Ричард Стерн - The Tower

Beth. At least she was down safe. He hoped. He wished now that he had stayed to watch, just to be sure. Well, it was easy enough to make sure.

He flipped on the telephone’s speaker switch. “Armitage here,” he said. There was no answer. He punched the disconnect buttons, punched them again. There was no sound. The phone was dead.

And now, he thought, we are truly alone.

The heavy line stretching from Tower Room to Trade Center roof supporting the weight of the breeches buoy was nylon, strong, flexible, flawless nylon. It was secured around a ceiling beam in the Tower Room, and the knot that secured it, a bowline, had been tied under the watchful eyes of the two firemen.

Because with nylon even a bowline, the queen of knots, has been known to work loose, the firemen had taken the added precaution of bending the bitter end of the line into two half-hitches around the standing part. The half-hitches showed no signs of slipping, and unless or until they did, the bowline had to hold.

But the beam around which the line was bent was steel, a part of the building’s structure, major support for the communications mast that rose still shining into the waning sunlight.

Steel conducts heat well.

And nylon melts.

The telephone on the desk in the trailer made noises. Nat picked it up and spoke his name. The sound of his voice in the instrument was all wrong: it echoed. Like the governor, he tapped the disconnect buttons, tapped them again, and yet a third time. The dial tone sounded suddenly in his ear.

He dialed the Tower Room office number, dialed it again, and then hung up. “That’s that,” he said to no one in particular. “Their line’s gone.”

The buildings systems had been so carefully prepared, he thought, so cunningly designed, so expensively researched, and now one by one they were collapsing. Were collapsing? Had collapsed. There was something of finality, in the death of the telephone.

He dialed again the number he had already called once, the city radio station. He was answered immediately.

“World Tower Plaza,” he said. “Their phone line has gone. You’re the only way we can reach them.”

“We’ll hold this line open. When you give the word, you’ll talk right on the air.”

“One thing,” Nat said. “You have an automatic delay, don’t you? So you can cut off foul language, that kind of thing?

“You’ll go straight on the air. No delay.”

“Okay,” Nat said. “Thanks. We’ll stand by. He laid the phone on the desk again and picked up the walkie-talkie. To the chief on the Trade Center roof he said, “Telephone’s out. If you get a signal, call me. I’ll get on the radio.”

“Will do,” the chief said.

Nat leaned back in the chair and looked around the trailer. Tim Brown was there, one battalion chief, Giddings, and Patty. “You heard it,” Nat said. He lifted his hands and let them fall. “What the hell is there to say?” he said.

“I have the feeling,” the battalion chief said, “that something’s going to happen, you know what I mean? That the alarm will go off, or I’ll fall out of bed, or, you know, some way this goddam nightmare will end!” He paused. “Only it won’t will it?” His voice was low-pitched, venomous.

Giddings’s big shoulders moved restlessly. He looked at Patty. “Simmons is your husband,” he said, “and I’m sorry about that.” He paused. “But if I get half the chance, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch with my bare hands.”

Police Lieutenant Potter came in through the doorway. He looked at them all. “Anything I can do?”

No one spoke.

“That’s what I thought,” Potter said. He leaned against the wall. “If you don’t mind, I’ll stick around.” He paused. “Though God knows why I bother.”

It was Patty who said, “You found what you wanted about John Connors?”

“More than I wanted,” Potter said. He told them what he had told the captain and the chief inspector.

None of the men in the trailer spoke. Patty said softly, “The poor man.”

“I won’t argue,” Potter said. There was no bitterness, only sadness in his voice. Then, slowly, “I’m a rotten cop. My job is to find who’s at fault.” He shook his head. “Sometimes that’s pretty easy. But sometimes, like now, it isn’t.” He pointed upward. His voice rose. “Those people up there—somebody has to be to blame for them, isn’t that so?” He was looking at Brown. “Isn’t it?”

“How the hell can I answer that?” It was almost a shout. And then, quieter, “It doesn’t make sense. None of it. You’ve got a man who flipped because somebody let his wife die.” Brown pointed at Patty. “She’s got a husband who did things he wasn’t supposed to do.”

Giddings said, “And there’s an electrical foreman and a building inspector who ought to be strung up by their”—he stopped and looked at Patty—“thumbs.”

“Some of my men,” Tim Brown said, “let things get by that they shouldn’t have.” He shook his head angrily.

“And,” Nat said, “some of us ought to have caught mistakes and worse while they were going on.” He was silent for a few moments. “One more thing.” he said, “maybe bigger than all the others put together.” His voice was solemn. “Just who in hell do we think we are, designing a building that size, that complicated, and that—vulnerable?”

It was then that the walkie-talkie came to life. “Roof to Trailer,” it said.

In the sudden silence, Nat picked it up. “Trailer here.” The chief’s voice said, “Something white is waving. You’d better get on the air. I have the breeches buoy and I’m holding it.”

Nat took a deep breath. “Here we go,” he said and reached for the phone.

Accounts vary; that of course is the norm. But in telling what happened there in the Tower Room, each survivor actually appears to have his own private version which holds him, if not heroic, at least blameless; and no amount of contradiction by others is even listened to. Perhaps that is the norm as well.

On one point there is agreement without warning, and by one of those freaks that were so much a part of this disastrous day, the air-conditioning ducts suddenly belched out quantities of hot acrid smoke. And that, like the pulling of a trigger, apparently set off the explosion.

This was the setting.

The transistor radio, tuned now to the city’s own station, played quiet music. The women were gone now, and there was no more dancing.

In a comer of the large room Rabbi Stein, Monsignor O’Toole, and the Reverend Arthur William Williams spoke quietly together. The subject of their discussion has not been disclosed.

In the loading area behind the table barricades, Harrison Paul, conductor of the city’s symphony orchestra, allowed himself to be hoisted into the breeches buoy and swung out through the window. He tried to keep his eyes closed, but the temptation to look was too great, and what he saw of the city beneath him from this terrifying and almost unsupported height made him violently sick. The storm music from the “Pastoral” Symphony thundered through his mind, he later recalled, as he clung desperately to the canvas bag, swaying and bouncing, positive that he was going to be killed. When at last he reached sanctuary, and the chief and Kronski together lifted him out of the breeches buoy, he dropped immediately to his knees to kiss the Trade Center roof.

He was the first man out, and for a time it appeared that he would also be the last.

The waiter with three kids was sitting on the floor now, still nursing his bottle of bourbon. The number of the crude lottery ticket in his pocket was ninety-nine. He had already decided that his chances of getting out safely were just about those of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through Hell. He did not particularly enjoy the bourbon, but he was determined that he was not going to panic; and he thought that maybe if he passed out, he wouldn’t mind so much what he was powerless to prevent.