Find You First

by Linwood Barclay

  He leaned up against the marble wall opposite the elevators, head down, trying to look inconspicuous, but always watching. There was a steady flow of people, and it’d be easy for Sherry to get lost in the crowd. But the good thing was, she liked bright colors. Yellows, pinks, turquoise. Never black or dark blue. She stood out. And she was blonde, her hair puffed up the way some women do it, like she went at it with a bicycle pump in the morning. She could be standing in a hurricane, have every stitch of clothing blown off her, but there wouldn’t be one hair out of place. As long as Stuart kept a sharp lookout, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t miss her. Soon as she got on the elevator, he’d step on with her.

  Shit, there she was.

  Striding across the lobby, those heels adding about three inches to her height. Stuart figured she was no more than five-two in her stocking feet, but even as small as she was, she had a presence. Chin up, eyes forward. Stuart had checked her out on IMDb, so he knew she was nearly forty. Looked good. Just a year or two older than he was. Imagine walking into Gramercy Tavern with her on his arm.

  Yeah, like that was gonna happen.

  According to what he’d read online, she’d started in television as a script supervisor in her early twenties and quickly worked her way up. Did a stint at HBO, then Showtime, then got lured away by Cromwell to develop new projects. The way Stuart saw it, she was his ticket to industry-wide acclaim as a hot new screenwriter.

  Sherry D’Agostino stood between the two right-hand elevators. There were two other people waiting. A man, sixtyish, in a dark gray suit, your typical Business Guy, and a woman, early twenties, wearing sneakers she’d no doubt change out of once she got to her desk. Secretary, Stuart figured. There was something anonymous and worker bee about Sneaker Girl. He came up behind the three of them, waiting to step into whichever elevator came first. He glanced up at the numbers. A tiny digital readout above each elevator indicated its position. The one on the right was at forty-eight, the one on the left at thirty-one, then thirty.

  Going down.

  Sherry and the other two shifted slightly to the left set of doors, leaving room for those who would be getting off.

  The doors parted and five people disembarked. Once they were out of the way, Sherry, Business Guy, Sneaker Girl, and Stuart got on. Stuart managed to spin around behind Sherry as everyone turned to face front.

  The elevator doors closed.

  Sherry pressed “33,” Sneaker Girl “34,” and the Business Guy “37.”

  When Stuart did not reach over to press one of the many buttons, the man, who was standing closest to the panel, glanced his way, silently offering to press a button for him.

  “I’m good,” he said.

  The elevator silently began its ascent. Sherry and the other woman looked up to catch the latest news. The elevator was fitted with a small video screen that ran a kind of chyron, a line of headlines moving from right to left.

  New York forecast high 64 low 51 mostly sunny.

  Stuart moved forward half a step so he was almost rubbing shoulders with Sherry. “How are you today, Ms. D’Agostino?”

  She turned her head from reading the screen and said, “Fine, thank—”

  And then she saw who he was. Her eyes flickered with fear. Her body leaned away from him, but her feet were rooted to the same spot in the elevator floor.

  Stuart held out the FedEx package. “I wanted to give you this. That’s all. I just want you to have it.”

  “I told you to stay away from me,” she said, not accepting it.

  The man and woman turned their heads.

  “It’s cool,” Stuart said, smiling at them. “Everything’s fine.” He kept holding out the package to Sherry. “Take it. You’ll love it.”

  “I’m sorry, you have to—”

  “Okay, okay, wait. Let me just tell you about it, then. Once you hear what it’s about, I guarantee you’ll want to read it.”

  The elevator made a soft whirring noise as it sped past the first twenty floors.

  Sherry glanced at the numbers flashing by on the display above the door, then up to the news line. Latest unemployment figures show rate fell 0.2 percent last month. She sighed, her resistance fading.

  “You’ve got fifteen seconds,” she said. “If you follow me off, I’ll call security.”

  Stuart beamed. “Okay! Right. So you’ve got this guy, he’s like, thirty, and he works—”

  “Ten seconds,” she said. “Sum it up in one sentence.”

