The governor said, “You knew they were potentially dangerous?” He was looking at Frazee.
“I’m not an engineer, for God’s sake! Stop trying to pin it all on me. Giddings showed me the damn things and I told him I didn’t understand them—”
“So,” Ben Caldwell said, “what did Will say then?”
“I don’t even remember.”
Some men grow in crises, Beth thought, some shrink. Frazee, the dapper jaunty patrician was already smaller than life size, and still shrinking rapidly. She felt a sad contempt for the man.
“You asked me,” Caldwell said, “if I thought we should call off the ceremonies and the reception. If that was your idea, then you must have understood a great deal of what Giddings told you. If it was his idea, then you must have understood something of its urgency.” Cold pitiless logic. “Which was it, Grover?” Caldwell said.
Frazee’s hand of its own volition reached for the drink. He drew it back. “You said there was no need to call the reception off.”
“Not quite.” Caldwell’s voice was cold. “I said that public relations was not in my line. A very different answer, Grover. You—”
The governor broke in. “The question was asked, Ben. Whether Giddings wanted the reception scrubbed or Grover merely wondered about it is largely immaterial. You are the technical man. Did you see the potential danger?” The question hung in the air.
“The answer to that ought to be obvious,” Caldwell said at last. “I came myself. I am here, along with the rest of you.” He showed an almost glacial calm. “No one could anticipate a madman down in the main transformer room. No one could anticipate the fourth-floor fire, which by itself might not have caused more than small unpleasantness.” He paused. “But taken together, along with the design-change orders, which apparently were followed—”
He shook his head. “As I said before, a concatenation of errors.”
“Leading how far?”
Caldwell shook his head faintly. “You are asking for an impossible judgment, Governor.”
The mayor spoke up. “That,” he said, “is precisely what he is asking for, Ben: a judgment, not a hard-and-fast answer.”
Even Bob, her cousin, Beth thought, whom she had never considered one of the earthshakers, even he had this quality of command, of clarity in crisis, the total willingness to face facts which, in her experience, few men or women had possessed.
Caldwell nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I see.” He looked at the fire commissioner. “Let’s have a judgment from your people. Then let me speak again to Nat Wilson.”
Assistant Commissioner Brown’s voice was hollow on the telephone’s desk speaker. “We’re doing the best we can—” he began.
“That,” goddammit,” the commissioner said, “is no answer, Tim. I know already that you’re doing the best you can. What I want to know is how much is that accomplishing and how does it look?”
There was hesitation. Then, “It doesn’t look very good, to be honest with you. There isn’t equipment anywhere that will reach up there, as you know. We’re going in from the outside as high as we can, and we’re going up inside—up the stairs. There are two men in each stairwell climbing to you, or trying to. They have masks—”
“The smoke is bad?”
“It isn’t good. How long some of those fire doors will hold is anybody’s guess, no matter how they’re rated. If it gets hot enough—”
“I’m aware of it, Tim. Go on.”
Brown’s voice took on an almost angry note. “Wilson here, Caldwell’s man, has tried to talk me into phoning the Coast Guard—”
“For God’s sake, man, why?”
“They have guns that shoot lines out to ships in trouble.
And he thinks maybe, just maybe—” The voice was silent. “At least Wilson is thinking,” the commissioner said. “He’s got another wild idea—”
“Put him on.” The commissioner nodded to Caldwell. “Caldwell here, Nat,” Caldwell said. “What is your thinking?”
“If we can get power in from the substation,” Nat said, “I’ve got Joe Lewis working on it, then maybe we can jury-rig something for one of the express elevators.” Pause. “At least that’s what we’re working on. We’ll need some men—”
“Simmons can provide them.”
Nat’s voice changed. “Yes,” he said. “I’m anxious to talk to Simmons. About a lot of things.”
Caldwell turned back into the room. “You heard it,” he said.
Nat’s voice came again on the desk speaker. “The choppers can’t see any way. With the tower mast there’s no place for them to set down.”
“All right, Nat,” Caldwell said. “Thank you.” He looked around the silent office.
The governor was the first to speak. “I’ve read about situations like this,” he said. “I never expected to be in one.” He showed his smile. “Anyone for parchesi?”
The time was 4:59. Thirty-six minutes had passed since the explosion.
15
Concrete and steel—insensitive? indestructible? Not so. The building was in pain, and the men climbing the interminable stairs could feel even through the fire doors the fever of the building’s torment.
Firemen Denis Howard and Lou Storr paused for a breather on the thirtieth floor. Smoke was not constant, only the heat, and at this level the air was clear. They took off their masks gratefully.
“Mother of God!” This was Howard. “Do you feel like one of those mountain goats?” He was catching his breath in great gasps.
“I told you to stop smoking,” Storr said. “See what it did for me?” His breathing was at least as labored as Howard’s. “I make it ninety-five floors to go.”
They breathed in silence for a time. Then, “Do you remember a poem in school?’ Howard said. “It was about this crazy mixed-up kid who walked through some little town waving a flag that said ‘Excelsior’ ?”
Storr nodded wearily. “Something like that,” he said. “Well,” Howard said, “I always wondered just where in hell he thought he was going.” He paused. “Like now.” He faced the stairs again. “Let’s get on with it.”
They had carried the charred body from the subbasement covered decently with a stretcher sheet. The TV camera followed the body’s progress to a waiting morgue wagon, where patrolman Frank Barnes stopped the stretcher, raised the sheet, and had a long careful look. To Shannon he said, “That’s our boy, Mike.” I could have kept him out, he thought. Self-incrimination, accomplishing nothing. He looked at the morgue attendant. “Does he have a name?”
“There’s a name inside his toolbox—if it’s his, that is.” Barnes looked at the toolbox, blackened from explosion but still recognizable. “That’s the one he was carrying.”
“The name in it,” the attendant said, “is Connors, John Connors with an O.” He paused. “‘Citizen of the World’ is what it says after his name. A nut.”
“The lieutenant,” Barnes said, “will want to know.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” the morgue attendant said, “the lieutenant-is welcome to the whole fried carcass. You know about radar ovens, instant cooking? That’s what we got here.”
Barnes went off to find the police lieutenant, whose name was James Potter. The lieutenant listened, wrote the name down in his notebook, and sighed. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a start.”