Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (8 page)

Douglas Ferguson pulled a flashlight from his pocket and walked in.

“At this rate,” McWhirty said to Mr. Marlucci, “this basement will be full in another month?”

“This sub-basement,” said Mr. Marlucci, smiling. “Well—I’d say another three to four weeks. We’ll have it full and sealed before the football season.”

Awful, Benny thought. Washington would simply have to donate a stadium to another university somewhere, and as soon as possible.

They were drifting on toward the exit on the side of the basement they had not seen, where Mr. Marlucci said they could take an elevator up to the ground level and see the stadium interior.

On the earth’s surface, on the sunlit grass, Mr. Marlucci shook his head as he spoke to a man in shirtsleeves and blue jeans who had asked him something. Benny was close enough to hear Mr. Marlucci say:

“The fallout shelters’re pretty empty now, nothing much to see yet. We’re bringing in supplies, as you see.”

To Benny Mr. Marlucci said, as they walked up a ramp, “One of the professors from the university. Now here we have a view!” With widespread arms Mr. Marlucci beheld the football field as if he would embrace it.

A dark grey running track framed the green of the football field. Bleachers climbed up and up, empty yet poised and focused for drama.

“Really something!” said a voice among the NCC men.

Mr. Marlucci talked about the heating and ventilation systems, the First Aid room for players and for spectators if they needed it, and finally he suggested drinks and a snack at a nearby restaurant, if the gentlemen had time. The NCC men hadn’t. It was after 4 now, and their plane left at 6:15. The afternoon had flown.

The limousines arrived again, congratulations, thanks and good byes were exchanged, and the cars moved off for the airport.

Benny Jackson sat next to McWhirty on the airplane, because he wanted to hear McWhirty’s impressions while they were still fresh.

“We’ll look at it again in two weeks,” said McWhirty. “Take a rem check ourselves downstairs and at all the vents. Those cracks—” McWhirty gave a laugh. “Talk about a rush job! I want to speak with Doug.” He unfastened his seat belt and got up.

Benny heard McWhirty’s voice behind him in the aisle asking,

“Where’s Doug?”

“Doug?” said another voice. “Maybe he went to the lav.”

A couple of minutes later McWhirty bent over Benny with a pained expression on his face. “Doug’s not on the plane. It just occurs to me—”

“What?” asked Benny.

McWhirty sat down stiffly. “I didn’t see him since he went into that container room. Do you suppose he got locked in there?”

“Christ, no!” Benny said at once, and thought back. “I didn’t see Marlucci close that door.”

“Neither did I, but—I just checked with the fellows and nobody remembers seeing him at the airport just now. He’s back there, Benny!” With difficulty Gerry kept his voice low.

“We’ll phone Well-Bilt as soon as we land.”

“We could radio now. It’s a couple of hours till we land.”

“No,” said Benny, meaning the idea of radioing from the plane and asking for a container room to be opened. “No.”

They both ordered Scotches.

“Doug’ll probably phone tonight from some hotel in Indianapolis,” Benny said. “Maybe he went to a toilet in that sub-basement and got lost from us.”

It was close to 10 p.m. before they got to a telephone at the West Virginia airport. Benny was told that Frank Marlucci had left at 5:30.

“I’d like to speak to someone in charge of the sub-basement. This is Benjamin Jackson of NCC. It’s urgent.”

After some delay, and much offering of more coins by the NCC men who stood outside the booth, another male voice came on, and Benny again identified himself. “I and some colleagues were visiting the sub-basement today. I have reason to think one of our party may be locked in one of the container rooms. I’d like someone to take a look
now
.”

A pause. “We get a lot of joke calls from the students, sir. We’ll need some more identification before we—We’re very busy here, sir. Good night.” The man hung up.

One of the NCC men said that maybe Doug had got out, if he had ever been in, and would phone Gerry or Benny tonight, and come back on the morning plane tomorrow. Benny and Gerry agreed that they should go home, wait for a call, but also try the two Well-Bilt-Balsam numbers again tonight.