  Stuart suddenly looked panicked. He blinked a couple of times, his mind racing to encapsulate his brilliant script into a phrase, to distill it to its essence.

  “Um,” he said.

  “Five seconds,” Sherry said, the elevator almost to the thirty-third floor.

  “Guy works at a factory that makes clocks but one of them is actually a time machine!” he blurted. He let out a long breath, then took one in.

  “That’s it?” she said.

  “No!” he said. “There’s more! But to try to explain it in—”

  “What the hell?” Sherry said, but not to him.

  The elevator had not stopped at her floor. It shot right past thirty-three, and then glided right on by thirty-four.

  “Crap,” said Sneaker Girl. “That’s me.”

  The two women both reached out to the panel at the same time to press the button for their floors again, their fingers engaged in a brief bit of fencing.

  “Sorry,” said Sherry, who’d managed to hit the button for her floor first. She edged out of the way.

  US militant group Flyovers prime suspect in Seattle coffee shop bombing that killed two.

  As the elevator continued its ascent, Business Guy grimaced and said, “Guess I’ll join the club.” He put his index finger to the “37” button.

  “Someone at the top must have pushed for it,” Sneaker Girl said. “It’s going all the way up first.”

  She turned out to be right. The elevator did not stop until it reached the fortieth floor.

  But the doors did not open.

  “God, I fucking hate elevators,” she said.

  Stuart did not share her distress. He grinned. The elevator malfunction had bought him a few extra seconds to make his pitch to Sherry. “I know time travel has been done a lot, but this scenario is different. My hero, he doesn’t go way into the past or way into the future. He can only go five minutes one way or the other, so—”

  Business Guy said, “I’ll walk back down.” He pressed the button to open the doors, but there was no response.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  Sherry said, “We should call someone.” She pointed to the button marked with the symbol of a phone.

  “It’s only been a few seconds,” Stuart said. “It’ll probably sort itself out after a minute or so and—”

  With a slight jolt, the elevator started moving again.

  “Finally,” Sneaker Girl said.

  Storm hitting UK approaching hurricane status.

  “The interesting angle is,” Stuart said, persisting, “if he can only go five minutes into the past or five minutes into the future, how does he use that? Is it a kind of superpower? What kind of advantages could that give someone?”

  Sherry glanced at him dismissively. “I’d have gotten on this elevator five minutes before you showed up.”

  Stuart bristled at that. “You don’t have to insult me.”

  “Son of a bitch,” the man said.

  The descending elevator had gone past his floor. He jabbed at “37” again, more angrily this time.

  The elevator sailed past the floors for the two women as well, but stopped at twenty-nine.

  “Aw, come on,” Business Guy said. “This is ridiculous.” He pressed the phone button. He waited a moment, expecting a response. “Hello?” he said. “Anyone there? Hello?”

  “This is freaking me out,” Sneaker Girl said, taking a cell phone from her purse. She tapped the screen, put the phone to her ear. “Yeah, hey, Steve? It’s Paula
. I’m gonna be late. I’m stuck in the fucking eleva—”

  There was a loud noise from above, as though the world’s largest rubber band had snapped. The elevator trembled for a second. Everyone looked up, stunned. Even Stuart, who had stopped trying to sell his idea to Sherry D’Agostino.

  “Fuck!” said Sneaker Girl.

  “What the hell was that?” Sherry asked.

  Almost instinctively, everyone started backing up toward the walls of the elevator, leaving the center floor area open. They gripped the waist-high brass handrails.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Stuart said. “A glitch, that’s all.”

  “Hello?” Business Guy said again. “Is anybody there, for Christ’s sake? This elevator’s gone nuts!”

  Sherry spotted the alarm button and pressed it. There was only silence.

  “Shouldn’t we be hearing that?” she asked.

  The man said, “Maybe it rings someplace else, you know, so someone will come. Down at the security desk, probably.”

