mind. Then his eyes were on a level with the huge aluminum and Plexiglass light sculpture, caked with ice but still lit, before the building. He barely had time to think not there, not there.
He turned his head; there was a sound like a thousand crystal glasses shattering.
He yelled to Kimbrough, “Get that!” The men on the plaza were shouting. Two men from one of the trucks ran forward with a tarpaulin.
Kimbrough was already whirring away and Quantrell wondered if there would be anything usable in the footage-probably nothing beyond a quick scan of the broken sculpture and the two firemen racing toward it with the canvas cover.
Quantrell himself hadn’t taken a closer look, hadn’t been able to force himself to. There had been that time years before when the kid in the university town had set fire to himself in front of City Hall to protest the Vietnam war. Quantrell had been a guest lecturer in the journalism school at the time and had gotten close enough to the corpse to recognize it as one of the students in his lecture class. The one who had Asked the most questions, who had seemed the most deeply concerned about the impact of.the media on society … He would find out.soon enough who she had been; he could dub in an excited “on the spot” commentary later..
“Jan, get a fresh cassette?” The blond girl who was with him dug in her equipment bag and pulled one out for him. He dropped it in his tape recorder and began to dictate commentary as harried-looking firemen ran past him. A brief description of the thick layer of ice on the plaza and the sidewalk with the thin slick of water on top, the steadily falling puffy flakes of snow that kept turning the scene into a Grand Guignol Christmas card, the wind and the acrid smell of smoke in the cold, sharp air, and the bottom third of the glass House sheathed in a thick mantle of ice-a palace right out of a fairy tale.
And, of course, the flames and smoke pouring from the upper stories …
While dictating, he glanced occasionally over at Jan who was jotting down her own notes on the scene. Quiet, efficient, in her early twenties, and a stunning looker. if Sandy left him, he thought, he might not have nearly as many regrets as he had imagined. Jan was a reporter who could do things that Sandy could not. Maybe a lot of things that Sandy could not-or would not.
Kimbrough came back and Quantrell quickly collared u a young fireman who was hurrying past. “Hey, Mac, got a minute?”
The fireman muttered, “What do you think?” He tried to sidestep him but Quantrell kept getting in his way.
“Can you at least tell us your name?”
The fireman looked uncertain, then paused and said reluctantly, “Jim Artaud.” Kimbrough was getting the action now as Quantrell started talking rapidly into his microphone. “We’re talking with Fireman Jim Artaud in the plaza before the blazing National Curtainwall Building.
Jim, how many floors are involved in the fire now?”
Artaud looked uncomfortable, realizing, too late, that he was trapped.
“I’ve got to go,” he protested.
“Just one minute, Jim,” Quantrell said smoothly. “You can spare that.”
“Well, at the moment floors sixteen through twenty-five are heavily involved. Sixteen and seventeen had been pretty well knocked down before and the fires on eighteen and twenty-one were being contained-then the explosions occurred. After that, all hell broke loose.”
“What about the fire at the top, Jim?”
“That’s a gas fire-at least it was when it started. The gas lines serving the upper ‘floors ruptured after the explosions and that set it off. I’m not sure how bad it is now.”
“What plans does Chief Infantino have for fighting a fire on the sixty-fourth floor?”
Artaud looked at him as if he were stupid. “Look,’man, the electrical system is completely knocked out, which means the building’s booster pumps aren’t working.
There’s no way to fight that fire, no way at all-we can’t get water up that high.”
For a moment Quantrell just stared. He hadn’t thought.
of that. He had imagined it would be difficult, a difficulty that would make for an even more sensational story. But he hadn’t thought it would be impossible. He was suddenly aware of his own silence and quickly said, “You mean that the fires on the top floors will simply burn out of control?”
Artaud nodded. “That’s right, unless they can figure out some way of jury-ring it so there’s juice for the boosters. Look, mister, I’ve got to go.” He turned and ran for the building. Quantrell faced the camera head- on.
“That’s it for the moment, ladies and gentlemen. While the major portion of your city’s fire-fighting force is still embattled on the eighteenth through the twenty-fifth floors, the fire also rages at the very top of the Glass House with no immediate prospects of either fighting it or containing it.” He paused as Zimmerman hurried up and handed him a note. Quantrell glanced down at it and then looked grave as he faced the camera once more.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as you recall from our bulletin of ten minutes ago, an explosion of a high-pressure steam line in the Glass House rekindled the fire on the lower floors as well as starting a new blaze at the very top. I have just been told that it did considerably more than that. The explosion has destroyed a good portion of the south facing of the building’s utility core. In doing so, it wrecked the guide rails of the scenic elevator being used to evacuate diners from the Promenade Room lounge.
The elevator with its last load of passengers was on its way down when the explosion occurred and is now stranded at about the twenty-fifth floor with an unknown number of passengers aboard.
Whether any of them were injured in the explosion is also unknown at this time. We will continue live coverage of the fire at the National Curtainwall Building-the worst fire disaster in our city’s history-throughout the night. This is your K.Y.S reporter Jeffrey Quantrell. Please stay tuned.”
He turned to Kimbrough. “That’s enough of me for now,” and called Zimmerman over. “Kimbrough, get some shots of the elevator. We can handle the commentary with voice over. Al, try and find a cop or a fireman who saw the explosion from the outside, from the plaza.” As Kimbrough walked away, Quantrell called after him: “And try and get some footage of the cascade of ice on the west face-it makes the building look like a popsicle.”
He stood for a moment staring up at the Glass House.
He was shaken from his reverie by Jan. “It’s a beautiful building, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It was,” he corrected.
“I’ve seen film clips of a high-rise fire in Sdo Paulo, Brazil.
All forty floors ‘ were on fire; it was one solid torch. Even the buildings across the street were going up from the radiant heat.”
He nodded. “I’ve seen them, too.”
“Can you imagine the Glass House going up like that’ She shivered.”
He was suddenly wary. “I’m not sure I ever thought of it.”
She laughed. “You’re lying, it would be impossible not to.” She was right, he thought. In his mind’s eye, he could see the Glass House in flames for its full sixty-six stories.
It would be a frightening, exciting, and, in its own way, beautiful sight. A part of him shied from the horror while another part contemplated it with a morbid fascination.
“You trying to tell me something?”
She smiled without much warmth. “You’re getting too involved.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Not for tonight. A week from now, yes.”
“There’re always stories,” he said quietly. “They may take some digging but they’re there.”
She looked at him curiously and he had the feeling that she was studying him like he was a dying species.
“Not like this one. Is there anything particular you might want me to do?”
“Talk to some of the tenants,” he said dryly. “Get some on-the-spot interviews.” He watched her walk Away, noticing the slight, confident swing to her hips. He had misjudged her, he thought.
She wasn’t the Girl Friday type after all-she was future competition.
And she would use her assets-all of them-quite as coldly and dispassionately as he used his. He was staring at the future and as far as she was concerned, the issue was already decided.
He turned away and checked his tape recorder. Infantino would be reluctant to talk but there were ways of
