I realized that while I seemed to be putting this man on edge with my blunt questions, Pet was pouring on the charm, coddling him, pumping him for every bit of information he had. I decided that it was best if I faded into the background and let her do her work.
The inspector led us from the basement up through several rooms, where he was apparently checking for cracks in the plaster or along the grout in the flooring tiles. He found none. Along the way, he had the guard take us into the council chambers, a large dark red room set up with a gallery of oak chairs looking up toward a long, raised desk where the council sat. It was trimmed with oak wainscoting and a simple but elegant coffered ceiling, from which was suspended an array of gilded chandeliers, all in the pleasing open style of a century and more past. Along the back wall hung a life-size portrait of Brigham Young in a broad carved oak frame that more than rivaled the ornamental ruckus of the outside of the building. “There’s the man,” Schecter said proudly as he faced the portrait. “Not just a great spiritual leader but a great engineer.”
From the third floor, where the council chamber was located, the guard and the inspector took us by elevator to the fourth floor, then up the fire stairs to the fifth. At that level, the inspector took us through the base of the clock tower and out a door that opened out onto an ice-encrusted catwalk that led along the peak of the steeply pitched slate roof of the north wing toward one of the building’s two flagstaffs. I stepped gingerly onto the walk and looked down onto the slates below. From that angle, the roofs looked like knives. There were nice meaty railings along the catwalk to hold on to, but still I thought it prudent to turn around about halfway and go back inside, and it did not escape me that the inspector had not strayed from the doorway.
Here Schecter turned to Pet and said dolefully, “It’s a lot more stairs from here. You sure you want to see it?”
My legs were already aching, and not just the one that had so recently been in a cast. I had to face it: I had been hobbling around so long that I was out of shape.
Pet once again put a hand on Schecter’s arm. I half expected her to say, Whither thou goest, but she said only, “Please lead onward,” and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.
The inspector held the door and waved us through, again avoiding looking at me.
We had to duck our heads as the guard led us under a big heating duct. We then turned, climbed a steel staircase about a story and a half up to a trapdoor, heaved it open, and stepped up through it.
We were now inside the main volume of the tower. And, I should say, inside the clock. Understand that the tower is about forty feet square and has a huge clock face on each side that’s at least ten feet across. So how big are the clockworks driving all those big hands? Well, you could put them in your pocket, except for the connecting rods. Rising from the floor to a fist-sized cluster of gears was a steel rod not much bigger around than my thumb. The gears were about the size of silver dollars. They drove four more rods, each again about the diameter of my thumb, one going to the inside of each of the four clock faces, so that all hands turned in unison. The whole rig was so surprisingly undersized that I felt like I’d seen under a big man’s shirt and found out that he was a midget wearing a giant’s clothes held outward by toothpicks.
Near the central rod sat a small hydraulic tank with four arms coming out of it. Attached to each was a slim cable that rose up through the open center of the tower toward the ceiling, which was fifty or sixty feet overhead. I didn’t have time to wonder what the cables did, because the guard and Pet had already started up the long steel-grid staircase that cranked at ninety-degree turns all up inside the empty interior space of the tower.
I turned and looked at the inspector. His face had turned ashen. “I’ll follow you,” he said hoarsely. “So I’ll … um, be behind you. You know.”
“Yeah.”
Let me admit something here: I don’t like that kind of staircase. I prefer my stairs with opaque treads, not grillwork, and please give me risers. And I like stairs to be fixed firmly between two solid walls, and a ceiling a reasonable distance overhead will do nicely. This baby just cranked right up through open space, nowhere touching the walls, and now it wasn’t just Jim Schecter who was feeling a smidge uncertain.
I told myself, Going up won’t be so bad, but coming down will be a bitch. I gripped both handrails and headed on up.
Twenty or more feet up, I remembered to look at the walls, which were rough-finished and braced with a network of modern steel beams, shot through with enough bolts and whatnot to make an engineer weep for joy. I decided that while I still had to go back down these stairs, I would at least survive if the big one hit before I got there.
We were almost up under the ceiling when I heard a whirring sound, and all of a sudden those arms on the hydraulic gizmo started to move and, BONG BONG BONG BONG, bells somewhere above our heads began to chime, so loud that the fillings in my teeth almost fell out. The only reason I did not suffer hearing loss was because we had not yet crossed up through the ceiling to the next level, where the bells were. Four of those big Liberty Bell jobs. I was thankful that we had not arrived any earlier, or my auditory nerves would have been pureéd.
We stepped out now onto a wooden floor. It was old and splintering. The steel staircase we’d been climbing was new, part of the retrofit, but here we passed on to the antique goods, a crotchety old wooden job that cranked steeply upward through a narrowing space underneath the pinnacle roof of the tower.
The guard turned toward Pet and me. “You sure you want to go up there?” he asked.
“What’s it like?” Pet asked, almost bubbling over with enthusiasm, as if she were asking for a clue regarding the contents of a birthday present.
“Dunno,” the guard said. “This is as far as I’ve ever been. I hear they’re kind of creaky.” He looked doubtfully up toward the roof. As he took an experimental step across the floor, the edge of one board splintered under his weight. He looked back at us, eyes wide.
