Even so, another hundred thousand?
“God, Mother,” exclaimed Charlie, “do you have to?”
His mother ignored him.
“What’s it for, Rose?” William gently inquired.
“Marble, dear. From Italy. The hall’s going to be all marble. Nancy de Rivers has a marble hall,” she added, with a hint of reproach.
“Ah,” said William.
“You’re obsessed,” said Charlie.
“Can you finish the house if I give you another hundred thousand?” asked William.
“Yes,” said Rose.
“All right then,” he said.
He’d just have to find the money, somewhere.
By Friday, September 19, the great steel cage of the Empire State Building was nearly complete. It was almost two weeks ahead of schedule. The bricklayers had been keeping pace, and they only had about ten floors to go. Eighty-five floors in six months from the start of construction. A staggering achievement.
The foreman was in a friendly mood when Salvatore approached him with his request. Could his brother Angelo spend the day with him? “He’s an artist,” Salvatore explained. “He wants to make drawings of us, working on the building.”
The foreman considered. The site was by no means closed. Boys went up selling water to the construction workers all the time. Photographers had taken pictures of the steelworkers perched on their girders in the sky. The promoters liked that sort of thing. “Will he be safe?” he said.
“He used to be a bricklayer,” Salvatore told him. “He won’t do anything stupid.” He grinned. “In fact, he just made a sketch of you a few minutes ago.” He gave the foreman a small drawing Angelo had dashed off.
“Well, blow me down, that’s me all right,” said the delighted foreman. And he waved them through.
As they went up in the service elevator, he glanced at his brother. Angelo was wearing a suit and a small homburg hat. He looked as handsome and contented as on his wedding day. The only change was that his face was a little fuller, and he had an air of modest success about him too. There was enough painting work to keep him busy, evidently. He’d also designed the logos and paint jobs for the trucks of several Long Island businesses. There was no question, Angelo had found his feet.
The new Otis elevators that would soon carry the occupants to their offices had been specially designed to travel up at almost double the speed of any elevator before, but even the works elevators moved at a rapid clip. Salvatore was proud of the building, and described its wonders as they went.
“Any day now,” he said, “they’ll start to build the mast on the top.”
The Empire State Building’s top office floor was higher than the tip of the Chrysler Building by two feet. But whereas Chrysler had beaten out the opposition with his cheeky, but useless spike, the Empire State would be topped by a huge mast, containing observation platforms, at the top of which there would be a dock at which huge dirigibles could be moored and their passengers disembark. “The whole place will be ready to open by Easter next year,” Salvatore said.
They came out at the seventy-second floor, and Salvatore went over to the outer wall where he was working.
The construction of the Empire State Building had proceeded rapidly because its design was so simple. First came the network of huge steel girders which carried the building’s entire weight. Some of the vertical steel columns would support a weight of ten million pounds, but they could have taken far more. The building was massively over-engineered. Between the girders were curtain walls, whose only structural function was to keep the weather out.
But here the architects had shown their genius. The outer edges of the vertical girders were given a chrome-nickel trim that rendered them a soft gray. Apart from that, the entire working facade of the mighty tower contained only these principal elements: first, pairs of rectangular, metal window frames; second, above and below each frame, a single aluminum panel, called a spandrel; third, between each pair of windows, large slabs of pale limestone. Thus the facade soared up in pure stone and metal vertical lines. Only at the very top of each high column of stonework or window was there an elegant art deco carving with a vertical direction to satisfy and uplift the eye. Essentially, therefore, the men working on the facade just moved up behind the girder riveters and, as it were, clipped the frames, spandrels and blocks of limestone into place.
And then there were the bricklayers.
“We work from inside, you see,” Salvatore explained. “Two courses of brick, eight inches thick.” The brick went in behind the limestone and the spandrels, supporting and insulating them. But the brick had another important function. “The brick protects the girders,” Salvatore pointed out. Being fired when they were made, the bricks were flame-resistant. In high heat, even steel girders are vulnerable. The brick would clothe and protect them. “The building is strong as a fortress, but it would be almost impossible to burn it down as well.”
While Salvatore and his gang went to work, Angelo sat on a pile of bricks with his sketchbook, and began to draw. High above, the deafening noise of the riveters at work would have made conversation difficult. Some days the racket went on from seven in the morning until nine at night, echoing down to the street below. The local residents just had to put up with it.
As well as sketching the bricklayers, Angelo’s attention was caught by a stack of the aluminum spandrels that had been stashed near the elevator. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architects of the building, had been trained at Cornell and Columbia mainly, though Lamb had also been to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. But they really came from New York’s Carrère & Hastings stable, and were dedicated to the French art deco style.
The spandrels were a perfect example of this elegance. Repeated hundreds of times on the building’s facade, each panel carried the same simple design—stylized, art deco lightning bolts to left and right, a gap in the center between them. Like electric ice tracks on the metal they soared, vertically, into the blue.
Angelo stared at the design intently, and began to draw it.
