The Glass Inferno

by Thomas N. Scortia

  He shrugged. “I know that. Frankly, if you could stand a mob of kids and in-laws, I’d be delighted to put you up at my place. I’ve told Mamie so much about you that she’s been dying to meet you anyway.”

  “Why, thank you, Harry,” Lisolette said, smug with genuine pleasure.

  “I know we really should do something about the children but . .

  .”

  She hesitated, then continued in a quieter voice: “I think I would like to stay here a little while longer, at least until everyone is down from the Promenade Room.” She glanced over at the chairs with the three children in them, all of whom had gone to sleep in the middle of drinking their cocoa. “There’s no real hurry.”

  Jernigan suddenly remembered. “You were dining Up there tonight with Mr. Claiborne, weren’t you?”

  She nodded. “I’ve looked all over down here for him and I haven’t seen him. I asked Mr. Garfunkel and he thinks that Harlee may still be up there-or possibly on the elevator.” She shook her head sadly.

  “He’s such a fine man; I just hope he’s all right.”

  “The fire is pretty bad up there,” Jernigan said slowly.

  “It’s just one floor beneath the Promenade Room and they’re having trouble getting to it.”

  “They’ll find a way,” Lisolette said firmly. “They will; I know they will.”

  “Miss Mueller.” Jernigan toyed with his cup, hating himself,for what he was going to say and knowing that if he didn’t say it, the day might come when he would hate himself even more. “Mr. Claiborne had credit difficulties with the management here. Rosie did some investigating-all right, call it snooping-and Harlee might be a nice guy but he’s not, you know, on the up and up.”

  “He’s what they call a con man,” Lisolette said quietly.

  “I’ve known that for almost two weeks now. I know it and it hasn’t made that much difference to me.” She laughed quietly. “I suppose that makes me a foolish old woman.”

  Jernigan suddenly reached out and took her hand. “I don’t think it does Miss Mueller. I think all it means is that you like him a lot.”

  “Thank you,” Lisolette said, squeezing his hand very tightly.

  “Thank you so very, very much.”

  CHAPTER 59

  His worries about what might have happened to Chief Karl Fuchs had preyed on Infantino long enough. His first stop was at the emergency first-aid station that had been set up on the eighteenth floor near the stairwell. It was here that Infantino discovered Mark Fuchs, his clothing ripped and torn from the explosion itself and from subsequent burial beneath the resulting debris. Fuchs had been dazed and semiconscious for half an hour and was just now coming out of it.

  Except for second-degree burns and severe lacerations about the face and shoulders, his chief injuries stemmed from shock.

  Infantino found him sitting on the edge of a cot, staring into space.

  He took one look and turned to the rescue man in charge. “Why the hell hasn’t this man been evacuated?”

  “Chief, we don’t have that many men to help the injured down the stairs. And except for a few burns, he’s in far better shape than the rest of them. Besides, he refuses to go.”

  Infantino turned back to Fuchs. “Mark, you’re as bad as your old man-stubborn as they come. Look, you want to go downstairs by yourself?

  Do I have to order you down?”

  Fuchs’s face was without emotion. “What happened to Dave? They won’t tell me.”

  “Dave?”

  “Lencho. He was just ahead of me hen the blast occurred. He probably touched it off when he opened the storeroom door.”

  Infantino stalled, trying to figure out Fuchs’s state of mind and how much bad news he could stand. “How’d you survive?”

  “An overhead beam fell over me and the rest of the debris piled on top of it. You didn’t answer my question.”

  Infantino felt uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Mark. He was right in front of the blast.”

  “Bad?”

  “He’s dead. It killed him instantly.”

  For a moment the younger man seemed on the verge of tears and then, with obvious effort, controlled himself.

  “That’s too bad.” Softly, with pity: “He was a lousy fireman.”

  “We’d better get you to the hospital for a checkup,” Infantino said.

  Fuchs didn’t move. “They told me the old man was nosing around on sixteen after the blast.”

