“That was a long time ago, Lisolette.”
“Perhaps not to me. Papa and I went to the park one time-I must have been twenty-one or -two at the time… . I was just getting into my graduate work-and there were a group of them marching and doing close-order drill. Papa called them a disgrace to the land of Schiller and Beethoven and he got into a dreadful fight with their officer …
then the rest of them started beating him. The police came but it was too late and Papa almost died.”
“Did they hurt you?” Claiborne asked after a moment of silence.
Lisolette smiled; for once it wasn’t a kind smile. “There was a metal stake thrust into the ground near a trash can. I pulled it up and attacked one of them who was trying to kick Papa with his foot. I put him in the hospital.” There was a somewhat sad triumphant look in her eyes. “Perhaps it was a terrible thing to do but I couldn’t let them do that to Papa, could I?”
He looked at her and suddenly remembered his long dead wife, Adele.
Both Lisolette and Adele were possessed of the same sort of fierce pride. It was exactly the sort of thing Adele might have done. A formidable woman, he thought. He toasted Lisolette silently and she joined him, her eyes misty with memories. “I’ve missed Papa over the years,” she said slowly. “Mama died when I was very young and he was .
. . quite important to me all of my life.”
“Did you ever marry, Lisolette?”
She shook her head, staring down at her drink. “Papa never recovered from the beating; I had to take care of him. It wasn’t that I was never asked, you know.” She looked up, the sparkle back in her,eyes.
“Would it surprise you if I said I’m not a virgin?” She smiled warmly.
“Do I shock you?”
“Hardly,” e said, laughing.
“Well, I’m not,” she said proudly. She pressed a hand to her mouth.
“A little alcohol and I say too much-you must excuse me, Harlee.
Nevertheless, it’s true and I feel pleased that I knew what love was.
But there was Papa, and, of course, the children … all the dear children I taught, all the fine young girls and boys. I suppose that became my life instead.”
Remarkable, he thought, there was so much within her that he found himself admiring. So much strength. She seemed giddy at times, but underneath there was that rawboned strength.
“Now tell me about your stocks-before they bring the food so that we can enjoy our dinner.”
She had taken him by surprise; he had almost forgotten why he had asked her to dinner. “Perhaps later on,” he stalled.
“I think now would be better,” she said. “There’s so much you’ll have to explain to me.”
He took out the envelope and spread the contents on the table.
She listened attentively, taking it all in, but for some reason his heart wasn’t in it. Her obvious trust in him made him feel uncomfortable; it took away the pleasure of the game, of the conquest.
“Now, Lisolette, you must remember that stocks of this sort-most over-the-counter stocks-are highly speculative.”
“But if you think the chances are good, Harlee she began.
“You really should give it a great deal of thought,” he said seriously. What the hell was wrong with him? he wondered. He was blowing the whole pitch.
“You know I trust your judgment,” she said simply. She fingered the certificates in front of her. “They’re very pretty, aren’t they?
Very impressive.” She glanced at him, her face open. “What should I buy Harlee? YouR have “The metal stocks,” he began. He could feel the sweat in his armpits and on his forehead.
“Yes?”
Suddenly he was very angry with her, with himself.
“You trust me completely, don’t you, Lisolette?”
Her face was suddenly quite serious. “Of course.”
“Why should you?” he asked slowly. “Why should you trust my judgment-or me either, for that matter?”
She looked flustered. “You’re angry. Did I say something wrong?”
“You’re trusting, Lisolette,” he said grimly. “Much too trusting.”
“Is there-any reason why I shouldn’t trust you?” She looked perplexed.
He leaned back in his chair and took a long drink of the martini.
His ex-wife, he thought, he.had forgotten how much he had loved her.
And Lisolette was her duplicate.
Adele had trusted him with the business, with her bank accounts and she had left him everything in her will. She had loved him, too.
“Lisolette,” he said slowly, “what if I told you that these stocks were absolutely worthless, that they’re not worth the parchment they’re printed on. I should know to tell me.”
I printed most of them myself.” He touched one of them.
“You’re right-they’re beautiful, but worthless. They’re fake.”
He looked up at her. “So am I, Lisolette. I don’t have a dollar to my name, I’m two months behind in the rent; I can’t even pay for our dinner tonight.”
Lisolette frowned. “When one is in desperate straits “You misunderstand,” he said impatiently. “This is my way of life. He hesitated. “You aren’t the first one; I’m sure there are a dozen warrants waiting for me around the country, although most of my ladies are too well bred to bring charges.”
“Your ladies,” she said, smiling.
“My ladies,” he said, suddenly unaccountably sad. “My poor ladies.”
“You’re a very sensitive man, Harlee.”
He looked at her sharply. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
“Of course I have. Every word.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
She made a gesture. “Why should I be? I knew all this long before tonight; it was very easy to check.”
He stared at her, shocked, and then suddenly angry.
“And you let me go ahead and make a fool of myself?”
She reached out and took one of his hands. “That’s not it at all.
