The Glass Inferno

by Thomas N. Scortia

  He reached down and pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk.

  There was a group of manila folders stacked upright within it and in the last one he found what he was searching for. Edged in green curlicues, it looked very impressive. The title said: “Comprehensive Fire and Liability Coverage.”

  He thumbed through it for a moment and nodded to himself; it was the simplest solution. They would split the payments and go their separate ways. The cash wouldn’t amount to much, perhaps fifteen thousand dollars each after their creditors were paid. But with that, he could go to California or Oregon and perhaps start all over again, build a new life. There would be no Larry in it-nobody could fill that void and, in any event, he was too old and too tired to look. It had been very good while it had lasted; it was asking too much to expect lightning to strike twice.

  What one needed in life, he thought, were courage and determination.

  He stood up and went into the outer shop, almost bumping his knees against a charcoal-co ore settee over which had been arranged some draperies; they were of shantung with thin threads of gold woven throughout the rich silk. It was the perfect place to begin ‘ he thought. He found the lighter fluid in a table drawer and stripped the spout from it with a pair of pliers, then began to dribble the fluid over the drapery fabric and ‘ the settee upholstery. He tossed the can in a wastebasket, fumbled out a pack of paper matches, struck one, and threw it on the couch. It flickered and went out. He tried a second, feeling his resolve begin to fail. It lay for a moment on the soaked couch, guttering, and then caught.

  A smoky flame-raced from the match and leaped at the drapery fabric.

  A few seconds later the entire surface of the couch with its burden of drapery fabrics was blazing.

  The room started to fill with a greasy, black smoke, and the flames brightened.

  For a moment Douglas watched the flames with all the fascination of a child, and then the seriousness of what he was doing suddenly hit him.

  “My God, oh my God!”

  The radiant heat from the couch felt hot against his face and even as he watched, the flames leaped higher, filling the room with rolling clouds of smoke. The wooden arms of the settee were charring now as the fire ate into the flammable varnish. The polyurethane foam upholstery began to swell and smoky flames raced across its exposed surface; the smoke from the foam was thick and acrid and made Douglas gag. A few minutes more, he thought, and the whole shop would be blazing.

  He suddenly turned and ran back to the storeroom to look for the carbon-dioxide fire extinguisher. It wasn’t hanging in its usual space on the wall and Douglas could feel the panic start to build inside. He should run into the hall and sound the alarm but there would be questions…. Then he remembered that Larry had taken the extinguisher down to repair its bracket. He found it at the foot of a pile of throw rugs. He grabbed it and ran back into the display room.

  The foam upholstery was blazing as if it had been soaked in gasoline.

  Douglas aimed the black cone of the extinguisher at it and thumbed the trigger. Clouds of frost-flecked carbon dioxide spilled out over the flames. They shuddered for a moment and then leaped higher.

  Douglas moved in on them, firing burst after burst from the extinguisher. He finally had one end of the settee under control and worked toward the other, then attacked the flames already creeping up the side of a bolt of drapery goods leaning against the couch. If there was only enough charge in the extinguisher …

  The last of the flames finally died and he grabbed up a sample of Fiberglas draperies to beat out the remaining sparks. He hurried back to the office washroom and filled a large flower holder with water, throwing the blooms on the floor, then returned and doused the wisps of smoke still coming from the charred settee and upholstery, returning for more water until the furniture and the fabric had ceased to smolder altogether. Then he sank down into a nearby Empire chair.

  The reaction from the fire made him weak and for a moment he thought he would vomit. The fumes from the upholstery had been nauseating and this, coupled with the heavy charge of adrenalin in his system, had left him shaking. He might have been trapped, he thought slowly.

  Another minute and his exit would have been blocked by the flaming draperies, and after that there would have been no way out. The upholstery, he thought, still breathing heavily, the foam had burned far faster than he had believed possible.

  He sighed after a moment and began to pick up the charred fabrics.

  There were heavy vinyl bags in the storeroom and he could fill them with the charred materials, though the showroom would still be a mess.

  There was little he could do about the settee frame itself-possibly knock it apart and pack the pieces in bags as well. But the smoke had permeated the shop and the fabrics themselves; the cleaning bill alone would break them and there would be explanations to be made to Larry.

  He flinched inwardly. Half the shop was Larry’s but he hadn’t acted that way; he had made all the decisions, as if Larry’s opinions were worth no more than those of an office boy. .

  He sniffed the air, realizing the smoke was still very heavy in the display room in spite of the air conditioning.

  Opening a window might help air out the shop and he walked over and pulled aside the draperies. The windows were completely sealed; there was no way to open them.

  It was because of the air conditioning, he thought; he could not open any one of the windows, short of shattering it, though presumably maintenance might have a way.

  He looked closer, spotting the recessed slot in a corner of the frame, and recalled that the window could be released with a special tool. But no such tools had been issued to the tenants; he would have to call the maintenance people, which he wasn’t about to do.

  He returned to the showroom and finished bagging the remaining scraps of charred cloth. There was no way he could explain this to Larry, he thought, agonized. The burned settee, the ruined fabrics, the sodden cloth, and the smell of smoke throughout.

