The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 43

The sidewalk and plaza in front of the Glass House were coated in a glistening sheath of ice. Infantino’s boots slipped on the glaze underfoot; he held onto the open door of the CD comm van as he stared up at the building. In spite of the scars of the fire, it was still a thing of beauty with the banks of floodlights playing on its exterior.

The queen of the city, he thought, but a tattered queen now. He could see the gaps in the curtainwall where the windows had been knocked out on the seventeenth and eighteenth floors. The thick mantle of ice ridged these floors and flowed down the outside of the building almost to the ground level.

Perversely, the effect added to the building’s beauty. The tower above was a glittering, golden gem swathed in a curtain of ice.

It hadn’t gone too badly, Infantino thought. For a while he had feared the fire might spread and they would have to bring in helicopters for a rooftop evacuation.

But the main fires on seventeen and eighteen were pretty well knocked down while the fire on twenty-one was now contained. They could look-forward to a morning of pulling down the remains of walls and ceilings and searching for minor smoldering fires hidden in remote recesses of the various floors. Sometime before dawn the majority of his companies could probably secure, coil up their hoses and go back to their cold meals still sitting on the firehouse stove. They would try to forget that they had been part of one of, the major near disasters of the city.

Infantino was surprised that there had been so few casualties. In a fire of this size, he would have predicted more. Out of a working crew of well over a hundred, perhaps a dozen had been sent to the, hospital for smoke inhalation, burns, and cuts from falling glass.

Some of the burns had been bad ones, both from the intense radiant heat and from some of the older turnout coats which had crumbled in the heat.

But as yet there had been only one fatality-the man with the hot lung.

Shevelson’s appearance on the scene was helpful but troubling.

The blueprints were proving useful, though not as much as Shevelson obviously thought they should be.

It was more helpful to learn, finally, that it was Shevelson who had been feeding information to Quantrell. Whether or not Fuchs would believe it, at least in.his own mind Infantino knew he was free and clear. But Shevelson had impressed him in one area-the Glass House was a minimal building. The equipment in it was designed to serve sixty-six floors and not one more. There was no reserve, no back-up system. If there were any unpleasant surprises now … well, they could really be unpleasant.

He took one last look at the building, then walked over to the Red Cross canteen truck where Chief Fuchs was having a cup of coffee. He took the cup offered by the girl inside, added cream, and ladled three heaping spoons of sugar into it.

“Sweet tooth, Infantino,?”

“You burn up a lot of energy fighting fires.” He studied the chief for a minute and decided to have it out. “Shevelson, the construction foreman for the Glass House, showed up a while ago. He brought along a set of the working prints.”

“Oh?” Fuchs waited.

“He’s your leak for inside information, if you were looking for one.

He’s been talking to Quantrell for weeks.

Apparently he was canned by Leroux and still carries a grudge.”

“That so?” Fuchs sipped at his own coffee without looking up.

“Your friend Barton talked to me about that. He even introduced me to Shevelson while you were upstairs. Interesting fellow. Would have made a good fire captain, though I’m not so sure I’d care. to work with him.”

There was surprisingly little hostility in his voice and Infantino asked: “Any complaints so far?”

“About how you’ve been handling things? If I had any You would have heard about them. Pretty standard fire …

larger than most, but standard.”

“Seen one fire, you’ve seen them all?”

A little of the sharpness returned to Fuchs’s ‘voice.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’ve never seen a fire like this one,” Infantino said.

“And I don’t think you have, either. It spread faster than any fire I’ve ever worked. And it was damned hot.”

Fuchs nodded. “I’ll give it that,” he said mildly.

Again, the absence of hostility surprised Infantino. He took another sip of coffee, then suddenly said: “Why the hell are we fighting, Chief?”

For a long moment Fuchs said nothing; he stood leaning against the truck and gazing up at the building a few hundred feet away. “You’ve got your views, I’ve got mine.

I didn’t put you in charge of the high-rise problem because I hoped you would agree with me. The only gripe I ever had was because I thought you were airing department business in public.”

That was as much of an apology as he was going to get, Infantino thought, but it was enough. “I didn’t think I was-but I can see where other people might have.”

“Yeah,” Fuchs agreed. “You know how some people are-touchy.” He put his cup on the truck window ledge behind him and pulled his collar up closer around his neck. “Speaking of department business, I imagine you have some recommendations.”

“I do. You probably won’t like some of them.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“It will all be in a formal report.”

Fuchs nodded. “I expect it to be, Mario. But I’d still like to hear your suggestions now.”

“We need new equipment.” Fuchs’s face was impassive and Infantino added: “Mostly personnel equipment. High-capacity respirators would allow us to hang in there longer. And we could use lightweight bottles containing oxygen instead of compressed air. More comfortable masks, more reliable reducing valves. And new turnout suits; some of the ones we were using are so old they crumbled from the heat. And the advance hose teams could use aluminized cover suits-the kind they use in fighting oil fires-for close proximity work. Almost all burns were from radiant heat.”

