“Fuck me,” said Barbara.
She looked to see what other stories came up that linked Lansing, the Sycamores, and Gormley.
Nothing else of consequence came up in her search results.
Okay, okay, she told herself. Take a breath.
Just because Richard Headley had something in common with these three buildings—or, at least, with people who had a connection to them—did not mean this was what linked the three elevator incidents.
But damn, it was pretty fucking hard to ignore. Barbara’s pulse was racing.
Suppose this is it, she thought. Suppose Headley is what connects these events.
That would suggest that if someone was sending a message through these horrific acts, the message was for him.
Barbara closed her laptop, stood, grabbed her jacket, and headed out of her apartment.
She wanted to talk to Richard Headley. She wanted to talk to Richard Headley, face-to-face, and she wanted to talk to him right now. She’d make some calls along the way to find out where he was. City Hall? Gracie Mansion? One Police Plaza? Wherever the son of a bitch was, she would find him.
Barbara went to the elevator, pressed the down button, and stood there. Glanced impatiently at her phone.
When the elevator did not immediately show up, she hit the button again.
And then it hit her.
“Jesus Christ, I’m losing my mind,” she said to herself, and headed for the stairs.
Forty-Nine
It was only Day Two at the new job for Arla Silbert, but wow, the shit that had happened.
Her first day—her first morning—she was off to a grisly disaster scene and ended up having dinner with the mayor’s son. On top of that, he disclosed to her something Arla just knew her mom would be dying to know. Which, if she hadn’t turned into such a bitch on the phone, Arla might have told her.
Anyway, it didn’t much matter that Arla didn’t pass on Glover’s tip that there was something fishy about those elevator accidents. The whole world knew that now. Just as well Arla hadn’t said anything. If she had, and Barbara had posted something on the Manhattan Today site twelve or more hours before Richard Headley held his disastrous news conference, the leak might have been traced back to her.
You don’t exactly want to be found out giving away your employer’s secrets your first day on the job. That’s definitely not going to help you get a good reference at your next place of employment.
So here she was, buried down in the data analysis department on her second day, and what with that Headley presser, and the shutdown of the city’s elevators, there hadn’t been a dull moment. Sure, she wasn’t ducking under police tape today, attending accident scenes with the mayor’s son. But there was plenty to do.
There was a hastily called meeting in one of the conference rooms midafternoon. Arla and her coworkers were tasked with monitoring media coverage of the crisis. Was the city’s messaging getting out there? Were property managers going to the city website to learn everything they could about how an elevator might be tampered with, how to recognize it, and how to stop it from happening?
At one point, Arla raised her hand.
“I saw something yesterday that really made an impression,” she said.
The others looked at her blankly, a kind of collective “Who are you again?”
Arla told them about being at the Sycamores Residences observing as the mayor comforted the boy who’d been in the elevator when the Russian scientist had been killed. Even with no cameras present, Headley took his time with the child, praised him, even invited him to Gracie Mansion for a hot dog.
“That was a side of him I hadn’t seen, that most New Yorkers haven’t seen,” Arla said. “A really human Richard Headley. For anyone who thinks that news conference today didn’t go well, maybe a way to offset that is to get him out on the street, and into those stairwells that everyone’s having to go up and down. Have him deliver some groceries to some elderly person on the fifteenth floor. Only, you know, have someone cover it.”
“Yes, well, thank you for that,” Arla’s new boss said, and then moved on to the next item.
In her head, Arla could hear the whine of a bullet-riddled fighter plane plunging earthward, the explosion as it hit the side of the mountain. There’d been no time for the pilot to eject to safety.
Humiliated, she went back to her computer after the meeting. Okay, maybe, for a newbie, she had overstepped. No one liked a smartass know-it-all, and maybe that was how she had come across. But that didn’t mean her idea wasn’t a good one. Maybe the problem was that she’d delivered it in the wrong venue. This department was not a campaign office. Yes, they gathered and analyzed data, but they were not strategists. These people, technically, worked for the city, not the mayor. It wasn’t their job to advise Headley on his image. He had political advisers for that. People like Valerie Langdon.
And Glover.
As the afternoon dragged on, Arla kept thinking about him. He was the one who needed to hear her idea. She should text him. Or … maybe not. He might react the way her supervisor had. Who did she think she was? Did she think those closest to the mayor had no clue how to present him during a crisis?
Or might Glover think she had an ulterior motive? Was she just looking for an excuse to talk to him again?
Yeah, well, maybe.
