“All he said was that they have fires in the building, that Bert McGraw is in the hospital with a heart attack, that they have a hundred people—he said trapped in the Tower Room—and he needs some answers from you.” All? It was quite a bit to remember, but the words had been repeating themselves in her mind ever since she had hung up the phone after Nat’s call.
“Trapped.” Paul repeated the single word. His eyes had not left the screen. “That means no elevators. That means no power.” At last he looked at Zib. “And just what answers does he think I can give him?”
He didn’t say.
Paul wore a small quizzical smile. “Was that all he said?”
Zib closed her eyes and shook her head. The entire conversation clamored in her mind. She opened her eyes again. Paul seemed a stranger, unaffected, uninvolved. “He said, ‘Where is the son of a bitch? If you don’t know where he is, find him. And get him down here. On the double.’”
Paul said, “Well!” The quizzical smile spread.
“I told him,” Zib said, “that he had never talked to me like that before.”
“And?”
“He said it was a mistake, that probably he ought to have paddled my patrician ass.” Like a little girl, she thought, a spoiled little girl given her way too long.
“As the British say,” Paul said, “the cat seems to be amongst the pigeons.”
Would she have laughed at the phraseology before? No matter. “This isn’t really a time for witticisms.”
“What is it a time for? Lamentations?” Paul glanced again at the screen, the tiny silent moving shapes. “There’s nothing I can do down there. Nothing.” He faced Zib again. “What’s done, as Shakespeare might have said, is already done and not to be undone.”
“You could try. They’re trying.”
“That,” Paul said, “is the kind of platitude we’re raised on. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ And they cite David the Bruce and his goddam spider. I think it was W. C. Fields who put it much better, ‘If at first you don’t succeed,’ he said, ‘give up; stop making a fool of yourself.’”
Zib said slowly, “Have you any idea what has happened? Is that it?”
“How could I have an idea?”
“What you said about what’s done.”
“A figure of speech.”
“I don’t think it was. I think—”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you think.” Paul’s voice was cold. “You’re decorative and sometimes amusing, and you’ve very good in bed, but thinking isn’t your forte.”
Oh God, Zib thought, dialogue straight out of the magazine! Unreal. Escape fiction come alive. But the words were like a slap, not a blow. Where was real hurt? “You flatter me,” she said.
“We agreed at the beginning—”
“That it was fun and games,” Zib said, “Yes.”
“Don’t tell me you began to take us seriously?”
The bastard, she thought; he is actually pleased. “No,” she said. “There was never anything about you to take seriously.” She paused and glanced at the screen. “There is even less now.” She faced Paul squarely. “You were the man on the job. I know that much. Paul Simmons and Company, Electrical Contractors. Did you skimp the work?” She was silent for a moment, thinking, remembering. “Once you told me that Nat was going to do you favors, only he wouldn’t know it. Was that what you meant?”
“Silly questions,” Paul said, “don’t deserve even silly answers.” He walked to the television set and switched it off. “Well,” he said, “it’s been nice. Don’t think it hasn’t.” He walked to the door. “I’ll miss this hotel and its cozy atmosphere.” His hand was on the knob.
“Where are you going?”
“I think I’ll go see a couple of men,” Paul said. “And then I think I’ll go home.” He opened the door and stepped through. The door closed quietly.
Zib stood motionless in the center of the room. Unreal, incredible: those were the words that came to mind. She tucked them away for later examination and walked to the bed, plumped herself down, and picked up the telephone.
She had no need to look up the number; after all these years the construction office telephone number was familiar enough. And Nat was there. Zib kept her voice calm, expressionless. “I gave Paul your message.”
“He’s coming down?”
“No.” Zib paused. “I’m—sorry, Nat. I tried.”
“Where is he going?”
There was in his tone a quality Zib had never encountered. Call it strength, force, whatever; it dominated. “He said he’s going to see a couple of men,” she said, “and then he thinks he’ll go home.”
“Okay,” Nat said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Have him picked up. Objections?”
Zib shook her head in silence. No objections. “He saw the television,” she said. “And I told him what you had said.” She paused again. “He said, ‘What’s done is, already done and not to be undone.’ Does that mean anything?”
Nat’s voice was quiet but unhesitant. “Entirely too goddam much,” he said, and hung up.
He turned from the telephone and looked around the office trailer. Assistant Commissioner Brown was there, and two battalion chiefs, Giddings, Patty, Potter, and himself. “Simmons,” he said, “apparently has seen all he wants to see on the tube. I don’t know if we can use him or not, but I think we want him.”
“If you want him, we’ll get him,” Potter said.
Giddings said, “More important, if Lewis has done his figuring, let’s get some men on the job and see if we can get power to at least one of those express elevators.”
Nat snapped his fingers. “Simmons’s foreman—what’s his name? Pat? Pat Harris.” He was looking at Giddings, and he saw that Giddings understood. To Brown, Nat said, “We need him and some men. Maybe they can do some good and maybe they can’t, but we’ll try.” He paused. “But we need Harris for another reason. Simmons didn’t put those changes in with his own hands. Harris had to know about them.”
Patty cleared her throat. She was alone, a trifle diffident, but quite at ease in this man’s world. To how many jobs had she ridden with Daddy? In how many construction trailers just like this one had she sat and twiddled her thumbs, waiting for technical discussion to end and a hooky afternoon’s excursion to begin? How much knowledge had she absorbed unknowingly? “There is somebody else who would have had to know about the changes,” she said. She paused. “The inspector who signed them off. Who was he?”
In the silence Nat said again, “Good girl.”
Giddings said, “We’ll damn well find out and get the son of a bitch down here. I know his face. His name—” He was silent for a moment. “Harry,” he said. “Harry. I don’t know his last name, but we’ll find it.”
16
Mayor Ramsay came out of the office in search of his wife. He found her alone at the Tower Room windows, looking out over the broad shining river. She smiled as he came up.
“So solemn, Bob,” she said. “Is it really as solemn an occasion as Bent indicated?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You will think of something.”
“No.” The mayor shook his head. “Any thinking will have to be done by the technical people—Ben Caldwell, his man at the other end of the phone, or Tim Brown.”
He paused. His smile was wry. “And any orders will come from Bent, not from me.”
“It is your city, Bob.”
Again denial by headshake. “There comes a time,” Ramsay said, “when you have to admit that others are better men than you are. I’m not in Bent’s class.”