Patty. “How long do we have?” he said. “That’s the question. How many are we going to have time to get out?”

  “Maybe all of them,” Patty said. She paused. “I hope.” She paused again, studying Nat’s face. “You don’t think so?”

  Nat shook his head in silence. He said at last, “I wish I knew what was happening. Up there in the Tower Room.” He gestured suddenly. “Inside the core of the building. When it’s all over, we’ll study what’s left, and we’ll try to figure out just what happened.” He shook his head again. “But that is no substitute for knowing at the time. That’s why they put automatic recorders in commercial airplanes. If there’s a crash and the recorder survives, it shows exactly what certain flight conditions were right up to the moment of impact.” He paused contemplatively. “Maybe the computer control ought to be located well outside the building for the same reason.” Something to think about. He was silent, thinking about it.

  Patty watched and listened, the here-and-now part of herself smiling inside. Daddy had never been very far away from his work either; she doubted that the good ones ever were. She said nothing lest she interrupt Nat’s train of thought.

  “This—mess,” he said at last, “is going to change a lot of thinking. We’ve gone on blithely assuming that tolerances, mistakes would automatically cancel themselves out. This time they haven’t. They’ve compounded themselves instead, and this is the result.” He paused. “Think of the Titanic.”