Pet turned to me, her grin so wide I thought she might bust her face. “What do you think, Em?”
What did I think? I thought that what waited below was a return trip down stairs I didn’t like, on legs that were already like jelly. This new flight of stairs looked worse than the others, but at least they led upward, and I never like to start a job and not finish it. “Well, we’ve come this far,” I said.
“Right,” she said. She turned to the guard. “Onward!”
The guard started the final pitch of the climb. The stairs in fact did not creak, or not much, and I’m pleased to report that the handrails were nice and meaty, but by now, we had climbed over one hundred feet vertically, so the going was more of a trudge than a merry scamper.
At the top, the guard heaved open another trapdoor and briefly stuck his head up through the hole. As he stepped back down to make room for us, he said, “Don’t go all the way out, okay?” Then he winked and added, “And no pumpkins.”
Pet and I climbed the last few steps together and peeked out over a low wooden railing.
The air was clear and bracingly cold. We looked out into the realm of angels and airplanes, a glimpse stolen from the life of a bird. I wanted both to cower and leap.
It was all too dizzying, too distracting, too wonderful. I felt on top of Salt Lake City, truly at ease with it for the first time. It was a beautiful city, sparkling and ringed by mountains. I breathed in, taking it to my heart.
I thought of love. I thought of Ray.
I thought, If Ava could see me now, she’d know I’m the one for Ray.
Then I wondered, Where’d that idea come from?
I got no answer.
Pet was saying something, something about getting to the top at last, but stopped in the middle of her sentence and said, “Hey, where’s the inspector?”
I turned and looked down. I saw the building guard at the first landing below us. I followed the turns of the stairs down from there, down to the bells, the wooden floor, and t
he trapdoor below us. No Jim Schecter. “Perhaps we’d better go check on him,” I said. “He didn’t look so good earlier.”
I forced myself to look only at my feet. The guard descended before us, turning, turning, stepped down onto the floor, then down onto the steel stairs. I concentrated on his head, and on my feet, on the sensation of the handrails against my hands, submerging my fear of the depths that yawned beneath me. I stepped down onto the open grillwork of the steel stairs, began the descent through space. The sky above had been home, but this was hell. In here, wings could not help me if I fell. In here, the requirements of safety had been met, but not the visual equation for security. In here, I felt that I was falling, and far below, at the last landing of the turning stairs, I saw the crumpled body of the inspector of buildings.
18
THE INSPECTOR WAS NOT DEAD, NOR WAS HE INJURED. WHEN we reached him, he was panting and perspiring freely, but he waved us off, whimpering, “Go, please. It’ll pass. Please.”
Pet took his hand and felt his pulse. Her eyes widened with alarm, but in the calmest of voices, she said, “There, there, we wouldn’t leave you like this. Guard, please go get a doctor. Em and I will stay with Mr. Schecter.”
The guard turned to go, but the inspector called him back. “No! No, I don’t need a doctor. I just … I need to get home.”
“Can you tell us what’s the matter?” Pet asked.
“No. I’d rather not. It’s … a silly thing. I’ll be fine. I always am. I just … need a few minutes is all.”
“Do you have medication you take for this?” she asked.
“Um, well … yes.”
Pet gave the guard a pert little smile. “Can you get Mr. Schecter some water, please?” As he turned to fill her request, she sat down, lifted the inspector’s head away from the hard, cold metal where it rested, and cradled it against her bosom. I eased out of sight beyond the inspector’s line of vision. As his eyes closed in the comfort of her kindness, she put a finger to her lips to indicate that I should keep quiet. She murmured, “Well, you had me worried for a moment there, Jim, but I see now that you’re just fine, aren’t ya? Tough work, this inspecting business.” She patted his hair smooth. “So, do you have these attacks often? My dad had them. My, how he hated it. Laid him out for days sometimes.”
“The poor man.” Schecter sighed. “Did he find anything that helped? Any of the sedatives? The analgesics?”
“No, but he’d let me hold him just like this sometimes, and if I spoke really quietly and kept things nice and dark for him, he’d feel better after awhile.”
“Yeah, dark helps. Just got to cut down the stimulation, that’s all. But after yesterday … I don’t know …”
“You had one yesterday, then,” she said confidentially. “How frightening.”
“Oh, yes. It was terrible.”
“But you’re such a brave man,” she whispered. “What could have frightened you that much?” She patted his cheek, smoothed his shirt.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, barely above a gasp. “Strictly confidential, I was told.”
“Of course,” she murmured. “Please, don’t say a word.” She began, ever so slightly, to rock him. She even hummed a soothing tune.
After awhile, as if in deep torpor, he said, “I was doing okay with the height. You believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course …”
He opened his eyes and looked imploringly up at his elfin guardian. “It was the cracks,” he pleaded.
“In the wall?”
“No! In the roof! The welds!”
“Yes, of course. That would have terrified me, too.”
“And all those people are going to be so disappointed.”
“It’s terrible,” she agreed. “The opening games.”
“Brand-new stadium,” he said, a tear leaking from underneath his closed lids.
