Part 11 (2/2)
”Investigator for the underwriters,” he said, and they let him through the barrier as soon as he'd produced his credentials.
”Three-alarmer,” said his departmental escort, flas.h.i.+ng his torch down the nightmare hallway from just within the entrance. ”I still don't know how we got 'em all out, even with the nets. I tell you, if it had happened a month sooner before the new escapes had been tacked on, it woulda made history. Mushroomed up the well, like most of 'em do. He turned his flash upward and the beam lost itself out of sight. There was no ceiling to stop it, just a weird network of charred beams through which the open sky peered from six stories above, where the roof had fallen through and disintegrated on its way down like something strained through a succession of sieves.
”Anything phony-looking about it?” asked Jordan. He edged forward along the fresh planking that had been laid between the doorway and the skeletonized staircase.
”Why would there have to be?” was the answer. ”The way they leave their baby carriages parked behind the stairs - you can count the frames of four of 'em back there right now, and cripes knows what other junk was piled on 'em that's just ashes now! That's begging for it to happen!”
”That where it started, you think?”
”Must've. The bas.e.m.e.nt under us wasn't touched, and fire eats up, not down - Hey, stay back here, those stairs would fold up if a cat tried to walk on 'em!”
”Lemme that a minute,” said Jordan, reaching for the torch. ”I'm not going up, I just want to take a look behind 'em. Nothing ever happened to me yet in one of these places.”
He sidled forward to the end of the plank, then got off it onto the original flooring, which was ankle-deep in debris that had fallen from above but hadn't given way on this floor. Testing it each step of the way before he put his weight down on it, he advanced slowly to what had been the back of the hall. The torch revealed a number of tortured metal frames, upthrust under the stairs, that had once been the hoops enclosing baby carriages. The heat here must have been terrific at the height of the blaze; the door that had once led downward to the bas.e.m.e.nt was completely burned away. An iron k.n.o.b and two twisted hinges were all that remained to show there had been one. The steps going down were brick, however; they remained.
”C'mon back,” the a.s.sistant marshal said irritably, ”before you bring the whole works down on us!”
Jordan got down on his heels and began to paw about, using the rib of an umbrella for a poker. Fine ash, that had once been the pillows and blankets lining the carriages, billowed up, tickling his nostrils. He sneezed and blew a little round clear s.p.a.ce on the charred floor boards.
It was when he had straightened up and turned to go, and had already s.h.i.+fted the torch away, that he first saw it. It sent up a dull gleam for an instant as the light flickered over it. He turned back to it with the flash, lost track of it at first, then finally found it again. It had fallen into one of the springs of the erstwhile perambulators and adhered there, soldered on by the heat like a gob of yellow-brown chewing gum. He touched it, pried it loose with a snap, it came off hard as a rock. It was, as a matter of fact, very much like a pebble, but it was metal, he could see that. He was going to throw it away, but when he scratched the surface of it with his thumbnail, it showed up brighter underneath, almost like gold. He found his way back to the fire marshal and showed it to him.
”What do you make of this?”
The marshal didn't make very much of it. ”One of the bolts or gadgets on one of them gocarts, melted down, that's all,” he said.
But it obviously wasn't one of the ”bolts or gadgets” or it wouldn't have fused with the heat like that, the rest of the springs and frames hadn't; and what metal was softer than iron and yellow - but gold? He slipped it into his pocket. A jeweler would be able to tell him in a minute - not that that would prove anything, either.
”What time was the alarm sent in?” he asked the marshal.
”The first one came in at the central station about 3:30, then two more right on top of it.”
”Who turned the first one in, got any idea?”
”Some taxi driver - he's got an early morning stand down at the next corner.”
Jordan traced the cab man to the garage where he bedded his car. He caught him just as he was leaving on a new s.h.i.+ft.
”I heard gla.s.s bust,” he said, ”and first I thought it was a burglary, then when I look I see smoke steaming out.”
”Had you seen anyone go in or leave before that happened?”
”Tell you the truth, I was reading by the dashlight, didn't look up oncet until I heard the smash.”