  If he told him why, Infantino thought, young Fuchs might never leave.

  “That’s his privilege,” he said gently.

  “Theoretically I’m in charge but I’m not about to put a bridle on an old war horse.” He tried to change the subject. “Look, you’re in no shape to be hanging around up here. Get down to the first-aid station below and if they want to send you to the hospital, go. It’ll probably only be for a short while. Besides, it’s free.”

  Fuchs’s eyes.were chilly and old. “Quit bullshitting me, Chief.

  The old man came looking for me, didn’t he? And nobody’s seen him since, have they?” His voice trailed off.

  “It was a dumb thing for him to dole And you’re waiting for them to bring him here, right?”

  Infantino asked.

  “You’ve got it.” Defensively he added: “He’s my father.”

  He was wasting precious time, Infantino thought. He’d wanted to avoid talking about it altogether and if he had, to break it to young Fuchs gently. But there wasn’t going to be time for that.

  “Okay, Mark,” he said coldly. “You’re right, the chief came up looking for you. He pulled rank on Miller and got on the floor.

  There’s been no word from him since, and if he started with a full bottle for his respirator the air in it must be gone by now. There’s a rescue squad looking for him; I came up to help-there’s not much else I can do until the new equipment arrives from Southport. One way or the other, I’ll find your father. We had our difficulties but besides being my superior, he was also my friend. I’ll make a point of getting word to you just as soon as I find out anything, regardless of what it is.

  If it’s good news you’ll be among the first to know. If it’s bad I’ll let you know just as soon.”

  He stood up from the box he had been sitting on. His voice was now icy. “You’re cluttering up the rescue station here, Fuchs.

  They’ve got men more seriously hurt than you to worry about. Go downstairs and let the doctors look you over-that’s an order.”

  He turned to go and Fuchs suddenly said, “Chief Infantino.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t try being a nice guy. Just be professional. It’s easier on the rest of us that way.”

  Infantino said quietly, “You’ve got a point.”

  Fuchs let himself be led out into the stairwell and helped down the steps. Infantino followed as far as sixteen, then turned in at the stairwell door. The corridor was slippery with water and cluttered with a tangle of hoses that led from the stairwell standpipe. The smoke was light at the landing entrance but thickened rapidly a few feet farther in. Boiling clouds of smoke churning at the far end of the corridor, past the elevator shafts, marked the present extent of the fire. Occasionally the dull orange flicker of flames could be seen through the smoke. Infantino started to cough, slipped on his mask, and picked his way down the corridor until he ran into a hose crew. He knelt and tapped the rear man on the shoulder, bellowing into his ear: “Where’s the rescue team that went to look for Chief Fuchs?”

  The man turned slightly-and shouted back: “Second feeder corridor off is one. They’ve covered the others and have been working their way in.”

  There were two ways of doing it, Infantino thought, and that was the wrong way. They had assumed that Fuchs had started searching the feeder corridors closest to the stairwell landing, which was easier and quicker but hardly logical. Chances were the old man had gone directly to the farthest corridor, the one at whose end the explosion had occurred. He had probabl
y been knocked out or pinned by falling debris, or else …

  Infantino turned and ran back to the stairwell landing.

  “Who’s got a spare respirator? Any bottles with pure oxygen?

  Okay, give them to me.” -He ran back in past the hose crew, cutting off into the feeder corridor just before the fire itself, catching the spray from the nob full against his side before the crew could Turn the hose away. Then he was past it and into the no-man’s land that was the battlefield for the wars fought between fire and men, the burned-out areas that were desolate marshlands of ash and water.

  It was a land of charred wars:and studding, of thick, greasy smoke, of burned-out offices, of twisted, half-melted skeletons of fire-blackened typewriters and adding machines, of shredded draperies dripping water on smoldering carpeting. Farther down the corridor, the fire had consumed most of the combustibles, and the active blazes had ‘been extinguished.