  The smoke was still very intense and he suddenly stopped and sniffed.

  It wasn’t the humid, after-odor o smoke and water, the smell of something that had been burned. His watering eyes and face told him that this smoke was warm, that it wasn’t coming from the doused ashes of a dead fire but from a fresh one, a fire that was still burning someplace. He dropped the vinyl bag that he had been holding and went back to the settee, searching for some stray spark, some piece of charring fabric that he had missed.

  No, everything was out. Only now he was sure that the smoke was becoming more intense, and that the odor was somehow different. In place of the acrid, poisonous odors from the upholstery, this smoke had a thinner quality with a trace of volatiles that had not been characteristic of the smoke from the earlier fire. It reminded him just a little of the odor of the lighter fluid that he had used to start the rue in the first place.

  Abruptly, he located the source of the smell and ran to the corridor door and opened it. The hallway was already filling with smoke. At the far end, several doors beyond the elevator bank, was the storeroom for the floor, its door now framed by white smoke. He had wandered past several times when the cleaning women or Krost, the maintenance super, had been in it and knew that it was filled with huge containers of waxes and solvents, as well as cartons of toilet tissue and stacks of moving pads.

  Smoke was oozing out from the wide crack under the door and even as he watched he saw the first small finger of solvent flow from under the door, blue flames racing across its surface. It was joined by another and then a pool of flaming liquid was flowing out from under the door.

  The corridor ceiling above the storeroom door had already begun to blacken and he knew it was only moments before it would be blazing.

  He slammed his office door, his heart beating wildly.

  An accidental fire, the very thing he might have prayed for. A solution to his own problems and without any assist on his part; in fact, once the fire crept down the hall, i
t would cover the evidence of his own folly. The catch, of course, was that there were more people in the building than just himself. He reached for the phone on the nearby table and dialed security’s three-digit number.

  Garfunkel answered and he blurted, “Mr. Garfunkel, this is Ian Douglas. We have a fire up here in the corridor storeroom. It smells like a solvent fire…. I’d say it’s too late for fire extinguishers, my guess is that the whole storeroom is blazing-it looks like the ceiling tile is ready to go.”

  Over the phone, Garfunkel’s voice was crisp and authoritative: “Mr. Douglas, get the hell out of there.

  Understand? Don’t try to take anything; get out now.”

  There was a sudden click at the other end and once again Douglas felt panicky. He started for the door, then hesitated by the glass display case. He opened it and plucked out the small netsuke of the water buffalo. He couldn’t leave it behind, he thought; of all the things in the shop, it had the most sentimental value for him. It, and Larry’s “Minotaurmachie.” He lifted it off the wall and tucked it under his arm, then raced for the door. The odor of smoke was now intense and for the first time, he felt real fear.

  He threw the door open and a chill suddenly ran down his spine.

  The far end of the hall was now burning furiously and the pool of flaming solvent was flooding swiftly toward where he stood.

  It had already cut him off from the elevator bank.

  CHAPTER 22

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Mario Infantino stirred in the darkness, savoring the lassitude that comes after sex. He felt Doris stroking his head, her nails lightly touching his scalp and tousling his hair, and for a moment his thoughts seemed completely disassociated from his, body. It was like drifting down some quiet river with the occasional wave laving his hand when he let it trail in the water.

  “Of how much I love you.”

  Soft laughter in the darkness. “I mean really, Mario.

  She shifted slightly on the bed so she was on her side and facing him.

  “Of Quantrell,. I suppose. He could hurt me, Doris.

  Badly.” He hadn’t wanted to say it but she should know; the weeks ahead might be very difficult ones, for her as well as for him.

  “I guessed he could,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure how, yet.”

  He put his arm around her, his hand caressing the light strands of her hair. “Too much exposure, Doris, I’m too much in the public eye.

  I’m the youngest first assistant chief in the city’s history and there’s resentment, some jealousy, too, I suppose. Quantrell makes it look like I’m a publicity seeker.”

  “And Chief Fuchs?”

  The thought of Fuchs made him feel uneasy. “We have differences of opinion.”

  “He could make you keep quiet any time, couldn’t he?”

  He kissed her shoulder. “It’s a paramilitary organization …

  I take orders like everybody else. So far he hasn’t said anything, but I don’t think he likes it. Hell, I don’t like it. But Fuchs is in a bind; if he tells me to shut up, then Quantrell would accuse him of having me muzzled.” He. hesitated. “That’s going to happen anyway; I won’t be giving Quantrell any more interviews. But you saw what happened when I wouldn’t talk to him on the phone. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.” She was thoughtful for a long moment.

  “You said you and Chief Fuchs disagreed. How?”

  “We don’t really disagree, Doris. It comes down to the budget and how it’s spent. We could probably get all the heavy, new, modern equipment we wanted to fight high-rise fires-the people who own those buildings have power and influence, they’d want the finest-but salaries, equipment to fight brush fires or house fires, that sort of thing would probably be hard to get then. City Hall would look at the over-all budget and say that we had enough. It’s a question of balance.”