Just as she’d come to question her motives for taking this job in the first place—had she done it, at least in part, to piss off her mother?—she was now asking herself why, exactly, her thumb was poised over her phone, ready to send a text to Glover.
Wasn’t it possible she wanted to share her idea, and see him again?
She wrote: HEY, DONT WANT TO MAKE SUGGESTIONS ABOVE MY PAY GRADE BUT THINK RH COULD WIN NYERS OVER BY DOING A COUPLE OF THINGS DIFFERENTLY.
Arla reread the words several times. To send, or not to send?
She made her decision. She tapped the tiny, blue, upward-pointing arrow, heard the soft whoosh of the departing message. Arla left her phone, screen up, next to her keyboard and tried not to look at it any more often than every four seconds.
After a full minute had gone by, she believed she’d made a grave miscalculation. Glover had not responded. She’d made a fool of herself. She was some lowly new hire thinking she knew how to run the place. As the minutes ticked by, Arla realized the only thing worse than Glover not replying would be if he did reply. How would that play once the rest of her department found out? Arla Silbert, doing an end run around her boss on her second day.
Stupid stupid stupid—
The phone rang. Arla jumped. Not enough for anyone else in the room to notice, but she’d felt her entire body jolt.
It was not her cell phone that had rung. It was her desk phone.
She picked up. “Hello. Arla Silbert.”
“Hey,” said a voice that she recognized instantly. “So what’s this great idea of yours?”
Arla felt a hammering in her chest. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her voice low so none of her coworkers would hear her. “I never should have—”
“No, no,” said Glover. “Look, we’re in the middle of a crisis. We need to consider everything. Even,” and at this point Arla thought she heard a light chuckle, “from the new kid on the block.”
“If you really think—”
“I do. Why are you whispering?”
“I don’t think the others here appreciate my suggestions. Like you say, I’m the newbie.”
“Okay, look, your day’s just about over, right?”
“Yeah, the whistle blows in twenty minutes. But the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re asked to hang in.”
“If you aren’t, come by my office when you’re done.”
“Yeah, okay, sure.”
Arla hung up, looked around to assess whether anyone had been listening in. Everyone else appeared transfixed by whatever was on their screens.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Arla tho
ught.
Some of the more experienced staff were, in fact, asked to stay late. A few who lived on the upper floors of tall residential towers volunteered to work overtime, hoping that if they hung in long enough, the elevators would be working again by the time they did go home.
Arla was not asked to stay, nor did she volunteer to.
She found a place in the hallway a couple of doors down from Glover’s office. Thank God for cell phones. In the olden days, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, if you were just hanging around, someone might approach and ask if they could help you, or demand to know what you were doing there, even if you did have a City Hall ID hanging around your neck.
But today, all you had to do was lean up against the wall and look at your phone. Your phone gave you cover in almost any circumstance, especially if it appeared you were dealing with an email or a text. That said you were working. You were dealing with something. You might not even have any business with anyone on this floor, let alone in this hallway. You were en route to someplace else, but had only stopped here because you’d received, or had to send, an urgent message.
So that was what Arla was doing. Leaning up against the wall, engrossed in her phone. For real. She was reading the latest updates about the elevator crisis when she sensed someone approaching. She looked up.
Glover smiled. “Hey,” he said. “You made it.”
“Hi,” she said, tucking the phone into her purse. “Okay, so you remember last night, I was telling you about when your dad—sorry—when the mayor was talking to that kid and—”
He put a hand on her arm. “We don’t have to do this in the hall.”
His hand felt warm through the sleeve of her blouse. “Yeah, sure, okay, that sounds great.”
“I need to get out of here for a few minutes, anyway,” he said. He tapped his chest by the handkerchief pocket of his jacket. “They can get me if they need me.”
Glover had been looking Arla in the eye, but something, or someone, farther down the hall had distracted him.
“Hang on,” he said.
Arla turned, following his gaze. A tall, broad-shouldered, and entirely bald man was walking toward them.
“Chris,” Glover said.
The man stopped, nodded. “Glover,” he said, his tone flat.
“You coming back from Top of the Park? Coughlin cooled down some?” There was an air of authority in Glover’s voice, but it sounded somehow hollow to Arla. Puffed up.
Chris looked at Glover through narrowed eyes. It reminded Arla of someone doing a Robert DeNiro impression, the way you’d stare someone down as you said, “You talkin’ to me?”
Finally, Chris said, “It’s handled.”
Glover nodded. “Great, just what I was hoping to hear.”