As his brother drew, Salvatore noticed that, just for a moment, as he started, Angelo’s face took on the same dreamy look it so often had when he was a child, but that as he became engrossed in his drawing, there was an intense, purposeful concentration in his eyes that was even a little frightening.
Uncle Luigi had been right. Angelo was an artist. He belonged in the company of the men who had designed this building, not among the bricklayers.
And so they continued, Angelo sketching all kinds of things that caught his eye, Salvatore laying bricks with his gang, until the noontime whistle blew for the lunch break.
Salvatore had brought enough food for both of them. He gave bread to his brother and cut the salami. When they had eaten, Angelo said that what he’d really like would be to go up to the top of the building and look out from there.
The riveters had stopped for the time being. A strange, unwonted peace pervaded the huge terrace of open girders, where the only sound was the small hiss of the wind that rose, now and then, to a little moan in the branches of the narrow cranes.
High across the sky stretched a veil of gray and silver cloud through which, like a voice offstage, the sun sent an echo of light. Ahead, beyond the cluster of pinnacles on Manhattan’s tip, the wide waters of New York harbor wore a dull gleam.
As he looked around, however, Salvatore noticed something else. Smaller clouds, closer to the skyscraper tops, were moving in contrary directions. To the right, across the Hudson, they seemed to be hesitating over New Jersey before turning north; to the left, over Queens, they were already scurrying south. Was the breeze changing? Or had the wind decided to circle the city, with the great tower at the center of its turning world?
A sudden gust of wind slapped his cheek, reminding him that up here on these high places one could never predict the air’s sudden eddies and flows.
Meanwhile, Angelo had gone over to the southern edge of the platform, the
Thirty-fourth Street side. Over there, Salvatore knew, it was a sheer drop for nine stories to the stonemasons’ duckwalk, then another seventy-five down to the street below. A couple of the Mohawk Indians were sitting quietly on a girder which made a temporary parapet there. They glanced at Angelo briefly, but seemed to take no further interest. Angelo sat down a few feet to their right, and he took out his sketch pad. He was leaning over the edge, looking down; something there had caught his attention. Perhaps it was the duckwalk. After a few moments, he started to draw. Salvatore moved over to one of the upright girders a few yards away and leaned against it, protected from the breeze.
There was certainly a wonderful view. It was as if, from that high place, all the riches of the world were laid out below them: the teeming city, the distant suburbs, busy Wall Street, the mighty harbor, the vast ocean beyond. If anywhere on earth could make the claim, the Empire State Building, surely, was the center of the universe today. This was it, the pinnacle of the temple of Man. And he, Salvatore Caruso, was here as a witness, and his brother was recording it in a drawing which—who knew—might be looked at for generations to come. He saw the paper on his brother’s sketchbook flutter.
Angelo seemed to have forgotten him, but from where he was resting, Salvatore could observe his brother’s face—keenly observant, intense and fine.
And quite suddenly at that moment, taking him entirely by surprise, the terrible pain, the sense of betrayal and jealousy he’d felt when he’d first discovered about his brother and Teresa, burst upon him. It hit him like a wave. Coming from nowhere, it seized him, possessed him, filled him with a cold horror and rage. Why had Angelo married the woman that he himself loved? Why had he given Angelo half his money? Why had Angelo accepted it? Why should it be Angelo who was talented, and handsome, and fine? Why was his little brother something that he himself was not, and never could be?
All these years he had protected him. He’d done what he thought was right, and what Anna would have wanted. He’d given Angelo everything. And what was his reward? To be surpassed, left standing like an onlooker, a fool.
Caught unawares by this realization, as it seemed to be, Salvatore could not help himself. He stared at his brother with hatred. Had they been alone in the desert, he would have struck him dead.
For a long minute, as the wind hissed, he gazed at Angelo with murder in his heart.
He sensed the danger just before it struck.
The wind does not break against a skyscraper. It wraps itself around it like a serpent. It breathes up and down; it strikes its head in suddenly through openings and rushes through to the other side. It squeezes and it twists. It is dangerous and unpredictable. Just before you feel it, you may hear the sudden bang of a heavy gust as it rushes across the open floor at you.
On the high girders of the Empire State, a gust could sweep a man off his feet.
As the gust came at Salvatore, he automatically caught the edge of the girder and braced himself. But it had been some time since his brother had worked on a high building, and besides, he was not paying attention.
The gust reached Angelo. It smacked into the sketching pad and tore it from his hands, carrying it thirty feet out from the building, where counter-winds buffeted it about like a kite. Instinctively, Angelo reached after his drawing as it flew from him. He was stretching out into space, grasping at empty air. He was tilting.
He was losing his balance.
Salvatore saw it even before Angelo knew it was happening, and he threw himself toward his brother. He was aware that the two Mohawks on Angelo’s left were moving also, but his attention was wholly on his objective. If he could just grab his brother’s jacket.
Angelo was going over the edge. He did not have time to right himself. His slim body twisted back, his hands searching for something to hold on to. But it was too late.
Then suddenly, just as Salvatore’s outstretched arms were thrown forward, just as he might have touched him, Angelo’s body shifted, abruptly, to the left.
