Fault Line

by Sarah Andrews

  Katie scanned the reception area before stepping out of the elevator, saw Hayes’s open door, saw him staring at her. She smiled—no teeth, eyelids half-lowered—stepped off the elevator, and advanced toward his doorway. “Good morning,” she said. “How nice to see you today. How are things going?”

  “Fine, and thank you for asking,” he answered, slipping into the display of deep dignity that served so well when dealing with the ladies and less guileful men of the church. “Tell me, Katie, what brings you here today?”

  Katie tipped her head forward slightly and took him in from the top of his balding head to his belt buckle, past which the desk obscured him; then her eyes continued to pan downward, as if could see right through the wood.

  Hayes would have found this action disconcerting if he hadn’t considered such displays of presumption a flaw that, in the transparency of its calculation, indicated his advantage. She’s decided she can handle me. Let her keep thinking that.

  “I thought I’d take Enos to lunch,” Katie said. “It seems that’s what I have to do if I want to see him.” She offered Hayes a coy, pettish pursing of her lips. “You keep him so busy.” She tugged lazily at her gloves and slowly pulled them off, revealing long, tapering fingers as supple and expressive as a dancer’s legs. She was attired today in a long white coat made of a good-quality synthetic that approximated polar bear fur. The collar stood up next to her dark hair, setting it off to brilliant effect.

  Below the hem of her coat, Hayes could see the last few inches of her shapely, muscular legs rising from a pair of high-heeled shoes that matched the purse that hung casually from one shoulder, its black strap sunken into the softness of the fur. He mentally tallied the cost of her ensemble, knew that, with their—how many, two? Three?—children, Enos’s salary had not covered such expenditure. Was it a hand-me-down from her mother?

  Her mother. Ava Raymond. That reminded him: He had not been in touch with her lately, except for the usual nods at church. He must phone her, offer the customary civilities. It was good business to stay on such terms with one’s silent partners, and helped to keep them silent. In Ava’s case, it assured her that her share in the corporation was being well cared for. And care for her share he did, because her prosperity was of course his, as well; but caring for her—the widow of his former corporate treasurer—also increased his stature in the eyes of the church, which was his greatest customer. Her departed husband, Thomas Raymond, Sr., had been a great asset to Hayes: scrupulously honest, yet incapable of detecting deceit in others. The perfect clean-faced boy to put in the front office, tallying up the numbers where everyone could see him. Back when Hayes Associates was young, Micah had given him stock options in lieu of salary advances, and it had paid off in the form of a handsome home, everything a widow could want or need, and an education for each of the children, not that the church would have let them go hungry. Too bad Thomas junior had become a policeman instead of a precise numbers man like his father, or an engineer like his brother-in-law. Little Ray had grown up to be as hardworking as his father, and twice as earnest. He could have used him. And here was one of Ray’s sisters, just as bright, but of little worth to him because of her gender. As an ultra-devout Mormon, she must stay home until her children were grown, and she had not even finished producing them yet.

  Katie had not sat down, having not been asked, and was beginning to look restless. He considered inviting her to sit, but found it more to his advantage to keep her standing. “You’re right, I do keep Enos very busy,” he said, letting a faint trace of fatherliness lace his tone. “But be thankful that Enos is such a hardworking husband. After all, you have that great big new house to pay for. How’s that going, by the way?”

  “Fine.” Her answer sounded brittle.

  Just as I thought. Cost overruns. Her ambition is being thwarted. This, I can use. Against the husband. Now to turn up the heat. He said, “Enos is not in just now.”

  Katie’s smile hardened and her eyes turned to flint. “Oh? Did you send him out somewhere?”

  “No. He asked for the morning off. As you say, he’s been working very hard, so I gave it to him.”

  Katie’s posture congealed like a layer of cooling fat. “Well,” she said stiffly. “I’ll just leave him a note, then.”

  Exactly, because you can’t stand to be kept waiting, Hayes observed, knowing the symptoms entirely too well.

  JIM SCHECTER SAT on the edge of his bed. He was perspiring, even though he was cold. He could see the moisture from his hand on the telephone, which he had just replaced on its cradle. A night and all morning spent lying down had done nothing to restore him to a sense of calmness.

  He could not believe what he had just heard. Had he misunderstood? He had called to double-check that his discovery of the cracked welds in the stadium roof had reached the correct ears, and had been told—could he truly believe this?—not to file a report. That everything would be handled quietly, so as not to worry the public. But how could repairs possibly be made in time? And it was snowing, loading the roof, and there were people working in there now! Had Satan stolen their minds? Salt Lake City would probably lose one small citizen to this earthquake; did they want to lose thousands?

  His head pounded. His vision swam. Somehow, he had to keep going. Do the next inspection. Which, O God, was the City and County Building. Which meant climbing all those unprotected stairs into that godforsaken clock tower.

  FRANK MALONE EXTRACTED the plastic toothpick from his Swiss army knife so he could dislodge the corned beef that had gotten stuck between his molars. It was hard to accomplish this while driving, but he felt a certain urgency to get where he was going.

