The Glass Inferno Read online

  He took off his hat and shook the ice and water off on the floor, then unbelted his coat and hung it on the hook that was reserved for him only-the sole fringe benefit that K.Y.S offered.

  “Hey, Quantrell, if you want to play the abominable snowman, why don’t you go back outside? How would you like it if I clouded up and rained all over your copy?”

  He deliberately gave his coat an extra shake, murmured, “Sorry, Ed,” and sauntered over to the small, glassed-in office with the news tickers. Outside of the weather, there was no major story on the wires, which meant that his series might be allotted even more time than usual. Fine, he certainly had enough to fill it.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee, tasted it and found it bitter, then added a heavy helping of cream, despite what it might mean in the long run to his lean and hungry image on camera. He was staring moodily into his cup and mentally rearranging his thoughts for the program, when Sandy came in with the script that he had ,dictated earlier over the phone.

  “all through,” she said brightly. “Should I give a copy to Bridgeport?”

  “Sandy,” he said quietly, “executive producers have no authority to censor my scripts. Since they don’t have the authority, there’s not much sense in showing them a copy, is there?” She had a date for tonight, he thought; she had ladled on the eyeshadow like mustard on a bun.

  “Going out?” he asked softly.

  She hesitated at the door, looking at him with the same combination of attraction and revulsion that he imagined a bird felt for a snake.

  “I had sort of a tentative date after the eleven-o’clock news,” she admitted nervously.

  It wasn’t that he found her attractive, . Quantrell thought.

  Like most small women in their late twenties she had already acquired a slight double chin that would broaden in another few years to give her a baby-doll look.

  But she was infatuated with him and he knew she hated and despised herself because she couldn’t help it. In any event, she was much too valuable for him to let her go so easily. “That’s too bad, Sandy, I was hoping we might have a bite together after the broadcast.” He shrugged. “If it’s important, please keep it; I don’t want to be accused of being a Cupid killer.”

  She fought with herself for a long moment and he watched the struggle with clinical interest. Finally she said in a low voice, “I could probably get out of it, have a headache … something like that.”

  He looked grateful but not too much so. “Thanks a lot, Sandy, I really appreciate it.” He resolved to pay more attention to her in the future. It was always useful to have a personal hold on his female assistants, and Sandy was certainly one of the more efficient ones he’d had in the past few years. She heard all the rumors practically before they started and several times in, the past he had managed to head off political brouhahas with the staff simply because of her advance knowledge of what was happening. He hoped the date hadn’t been serious; now was no time to lose his Girl Friday in a hearts-and-flowers routine.

  “Did Infantino call?” he asked.

  She looked surprised. “Did you expect him to?”

  “Yes,” ‘ he said thoughtfully, “I did.” He had phoned earlier for some information on the fire codes and had expected Infantino to call back.

  “I can get him at home. He’s off shift now.”

  “Don’t bother. With his kids whooping it up in the background, it’d be like trying to discuss existential philosophy in a boiler room.”

  Besides, he thought, for what he had in mind, it would be just as effective if First Assistant Chief Mario Infantino could not be reached for comment.

  He glanced quickly through the script, made a few notations on it, then pulled a sheaf of notes from, his pocket, and-handed them to her.

  “Those are last-minute inserts; you ant to type me up a clean copy?

  I’ll need the final in half an hour.”

  She ruffled through the notes. “That’s quite a bit.”

  “Sandy, when have you ever let me down?” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

  She started to leave, then suddenly turned. “Oh-Mr. Bridgeport is looking for you.”

  “I’ll bet he is,” Quantrell murmured. Herb Bridgeport was the station’s news editor as well as the executive producer of Quantrell’s show, a soft, pudgy man who lived in mortal terror of a frown from the station manager or a bolt of lightning from the Olympian heights of W. G. Clairmont’s penthouse. A frightened man, Quantrell thought with contempt, which was the whole problem with television news these days. Too many so-called reporters who were satisfied to be collectors of handouts and press releases, commentators on second-hand information. Very few newsmen conceived of their jobs in terms of investigative reporting. Which was where he was unique. He had seen the need for it within the framework of television news coverage and had managed to outline his ideas to old man Clairmont himself.