The Mohawks had him. They were dragging him toward them, and holding him fast, thank God.
Had Salvatore not swiveled to look at the Mohawks, he might have kept his balance. But as he crashed to the edge, he slipped, tripped over the girder, and went headlong into empty space.
Salvatore Caruso knew he was going to die. As he felt himself go over the edge, he was able to think fast, and clearly. I am going to die like my sister Anna, he thought. He wanted to tell Angelo that he loved him, and did not hate him at all. But then he realized that Angelo had no idea of the shameful thoughts that had passed through his mind in the moments before. So that was all right.
Nine floors below hung the duckwalk. The duckwalk had a hard roof to protect the stone setters from any falling debris. If he hit that roof the impact would surely kill him, but wouldn’t stop his fall. He’d bounce off the roof, and then fall like a stone all the way down to the street. He must try to miss the duckwalk, and cry out as he fell, to warn the people on the sidewalk far below.
He heard a voice above cry out his name, “Salvatore.” It was Angelo.
There was only one thing he had not thought of. He realized it a moment later.
He was not falling as fast as he should.
When the wind strikes a tall building, its current is checked. It searches for somewhere to go. Often, it will go up. Just as the wind will rush up a cliff and blow you back if you look over, great up-currents of air chase the soaring facade of a skyscraper.
Now, as he fell, Salvatore suddenly noticed that Angelo’s sketchbook, which should have been below him, was rising, flapping like a bird, some way over his head. While the sudden gust from the west side had ripped the book from Angelo’s hand, great eddies in the changing wind had also caused a column of air to funnel up the eastern facade.
And now, like an angel’s hand, it took Salvatore as he fell and held him, then pressed him back against the framework of the building, so that he crashed with a thud onto an open parapet, three floors below.
The landing knocked him unconscious, and broke his leg.
It was a spring morning in 1931, a Monday, and William Master was dressing. He did not know why he should have opened that particular drawer—he hadn’t done so for months. It contained some old ties and a couple of waistcoats he never wore. Then he noticed the belt.
He pulled it out. The thing had been handed down in the family since God knows when. His father had told him: “Better keep it. It’s wampum. Supposed to be lucky.”
William shrugged. He could sure as hell use some luck today. On an impulse, he decided to put it on. Under his shirt of course—he didn’t want to look like a damn fool. Then he dressed as usual, every inch the successful man. If he was going down, he’d go down in style.
Anyway, you should never give up hope.
He went downstairs, kissed Rose good-bye, as if this were any other day, and walked out the door.
Joe was waiting there smartly, beside the Rolls.
“Good morning, sir.” Joe opened the door for him.
“Morning, Joe. Fine morning.” Comforted for a moment, he got in. Joe was a good man. He wondered if he’d be employing him much longer. Probably not.
As they went down Fifth, he gazed out at the park. A sprinkling of daffodils and crocuses had appeared on the grass.
He’d told Charlie he wouldn’t be needed in the office today. He didn’t want to see anyone except the chief clerk. That trusted man had been going over the books all through the weekend.
For today was the day of reckoning. It couldn’t be put off any longer. There was a bunch of calls due today that would bring everything to a close. Of course, if the market suddenly had a huge rally, that might make a difference. But the market wasn’t going to rally. In April last year he’d said the Dow would get to 300. It never had. It was only a little more than half that now.
While the chief clerk went over the brokerage accounts that weekend, he’d done the same for his own affairs. Alone in his stu
dy, he’d reviewed his remaining assets. He shouldn’t have tried to save the brokerage, of course. Shouldn’t have used his own money to prop it up. Easy to see that now, but at the time, there had always seemed to be hope round the corner. He’d deluded himself that something would turn up. Fact was, he just couldn’t bear the loss of face, couldn’t admit his failure. Couldn’t let go. Too late for that now.
The house would have to go. Hard to say what it would fetch in this market, but it was a hell of a house. A good asset. The Newport house was another matter. Three weeks ago he’d casually asked Rose if she had any of the $600,000 he’d given her left.
“Not a cent, William,” she’d answered with a sweet smile. “Actually, I might need just a little more.”
“The work’s not finished?”
“Not by some way. You know these designers. Well, the builders, too …”
An unfinished palace in Newport. God knows how you’d sell that in the present market. Nobody was buying fancy houses that he knew of. He’d marked its value down severely.
So, absent a miracle, he’d find out in the next few hours whether his net worth was positive, zero, or negative. He preferred to do that alone. Then, when it was over, he’d have to go home and tell Rose that they were broke.
She had no idea.
“Pick me up at four o’clock, Joe,” he said, as he got out.
The sun was still shining quite brightly when Joe opened the door for him again that afternoon. He settled comfortably into the back seat, and looked out at the street.
“Take me for a drive, Joe,” he said. “We’ll go up the West Side.” He smiled. “Take me to Riverside Drive.”
It was a while since he’d driven up the Hudson. As they got into the Seventies, he looked out at its broad waters. They were pretty much the same, he supposed, as they would have been when the first Masters and Van Dycks had come to the city. That’s what they would have seen. The Indians before them, too.