Patty said automatically, “Paul’s office files.”
Nat thought about it. He nodded. “You’re probably right. We’ll have them picked up. I’ll talk to Brown.” He was gone only a few moments, and then, compulsively, he was back to stand once more beside this small bright creature who did not know how to give up.
“How do you explain Paul?” Patty said. The feeling of schizophrenia was very strong: in its secret place that one part of her mind wept quietly; here her attention was on reality, life. “I mean,” she said, “I know these things happen. But Paul?”
Nat had never considered himself knowledgeable about people, but he understood now that Patty’s need was for someone to listen, occasionally to talk, but above all to try to understand. “You know him better than I do, Patty.”
“Do I?” Patty was silent for a few moments. “I’m his wife. We’ve made love together, laughed together, had our arguments, our hopes, our triumphs, our sadnesses—” She shook her head. “But know him? I don’t think I do. I’m—lacking.”
“Maybe,” Nat said slowly, “there isn’t very much there to know.”
Patty’s glance was shrewd. “You never thought so, did you?”
“He and I are entirely different. I’m a country boy.”
“That’s a pose.”
Nat smiled faintly. “Maybe partly. But down deep it isn’t. I can’t complain—”
“Try.”
Nat lifted his hands and let them fall. “I don’t see things the way—city people do. Oh, I’m not trying to make myself out as a hayseed gaping at the tall buildings—”
Patty’s smile was wry. “In Brooks Brothers clothes? Even dirty as they are? Hardly.”
“But,” Nat said, “an air-conditioned duplex apartment overlooking the East River, a house in Westchester or Fairfield, a yacht club on the Sound or a membership in the Racquet Club—these aren’t living, to me; they’re ridiculous attempts to make an artificial existence merely bearable.” He smiled sheepishly. “That makes me sound like a bush-league Thoreau, doesn’t it?”
Patty’s smile was gentle. “What is it you want, Nat?”
“I’m an architect. Maybe that’s it. What I want above everything else is space, room to move around in, distances you can see, mountains that make you feel small—”
“Room to breathe?”
Nat looked at the girl with new interest. “You do understand, don’t you?”
“Is that surprising?”
“I guess it is.”
“I’ve never been out in your country,” Patty said, “and I’d probably be out of place—”
Nat shook his head. “Not you.” He had said the same to Zib once, he remembered, but for wholly different reasons. “You’re—real,” he said now. “That’s a funny thing to say, I know.”
“I’m flattered.
“Bert,” Nat said. “You’re like him in some ways, a lot of ways. When Bert said something, you didn’t have to look it all over for booby traps. He said what he meant and he meant what he said.”
“I’m more than flattered,” Patty said.
From the far end of the trailer Brown said, “They’re on the roof.” A walkie-talkie was speaking hollowly. “Oliver wants the word when they’re ready in the Tower Room.” Brown held out the phone to Nat. “You’d better take over.”
Nat nodded. “Here we go.”
24
Paul Simmons drove back into Manhattan and parked his car in the basement of his office building. He started for the elevators and then changed his mind and walked out to the street and around the corner to a bar. It was dimly lighted and, except for the bartender, deserted. On the color television set behind the bar the World Tower writhed in smoke. Paul tried not to look at the screen as he paid for his drink and carried it to a corner booth. Thank God the bartender was not a talker.
So the cops had picked up Pat Harris. That was the first thing, and its implications were unpleasant. If that kind of pressure was on, then Pat Harris would think first, last, and always of his own neck, that was sure. The story he would tell would not be the one they had agreed on down in the game room, but the one he had threatened Paul with: Harris had wondered about the change orders, even questioned them, but Paul Simmons, his boss and an engineer, had told him to mind his own business and do what he was told. So maybe Harris came out of it not very bright, but neither was he apparently culpable. God damn Harris.
Harry Whitaker, the inspector with his hand conveniently out—what about him? In panic? Probably, because that was Harry Whitaker, but it would be well to find out. Paul maneuvered out of the booth and went to the public telephone.
Harry’s wife answered and did not even ask who was calling. Her screech for her husband almost shattered Paul’s eardrum.
Harry came to the phone at the double and his voice snarled, “Close the goddam-door?” Then, into the phone, in a different tone, “Yes?”
“Simmons here.”
“Oh,” Harry said, “thank God! I’ve been trying to get you, but they said—”
“Now you have me,” Paul said. His voice was cold. “What do you want?”
There was a significant pause. “What do I want?” Harry said in a new, wondering voice. “What do you think I want, Mr. Simmons? I want to know what to do.”
“About what?”
The pause was longer this time. “I don’t understand, Mr. Simmons.”
“Neither do I,” Paul said. The pause, he thought, would be almost interminable this time while the stupid oaf tried to think. It was.
“Look, Mr. Simmons,” Harry said at last, “haven’t you seen on TV what’s happening? At the World Tower, I mean? There’s fires, and people trapped up in that Tower Room, and there’s no power! There’s no power in that whole big goddam building! No electricity at all!”
“So?”
Harry’s voice tried to sound amused. “You’ve got to be kidding, Mr. Simmons. I mean, you know, you and I know what must have happened. There isn’t any other way. A primary short that wasn’t grounded—I mean, what else could it be?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Paul said. Harry’s breathing turned audible, harsh. “Look, Mr. Simmons,” he said, and his voice lowered now, was carefully controlled, “you paid me. You know you did. You told me everything would be all right, and once everything was buttoned up, who would know we’d cut a few corners, who would ever know? You never told me anything like this could happen. I mean, there’s two dead guys already, and some of the firemen they’ve carried out don’t look too good, and what if they can’t get those people down out of the Tower Room, how about that?” The voice paused and then took on new urgency. “If they can’t get those people, Mr. Simmons, that’s—murder! What do we do? That’s all. tell me what we do!”
“I wouldn’t know,” Paul said.
“Look, you paid me!”
“I paid you nothing. I don’t know what you’ve dreamed up, but leave me out of it.”
“You paid me!” The voice was out of control now. “You paid me! How do you think I went to Florida on that goddam vacation?”
“I wondered about that,” Paul said. “It did seem a little odd on an inspector’s salary.”
The pause this time was the longest of all. Harry’s hoarse breathing was the only sound. Then, “So that’s the way it is, is it?” he said. His voice was almost resigned. “Okay, Mr. Simmons. My name’s on all the sign-offs. I’m the guy they’ll come looking for. And you know what I’ll tell them? Do you know, Mr. Simmons?”
“Tell them what you please.”
“I will! I goddam will!” It was a shout, almost a scream. “You’re fucking well right I will! I’ll tell them what you paid me, right down to the last penny! I’ll tell them you told me it was all right, not to worry, nothing could happen! I’ll tell them I believed you!”