  For several seconds, no one said anything. It was dead silent in the elevator. Everyone took a few calming breaths.

  Average US life expectancy now nearly 80.

  Stuart spoke first. “Someone’ll be along.” He nodded with false confidence and gave Sherry a nervous smile. “Maybe this is what I should be writing a—”

  The elevator began to plunge.

  Within seconds it was going much faster than it was designed to go.

  Stuart and Sherry and the two others felt their feet lifting off the floor.

  The elevator was in freefall.

  Until it hit bottom.

  One

  Barbara Matheson was impressed by the size of the crowd.

  The usual suspects, more or less, but the fact that they’d turned out meant her story had made an impression.

  This was a TV event, really. Get the mayor walking out of City Hall, lob a few questions his way, get video of him denying everything. The Times, the Daily News, the Post could all write their stories without being here. But NY1 and the local ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates had crews waiting for Richard Wilson Headley to show. He might try sneaking out a back way, or leaving in a limo with windows so deeply tinted you wouldn’t know whether he was inside or not. But then the evening newscasts would say he made a point of avoiding the media, imply that he was a coward, and Headley never wanted to come across as a coward.

  Even if he could be one at times.

  Barbara was here on the off chance that something might actually happen. And yes, she was enjoying the shit she’d stirred up. This show of media force was her doing. She’d broken the story. Maybe Headley would take a swing at somebody who put a camera in his face, although that seemed unlikely. He was too smart for that. The TV stations were here for a comment, but she’d already gotten one and put it in her column.

  “That’s a load of fucking horseshit,” Headley had said when Barbara ran the allegations past him. Her editors at Manhattan Today printed the response without asterisks to disguise the profanity, but that was hardly daring these days. The Times still avoided curse words except in the most extreme cases, but even The New Yorker, that staid institution, didn’t blink an eye about f-bombs and hadn’t for years.

  “You really put his dick into the blender this time.”

  She turned. It was Matt Timmins, instantly recognizable by his multidirectional black hair and glasses thick enough to see life on Mars. He worked for an online site that covered city issues, but she knew him back when he worked for NBC, before he got laid off. He had a phone in hand, waiting to take video, which would be good enough for the political blog he wrote.

  “Hey, Matt,” Barbara said.

  “Wearin’ Kevlar?”

  Barbara shrugged. She liked Matt, vaguely remembered sleeping with him nearly ten years ago when they were both in their early thirties. The local press had been camped out in front of the house of a congressman in the midst of a bribery scandal. Barbara and Matt had shared a car to keep warm while waiting for the feds to arrive and walk the politician out the front door. After, they went to a bar, had too much to drink, and went back to his place. It was all a bit foggy. Barbara was pretty sure Matt was married now, with a kid, maybe two.

  “Headley won’t shoot me,” she said. “He might hire someone to shoot me, but he wouldn’t do it himself.”

  A woman with a mike in one hand looked up from the phone in her other. She’d been reading a text. “Dickhead’s on the move,” she said to the cameraman standing beside her, loud enough that it created a low-level buzz among the collected media. The mayor was on his way.

  Of course, Mayor Richard Wilson Headley always went by “Richard,” sometimes “Rich,” but never “Dick.” But that didn’t stop his detractors from referring to him that way. One of the tabs, which had it in for him nearly as much as Manhattan Today did, liked to stack DICK over HEADLEY on the front as often as it could, usually with as unflattering picture as they could find of the man. They also took delight in headlines that coupled GOOD with HEADLEY.

  Headley knew it was a losing battle, so sometimes he’d embrace the word so often used against him, particularly when it came to the city’s various unions. “Am I going to be a total dick with them on this new contract?” he asked the other day. “You bet your ass I am.”

  “Here we go,” someone said.

  The mayor, accompanied by Glover Headley, his twenty-five-year-old son and adviser, communications strategist Valerie Langdon, and a tall, bald man Barbara did not think she’d seen before, was coming out the front door of City Hall and heading down the broad steps toward a waiting limo. The media throng moved toward him, and everyone stopped halfway, allowing Headley a makeshift pulpit, standing two steps above everyone else.