“SO THE BUILDING Department’s red-tagged the new stadium which was going to be used for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. You knew that coming into this meeting, right?” I asked Pet after we had gotten the inspector safely into a taxi and then had gotten ourselves to a place where the two of us could talk. I had said I was hungry, and she had offered me a handful of nuts and raisins. I had allowed as how I was not a squirrel, and that any combination of beer and Mexican food would do nicely. Pet had taken me south of town, to a place called the Lone Star Taqueria, a quirky little joint with a new spin on the use of fish and cilantro in Mexican cuisine. Pet was beginning to look like my kind of woman. I ordered a sampling of the house fare and we each ordered a long-neck Corona.
She took a pull at her beer. “No, I didn’t know, and no, it hasn’t been red-tagged. Jim thinks it should be, but if I read him right, he reported it and nothing happened. He phoned his office to report his findings, but he was told to lose his notes. And this is all confidential. Remember? The poor dear had himself tied in knots trying to keep the secret he so badly needed to lose.”
“Then how did you peg the location that quickly?”
“Oh, I don’t know … public buildings … acrophobia … that narrowed the field. It had to be somewhere with a big drop. I didn’t consider the stadium right away, because it’s privately owned. It should have a different inspector. But as soon as he started talking about disappointment for lots of people, I knew he meant the Olympics, and the new stadium west of Temple Square was a likely subject, because it’s sitting right in line with the Warm Springs branch of the fault. Beyond that, call it instinct.”
“You’re good.”
Pet smiled, pleased with herself. “Damned good, to be precise.”
I raised my burrito de carnitas in recognition. I was famished. I had ordered enough to keep me going for a week.
Pet spirited a raisin out of a pocket and nibbled at it.
I pushed a taco de pollo asado across the table at her.
She said, “Well, just to be polite,” and took a bite, and then another. She added, “I’m so good, in fact, that you’re going to tell me what you were doing at the City and County Building yesterday.”
I lowered the burrito back to my plate. “Sorry.”
“Ooooo. Another secret, huh?” She crunched down on her taco and moaned.
I smiled at her. “Give up, Pet. I’m not a sweet old engineer with a fear of heights. I don’t crack that easily. I don’t have acrophobia or—what was that other one again?”
“Agoraphobia. Fear of open spaces. That means the guy’s not only afraid of heights but that he’d much happier in a box with the lid taped shut.”
“You know all that because your dad really had it?”
She took a sip from her beer. “Never met my dad.”
I laughed, nearly choking on my own cerveza. “Sorry again, because that’s not funny at all.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. It makes it handy when I need to invent someone who’s just like whomever I’m trying to pump. I’m not blinded by the truth that way.”
And you pass yourself off as the pert little reporter from the Daily Blah, I thought. “So somebody’s trying to keep a lid on Jim Schecter’s findings. Who? Developer? Politician?”
“I don’t know. I intend to find out, though.”
“You said the stadium was privately owned. So who owns it?”
“An investment group. It’s part of a big package of urban redevelopment. They get federal, state, and local redevelopment funds—you know, grants-in-aid—if they improve the place, but to qualify, they have to include a feature that’s in the public interest. Like a symphony hall or a museum. This particular group wanted to put in another huge shopping mall—a cultural mecca if ever I saw one,” she said dryly, “so they stuck it to the stadium, which they built first, right next door. It’s a clever scheme. They want a sports franchise, so they need a stadium, but stadiums are expensive. And they want to put in their shopping mall, but they need to have a feature in the public interest. So they put the two together, making sure they have the stadium in t
ime for the Olympics, and tell the city, ‘See? You okay our development, and you can have a brand-new stadium for your big show-off event. How much more in the public interest could you want?’ So the political bosses tell the Building Department to give it the go-ahead. And the developer is happy as a skier in deep powder, because now he’s got public money subsidizing both the mall and the sports franchise.”
I said, “But the truth is, or should be, that if that stadium’s unsafe, it can’t be used.”
“That’s the way I read it too.”
“Then why help keep it secret? Hell, if that roof falls in on how many thousand spectators, that’s a black eye the city would never recover from. In fact, there should be a big red tag on the front door barring entrance. And you’re telling me there’s not.”
“Not according to everything I had from the Building Department up till ten minutes before we met the inspector. Unless you got something I missed when you went to Planning yesterday.”
Evading her probe, I asked, “When did he inspect the stadium?”
“Yesterday. Monday. Earthquake day. That would have gotten a man like him pretty wound up all right. And then someone told him to keep quiet about it. Imagine.”
“I wonder who got to him.”
“Got to his boss, you mean. It’s probably grounds for dismissal, if not a felony, to leave something like that unreported. Or it should be.”
I took a bite of my taco de pescado, the house specialty. It was a choice little morsel with shredded cabbage, tomato, fresh cilantro, onion, and lime nestled on a soft white corn tortilla and slathered with jalapeño mayonnaise. It was delicious, although under the circumstances my enjoyment of it was abstract. I was beginning to feel personally responsible for the safety of a great many people. “What exactly are you working on, Pet? It’s not just a follow-up on Monday’s quake, is it?”
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