The Ghost Goes to the Dogs by Cleo Coyle

Author:Cleo Coyle [Coyle, Cleo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Key to Disaster

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above . . .

—W.B. Yeats, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”

“It was the last Saturday in July, 1945,” Morgan Keene began, “a little before ten a.m. I was on my way to the office because I had three hours to get my Mildred Virtue column to the editor’s desk for the Sunday edition.”

The bartender poured Keene a fresh drink, and he downed it.

“The morning was foggy. I mean, as thick as pea soup. I was on Thirty-fourth Street, right in front of the Empire State Building, when I heard this airplane, real low and getting closer. Before I had time to look up, there came an explosion. Seconds later, glass was falling like rain, mixed with chunks of metal and chips of granite. A hunk of burning something smashed through the hood of a taxicab and sent the driver scurrying for cover.

“I look up and see this yellow glow through the fog. It was hundreds of gallons of burning aviation fuel spilling into the building. The plane—a bomber from the Army Air Corps flying out of Massachusetts—had slammed into the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors at two hundred miles an hour.”

“Yeah,” Brennan chimed in. “Lucky it was a Saturday. There were a few people on the observation deck, and they got quite a scare. But the offices were empty—”

“Not all of them,” Keene interrupted. “There were ten sweet ladies and one man working at the National Catholic Welfare Council on the seventy-ninth floor. Nine of those women burned to death like that—” Keene snapped his fingers. “The man lingered for four days before he bought it, and one woman survived with horrible burns, but she ultimately succumbed.”

“It was a twin-engine B-25 bomber,” Brennan said. “One engine fell down the elevator shaft, snapping the cables. An elevator car dropped seventy-nine floors with the operator inside. Believe it or not the dame survived. I think she’s living in Arizona now.”

“The other engine went clean through the building and came out the other side,” Keene said, staring into his glass. “It landed on an art studio and burned it to cinders.”

“Fourteen people were killed in all,” Brennan said, “including the pilot, copilot, and some unlucky Joe who was hitching a ride home for the funeral of a brother who was killed in the Pacific.”

“You said there was a fire,” Jack prompted.

“Yeah, a big one, too. But the fire department did a swell job.” Keene’s face brightened with that memory. “They put it out in under an hour. And no elevators worked above the sixtieth floor. Those boys climbed twenty flights of stairs, carrying all their gear, just to reach the inferno.”

“What caused the collision?” I asked.

“Pilot error,” Keene replied. “The pilot mistook the East River for the Hudson and made a wrong turn.”

“Unbelievable,” Jack muttered. “But then you should have seen the god-awful FUBARs I witnessed Over There.”

The bar went quiet at that, until I finally broke the silence.

“If you don’t mind, Mr.

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