Urban Flight

by Jonathan Kirshner

  “Head directly for the stairs in an orderly fashion!” Harry was calling out. “Remain calm. Do not use the elevators!” He annunciated loudly and carefully.

  Jason pushed more aggressively past people and almost caught up with Adam. “Adam! Adam! Where are you going?”

  “I have to save the papers in my office!”

  As they got closer it became clear that Adam’s office was where the fire was at its worst. For the first time flames were visible, just reaching out the door. Adam hesitated, and Jason saw that he was about to charge into the room. He grabbed Adam and pushed him against the wall, hard, holding him there.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jason screamed in his face.

  “My whole life is in there!”

  “Forget about it—there’s nothing you can do! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  “No, let’s get the hose!”

  “What?”

  Adam broke loose from Jason and ran back the way they came, this time pushing past people heading in the same direction. Jason followed as best he could and found Adam back at the staircase, unspooling the fire hose.

  “Does that thing even work?”

  “Try turning that wheel!”

  Jason struggled at first but managed to turn the small red wheel attached to an oversized pipe that could have been a water source, while Adam continued to free the hose. He looked down at and saw that water was dripping from the nozzle. “Let’s go!”

  Adam dragged the hose back down the hallway, again struggling against people trying to leave the building. The hose was leaking water, and they moved awkwardly, slipping twice. Back at Adam’s office, the fire hadn’t advanced much beyond where it had been, but you could feel the heat more intensely than before. They crept slowly towards the doorway, now more alert to the danger of the situation, with the hose dripping at their feet. Adam held the nozzle and Jason was right behind him with a couple of feet of the hose in his hands.

  “I don’t think you can put out a fire with a dripping hose,” Jason shouted with half a smile at the absurdity of the situation. “Now what?”

  Adam looked backed at the gray canvas length of hose. It was firm and full of water. Looking down at the nozzle, he noticed a small lever. Pressing his arms against his sides and squinting through scrunched eyes he took a tentative step into his office, pointed the nozzle of the hose at the fire, and shifted the lever. Water exploded from the hose with such force that it knocked both of them down. Adam didn’t lose his grip, but the water sprayed everywhere. It blasted a stack of burning papers and sent them flying. Some landed on Adam, setting the cuff of his pants leg on fire. He didn’t notice and Jason took off his coat and dove to the floor, smothering the fire at Adam’s feet and getting a kick in the face for his efforts.

  Adam moved farther in, still struggling to gain control of the nozzle. Lurching backwards, he misfired and blew a series of framed album covers and photos from the wall one by one like ducks in a shooting gallery, and they fell to the ground, each one a witness to the disorder—There’s a Riot Going On by Sly and the Family Stone went first, followed by a picture from the Kent State shootings. But in relatively short order and despite Adam’s inefficiency, the sheer force of the water brought the fire under control, even if it did trash the place in the process.

  19

  Adam’s office was badly damaged in the fire, and what wasn’t burned had been knocked around pretty good by the water. But they had contained the fire; there were some smoke stains on the walls but nothing else outside the office was damaged, and in retrospect everybody was pretty pleased with Adam and Jason’s performance. Adam hadn’t made a lot of friends at the station, so most of them were patting Jason on the back, which was a pretty big laugh because if Adam hadn’t been there, whoosh, Mr. Helicopter Hero would have been the first one down those stairs. Adam was avoiding people in any event—he was devastated, splashing around his office trying to assess the damage, which was extensive. The firefighters that eventually arrived—not too late by city standards but long after the show was over—only added to the carnage. Their job was to put out fires, not to worry about anything that got in their way. A few firemen were still milling around the station, checking rooms, inspecting electrical panels, and leaving wet footprints everywhere.

  Adam opened a few file cabinets, slamming the last one shut. “Nothing! Nothing! Maybe half the stuff in the file cabinets survived. Everything else is gone.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Jason said, trying to be reassuring without sounding like he was faking it. “At least you still have—”

  “I’ve got nothing,” he said, correcting Jason, something he was still fully capable of. “Remember the pyramids? Well, they’re gone. The ashes of history. All the stuff I was working on.” He slumped down on a box. It was solid, and reaching one hand hopefully inside, he fished something out. It was a copy of his second book, and his face on the cover stared up at him with an expression Jason had, back in the day, incisively labeled as “über-poser.” He looked over to see if Jason was smirking, but he looked dead serious, which was a bad sign.

