"His family had accumulated their fortune in railroads, but he was not inclined to business. He was a dreamer, a dilettante. He studied for a while at L 'Ecole des Beaux Arts, and while he was in Paris he saw the nobility living in lavish apartments in the city. He brought the idea home. He dreamed of building an apartment-palace." "What was the reaction from the local elite?" "They tumbled for it! It was a smash hit! For families there were twelve-room apartments with servants' quarters.
There were smaller apartments for bachelors and mistresses. Horses and carriages were stabled in the rear and available at a moment's notice, like taxis. Curiously there were no kitchens, but there was the restaurant on the top floor, and the residents either went upstairs to the dining room or had their meals sent down." "What about the swimming pool?" "That was for men only-and somewhat of a conceit. On the main floor they had a stockbroker, jeweler, law firm, and insurance agency. In the basement there were laundresses and cobblers. Barbers, tailors, seamstresses, and hair- dressers were on call to the apartments." "And Plumb kept the best apartment for himself?" "The entire twelfth floor. It was designed to his specifications in Spanish style and then redesigned in the 1920s in the French Modern of its day. If the building is restored, the Plumb suite could eventually be a private museum; it's that spectacular!" Qwilleran said, "Suppose the Klingenschoen Fund undertook to restore the Casablanca to its original character, would there be a demand for the apartments?" "I have no doubt." "I suppose you've met Harrison Plumb's daughter?" "Only twice," said Lowell. "The first time was when I asked permission to make the study. I buttered up the old girl, invoked the memory of her dear father, indulged in some architectural double-talk, and got her okay. The second time was when I presented her with a copy of the report-leather-bound, mind you-which I'm sure she hasn't opened, even though we bound in a photo of her father, arm in arm with John Grinchman. Unfortunately, I'm not a bridge player, so I was never invited back." "I have yet to meet the lady," said Qwilleran. "What is she like?" "Nice enough, but an absurd anachronism, living in a private time capsule. She doesn't give a damn if the front steps are pulverizing and the tenants' elevators are shot. If someone doesn't shake some sense into her, she'll hang on to the place until she dies, and that'll be the end of the Casablanca. I don't want to be there on the day they blast." They ordered the Press Club's Tuesday special, pork chops, and talked about the metamorphosis of Zwinger Boulevard, the proposed Gateway AIcazar, and the gentrification of Junktown. Then over cheesecake and coffee they reverted to the subject of the Casablanca.
"Let's draw up the battlelines," said Qwilleran. "On the one side, the developers and the city fathers want to see it demolished." "Also the financial backers for the Gateway Alcazar. Also the realty firm that manages the Casablanca. The building is a headache for them; in spite of the low rents, it's only half-occupied, and the mechanical equipment is constantly breaking down because of age and mishandling." "Okay. And on the other side we have SOCK and G&H, right?" "Plus the art and academic sector. Plus an army of former tenants in all walks of life who've contributed to SOCK for the campaign. Strange as it may seem, there are people who are sentimental about the Casablanca in the same way they love the memory of - say - Paris. It has almost a living presence. It's too bad what happened to Di Bessinger. She had a lot of drive and - as you probably know - she was set to inherit the building." "That's news to me," Qwilleran said.
"You might say she had a vested interest in the Casablanca. That's not to discount her genuine love for it, of course." "Are you telling me that the Countess had named Bessinger in her will?" "Yes, Di spent a lot of time up on Twelve, and it must have been appreciated by the older woman, who - let's face it - lives a lonely life." "Tell me this," said Qwilleran. "If the Klingenschoen Fund makes an offer - and at this point I'm not sure they will - can we be certain that the Countess will sell?" "That I can't answer," said the architect. "Mary Duckworth thinks the woman is craftily playing cat and mouse with both sides. She can't possibly want to see her home demolished, and yet she's related to the Pennimans on her mother's side, and they're financial backers for the Gateway. Do you know the Pennimans?" "I know they own the Morning Rampage," said Qwilleran, "and as an alumnus of the Daily Fluxion I don't think highly of their paper." "Also they're big in radio, television, and God knows what else. Penniman is spelled P-O-W-E-R in this town. It would give me personally a lot of satisfaction to see that crew get their blocks knocked off." "This is going to be an interesting crusade," said Qwilleran. "You understand, of course, that the Klingenschoen board doesn't meet till Thursday, and at this point it's just pie in the sky." The two men shook hands and promised to keep in touch.
From the Press Club Qwilleran wandered over to the public library, one of the few buildings in town that had not changed, except for the addition of a parking structure. It was forty times the size of the library in Pickax, and he wondered if Polly Duncan had ever seen it. She crossed his mind more often than he imagined she would. What would she think of the Casablanca elevators? The tenants? The conversation pit? The mushroom paintings? The gold faucets?
The waterbed? He doubted that she had the objectivity to appreciate a building that looked like a refrigerator.
Browsing through the library's local history collection, he was gratified to find abundant material on the Casablanca in the years when Zwinger Boulevard was crowded with horses and carriages - later with Stanley Steamers and Columbus Electrics. Photos in sepia or black and white depicted presidents, financial wizards, and theater greats standing on the front steps of the building, or stepping from a Duesenberg with the assistance of a uniformed doorman, or dining in the Palm Pavilion on the roof. Women in satin hobble skirts and furs, escorted by men in opera cloaks and top hats, were shown departing for a charity ball. In the grassy park adjoining the building a bevy of nursemaids aired infants in perambulators, and overdressed children batted shuttlecocks with battledores. There was even a photo of the undersized swimming pool with male bathers wearing long-legged bathing suits.
What interested Qwilleran most were the pictures of Harrison Plumb with his little moustache, probably a souvenir of his Paris days. He was shown sometimes with his friend Grinchman, often with visiting dignitaries, frequently with his wife and three children, the boys in knee pants and little Adelaide with ringlets cascading below the brim of a flower-laden hat. In later photos Adelaide and her father posed in a Stutz Bearcat or at a tea table on the terrace. Qwilleran recalled hearing that the personalities and events of the past seep into the brick and stones and woodwork of an old building, giving it an aura. If true, that accounted for the Casablanca magic that Lowell had tried to describe.
Following his two-hour immersion in the gentle, elegant past, Qwilleran found the whizzing traffic hard to take. He walked home briskly because a cold breeze was blowing, and Zwinger Boulevard, with its high buildings, functioned as a wind tunnel. It had been called Eat Street by the Fluxion food editor, and Qwilleran counted a dozen ethnic restaurants not to be found in Moose County: Polynesian, Mexican, Japanese, Hungarian, Szechuan, and Middle Eastern, to name a few.
He intended to try them all. He wished Polly were with him.