  He passed a salvage crew pulling apart the smoking remains of a pile of office furniture. The offices in the area had been completely gutted, sagging metal wastebaskets and half-melted hangers drooping from warped coat hooks indicating how intense the fire had been. The smoke was considerably ‘heavier now.

  At a cross corridor, Infantino hesitated, considering his next move.

  He could hear the salvage crew moving up behind him, dampening down the last of the smoldering debris. To his left, an entire section of acoustical ceiling had collapsed as its supporting walls had buckled.

  Here the debris was surprisingly free of the touch of fire. The collapse had apparently denied air to the fire in this section and only occasional tendrils of smoke drifted up from the heavy mass of wreckage. He was about to Turn to the right-hand corridor when his eye caught a gleam of rubber and canvas.

  He knelt and scrabbled away at some of the fragments of tile.

  What he had seen was the tail end of a fireman’s slicker. He heaved a section of the debris to one side and uncovered a booted foot.

  He started to work feverishly now, tugging desperately at the hot wreckage and prying away hunks of plaster and tile and lengths of partially burned two-by-fours. In a few minutes he had tunneled part way underneath the pile, exposing the man below up to his waist.

  Suddenly the stack of debris he had pushed to one side began to slip.

  He grabbed a length of metal pipe that had fallen from the ceiling area and used it to prop Up the wreckage. It was some minutes before he could grab the man about the waist and gently ease him out from under the remaining mass of tile and charred studding.

  He turned him gently over on his back. Chief Fuchs.

  For a moment, -Infantino thought the old man was dead.

  His respirator mask was lying to one side and his skin was acyanotic blue. Then he noticed Fuchs’s chest moving slightly. He quickly removed his own mask and tried giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  After a moment, the chiefs chest heaved spasmodically and settled into a more normal breathing cycle. Infantino scrambled back into the corridor where he had left the spare respirator and the tank of pure oxygen. He had forgotten to put his own mask back on but that could wait a minute. He accidentally took a lungful of acrid smoke and started coughing.

  He forced himself to stop while he tightened the mask on Fuchs’s face and carefully adjusted the oxygen flow. Then he quickly strapped his own respirator back on and tried to lift Fuchs to his shoulder.

  Jesus, what was wrong, a little smoke and some exertion and he was dizzy as hell…. He tried to half carry, half drag Fuchs down the corridor.

  Suddenly he felt other hands taking the chief from him.

  The salvage crew had abandoned their hoses and ran to help him.

  Two men carried the chief down the corridor and the third put his arm around Infantino and helped him down The hall toward the stairwell.

  Once on the landing, he took off his mask and sat down on the steps for a moment to let his head clear. He started coughing again but it wasn’t too bad, not serious enough to require attention. A moment’s rest and some fresh air …

  He craned his neck and watched the salvage crew carry Fuchs down the steps. He hoped desperately he had found.

  the stupid, obstinate, brave old bastard in time.

  He watched a moment longer and automatically started to move his lips in the old familiar litany: Holy Mary, Mother of God.

  CHAPTER 60

  Thelma had instinctively clutched at Jenny at the sound of the explosion and the clatter of the cables as they fell on the roof of the cage. Then she abruptly loosened her grip, fearful that Jenny could feel her own trembling.

  The situation was bad enough as it was; there was no sense in communicating to Jenny her.own fright. She wondered briefly how it would feel if the last cables snapped and they plummeted to,the ground.

  What would she think about, and then the crash on the plaza below.

  . .

  . .

  She couldn’t, she wouldn’t think about that. instead she concentrated on her husband’s voice roaring above the hubbub in the cage: “We’re perfectly safe! As long as even one cable holds, we’re safe!” Jenny was on the verge of hysterics and had started to cry.