  “Somebody out there is laughing at me right now.”

  “Look,” Jason told him, “this just happened. Right now you can’t face the thought of pushing that rock all the way back up the hill. But you can get past this.” Adam pretended not to listen, and flipped through his book. “You know what you know. And there’s still some stuff here, stuff that can be replaced, the library—”

  “I’ve got nothing. Just theories. Theories! From staring at those papers for so long that I felt I could levitate them. Nothing really solid—I could only half convince you, and you have to listen to me.”

  “Come on, just a few hours ago you solved the riddle of the Sphinx.”

  “Yeah, I started out in Egypt and ended up in Pompeii. In a few thousand years somebody will dig this all up and prove I was right.”

  “Or maybe tomorrow.” Jason jumped on the optimism that lingered at the end of Adam’s last thought. “You know what you know. Even if it’s gone now, you’ve seen it. Nothing can change that.”

  “Maybe it was a mirage. Look at something long enough you start to see what you want to see.”

  Lou ducked his head in the room. “Jason, Harry wants to see you in his office.”

  “See me?” Jason asked, hoping Lou would realize he’d made a mistake.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Probably another interview with our resident hero,” Adam chimed in.

  “Lou, there is no way on this planet—”

  “Save the Greta Garbo routine,” Lou said, cutting him off sharply. It wasn’t his style, but there were people marching all over the place, and he still had a show to put on. “We’re not in the business of airing our own dirty laundry. You want to see that, you’ll have to turn the dial.”

  “Then what does he want?” Jason asked.

  “How the hell should I know? He just barked out that he wanted to see you—probably wants to thank you. You lunatics don’t play fireman and we’re off the air.” That was enough time in one place for Lou, and he was gone.

  Jason looked over at Adam. “Go ahead,” Adam instructed. “If I jump I’ll leave my final instructions on the windowsill.”

  “All right. I’ll be right back. But type ’em. You know I can’t read your writing.”

  Jason walked down the corridor and approached Harry’s office, which was in the corner of the newsroom. The office had large windows with Venetian blinds, so Harry could see the whole newsroom but still have privacy when he needed it. At the moment they were drawn but not shuttered, and through the blinds Jason could see Harry and a police detective, who looked so much like a detective he might as well have been walking around under a neon sign, but just in case anybody wasn’t sure he wore his badge on his belt. The cop was talking and waving his arms, and finally he pointed dramatically to the floor with both hands. The whole thing play
ed like an old film noir, and Jason panicked, convinced he was being cast as the fall guy. They probably knew everything about Bill, he thought, and he was being set up. There was probably one of those suitcases full of money planted in his apartment right now. Faye Dunaway would double-cross him in the movie version.

  Jason started to back off slowly, planning to ease down the corridor. Were those two firemen walking toward him, or just walking? They stopped at the coffee machine. That seemed innocent enough, but Jason felt pinned between the cop that was waiting for him and the firemen clogging the hallway. After seven seconds of just standing there he leaned back against the wall, took a breath, and reassessed. On second thought, he probably wasn’t being set up to be the fall guy. Whatever it was, he decided, making his way slowly back to Harry’s office, better to confront it head on.

  “You wanted to see me, Harry?” he said in his most innocent voice as he entered the room.

  “Yeah, and hey, thanks again. Tell Shaker, too. Oh, sorry, let me introduce you. This here is Detective Stanton.”

  “What’s he want?” Jason said directly to Harry, not making eye contact with the Stanton. “I mean, I don’t know anything, I just fly helicopters. I don’t see why I have to—”

  “Jesus, kid, he’s just here about the fire,” Harry interrupted, holding up both hands.

  “What does a cop know about fire?” Jason asked, still looking only at Harry.

  “We know something about arson,” Stanton replied.