“Anything else?”

“I think every man working on a fire floor where the smoke is heavy should have a walky-talky. It’s easy to get separated up there.”

Fuchs seemed lost in thought and finally Infantino asked, “Any comments?”

“Not many You’re right about the heat. It was greater than I had expected, though part of it may be because of the nature of the building-poor construction techniques, fire loading far above the norm, that sort of thing.”

He half smiled. “But you’re not through in listing what you would like to have, are you?”

“Shape charges? We actually didn’t have to use them tonight but they would be nice to have on hand.”

“Speak to the department engineers and send me a memo. If they recommend it I’ll look into it.”

Fuchs started for the building and Infantino shouted, “I’m not through yet!”

“I don’t know why I thought you would say that,” -Fuchs said dryly.

“What did you forget this time?”

“I’d like to recommend the hiring of fire protection engineers, perhaps on a part-time basis, when it comes to the Fire Department checking out major buildings.”

“Good idea if we can find them; there aren’t many floating around.

Put that in your memo, too.”

Fuchs had taken a step back to the building when a voice said, “You gentlemen have anything to say for the tube?”

. Quantrell approached from the other side of the Red Cross van, trailed by a cameraman, his sixteen-millimeter rig riding high on his equipment pod.

“Why don’t you go straight to hell, Quantrell,” Infantino said, suddenly acutely tired.

“I probably will, in due course,” Quantrell said grimly.

He glanced up at the ice-sheathed building. “Nice little fire; it probably could have been avoided if the developer had been more conscientious. Wouldn’t you gentlemen agree?”

“Get lost, will you, Quantrell?” Infantino snapped. “The Glass House is no better or worse than half a dozen other buildings in this town. They’re all alike; they all suffer from the same defects.”

“Care to point out a few of the others? You’d be doing our viewers a public service. Now’s the time to sound the alarm, now while the press is listening and watching.”

He cocked his head, half smiling. “Well, Division Chief Infantino?”

“It was a tough fire,” Infantino said slowly. “A dozen of my men are in the hospital-some of them may not leave for months. One is dead.

I’m not about to play games with you tonight; all I want is for you to get the hell out of here. It was probably a bastard like you that thought up the term ‘body count’ for the enemy dead in Vietnam.

You cover disasters like they were football games; for you there’s no difference between a man who gets tackled and one who gets killed.

They’re just numbers on a scoreboard.”

Quantrell stepped closer to Infantino, the bantering smile gone.

“Where the hell do you get off calling me names, Infantino? I’ve got my job just like you have yours.

My job is to get the news out to the voters who just happen to pay your salary. I kick a few asses and I bruise a few feelings and nobody’s ever going to vote me the most popular guy in the class. I don’t deal in press releases and handouts; I get out there to see for myself.

Buddy, you don’t know this business-how much information do you think I would get with a sweetness-and-light routine? There isn’t a department in this city that wouldn’t like to brush me off with a couple of drinks and three pages of public relations bullshit. Well, if you don’t like how I quote you, then stop being a gabby dago and keep your mouth shut.”

“That’s enough,” Fuchs interrupted quietly. “You’ve had your say, Quantrell. Now get the hell out of here or I’ll have you escorted out of the lines.”

“Go ahead; it’ll make a great story,” Quantrell said sarcastically.

“If you don’t think I’ll do it try me.”

Something in Fuchs’s voice made Quantrell back off.

“Okay, Chief, I’ve got my story anyway.” He jerked his head at the cameraman and they walked away.

“That goddamned cameraman was picking all of that up,” Infantino said, furious.

“Don’t worry; they won’t use it.”

Infantino said, “I don’t give a damn whether they do or not.” But he did; Quantrell had really gotten under his skin.

Fuchs said, “Stay cool,” chuckled, and started walking back across the plaza, the frigid wind whipping his coat around his waist.

Infantino remained by the van a moment longer, staring at the Glass House. He was thinking of the men still in the building working at knocking down the last of the fire. Idly he watched the scenic elevator start down the side of the shear wall again; it looked like some slow-moving, phosphorescent waterbug. Then he spotted Quantrell and his cameraman running up the terrazzo steps to the lobby.

Quantrell must have been counting the loads and realized that Leroux was in this one. They’d catch Leroux as he stepped out of the elevator, still dressed-in evening clothes-a perfect contrast to the pajama-clad, weary and frightened-looking tenants whom Quantrell had probably already photographed in the basement lunchroom.

Infantino drained the last of his coffee. He could care less about what Leroux and Quantrell would have to say to each other. He’d read about it in the morning paper or watch it on the six-o’clock news tomorrow night.

The wind began to pick up again; the combination of sleet and snow pelted him like tiny little darts. He shivered, wanting desperately to go home. He thought of bed; and Doris’ warmth beside him.

Another hour, he thought, perhaps in another hour …