Ричард Стерн - The Tower

The big office was still. The chief inspector let his breath out in a noisy sigh. “Okay,” he said, the word was without meaning. “But so he did have a grudge, and so he wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards, why the World Tower building?”

“I’m no shrink,” Potter said. “But the World Tower building was the last real job he had. He was fired, there’s a connection, but maybe you have to be loony to see it. I don’t know. All I know are the facts.”

In a vague kind of way it made sense. All three men felt it. The Establishment had killed Connors’s wife, hadn’t it? The World Tower building was the brand-new shining symbol of the Establishment, wasn’t it? Well? They sat quietly, thinking about it.

At last, “Sometimes,” the chief inspector said slowly. “I think the whole goddam world has gone crazy.”

“Amen,” said the captain.

In slow, almost interminable succession, the women were helped or loaded into the canvas bag, and their legs poked through the twin holes. Almost without exception their eyes were wide with terror. Some cried. Some prayed.

Paula Ramsay was number twenty-two. “I don’t want to go,” she told the mayor as they waited for her turn. “I want to stay here with you.”

The mayor was smiling faintly as he shook his head. It was not his well-known campaign smile; this was the real man exposed. “I want you to go, and that is purely selfish.”

“You, selfish?”

“I want you to go,” the mayor said, “because I would rather have you safe than have anything else in the world.” The smile spread, even mocked himself. “Including the White House. Jill needs you.”

“Jill is a big girl now. We agreed on that,” Paula I looked around. “Where is Beth?”

“In the office with Bent. Their little time together.”

“I thought,” Paula said, “that she was ahead of me.”

The mayor could not remember when last he had lied to his wife. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, and stared out the window as the breeches buoy began its swaying trip back from the Trade Center roof.

The secretary general said, “Number twenty-one, if you please.” There was no answer. He repeated the call. ! “Hey,” somebody said, “that’s you. Here’s your ticket.” The girl in the bikini briefs dancing in the comer stopped her automatic gyrations. She shook her head as if to clear it. “I thought I was forty-nine.’ She giggled.

“Funny.” She waved her hand in the air and lurched forward, bare breasts bouncing, toward the loading window. “Here I come, ready or not.”

“God,” the mayor said. “She goes ahead of—anybody at all? Why?”

“You are usually kinder than that, Bob.” Paula’s smile was gentle. “The girl is drunk. And frightened.” The ‘ smile spread. “The difference between us is that I’m not drunk.”

“Or naked.”

“Does it matter now?”

The mayor made an almost angry gesture. “I am stuffy enough or square enough to believe that some values—” He stopped suddenly. “No,” he said in some surprise, “it doesn’t matter, does it? We’re down to basics.”

“And my basic wish,” Paula said, “is not to go but to stay—with you.”

“You’ll go,” the mayor said. There was a new tone of command in his voice.

Together they watched the half-naked girl being lifted into the canvas sack. Someone tossed her dress into her lap. She stared at it in bewilderment, and then, as if only that moment realizing her nakedness, she crossed both hands over her breasts and began to cry. “What am I doing?” Her voice was almost a scream. “I—can’t—!”

“Lower away!” This was the first commissioner, in command of the operation. “Hang on, sister, and you’ll be home free before you know it.”

The girl’s shrieks were lost in the whistling wind.

The mayor took his wife’s arms and walked with her toward the loading window. “Like airplanes and ship sailings,” he said, “there’s never anything to say, is there?” They stood quietly, holding hands, watching the breeches buoy near the Trade Center roof, reach it. They watched the chief lift the girl out of the canvas sack as if she were weightless. Her dress fell to the roof. The chief held her upright with one hand and picked the dress up with the other. Then he gestured toward the Tower Room and the breeches buoy began its return journey.

The mayor’s wife watched it approach. “Bob.”

“Yes?”

Paula turned to look up into the mayor’s face. Slowly she shook her head. “You’re right. There is nothing to say. You can’t put thirty-five years into words, can you?” She closed her eyes as the breeches buoy swung through the window and halted, swaying gently.

“Number twenty-two, if you please,” the secretary general said.

Paula opened her eyes. “Goodbye, Bob.”

“Au revoir,” the mayor said. He was smiling gently. “Your words to Jill, remember? Give her my love.”

The senator knocked and walked into the office. The governor was in the desk chair. Beth was perched on a comer of the desk, long slim legs crossed and swinging gently.

“Come in, Jake,” the governor said. From the big room outside the mixed sounds of rock music and song blended in cacophonous counterpoint. From the bar came a sudden burst of laughter. “Sit down,” the governor said. “I don’t cotton to the bacchanalia either.”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“Nonsense.” The governor paused. “You came in with a purpose, no?”

He had always seen deep, this Bent Armitage, the senator thought, which probably at least partly explained his success in public life. You did not go as far as he had gone without knowledge of your fellow man.

The senator sat down and stretched his legs wearily. “A long lonesome road,” he said, and smiled. “The youthful bounce is long gone.”

He gestured toward the telephone. “Anything new?”

“I phoned down the lists,” the governor said. “And then”—he paused, smiling—“I indulged myself by calling my daughter, Jane, in Denver.” The mile spread. “I charged the call to the executive mansion telephone. That will give the auditors pause. Anyone you want to call, Jake? I’ll let the taxpayers pick up your tab too.”

The senator shook his head. “No one,” he said. He stood up suddenly. “Do you ever doubt yourself, Bent? Do you ever wonder just what in hell use you have been to anybody?”

The governor grinned. “Frequently.”

“I mean it,” the senator said. He took his time. “When you’re a kid just starting out—for me that was back in thirty-six, just elected to my first term in Congress—you look around and see the big ones, the important ones, the man in the White House, the Cabinet Officers, names you’ve read about ever since you could remember He paused and plumped back down in the chair. He waved one hand. “You study their style because they’re what you want to be.” His smile was wry. “It’s in today to talk about a search for your identity. That implies that there is already a you and all you have to do is be yourself.” He shook his head. “What you’re really doing is hunting for the character part you’re going to play for the rest of your life, a very different thing indeed.”

I have always doubted myself, Beth thought suddenly, but I was sure the reason lay in my own shortcomings. She watched the senator in wonder.

“So,” the senator said, “you find the role you want and you learn it letter-perfect.” He paused. “And it works. It’s convincing. First you’re a bright young fellow. Then you’re a comer in his forties, beginning to carry some clout. You reach fifty, sixty, and you’ve come a long way, but you aren’t there yet. Do you know what I mean, Bent?”