  “Arson?” Jason finally made eye contact with the detective, who was half-sitting on the edge Harry’s desk.

  “Maybe,” Harry interjected. “They have to check. It’s procedure. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here.”

  “So why am I here?”

  “I need you to fly Carol out to Brooklyn for Maynes’s funeral.” Harry looked over at the corner of the room as he said it. Carol had been sitting there the whole time, but Jason was so charged up he hadn’t noticed. “What with the fire and everything, we lost track of the road crew, and now they’re stuck in Brooklyn. I sent them straight to the cemetery; you’ll fly her there.”

  “So that’s it? I mean…sure, whatever.” Jason looked over at Carol. “You ready?”

  “I need five minutes.” She turned to Harry. “You want one-on-ones, or just background?”

  Jason headed for the door. “I’ll pick you up at your office,” he said, barely looking over in Carol’s direction. He couldn’t get out of that room fast enough.

  “Hey.” Stanton stopped him.

  “What?” Jason responded at the edge of rudeness.

  “Where were you during the fire?”

  “Around,” Jason said, making a twirling motion with his fingers.

  “You were in the air?”

  “No. Here at the station.”

  “Where?”

  Jason was sick of this cop and he knew his answer wasn’t going to go over well, nor did he feel like explaining to Harry and Carol the intricacies of The Cone of Silence. “In the stairwell,” he said casually, trying to make it sound like it was a perfectly normal place to be.

  “What were you doing there?” Stanton asked predictably.

  “Ask my lawyer.” Jason stared as hard as he could.

  “Easy, kid,” Harry chimed in. “He’s a little sensitive about that sort of thing,” Harry explained to Stanton.

  “You see anything?” Stanton continued.

  “I told you. I don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah, that figures,” he said, looking Jason up and down like a Chicago cop would have at the ’68 convention.

  “Actually, right after the alarm went off, some guy in a suit went down the stairs. At almost exactly the same time, now that I think about it. Well ahead of anybody else. Impeccably well dressed, kind of guy you’d see at a PBA function.”

  “Really,” Stanton said skeptically, slipping off the desk. He put his hands in his pockets and his shoulders rolled forward. “What did he look like?”

  Jason squared off, confrontationally. “I don’t know. All guys in suits look alike, don’t they, Detective?”

  Stanton leaned in even closer, and Jason figured it was a good thing that Harry was there. “No,” he said in a loud, hoarse whisper that suggested he’d seen both Dirty Harry movies more than once. “It’s niggers and wise-ass hippies that all look alike.”

  “Depends on what you mean by wise-ass.”

  “Let me see your shoes.”

  “Got a warrant?”

  “Jason, show him your fucking shoes,” Harry ordered. He’d had enough of the whole act. He didn’t like the cop and he didn’t like Jason’s attitude.

  Jason lifted his leg and propped the heel on Harry’s desk. Stanton dragged his index finger theatrically across the sole of Jason sneaker, and sniffed it.

  “You can take your foot off my desk now,” Harry said, trying to keep in the mix.

  “You got a little kerosene on your shoes, fella.”

  “How long you been a detective?” It was a good shot, and Jason was close enough to see Stanton’s jaw tighten.

  Harry stepped forward, not quite getting between them. “Hey Stanton, he’s one of the guys put out the fire. Saved our asses. He was standing in the middle of it. Anything on his feet must have come from there. I saw him come from the stairway.”

  “Before or after the fire? Half the time the torch puts it out himself. Gives them a chance to play hero.” Stanton smirked when he said it, but he turned his back on Jason and walked a few paces away.

  “You finished?” Jason asked. He toned it down just a notch and hoped it would get him out of the room.

  “For now.”

  “Five minutes,” Jason said to Carol. “Don’t be late.” He left the room without closing the door, having rejected the alternatives of slamming it and shutting it quietly.

  Jason walked back to Adam’s office. Adam was sitting with his head resting on his desk. He could have been sleeping. Adam had this philosophy that you should sleep when you were tired. He probably slept about five or six hours in any twenty-four hour period, though once a month or so he’d crash. He also only ate when he was hungry, which worked well for him, but the combination sometimes made it hard for him to connect with regular people, since they worked their lives around sleeping and eating, rather than vice-versa.