  Thelma reached over and touched her shoulder gently, as she might to reassure a child. “Don’t be afraid -Wyn knows what he’s talking about.” She believed Wyn, she believed him implicitly, and at the moment she was proud of him. He was the steadying influence in the darkened cage, the voice of sanity and courage that kept the rest of the passengers from panicking. Twice now the, emergency brakes had slipped briefly and Wyn had calmed the fear . s of those in the cage each time. She knew that Wyn was actually as confident as he sounded-and fortunately he could communicate that to those around him.

  Funny, she thought. In a situation like this, he could be so brave.

  What worried her was how he would react in the months to come, when the challenges were of a different -sort.

  Jenny had huddled closer to her in the darkness, partly for warmth and partly for the sense of security that Thelma knew she radiated. A sense of false security, Thelma thought to herself. But the mere effort of trying to remain calm for Jenny’s sake was helping herself as well.

  “You’re very close to him, aren’t you, Thelma?”

  “Close?” She thought about that for a moment. “I suppose so.

  You might say that Wyn and I depend on each other.”

  “You’re actually content to let him have his outside interests?”

  There was a slight jiggling to the cage now; the wind was catching at it, Thelma thought. She forced her mind back to the question. “You mean his having a mistress?

  Tolerate would be more accurate, I suppose. But what can I do?

  Nag?

  Issue an ultimatum? It might be effective for a while, but eventually he would look for considerably more than he does now. And .

  . . I don’t think it would do me any credit. Besides, if I …

  pushed it, I might lose Wyn. And I don’t want to lose him.”

  “If it were Craig I would have to tell him to get out.”

  “That’s confidence without considering the consequences, Jenny.

  And I think it shows you want to own him.” Thelma was surprised at her own obtuseness. Another time, another place, and she would be considerably more diplomatic. But their own immediate situation hardly invited diplomacy. “I don’t want to own Wyn; I don’t think I could stand to live every moment of his life along with him. Much of his life has no appeal to me and there would be no point in pretending that it does.

  He gives me a great deal of himself. I need him-and he needs me.

  “He’ll need you more than ever after this is over,” Jenny said.

  That was very true, Thelma realized. There would be inquiries into the fire, attacks in the newspapers, all sorts of innuendoes. Now, more than ever in his life, Wyn would need her. For a moment she had a strange feeling of satisfaction, then dismissed it as being unworth
y of her.

  “Jenny, I said I depended on Wyn but you can’t carry that too far.

  There’s a difference between love and dependency.

  I think if a person does not live their own life that they eventually end up with no internal strength at all; and without that, a couple would have nothing to give each other. A man and a woman live their own lives and I$ their gift to each other is the sharing thereof.

  I think . ‘ .

  At that moment the cage shuddered and the air was filled with the screeching of the emergency brakes on the outside rails. People began to scream and once again Thelma threw her arms about Jenny, half to comfort her and half to comfort herself.

  The cage began to sway like a pendulum, dropping as it did so.

  Some’of the passengers were thrown to the floor and Thelma winced as somebody fell heavily across the lower part of her legs. But there was no time to cry out at the pain. The brakes, she thought. The cage must have gradually slipped to the point where the guide rails had been spread and the emergency brakes had now released their saving grip.

  She realized with horror that they had started the long drop toward the street below.

  Then, suddenly, the cage jerked short. For a moment it was completely quiet, except for a faint, swaying motion.

  The cables had held, she thought, slowly releasing her breath.

  But the cage was no longer braced against the side rails. They were now dangling in midair, held only by the four remaining cables.

  CHAPTER 61

  Barton and Infantino were outside on the plaza, staring up at the shear wall, when the scenic elevator broke loose from its rails. It slipped a few feet, then suddenly plunged from its seating on the stele tracks. It came to an abrupt stop when the remaining cables broke its fall. The cage bounced a few times, then settled down to swaying gently in the wind, occasionally brushing against the side of the building.

  Barton slowly let his breath out. He could imagine the panic inside the darkened cage. He wondered again if Jenny were in it or if she were still up in the Promenade Room. If she were in the cage she had taken quite a jolting. And if she were in the Promenade Room …