  Clairmont had been intrigued, and Quantrell had been assigned a small staff and budget and given carte blanche to roam the city and dig up stories. It was paying off for the station now -and, in particular, it was paying off for him. The dailies had even dubbed his small group of legmen “Quantrell’s Raiders.” Catchy phrase, he could do a lot with it at some future date.

  He glanced at his watch. Time to make-up and shave before he went on the air. He took the electric razor from the bottom drawer of his desk and headed for the washroom. His beard was heavy and he always liked to shave just before a broadcast. If he didn’t, the slight shadow of beard gave his thin features a sinister and devious look.

  He glided the buzzing head-of the shaver over his jowls and quickly reviewed the more important points of his evening broadcast, occasionally making subvocal sounds as he turned a particularly pleasing phrase. It was the right profession for him, that was certain, Quantrell thought. Possessed of a deep, resonant voice and a wry humor to his delivery, he also had the knack for ferreting out the people who always seemed to know where the bodies were buried. In the case of the Glass House, it was Will Shavelson, the former construction foreman who had been 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 t
hought.

  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.

  “You haven’t touched your dinner, Mario.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Is what he says true?”

  Infantino nodded slowly. “I wish it weren’t but it is.

  I’d give a lot to be able to say he was lying.”

  And then Quantrell was back again, this time standing in front of a huge blowup of the Glass House.

  “People have accused me of picking on the building you see behind me.

  They maintain that there are dozens of high rises throughout the_city which are inherently fireproof shells that have been filled with enough combustibles to Turn them into tinderboxes. And they’re absolutely right-the city has dozens-, hundreds, of such buildings.

  There are measures, of course, that can be taken. One is an extensive sprinkler system. But sprinkler systems are frequently unpopular with tenants because they’re unsightly and unpopular with builders because they’re expensive. Some progressive builders have nevertheless installed sprinkler systems throughout, perhaps in return for lower insurance rates. But our local building codes do not require a building to be completely sprinklered and until they do, competition will deprive most high-rise tenants of that protection.

  “The Department of Building and Safety, however, is not completely blind to the hazards of high-rise fires and the fire codes have other requirements that builders have to follow; granted that adherence in these codes is often a matter between the local contractor and the building inspector. The vast majority of inspectors are honest men who are paid relatively small salaries for the work they do. But it would be too much to expect all of them to be above temptation. However, the construction of the tall buildings that dot our skyline involves huge amounts of money, and big money frequently has methods of, getting its own way besides the
obvious but crude one of bribery”For instance, consider the city code requirement that all buildings above a certain height have stairwells that are pressurized to keep out smoke and thus serve as a safe, interior fire escape for tenants. This is a vital, relatively cheap protection for the occupants of our sky scrapers.

  Listen to what Mario Infantino has to say about them. Mr. Infantino is the youngest and most knowledgeable of our city’s division fire chiefs as well as first assistant chief fire engineer.”

  Infantino cursed and felt Doris’ hand on his shoulder.

  Quantrell had faded from the screen, to be replaced by Infantino’s own image in a street interview that had been taped weeks before. He leaned forward to catch the words of his television alter ego.

  “… well, -of course, the pressurized stairwell is an obvious and straightforward approach to confining the, spread of smoke during a high-rise fire. It offers invaluable protection to the tenants of such buildings at a minimal cost. As a protective device, it’s probably next in importance only to sprinkler systems-and in buildings that are only partially sprinklered, it may be even more important for the safety of the average tenant.”

  Quantrell’s image reappeared on the screen.

  “It may come as a shock to our viewers that the building amendment requiring pressurized stairwells was repealed by the City Council shortly after construction began on the Glass House, well after its building permits had been approved. Coincidence? Perhaps.”

  Behind him appeared an architect’s drawing of a portion of the Glass House. The date under the National Curtainwall logo was quite clear.

  Drawings from the earliest design period for the Glass House show that the plans never included a pressurized stairwell, despite the fact that at the time National Curtainwall’s architects were designing the Glass House, building codes clearly required such stairwells.

  Prior knowledge that this requirement would no longer exist. when the building was finished? A wish? A mere hope? The management of National Curtainwall, as usual, had nothing to say. Nobody at City Hall seemed to know either And when we called the Fire Department, the usually knowledgeable Division Fire Chief Mario Infantino could not be reached for comment.