You’re a lovely, gentle man, and I.wouldn’t hurt you for all the world.
I wouldn’t have missed the money and you have given me so much more.”
“You would have gone ahead with it, let me take your money?”
“If it had come to that-though perhaps not as much as you wanted.”
“Lisa,” he said, for the first time using the diminutive form of her name, “you’re really an astonishing woman.”
She smiled..”No, just a woman who has lived a long time and still has an eye for the gentlemen.” Suddenly she was overcome with delight at her judgment. “Would it surprise you if I knew you would tell me all about the stock certificates, the truth about them? I told Rosette that you were the most honest man I had ever met!”
He laughed quietly. “God, I wish I had known you earlier.” And then he realized that he had, and that he had married her. Adele. She was Adele all over again.
“Now,” Lisolette said, suddenly very matter-of-fact, “while you were trying to convince Miss Reynolds that she should allow us to eat here, I took the liberty of ordering chateaubriand and a bottle of ChAteau Lafite Rothschild, ‘64. You see, I do know what gentlemen like!”
“Why … ?”
She shrugged. “I knew what she must be saying to you -and I wanted you to enjoy the evening with me.”
How like Adele, he thought. How much like Adele.
And yet-how uniquely Lisolette Mueller.
CHAPTER 19
Thelma and Jenny had shown up and Barton and Leroux, not wishing to talk business in front of them, had gone for a stroll on the promenade.
There were still ten minutes before their table would be ready.
Time enough to ask Leroux questions that Quantrell’s TV program had brought up-more than time, probably; considering how crowded the room was and that nobody was in a hurry to venture back outside. The table would undoubtedly be late anyway-and with
less tension and hostility on Leroux’s part, Barton was beginning to enjoy himself. He was inside where it was warm and smelled pleasantly of food, and relaxed enough to admire the beauty of the soft snow drifting past the windows. It was almost a ghost snow-light, puffy flakes that clung to the glass for a moment before dissolving into tears of water that trickled down out of sight.
“Craig, you’ve been around architecture and construction long enough to realize there’s no such thing as a fireproof building, the best we can build is a fire-resistant one,” Leroux was saying. “Almost anything will burn; it all depends on how hot it gets. That’s your basic premise. After that, we get into time-how long will a piece of wood or a strip of rug resist charring, resist breaking into open flame? And at what temperature? Almost anything that goes into any building has a fire rating-it’s the law. And then there are building codes that every construction firm has to follow. We’re no different from the others.
We do our best to compete; we cut unnecessary corners and frills -that’s the name of the game. But we don’t break the law. The city has inspectors; the Fire Department has inspectors; the insurance companies have inspectors. If they don’t’ approve of the construction of one of our buildings, we can’t open it up for tenancy. It’s as simple as that.”
Barton swirled his drink for a moment and thought that it was anything but as simple as that. Leroux was pitching him and he wondered why the older man was making the effort.
“What about insurance trade offs? Quantrell implied that a builder could completely sprinkler his building, for example, and perhaps get a reduced rate from the insurance company that would help pay for the sprinkler system. True?”
Leroux laughed. “That’s almost a knee-slapper. He might actually find his insurance rates going up; there’s always the chance that something will set off the sprinklers accidentally and if they’re in a shop area with goods below, you’ve got one expensive, unholy mess on your hands. And few tenants would go for unsightly dropheads in their ceiling. What might happen is that you might get trade offs from the city in the form of relaxation of other parts of the fire code. For the majority of high rises, however, there’s not much chance of lower insurance rates.
Insurance is dirt cheap to begin with-there are something like four hundred companies out there bidding for your business. Frankly, the annual light-bulb bill for the Glass House will run to more than our annual insurance premiums.”
Barton drained his glass. Good, but they had included everything but ice cream in his Ramos fizz. He signaled for another. “How come it’s so cheap?”
Leroux looked angry. “Because, despite everything that Mr. Quantrell implies, fires in high-rise buildings are scarcer than tits on a boar hog. Sure, they happen-so do airplane crashes.
But, relatively speaking, the annual fatalities are so low as to be nonexistent. How much insurance can you buy for fifty cents at the local airport fifteen thousand dollars’ worth?” He calmed a little.
“All the public areas in the Glass House are sprinklered-they have to be. Install them throughout an entire building and the expense would be so high you’d no longer be competitive. Sears Roebuck did it in their headquarters building, as much for public image as for safety.
But we’re not Sears -at least not this year,” Maybe he was tired, maybe it was because Leroux was trying too hard, but Barton didn’t feel convinced.
“Craig, look out there. That building about two o’clock to your right, the one with the small red beacon on top.
The Penobscot Building. National Curtainwall was the developer there. And on your left, about the same relative position-the Hanson Building is ours, too. There are half a dozen more in town, all ours.”