  But it was Glover who spoke. “Hey, guys, we’re on our way to the mansion, no time for questions at this—”

  Headley shot his son a disapproving look and raised a hand. “No, no. I’m more than happy to take a few.”

  Barbara, hanging at the back of the pack, smiled inwardly. Standard operating procedure for Headley. Overrule your aides; don’t hide behind them. Act like you want to talk to the press. The whole thing would have been rehearsed earlier. Valerie touched the mayor’s arm, as though asking him to think twice about this. He shook it off.

  Nice touch, Barbara thought.

  Even though the bald guy was standing back of the mayor and trying to be invisible, Barbara was sizing him up. Trim, over six feet, skin the color of caramel. Of the three men standing before the assembled media, this guy had the most style. Long dress coat over his suit, leather gloves even though it wasn’t that cold out. Looked like he’d stepped off the cover of GQ.

  A looker.

  She thought of the people she knew in City Hall, the ones who regularly fed her information. Maybe one of them could tell her who this guy was, what the mayor had hired him to do.

  Then again, she could just go up and introduce herself, ask him who he was. But that would have to wait. NY1’s correspondent, a man Barbara knew to be in his fifties but could pass for midthirties, led things off.

  “How do you respond to allegations that you strong-armed the works department to hire an independent construction firm owned by one of your largest political donors for major subway upgrades?”

  Headley shook his head sadly and smirked, like he’d heard this a hundred times before.

  “There is absolutely nothing to that allegation,” he said. “It’s pure fiction. Contracts are awarded based on a long list of factors. Track record—no pun intended—and ability to get the work done, cost considerations, and—”

  The NY1 guy wasn’t done. “But yesterday Manhattan Today printed an email in which you told the department to hire Steelways, which is owned by Arnett Steel, who organized large fund-raisers for your—”

  Headley raised a shushing hand. “Now hold on, right there. First of all, the veracity of that email has not been determined.”

  Barbara cl
osed her eyes briefly so no one would have to see them roll.

  “I would not put it past Manhattan Today to manufacture something like that. But even if it turns out to be legitimate, the content of that message hardly qualifies as a directive. It’s more along the lines of a suggestion.”

  In her head, Barbara composed her next piece.

  “Headley alleges the email uncovered by Manhattan Today could be phony, but just to cover all his bases, says that if it turns out to be the real deal, it’s not that much of one.”

  In other words, suck and blow at the same time.

  “Everyone knows that Manhattan Today has an obsession with me,” Headley said, waving an accusing finger in Barbara’s general direction.

  He’s spotted me, she thought. Or one of his aides alerted him that she was there.

  Headley’s voice ramped up. “It’s been involved in a relentless smear campaign from day one. And that campaign has been led by one person, but I won’t give her the satisfaction of repeating her name before the cameras.”

  “You mean Barbara Matheson?” shouted the reporter from the CBS affiliate.

  Headley grimaced. He’d walked into that one, Barbara thought.

  “You know who I’m talking about,” he said evenly. “But even though this vendetta is being led by a single individual, I have to assume this kind of character assassination is approved from the top. Maybe the opinions of this journalist, and I use the term loosely, are slanted the way they are because of direction from upstairs.”

  Barbara yawned.

  “That’s why I’m announcing today that I will be filing a defamation suit against Manhattan Today.”

  Oh, goodie.

  Textbook Headley. Threaten a lawsuit but never actually file. Act outraged, grab a headline. Headley had threatened to sue every news outlet in the city at some point. He’d used the same tactics back when he was in business, before he embarked on a political career.

  “Furthermore,” he said, “I—”

  Headley noticed Valerie waving her phone in front of Glover, who winced when he read what was on her screen. The mayor leaned her way as she turned the phone so he could see it. While he was reading the message, there was a stirring in the crowd as some received messages of their own. The NY1 guy and his cameraman were already on the move.