At the emergency ward, where the three worst sufferers had been taken, Jordan found none in a condition to talk to him. Two were under morphine and the third, a top-floor tenant named Dillhoff, swathed in compresses steeped in strong tea to form a protective covering replacing burned-away tissue, could only stare up at him with frightened eyes above the rim of the gauze that m.u.f.fled even his face. His wife, however, was there at the bedside.
”Yah, insurance!” she broke out hotly when Jordan had introduced himself. ”He gets his money - but vot do I get if my man diess?”
He let her get that out of her system first, then - ”Some of those people that Lapolla forced to vacate were pretty sore, weren't they? Did you ever hear any of them make any threats, say they'd get even?”
Her eyes widened as she got the implication. ”Ach, no, no!” she cried, wringing her hands, ”we vas all friends togedder, they would not do that to those that shtayed behind! No, they vas goot people, poor maybe, but goot!”
”Was the street door left open at nights or locked?”
”Open, alvays open.”
”Then anybody could have walked into the hallway that didn't belong there? Did you, at any time during the past few days, pa.s.s anyone, notice anyone, in the halls or on the stairs that didn't live in the house?”
Not a soul. But then she never went out much, she admitted.
He left on that note, got in touch with the rewrite man who had shaped the account sent in by the reporter who had covered it. ”What'd he say that made you people label it 'suspicious' orgin?”
”I put that in myself for a s.p.a.ce-filler,” the writer admitted airily. ”Anything with three alarms, it don't hurt to give it a little eerie atmosphere -”
Jordan hung up rather abruptly, his mouth a thin line. So he'd been on a wild-goose chase all day, had he, on account of the careless way some city rooms tossed around phrases! There wasn't a shred of evidence, as far as he'd been able to discover, that it was anything but accidental.
Parmenter, when he went back at five after seeing Lapolla and getting a statement from the Chief Fire Marshal himself, nodded in agreement after listening to him outline the results of his investigation. ”Make out your report,” he said briefly, ”I'll see that a check's sent to Lapolla as soon as he files his claim.”
Jordan wound up both reports, the one he'd been working on that morning and the new one, then went home, still heartily disgusted with the methods of city journalism. The kid scuffled to the door to let him in, gamboled about him. Marie planted an amiable kiss on his cheek. ”Something you like dear - giblets,” she beamed.
It was when she turned her head to reach for something behind her, near the end of the meal, that he looked twice at her neck. ”Something missing on you toni -”
She touched her throat absently. ”Oh, I know - my locket, isn't that what you mean?”
”What'd you do, lose it?”
”No,” she said slowly, ”it finally came off, after all these years. I left it at the jeweler's to be fixed.”
”That reminds me -” he said, and touched bis side pocket.
”Reminds you of what?” she asked calmly.
”Oh nothing, never mind,” he answered. If it was worth anything, gold, maybe the jeweler'd give him some trinket in exchange he could surprise her with. He got up and went out again right after the meal, said he'd be right back. ”My wife's locket ready yet?” he asked the little skullcapped man behind the counter.
”What locket?” was the tart response. ”She left no locket with me. I haven't seen your wife in three months, Mr. Jordan.”
Must've been some other shop then. He coughed to cover up the mistake. ”Well, as long as I'm in here, take a look at this. Worth anything?” He spilled the shapeless calcinated blob of metal onto the gla.s.s counter. The old man screwed a gla.s.s into his eye, touched a drop of nitric acid to it, nodded.
”Yop, it's gold. Wait, I find out if it's solid or just plated.”
He took a file, began to sc.r.a.pe it back and forth across the surface. There was a tiny click, as though he'd broken it. He turned back to Jordan, holding his palm out in astonishment to show him. There were two blobs now instead of one, both identical in outline but thinner; two halves of what had been a locket before it fused together in the fire. A little powdered gla.s.s dribbled off one, like sugar, as the jeweler moved his hand.
”What's that, there?” said Jordan, pointing to a scorched oval of paper adhering to one side. ”Lemme use that gla.s.s a minute!”
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