  It was an unexpected but very fortunate payoff for all his time spent hanging out making friends at the Building Department that he had been there when that call came in from the inspector who’d found the broken welds in the new stadium. Otherwise, he might not have had enough warning to get away before people decided that he was someone they needed to talk to. To demand answers from.

  Off to Cabo for a while. Do a little sportfishing. Work on the tan. Too cold here in Salt Lake in the wintertime anyway. Best to be unreachable until the dust settles and some other poor fool is strung up instead of me. Some fool who stays in town. The politicians were so predictable: All they wanted was a hide to tack up on the city gate, someone to point at and blame for the fact that their damned $50 million sports arena was a dud. It didn’t matter whose hide got tacked, so why stick around and look like he was volunteering? Hell, the news media alone could bog him down for days with their phone calls, and the resulting publicity could set him back for months on the profit schedule. They, too, would move on down the line until they found someone to sensationalize, someone to blame. They didn’t understand science, didn’t understand that he was in the business of stating opinions and making interpretations, not guaranteeing answers. The fools should know that. The developers certainly know it; hell, if they don’t like my interpretations, they just throw my reports into the circular file and shop for ones they like. It happens all the time.

  “So don’t blame me,” he said out loud. “Blame the developers.” Or the regulators. Or the idiot public that sits around waiting for someone else to take responsibility. Hell, I wouldn’t sink my investment dollars into a fault zone. Or a floodplain. Or a tornado alley. Or a shoreline. The list goes on. Geologic hazards are here to stay, and the damned fools keep thinking they won be the ones to get caught. But not me; I’m going to Cabo.

  He, Francis W. Malone, was not going to get caught. Just as with the new mall project next door, he had called the disturbed ground under that stadium a case of liquefaction, not fault slippage, and he was entitled to that opinion. Besides, short of the big 7.0 it would take to rip the Warm Springs branch of the Wasatch fault to surface, no one was going to be able to prove his interpretation wrong—otherwise, the data were going to stay buried as deep as the quake itself—so why stick around and try to defend it? It was a witch-
hunt they’d be wanting, and he was just an old jive geologist.

  As a professional courtesy, he had, before leaving, put a call through to his client, Hayes Associates, and spoken to the big man and the big man only. Hayes had been grateful for the trip-off, and gratitude was bankable. It meant more jobs with nice big fees. And all so easily accomplished.

  17

  A baker who was on his way passing through the city and county building grounds, looked at the big clock to see what time it was, and when he looked he forgot all about the time. The big tower was swaying back and forth. The baker looked again and rubbed his eyes and the swaying motion continued.

  —“Tremblor Incidents Tersely Told” an eyewitness account of Salt Lake City’s 1910 magnitude 5.5 earthquake reported in the Deseret Evening News, May 23, 1910

  THE RED SANDSTONE BULWARKS OF THE SALT LAKE CITY AND County Building rose before me. I paused a moment to enjoy it this time. It’s a gem, an architectural delight snatched from the jaws of tear-down-and-rebuild-itis by a seismic retrofit.

  As you approach the formal entrance from State Street on the west, you’re looking at five or six stories (depending on what you count) of ornately carved and fenestrated red sandstone. It is elongate north to south, and the barrel arches above each door and most windows peg the style as Romanesque Revival. The walls rise to a splendid array of round and square turrets and cupolas capped by steep slate roofs, needlelike finials, and statues of heroic ladies. According to the free brochure from the guard’s station, the square central clock tower tops out at 250 feet above ground level. Stacking all that rock was a real job of work. It took three years to build a railroad spur to a quarry in the Kyune Sandstone, cut the rock, haul it one hundred miles to Salt Lake City, and raise it into place. The Kyune Sandstone was chosen because it was soft and easily carved. The main sections of the stone that forms the walls were left rough-hewn, forming pleasing horizontal shadows, but around every door and window, it sprouts smooth columns and patterned friezes, geometric textures, and classical curlicued acanthus leaves. According to the brochure, most of the stone was cut by masons whose names are lost to memory, but the myriad creatures that peek out from around its arches were done by a sculptor named Linde, who caught the likenesses of everyone notable, from American Indians, to Spanish explorers, to early pioneer men and women. He added gargoyles for fun, and Mormon beehives, and mythical sea serpents said to have inhabited Lake Bonneville. He signed his artistic statement by adding himself, slipping a self-portrait in between the words City and County on the north face.

  And that’s just the outside. The inside has been completely restored, right down to the last inch of bird’s-eye marble wainscoting, tile, gilded picture frame, and chandelier. It is opulent. It is delicious. Unlike the austere spaces and cold lines of so many modern civic structures, it is warm and welcoming, yet dignified. Mature. Venerable. Stuff like that.

  Pet was waiting for me at the guard’s desk in the main hallway, just as she had said. She seemed bursting with energy and excitement. “Em! There you are. I just phoned you to make sure you were still coming.” She waved her cell phone. “This is Jeremy, the guard who’s going to take us through the building,” she told me, gesturing toward a young man built like a whippet.

  I nodded to him, wondered if he’d gained his sinewy physique from running up and down the clock tower several times a day.

