axed two thirds of the way through the final construction period and who hated Leroux’s guts. And then, of course, there was Infantino himself. A man with a mission, he thought-the kind who was most dangerous to himself Infantino was bucking the whole Fire Department establishment; all he had to do was keep shooting off his mouth to reporters and in another month he’d be back to being a hose jockey.
Quantrell scrubbed at the patch of hair under his chin, noting with displeasure that the fold of flesh just under the bone was becoming a shade too thick. He always photographed too full-faced, which meant-that he had to diet constantly to maintain the hollows in his cheeks and the intense angularity to his face. Camera make-up took only a minute.
He finished and slipped into his shirt, carefully knotting his broad-patterned tie. Conservative mod, he thought; youthful, without forcing the youth image. The viewers liked it; it made him look very much one,of the “now” generation, whatever that might be. He ran his comb carefully through his hair, wishing he had a hair dryer here in the washroom, then flicked off the fluorescent mirror lights.
Ten minutes before air time. He stepped from the washroom and almost ran into Bridgeport. The chubby man was breathless. “Jeff, I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Later, it’s almost air time.”
“The old man’s very concerned,” Bridgeport insisted, almost tearful.
“Catch me after the broadcast,” Quantrell said coldly.
“I don’t have the time now.” He walked off, wondering if Bridgeport might have seen the script. Not likely; Sandy wouldn’t cross him. If she had turned it over to him, Bridgeport would be one helluva lot more disturbed than he actually was. For a moment, Quantrell felt a twinge of pity for the man. He produced Quantrell’s show but had gradually lost his authority to censor Quantrell’s scripts. It was a slap in the face for Bridgeport and caused him endless worry. This was one time when it should, Quantrell thought.
He reached in his pocket and realized he had left his cigarette lighter beside the washbasin. He went back in and picked it up, his mind flashing back to the ceremony when he was leaving Greenville, South Carolina, after a two-year stint at the boondock station and management had presented him with it, It was a handsome lighter.
He thumbed it and lit his cigarette, then watched the dancing flame for a moment.
Flames. He turned and looked out the window of the washroom toward the Glass House, a thin shaft of gold against the lowering sky.
That was it, he thought, the key to a network spot. He raised the flickering light and sighted along it at the distant building. One plus one, he thought the simplest of all equations.
Suddenly he could hear Sandy outside the door. “Five minutes, Jeff.”
For another moment he looked at the flame and past it, at the distant tower of the Glass House.
“Right on,” he said softly.
CHAPTER 3
Mario Infantino felt on edge. Even the smell of minestrone and roast beef that seeped out of the kitchen didn’t make him feel any more at ease. A dozen minutes until the six-o’clock -news and five would get you ten that tonight would be the blowoff Quantrell had been building up to something for the past two weeks; hardly a day had gone by that -he didn’t call, despite the fact that Mario had kept recommending that he contact public relations.
Mario had been glad to talk to him at first, even in front of the cameras that had tracked him down to one or two small fires. But the way it was coming out on the air had made him look publicity hungry and things were strained enough in the department as it was.
He punched Channel 4 on the TV set and settled back to watch the tag end of a movie that preceded the news.
At the sound from the set, three boys came boiling out of a distant bedroom and raced into the living room.
“Hey, DAd, can I watch The Far West? Can I?”
o “Dad, I don’t wanna watch Far West, you promised last week I could see Hanrahan, Private Eye!”
“He didn’t, he said I could watch Galactic Rover!”
Infantino sighed. Down at the firehouse, where his division headquarters was based, he often referred to his sons as “the menagerie” and kept telling David Lencho, a rookie hoseman in his company, how it was a full-time job to “tame the menagerie.” Lencho dreamed of getting married and Infantino delighted in describing the horrors of raising a family to him. It wasn’t that he didn’t love the boys. There were just those nights when he would have been perfectly willing to auction them off on the block. Tonight was one of them.
“Look, kids, none of you are going to watch anything -I’m going to look at the news. You want to see something Turn on the set in the playroom in the basement.”
“but it’s black and white!”
Jerry, the oldest, mumbled something about Quantrell, and Infantino caught his arm in a tight grip. “You use that kind of language in front of your mother, young man, and I’ll guarantee you won’t be able to sit down for a week.” The boy winced and Infantino let go, suddenly ashamed of himself. He was tired, he thought, too tired.
“Doris!” he yelled.
She came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands and brushing damp strands of hair out of her eyes.
“Doris, get your kids out of here, I want to watch the news.”
She shooed them into the basement, then said, “They’re all mine?
You didn’t have anything to do with it?”
He laughed. “Okay, okay-I was half responsible.
When do we eat?”
“What now.”She glanced at the set’and her eyes strayed to the clock on the mantel. “I can set up the TV tables and we can eat in here; the kids can serve themselves.”
Infantino nodded. “Why don’t we do that; I want to see what the bastard has to say tonight.”
She looked concerned. “Did he phone you again today?
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t take the call.”
“I wish you hadn’t taken any of them.”
He, glanced up at her, annoyed. “Don’t start in on me, Doris; don’t you think I wish the same?” She squeezed his shoulder lightly and went to the basement steps to announce that dinner was ready. That was something else Quantrell had screwed up for him, Infantino thought.
a liked dinner at home-there were few enough that he had away from the firehouse-with all the kids sitting around the table, noisy as they usually were, and Doris bringing in huge plates of pasta from the kitchen or her own special lamb stew, which he never ceased to brag about. there was something about Doris, small and efficient in her crisp apron and with just a touch of make-up, that he found highly arousing. The movie stars were for somebody else, he liked to think; show him a woman who could keep a house and raise the kids and still not let them fall apart and she was for him-you could have all the =A Now supper was a different affair, noisy but hurried if it was the six-o’clock news, and slow and usually deadly,quiet if it was after.
There was a special tension during the dinner hour and Infantino resented it and blamed mill for it.
Doris set up the TV tables and he started to nibble at his food to the parade of news slowly passed by. And then Quantrell appeared on the screen with that look of concern that his viewers found so charming and heartwarming.
“I don’t think he really gives a damn at all,” Doris said in a low Voice.
“Doris, please.”
On the screen, Quantrell started with a statistical approach, supported by a series of graphs flashed on a board behind him. The population of an average high rise during the working day, the difficulty of evacuating so many people down the stairwells in case of a fire, the hazards of using the elevators, the fire dangers from modern furnishings, and the impossibility of policing what tenants might bring into a building. Some film clips of fires in South America and -Japan, including one particularly terrifying segment on the high-rise fire in Sgo Pauto, Brazil. Then it was time for a commercial break and Quantrell’s request to stay tuned in because the next five minutes would be devoted to a story proving that if some of the developers in the city were not above the law, neither were they incapable of changing it.