From his own house, McWhirty telephoned Evelyn Ferguson, Doug’s wife, and told her that Doug had had to stay overnight in Indianapolis to talk some details over with construction people.

Benny and Gerry McWhirty were stonewalled by the male voices that answered the telephones in the small hours of the night at the stadium. They didn’t know anything about a party of visitors having inspected the stadium and “the basements” in the afternoon, and “Operation Balsam” produced no glimmer of recognition. The NCC, if such they were, should get in touch with the Frank Marlucci they were asking about tomorrow, and he could verify matters and take care of their requests.

“What on earth is the matter?” asked Benny’s wife Beatrice, coming into the living-room at 2 in the morning.

“Doug Ferguson—as I said—he hasn’t got all the info he needs for tomorrow and I can’t find what hotel he’s at.”

When Benny telephoned Well-Bilt at 9:30 the same morning, he learned that Mr. Marlucci was not coming to work that day. “Mr.Siegman then, please.” Benny had a short list of names of the Well-Bilt people.

“Mr. Siegman’s in conference now, sir. Everyone’s in conference, because the press is due this afternoon to look at the stadium.”

“Who’s in charge of the container rooms—
now
?” Benny asked.

Silence. “We’ve only got a skeleton staff here, sir. No one person’s in charge.”

“Someone like Marlucci. Look, this is urgent. I have reason to think one of our party may be locked in one of the container rooms—since yesterday and he’s got to be let out!”

“Wh-which room, sir?”

“Can’t tell you exactly. On the other side from where the trucks roll down. On the left side as you go along what I think is the main corridor to the other side.” Benny had the plans before him, but the passages and rooms had no numbers or letters on them. The passages radiated from the center but were crossed by circles of passages that intersected them, making the plan look rather like a spider’s web, but he thought the corridor they had been in was central, so he called it the main corridor.

“There’s a delivery entrance for trucks both sides, sir.”

“It’s not too much trouble for you to open those rooms and have a look, is it? It’s one of the half-full rooms. Do that and call me back, would you?” Benny made sure the man had his number correct.

The man did not ring back.

Doug Ferguson did not arrive on the morning plane from Indianapolis. Benny had begun chewing his minty pills, the only pain-reliever he had until he renewed his prescriptions. Gerald McWhirty was at work with a team on the NCC’s “Preliminary Report on Operation Balsam.” This was for EWA and it had to be favorable and at least sixty pages long. Marlucci had given them a sheaf of papers, which could be organized and copied. Evelyn Ferguson rang the office twice to ask if Doug were back or had communicated.

“It’s not like him not to phone,” Evelyn said. “He can phone me at any hour day or night, and he always does.”

“I know it’s a heavy assignment he’s got out there,” Benny said. “He probably hasn’t a minute free.”

From 2 p.m. onward that afternoon, the two Well-Bilt numbers simply didn’t answer. Benny imagined the sub-basement, where the phones perhaps were, sealed off from the journalists, with no trucks rolling today, not a soul down there except Doug maybe, shouting unheard in a container room. Had the last man he had spoken to believed him about a man maybe locked in a container room?

Benny Jackson and Gerry McWhirty lingered in the NCC building after everyone else had gone home. McWhirty looked haggard, and admitted that he hadn’t slept the night before. They decided to try again to reach Marlucci. Benny got busy with information on one telephone and McWhirty on another, trying to get the home number of Marlucci, who must live in the area, though it was conceivable that he had rented an apartment for the duration of the Well-Bilt job, and wouldn’t be listed yet. He’d still have a telephone, Benny reasoned. Neither Indianapolis nor any town in the area had a number for Frank Marlucci. Was that really his name, Benny wondered?

It was Benny’s turn to have a sleepless night. Benny had said to McWhirty that he would go to the stadium on the plane tomorrow Thursday, and McWhirty had said no, he would go, because he was less conspicuous than the head of NCC. Benny now saw Doug’s incarceration as a stupid accident, indicating inefficiency. That was how Washington would see it. It reflected upon Benny and the Nuclear Control Commission.

