he cheapened it? There hadn’t been any reason for it. , . .
“Mr. Barton, when do you think the fire will be over so we can go back?”
. He vaguely remembered her; an elderly matron, her wispy hair done up in curlers, half lost in her soot- smeared silk bathrobe. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe a few-hours but then there’ll be the cleaning up. We’re making reservations for those who want to stay in a hotel until the building’s all right for tenants to move back in.
There’ll be no expense on your part.” She shook her head and smiled somewhat wanly. “No, I don’t think I’d care for that. This is such a beautiful building and it’s home to us. My husband and I have been living in hotels for years.”
There were murmurs from other tenants who were watching him; they didn’t know him by name for the most part but knew that he must represent management.
Some of them started to come over. He finished his coffee in a hurry and fled.
Back upstairs, Garfunkel had finished filling in several floors for Infantino. Barton had just bent over to study the sheets when there were quick bursts of light near the entrance. A small group of reporters started to crowd into the now almost-emptied lobby.
“Where’s Leroux?” one shouted.
“Any statement from management?”
One of the reporters remembered Barton from the dedication. “What went wrong, Mr. Barton? The building’s going up like it was a torch job.”
“No comment!” Barton shouted furiously. He motioned to Captain Greenwall who had come in to check at the communications station. “Get some men and clear the lobby. See that all reporters stay behind the barricades -it’s dangerous within a block of the building and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll be responsible for anybody else’s life tonight. No unauthorized personnel are to be allowed within a block of the building.”
The captain motioned to several of his men standing nearby and headed for the entrance. “Okay, fellas, I’m sure everybody will have statements later on. Let’s move on, let’s go. At least a block and watch out for falling .glass, we already lost one young man that way.”
One of the reporters asked him what he meant; Greenwall explained in brief, graphic detail. The reporter went white and the group backed quickly out, a few taking last-minute shots of Barton.
After the reporters were herded out, the captain came back.
“There’s a man from the insurance company by the barricades; he wants to talk to you. Also some people who claim they lease stores and offices and want to check their shops and empty the cash registers or else look over the premises.”
“Nobody gets in,” Barton said automatically. “Absolutely nobody.”
“Some of them are pretty worked up.”.
“Tough.” They wanted to complain to somebody, he thought, they wanted to confront somebody in authority so they could threaten to sue.
But that was Leroux s job, that was his dirty laundry.
“Greenwall?”
The captain turned. “Keep them out of my hair; I don’t care how you do it. It doesn’t matter if they’re tenants or from the insurance company or what. Tell them . …” He hesitated, then shrugged to himself. He had done enough, he had done more than enough.
From now on, it was going to be Leroux’s ball game. He had had it.
And it didn’t matter to him what Jenny was going to think.
“Tell them,” Barton said slowly, “that Mr. Leroux will be down in a few minutes to talk with them.” Before he could get to a house phone, Infantino called him over. He was puzzled. “Craig, is there any way at all we can get blue prints? We need to know the distances between these offices and exactly which ones are above one another.”
“No way, Mario, unless your men can get. into Curtainwall’s offices.”
“Okay, so we do without them. But it would help.” He glanced up from the drawing in front of him. “I wish the hell you had designed in fire doors in the stairwells, too.
It would cut smoke spread. It’s not required by city code but it would have helped in preventing smoke spread-helped in evacuation, too.”
Barton Rasped in sudden anger. “I did design them, Mario! I knew they weren’t required by the local code but I know the value of them.”
Infantino shook his head. “They never bothered to install them Craig.” He laughed bitterly. “Looks like your baby was a breech delivery.”
Barton stalked over to the house phone and savagely dialed the Promenade Room. He no longer trusted Leroux’s -reasons for having sent him down..It had been a setup, he thought. Leroux had known what he would hear and he didn’t want to face it. So it was send down Barton As his patsy. Well, this was the end of it. He’d call Leroux and have Jenny come down with him. And when Leroux arrived, Barton would turn in his resignation on the spot.
He finished dialing and waited for the ring. There was dead silence on the phone. He dialed again and still nothing. Then he dialed the operator.
A moment later he hung up, feeling sick and tired and frightened.
There was no phone contact to the forty-fifth floor and above.
Somewhere, the fire had cut the coaxial for the bank of phones that served the Promenade Room.
The restaurant was now cut off from all outside contact. And so was Jenny.
Nearly all of the offices in the area of the seventeenth floor utility room, the birthplace of the beast, have now been gutted. rugs and draperies are rich fuel for the fire, as are the heavy parquet floors installed by Psychiatric Associates half a corridor length away.
The paint on the office walls and those of the corridor is a Popular brand that advertises itself as “fire resistant.” In the incandescent heart of the fire, it quickly bubbles, exposing the flammable surfaces beneath. The exposed metal studding glows and begins to melt; Plaster decomposes and spalls in a rain of dirty white flakes.
In the washrooms, grouting crumbles away and tile walls buckle.
Plastic water tumblers and hampers slump, then finally char and flame.
The paint on the paper-towel dispensers blackens and the towels blaze, peeling away from the roll like the leaves of an onion. In various offices, the bottles in water coolers crack and shatter as their contents boil and turn to steam. In a lunchroom area,- the glass front of a sandwich vending machine breaks and the sandwiches inside toast, then char as their Plastic wrappings burn away. The front of a nearby softdrink machine warps and buckles with the heat, then curls aside.
The cans of soda explode in a continuing chain, like a string of giant firecrackers. In the offices of the collection agency next door, the fire sweeps the desks clear of correspondence and file.
folders, fuses staples and paper clips into solid ),masses of metal.
It scorches the paint from a line of file cabinets and warps the drawers, then reaches inside to finger the contents. The records of a thousand debts go up in a rush of flames.
On the eighteenth floor, the fire has pushed its way through badly sealed duct holes to race across the carpeting in a dozen different offices. It climbs the wallpapered walls of an insurance company and Penetrates into the air space above the acoustical tile ceiling. Here it discovers a long air-conditioning duct that has accumulated a heavy coating of dust and lint inside its walls. There is just enough air within the confines of the duct for a hot, incomplete combustion that chars the organic contents, releasing flammable gases to burn in the limited oxygen.
The temperature of the resulting mixture of carbon monoxide and resinous fumes approaches 1,000 degrees.
A hundred feet farther down, the duct fails at a plastic joint.
The hot, fuel-rich gases hit the open air. There is a low-order, gaseous explosion that tears away whole masses of ceiling tile. For a few seconds, the equivalent of a massive blow torch flares over the wooden furniture below and plays against a wall covered with plastic paneling resembling walnut veneer. The wall bursts into flame.