  “Hey,” Jason said quietly.

  “Hey back,” Adam said without moving. He wasn’t sleeping.

  “Feel like taking a free copter ride? It’s been a while. Just the thing to clear your head.”

  “Fuck you,” Adam mumbled.

  “Suit yourself. But I’m heading out to Sid Maynes’s funeral. I hear it’s gonna be a hell of a show.”

  “I hate funerals.”

  “No, that’s me,” Jason reminded him. “I hate funerals. You love them—it’s birthday parties you hate.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Five minutes. Meet me on the roof.”

  Adam didn’t move and Jason knew if he left now the part of Adam that wanted to go would be much more persuasive than anything else Jason had to say. He headed back in the opposite direction—it would be quicker to cut through the studio than to pass by Harry’s office again, and besides, the company would probably be better. As he neared the studio he noticed that the stage lights were on and he could hear the rhythm of Nate’s voice, but before he got any closer someone stuck a hand right in his face. It was Lou, keeping him off the set. They were shooting an editorial.

  “Mock Live?” Jason mouthed the words at Lou, with a little twinkle in his eye. It was much more fun to ridicule TV than to be on it. Lou didn’t respond, he just quietly walked over and stood behind the camera. Nate was standing at full attention, turned ever so slightly to his left, against a light blue backdrop with a map of the City (not to mention the station’s logo and call letters) painted on it.

  “…We at Channel Six appreciate the deep financial difficulties that the City finds itself in, and we
applaud Mayor Cohen’s skillful stewardship during these difficult times. Indeed, we are proud to have endorsed his candidacy in the last two elections. But we would argue that trying to close the fiscal gap with unprecedented increases in regulatory fees is misguided, disproportionate, and, perhaps worst of all, almost certain to backfire. Fees so high that they force stations off the air will not increase revenue; the end result will be nothing more than fewer stations paying higher taxes, amid the wreckage of job losses and reduced viewing options for the public. We urge the Mayor to reconsider this short-sighted measure. And we hope you, the viewing public will join us. Please write the Mayor at the address printed on your screen, and let him know that you’re opposed to raising taxes that will cost jobs and force your favorite stations off the air. For all of us at Channel Six…I’m Nathan Johnson.”

  That’s taking a bold stand, Jason thought, walking though the studio after Lou had waved him on. Turns out the TV station is against higher TV licensing fees. Must have been up all night debating that one. Now that this hot potato is out of the way they’re probably ready to take a stand on school busing.

  “Do we have time for one more?” he heard Nate say as he walked though. “I think it would be stronger if we added that sentence about our support for the parking fee surcharge.”

  Nate was the James Brown of the broadcasting business—nobody worked harder. Jason swallowed a smile as he pictured James Brown’s version of the same editorial. “Forget about crime, traffic, and sanitation, everybody write the Mayor about those sky-high TV licensing fees! Papa needs a higher profit margin. Yeow!” Now that might just push that letter-writing campaign into the double digits.

  20

  Jason, Carol, and Adam were crowded together in the helicopter. It would have been awkward enough for the three of them just to share an elevator, even on a good day. In fact, almost any twosome would have set off some unpredictable sparks: Jason-Carol, or Adam-Carol, or even Jason-Adam with Carol nearby. And it wasn’t a good day. Carol had never been in a helicopter before, and she had that hollow look people get when they try to figure out why the thing actually flies. But she was more ambitious than scared, and nothing was going to stop her from doing a remote this big. Adam was a fatalist, so he wasn’t afraid of much, but he hated flying under any circumstances because he couldn’t stand being put in someone else’s hands. He was also still reeling from the fire. If anything, Jason was the most put together of the three of them, which was not an inspiring thought. He needed to keep an eye on how Adam was doing, and that helped distance him from Bill’s murder, but only so much and not all the time. He was grateful he’d been looking away at the moment of the shooting. As it was he still saw the body whenever he closed his eyes.