  She stirred uneasily. “I’m not sure I follow where you and Chief Fuchs disagree.”

  “Fuchs has been fighting for higher salaries-the department’s beginning to lose men. But we also need newer and more modern equipment: lighter respirators, more two-way walky-talkies, reflective fire clothing, high pressure pump units … equipment that’s specifically designed for fighting fires in tall buildings. Fuchs is afraid that if we go hat in hand and get the equipment, when he goes back for salaries, he’ll get turned down on the grounds that the department was already over budget.”

  He hesitated a moment. “I feel for the old man,” he said slowly.

  “He’d like both if he thought he could have them; so would any chief engineer I guess. And the fact remains that far more people are killed in home fires, far more property lost in brush fires.”

  “He can’t compromise?”

  He let a hand trail down her back until it was cupping one of her buttocks. “He’s getting old, set in his ways, I guess. He’s been fighting his fight too long; he can’t see anybody else’s viewpoint.

  When he made. me first assistant chief, he assigned the problem of tall buildings to me.

  I guess I’m like him in some respects; I see my argument more clearly than his. I would rather see a few men leave the department for greener fields than lose them later … for other reasons. He set me up as his technological expert but now he doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say.” Her warmth was intoxicating to him and he pulled her closer. “Someday we’ll have a fire,” he murmured, “and it’ll Turn out to be the daddy of them all, and we won’t be able to fight it, we’ll just have to stand there and let it burn. I have nightmares about that.

  . .

  Someday Fuchs would order him to shut up, he thought, and he wondered what he would do, then. Would he be a good soldier and follow orders, worry about his position in the department, his pension? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that a clash was coming. Fuchs was becoming almost less than civil in their meetings, although he could probably blame Quantrell for a lot of that.

  “The children,” Doris said quietly.

  He glanced at the clock on the night stand. There was less than half an hour to go of their favorite program and then they would be back upstairs, raiding the icebox and looking for him to roughhouse with. He shivered slightly; the draft from the open window was turning colder; the weather was closing in rapidly. But there was still almost half an hour yet….

  Doris stirred again and he cupped her full-breast and glanced down in the half light to admire the gentle swell of her belly and below that the intense black of the triangle of her pubic hair. There was so much life in her, he thought, and he lived too close to danger and sudden death. He moved his hands gently over her body and she arched her back and turned slightly, touching him along the full length of his body. He was aware of her pressing against his hairy thighs, of her small toes tracing chills against his calves, of the touch of her gently rounded belly against his own muscular one.

  He had hiked himself up on one elbow and was turning into her when the phone on the night stand began to ring. He was scarcely aware of it, a part of him waiting for it to stop. Only it continued to ring, gradually interrupting his thought and physical concentration.

  He reached for it and Doris caught his hand. “No,” she whispered fiercely. “Not now.”

  But there was something insistent about it and he felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise. A vague premonition insisted he should answer and he sensed that Doris felt it, too. He pulled slowly away and she said softly, “Oh.”

  He kissed her deeply and then reached for the phone.

  CHAPTER 23

  “May I take your coat, sir? Mr. Clairmont’s waiting for you in the game room.”

  Quantrell turned over his coat and hat. “Thank you, Pepe.” He had been in Clairmont’s penthouse apartment several times before, but always accompanied by the young Clairmont or Bridgeport. He followed Pepe down the hall, admiring the subdued recessed lighting and the polished slate tiles. Above a gilt table, an oval mirror with an intricately carved f
rame threw his reflection back at him. Just outside the game room, he paused to examine two small paintings on one of the side walls; each was not more than ten inches square. Original Matisses, he noted.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Jeffrey.”

  William Glade Clairmont was waiting for him at the entrance to the game room, an ornate, ivory inlaid-pool cue in his hand. “I’ve ordered drinks. Pepe reminded me that you’re a scotch drinker-very long memory, Pepe’s.

  I see you like my Matisses?”

  “Exquisite,” Quantrell admitted. “They must be worth a fortune.”

  “Fine art has a value, Jeffrey-it’s a pity so many people confuse that with price.”

  Quantrell turned to face Clairmont who, stood half a head shorter than he, though he carried himself as though he were a head taller and physically more powerful. He had aged, Quantrell thought, even in the relatively short time he had been with the station. A few more lines in the face, hair that was turning silver instead of gray, a gauntness about him, and a tendency for his clothes to hang. And when he was gone, young Clairmont would be the power behind the dynasty. But not until the Old Man was dead and buried, he thought.

  “Well, come on in and make yourself comfortable,” Clairmont offered.

  “I know I said only ten minutes, but I’m an old man and not many people visit me and I’ll be frank, I like visitors these days.” He walked back to the pool table in the sprawling game room.. “If you play, we might drink and talk while we have a game.” He looked oddly hopeful. “Do you?”

  “It’s been a long time,” Quantrell said. “My bank shots aren’t what they used to be.” He suddenly smiled. “I’m not being hustled, am I?”

  “Frankly, yes, but I don’t very often get the opportunity-I wouldn’t take your money in any event. Willie Hopper taught me; he was a rather good teacher.”