Nevertheless, Benny picked up his telephone the first thing Thursday morning, and rang his Washington hotline, thinking himself rather noble for putting his job at risk by doing so.

“Jackson, NCC. Is Man there?” Matt Schwartz was a man Benny often talked to, a friendly and helpful fellow, though Benny had never met him face to face. Now he was told that Man was in conference in another building and could not be reached. “This is about Operation Balsam . . . Yes . . . Specifically we have to find a certain Frank Marlucci, one of the superintendents for Well-Bilt. We have to speak with him on the phone and we can’t locate him.” Benny’s tone sounded firm, but he had faltered: he had not said straightaway that an NCC man appeared to have been locked up in a container room since Tuesday afternoon.

“What do you want him for?” asked Washington.

“I need to ask him something. He wasn’t at work—yesterday.” Benny had not tried this morning, he realized.

“Call you back,” said Washington, and hung up.

Washington was back in record time, the same male voice. “Marlucci is no longer employed by Well-Bilt, sir. No use trying to reach him.”

“They must have his home number. I need to ask him—”

“We know about that. The trouble.”

Benny was surprised. “And something’s been done about it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the voice crisply.

“This has to do with Douglas Ferguson of NCC. You mean he’s all right?”

“All right? What’s the matter with him?”

“Wh-what did you mean by ‘the trouble’ out there?”

“Marlucci did something wrong and got fired. We don’t advise any of our people to go out there for a while. Till further notice.”

Those were orders, Benny knew. He had just time to catch Gerry McWhirty at home and tell him not to take the morning plane. McWhirty came into the office at 11. The Well-Bilt numbers were now answering, but Benny had not been able to speak with anyone who could tell him Marlucci’s personal number, or who knew if any container rooms had been opened yesterday or today to look for a man who might have been locked in one. People simply didn’t know anything.

“This is Jackson of NCC,” Benny repeated to one man.

“We
understand,
sir. We can’t help you.”

Once more Benny and Gerry had a faint hope that Doug might come in on the plane that arrived at 11:30. If so, he didn’t telephone, and they hadn’t the courage to phone his wife and ask if Doug had got home. Evelyn had rung once that morning to ask if NCC had any news, and Benny told his secretary to tell Mrs. Ferguson that they hadn’t heard from Doug either, but were assuming he would be back Saturday latest. Benny knew this was not going down well with Evelyn Ferguson.

The afternoon brought a further torment. Inhabitants of the Love Canal area had organized a new campaign, and starting after lunch the NCC offices were bombarded with telephone calls and telegrams from homeowners and housewives angry at having been told they had to move out again, after having been told they could move back to their once abandoned homes and apartments. The Committee for Justice at Love Canal tied up the telephones with personal calls and telegrams being read by telegraph office operators—all the messages blaming the NCC for misinformation and lies—until Benny thought he was going mad. A bomb should hit the goddam Love Canal area and their whole effing committee too!

On Friday Benny was informed by a female voice on his hotline from Washington that Frank Marlucci had been killed in a car accident yesterday afternoon in southern Indiana. Benny knew what had most likely happened: someone had deliberately run Marlucci off the road. Benny felt sickish, then reminded himself that he had heard about such things before, two or three times before. He knew why he was feeling sickish: Marlucci’s death confirmed Doug’s death. Benny was sick at the thought of Doug in that room half-full of containers, Doug getting weaker from thirst and hunger, from lack of air, moaning unheard, dying. Benny called McWhirty in to tell him.

“Good Christ.” McWhirty sank into a leather chair in Benny’s office as if all his strength had gone.

“You think maybe Marlucci tried to get him out?” Benny asked. “Or did get him out—dead?”

“Or loaders found him and Marlucci got the blame.” McWhirty looked drugged, but was merely exhausted. “I figure Doug would’ve been dead by yesterday morning from asphyxiation.”