His first thought had been to attack the electrical installation that serviced the upper stories of the building, thereby isolating the Tower Room, where the reception was to be held. He had in his toolbox an eighteen-inch wrecking bar and some stolen plastic explosive, and with them, he figured, he could stir up a considerable fuss and send sparks flying all over the place just like the Fourth of July.
But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered why he limited his efforts to the top floors. Why not attack the basic installation down in the bowels of the building where the power cables led directly in from the substation? Why bunt, when a triple would clear the bases? It was an appealing thought.
In the meantime, all he had to do was stay out of sight, and that ought to be easy. But just in case luck played him foul, it would be well to be prepared.
He opened the toolbox and took out the wrecking bar, hooked at one end, splayed and canted at the other. It was a weapon a man could use, and he had no qualms about using it if necessary.
They were setting up the low platform for the ceremony in the plaza when Nat and Giddings came out of the building Giddings looked at it with distaste. “Speeches,” he said. “The governor congratulating the mayor and the mayor congratulating Grover Frazee and one of the senators saying what a great thing the building is for humanity—” He stopped.
“Maybe it is, at that,” Nat said. He was thinking again of Ben Caldwell’s reference to the Pharos. “A world communications center—”
“That’s crap and you know it. It’s just another big goddam building and we already have too many of them.”
It was a love-hate relationship Giddings had with the building he had helped create, Nat thought. Well, as far as that went, he vacillated himself between pride and admiration on the one hand and on the other a resentment that the inanimate structure had long ago taken on a personality of its own, dominating all who served it. “You stay here and swear at it,” he said.
“And where are you going?”
The friction between them was threatening to break out into open hostility. Well, let it, if that was what had to be, but Nat would not precipitate it. “Where somebody ought to have gone earlier,” he said. “To see Joe Lewis about these changes.” He walked off across the plaza, unpinning his badge as he went.
This time, in the interest of speed, he took a subway uptown to Grand Central, walking only the two blocks back along Park to the Architects Building, and rode on the elevator to the tenth floor, where the sign on the glass door read: Joseph Lewis, Electrical Engineer. The offices and drafting rooms occupied almost the entire floor.
Joe Lewis was in shirtsleeves in his big cluttered office. He was a small man, quick, sharp, direct. “If it’s a new project,” he said, “tell Ben I’m up to my ass in work for the next six months. If he can wait—”
Nat tossed the manila envelope on the desk. He watched Joe look at it, pick it up, and empty the change-order copies onto his blotter. One by one he read them swiftly, dropped them as if they were live things. He looked at Nat at last, anger plain. “You issued these? Who in hell gave you the right?”
“I never saw them before this morning?”
“That’s your’ signature.”
Nat shook his head. “My name, but somebody else wrote it.” Like a word too often repeated, the truth was beginning to lose its meaning. I’ll end up not believing it myself, he thought.
“Then who?” Joe said.
“I haven’t any idea.”
Joe tapped the papers with his finger. “Were these changes actually made?”
“We’ll have to see.” It was a conversation without point so far, but the groundwork had to be established.
“And what do you want from me? I gave you the drawings, the whole electrical design. If the job was done according to them, and not these—”
“Nobody’s blaming you.” At the moment, Nat thought, but nobody is really in the clear yet. “What I want from you is an order of priority. Which of these do we look at—”
“All of them. Every single goddam one, even if you have to tear the building apart. I’m going to insist on it. Damn it, man, the electrical design of that building is in my name.”
“And ours. I realize it.” Why couldn’t intelligent people see what was right in front of them? “But which do we look into first? And second? And so on? You’re the expert. Give us a list in order of importance and we’ll get McGraw’s people on it.”
Lewis sat down abruptly. “McGraw,” he said. “Bert wouldn’t have anything to do with this. He shook his head. “Impossible. You try cutting comers on a Bert McGraw job, fishing for kickbacks, bribing inspectors—and you get your head handed to you on a platter.”
Nat sat down too. “I had heard that, but I had no way of knowing whether it was true.” It could put a different light on matters.
“Next to building highways,” Lewis said, calmer now, “there is probably more room for hanky-panky in the big building construction business than any other. The rackets boys have moved in and out for years. Longer. Usually, but not always, public buildings. Over in Jersey—” He shook his head. “Certain Jersey counties, I wouldn’t take an electrical-engineering job if it had diamonds hanging on it. Over here is better. Most times. Far as I know, the fast-buck boys only tried once on a McGraw job.” He smiled. It was a bitter smile, strangely contented.
So Jot Lewis was one of those to whom the job was sacred Nat thought, one of the good ones. He said, “What happened?”
“They sent around some persuaders,” Lewis said. “All McGraw said was that he wouldn’t deal with small fry. The big boy or nobody.” He paused: “It was a big building, lots of money that might be plucked, and maybe only a beginning, so the top boy came himself.” He paused again. “McGraw took him up where they could talk in private—up as far as the steel had gone, forty, forty-five floors, nobody around, and the street a long, long way down. ‘Now, you son of a bitch,’ McGraw said after the rackets bum had had a good look and hadn’t liked what he saw, ‘do you want to ride back down in the hoist and walk away and never come back, or do you want to go down the fast way, right off the steel, right now, and they pick you up off the street with blotting paper? Make up your goddam mind.” Lewis paused a third time. “They never bothered him again. Some men you can’t push, you know, and it isn’t worthwhile even to try.”
Food for thought. Nat sat quiet for a little time, setting what he knew of Bert McGraw against the tale he had just heard. It fit. There was in the old man an instant willingness to shoot the works, roll the dice for whatever was on the table. It showed, unmistakable. The racketeer may have been as close to death on other occasions, but Nat was willing to bet never as openly. Leave McGraw out of the puzzle.
“Have you ever worked before with Paul Simmons?” he said.
“Ever since he married McGraw’s daughter and McGraw set him up.”
“Is that how it was? I never knew.”
“Paul’s a bright boy.” Lewis stared thoughtfully at the change orders. “You think he might have issued these? Put your name on them?” Slowly he shook his head. “It doesn’t figure. Sooner or later these would turn up, as they have, and then everybody asks, ‘Who benefits?’ The electrical subcontractor is the obvious man: he gets his bid price for doing substandard work, money in his pocket. But it’s too obvious, too easy. And why does he need it anyway? He’s got a going business and Bert McGraw as a father-in-law, and an obvious Ivy League pedigree, so there was probably money to begin with. Why mess with something like this?”