For a moment he was lost in thought. “In a sense, Craig, we’re the original ecologists. Mankind can’t go on expanding his living space forever, cutting down forests and leveling the hills. Los Angeles houses a population two thirds that of Chicago in twice its space. We can’t afford suburbia forever; we have to get back to the city, the city that was invented as a trading center, as a manufacturing center, designed so the worker could be close to his job.” He flicked the ash off his cigar. “We build cities, Craig-it’s not a mean occupation.”
He wasn’t Caesar after all, Barton thought. He was Ramses; he was a pyramid builder.
“You mentioned earlier that you had seen Joe Moore’s project,” Leroux said. “Do you know what’s behind it?”
Barton suddenly felt stone sober. “No, but I’d like to.
For some strange reason, Wyn, I can’t see a country full of replicas of the Glass House.”
Leroux smiled. “You might see one or two, probably no more than that-local conditions vary too much from city to city. But I wouldn’t deny that you’ll see some that are remarkably similar, that might differ only in external detailing or such things as size of site, height-you could list the variables.
And you’ll see parts of it incorporated in buildings that might, to the untrained eye, seem radically different. I wish I could claim the original idea but a hotel chain beat me to it. Their flagship hotels are all designed after the same general model-a shell of rooms surrounding an enormous interior lobby, complete with ‘outside’ elevators running the height of the lobby, fountains,. plaza-type restaurants, the works. The lobbies may vary in size and shape but they’re still the same idea. For the most part, the basic problems of cantilevered floors and the like have all been figured out; you make the modifications you want and the building goes up in nothing flat.”
Leroux was leading up to, something, Barton thought uneasily. He had said earlier that he couldn’t do without him, which was ridiculous, but there had to be a reason why Leroux thought so.
“Construction is a hazardous occupation financially,” Leroux continued. “It’s one where time is-often the most critical factor. As a developer, we first have to arrange for interim financing, usually with a bank or a real estate investment trust, where the interest rates are high-banks don’t like to tie up their capital for long periods of time, for one thing. And the building itself represents a risk, it exists only on paper and a lot of things can go wrong between the rendering and the completed project. God help you if you run into trouble putting in your foundations, for example. When the building is finished, we arrange for permanent financing, usually with an insurance company.
The finished building is much less of a risk and the rates are lower.
One of your obvious expenses, of course, is how long you tie up the initial capital.”
“You taught me all of that in the first six months,” Barton said shortly. “You’ve been a good teacher.”
It was Leroux’s Turn to signal ‘for another drink.
“Developers and builders naturally try to beat the problem. The first thing was to junk the traditional method of acquiring the site, having the architectural firm prepare a complete set of working drawings, then calling for bids.
Unfortunately, there’s the time factor-the time to turn out the drawings, the time required for contractors to plow through all the drawings to make their. bids. You can lose six months, perhaps close to a year. So most high rises are ‘scope’ jobs or built by ‘fast-track’ methods. You usually don’t ask for bids. As soon as the initial shape is pinned down, we start construction of the basic building the foundation, frame, skin, basic mechanical, the core with the fire stairs, elevators, and the like. You work from the shell inward, essentially doing a lot of your designing at the same time you’re building, though granted that much of your basic designing may have been done before the rendering. You do an estimate of the quantity of materials you’d need, even though you may not have decided on a specific use for them at the time of the estimate. There’s an element of waste involved but you save on the most valuable commodity of all-time.”
“You’re leading up to something, Wyn; what is it?”
“The idea is to have a proven product, Craig, like the hotel chain I mentioned. Or the Glass House.
It’s beautiful building; we’ll market it in various permutations and combinations-again, like the hotels.
But because there’s so little risk with a proven product, there’s no need for risk capital, for interim, financing, and the high interest rates. You eliminate the middle man financially. Which cuts the expense of the building to the eventual owner.”
“The only thing he doesn’t get is something that’s uniquely his own,” Barton said bitterly. “Something that’s an expression of his own corporation or business.”
Leroux waved his hand at the skyline. “There are a lot of buildings out there, Craig. How many of them strike you as beautiful?
One out of ten perhaps? Or is that a highly inflated figure?
What’s wrong with a Glass House here and a slightly different version of it in Milwaukee?
Nobody lives in two cities at the same time; the natives would hardly be offended.”
Leroux had sold Moore on the idea, Barton thought.
That’s what he had sensed and that’s what Moore hadn’t wanted to admit-that he had actually considered Leroux’s idea to be a good one.
“You’re telling me this for a reason, Wyn. I gather there’s some role you have in mind that I’m supposed to play?”
“That’s right.” Leroux suddenly looked troubled, unsure of himself because of Barton’s lack of enthusiastic response. “This isn’t something that’s going to happen several years from now; it’s in the works already. United Insurance has agreed to finance all National Curtainwall buildings-at permanent financing rates. We’ll be developer, designer, do the general contracting, decorate, and manage.
We’ll be hard to beat.”
“We’ll Turn out buildings like GM turns out cars, that it?
Complete with a five-year guarantee?”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Leroux said coldly.
“It isn’t mine.”
“And me?”
“You were right earlier-I don’t need your talents as an architect …
The Glass Inferno Page 14