  “The inspector isn’t here yet,” Pet said breathlessly. “I called his office to make double sure, and the secretary said he should be here soon. He took the morning off, she said. Something with his health. I hope it’s not his heart or lungs, because I hear it’s a long way up that clock tower.”

  “So we’re really going up that tower?”

  “Yeah. Cool, huh?”

  The guard said, “No pumpkins, y’hear?”

  Pet gave him a wink. “Gotcha.”

  I was just about to ask why everyone seemed so sensitive about pumpkins, when the building inspector hove into view. I knew it had to be him because he was dressed in the simple, no-frills attire of a civil servant and he carried an aluminum clipboard. He was a slightly overweight man in his mid-forties, thinning hair, pasty face. I wondered if he was entirely well. He shuffled up to the desk and said, “Jim Schecter.” He offered a hand to shake. It was cold and clammy. “Which one of you’s the lady from the Tribune?”

  Pet said, “That’s me. And this is Em Hansen. She’s a geologist, came along to get a firsthand look at a seismic retrofit job.”

  The man turned toward me, his eyes widening noticeably. Then he did a double take and put his hand over his heart with relief. “Oh. You mean for this building. Yeah, it’s already done.”

  “So there’s another building that needs one?” Pet asked.

  The man flinched and clamped his mouth shut as tightly as a child trying to avoid a spoonful of medicine.

  I said, “I’ll bet half the older buildings in Salt Lake need it to one degree or another. If only a chimney brace, or fresh pointing on the bricks.”

  Pet kept after the inspector. “What other building needs a retrofit?”

  The inspector avoided looking at her. When he spoke, his voice quavered with anxiety. “Let’s … uh, get started with this one, see how she’s held together.” He nodded to the guard and started toward the stairs that led to the lower floor.

  He took us first down into the basement. As the guard unlocked the door that led down underneath the main staircase to the building’s nether regions, Inspector Schecter (I wonder if he ever got teased about that) said, “This part of the retrofit is called a ‘base isolation system.’ The idea is that the engineers have isolated the building from the movement of the ground it’s sitting on. It was quite a job to do this. It was only the second or third building to have it done.”

  I asked, “Have any of them been put to the test yet? I mean, does the system really work?”

  The inspector turned and looked at me with his jaw hanging open, like he’d never thought to ask this question before. After a moment, he surreptitiously rubbed the palm of his free hand on his pants leg. I noticed that it was trembling. His gears seemed to have jammed again. He took a breath, exhaled, and closed his eyes for a moment as if in meditation. When he opened them again, he seemed to make a point of not looking directly at me.

  I glanced at Pet. She looked my way, raised one eyebrow. She was catching all of this, too.

  The guard stood by the open basement door, looking expectant.

  Fixing his gaze resolutely on the floor, the inspector pulled a heavy metal flashlight from a holder on his belt, clicked it on, twisted the head of it to focus the beam on the floor, and then followed its light through the doorway and down the stairs.

  At the foot of the stairs, we were greeted by a large framed blueprint of an elevation of the building. In fact, there were two renderings of it: one showing it in a stationary position, and the other depicting it horribly bent to the shape of a sine wave by the force of a titanic shock being applied from one side. One glance at that picture and I knew exactly what the engineers who designed the retrofit had been worried about. “That’s gross,” I said.

  The inspector seemed to stick to the floor again, then found forward gear one more time and stepped through a final door, which the guard had now unlocked.

  The building guard nodded. “After seeing that thing, I wouldn’t want to be down here unless they’d done the retrofit.”

  Pet and I joined the inspector in the subbasement. It was a cramped region, little more than a glorified access to an immense crawl space that extended the length of the structure. We were standing in a small pocket where there was barely room to stand. All around us were the dusty, gray bowels of the building, a grid of heavy concrete beams running this way and that. The ground was strewn with rubble. I looked more closely, trying to discern what the inspector was aiming his light at. It appeared to be a large cube of black rubber, about a half meter on a side.

  “What’s that?”
Pet asked.

  “That’s what this building’s sitting on now,” Jim Schecter told her. “There are four hundred and forty-three of these.” He danced his light through the gloom, showing us the repetition. Then he aimed it at one of the posts that used to support the incalculable tons of stone that rested over our heads. It had been sawed through.

  “Ohhh, that’s cool,” Pet said. “Wow, how did they do that?”

  The tool used had cut two-inch-diameter cylindrical holes sideways through the post, leaving a row of concrete teeth above and below a horizontal cut. “Rock drill,” I said.

  Pet put a hand on the inspector’s arm and turned him more fully toward the cut post, away from me. “Tell me about it, please,” she said, her voice soothing, encouraging.

  He took a deep breath and said, “It was quite a feat. They braced each section, then made these cuts.” He gestured with his flashlight as if it were a drill.

  “Wow,” Pet gushed. “This is so fascinating. And old,” she added reverently. “Our forefathers did such a job here.”

  I almost groaned. She was playing the Mormon card.

  The inspector took in a deeper, more prideful breath. “Yes, and they were frugal. Just look at this.” He skipped his flashlight beam over to a place were the concrete formed a sill. There were bits of iron hanging out. “Look at that. An old railroad rail. And that, an old pipe. They used whatever iron they had available. Acted like rebar.”