Arla sensed what was happening, and it made her sad for Glover. He was hoping to impress her, suggest that this Chris guy, whoever he was, reported to him. But it was clear this man felt no such obligation.
In a bid to break the tension, she extended a hand and said, “Hi. I’m Arla.”
Chris’s eyes widened and he smiled graciously as he took her hand. “Chris Vallins. Arla, you said?”
“Yes. Arla Silbert.”
Vallins’s eyes seemed to flicker. “Pleasure,” he said.
“Ms. Silbert has just joined us,” Glover said. “She’s a whiz at data analysis.”
Vallins smiled. “Well.”
“Listen, we’re just on our way,” Glover said.
“Of course,” Chris said. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Silbert.”
Glover lightly touched Arla’s arm to propel her down the hall. Once they were walking, she asked, “What’s he do?”
“Whatever my father asks,” Glover said.
“That all seemed, I don’t know, a little awkward.”
Glover shot her a look that seemed to confirm her assessment. “I feel like he doesn’t trust me, or respect me. It’s like he’s watching me half the time.”
Arla gave him a sympathetic look. “It’s not like you’ve got anything to hide,” she said. “I mean, you’re the mayor’s son.”
Chris Vallins watched as Glover Headley and Arla Silbert walked away. Once they’d turned the corner at the end of the hall, he got out his phone and pulled up the pictures he’d taken when Barbara Matheson visited the Morning Star Café.
Using two fingers, he zoomed in on the photos of the young woman who had joined her. He’d taken a few shots as she was leaving the restaurant.
Without question, this was the woman he had just met.
Hanging out with the mayor’s son.
His preliminary research had determined that while Barbara wrote under the name of Matheson, her legal last name was Silbert.
There was, Vallins believed, more than a passing resemblance between the two. He was willing to lay odds that the woman he had just met was Barbara’s daughter.
Vallins shook his head with no small measure of admiration. You had to hand it to Barbara, he thought. She’d installed a mole in City Hall. A mole who was cozying up to the mayor’s son.
The only thing to do now was figure out what to do about it.
Tell the mayor? Or warn Barbara that she was pushing her luck?
Vallins had to admit, he was warming to her.
But for now, telling the boss was the way he was going to play it.
Fifty
Bucky heard a knock at his second-floor hotel room door.
“Hello?” he said.
“Housekeeping?” a woman called out.
“Look at the sign!” he shouted. He’d left the Do Not Disturb card hanging off the door handle since checking in days earlier.
“I know, but—”
Bucky got up from the bed where he had spread out everything he needed, went to the door, and opened it a foot. Any further, and someone would be able to see what he had spread out all over the bedspread. A woman was standing in the hallway with a large cart stocked with sheets and cleaning supplies and tiny bottles of soap and shampoo.
“I haven’t serviced your room since you got here,” the woman said. “Are you sure you don’t need—”
“I don’t need anything,” Bucky said.
“Fresh sheets?”
“No.”
She held up a tiny bottle of shampoo. “This?”
“I’m good. The room is fine. I don’t need a thing.”
Bucky started to worry when the maid eyed him suspiciously. Maybe she thought he had a dead body in there. Or that he’d kidnapped a girl or something. Or was on some kind of porn-watching binge. He needed to give her a story.
“I’ve got the flu,” he said, and placed a palm over his stomach. “I come to New York to see my girlfriend and soon as I get here I come down with something. Musta caught it on the plane. Right after I check in I start throwing up and then I got the runs.” Then he made a waving motion in front of his nose, clearing the air.
“Oh my,” the maid said, taking a step back from the door.
“I’m taking it easy till it blows over,” he said.
“What about food? I don’t see any tray from room service outside your door.”
“Been too sick to eat,” Bucky said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay, okay, you get better,” the woman said, pushing her cart on to the next room.
Bucky closed the door and sighed with relief. He wouldn’t have wanted to be asked to explain the items strewn across the bed and desk. Certainly not the empty pizza boxes, which would have put a lie to the story he’d just told. But especially not the various containers of chemicals. The wires. The timers. The two open laptops. The two burner phones and other electronic devices.
The gun.
Bucky had driven all the way across the country to New York. It wasn’t like he could get on a plane with all this stuff, especially the silencer-equipped Glock 17.
He’d brought everything up to the room in two trips, which wasn’t all that difficult given that he had booked himself into a two-story motor cour
t. No high-rise hotel for him. Wouldn’t want to be trekking up all those flights of stairs these days. Once he had everything in the room, he set it all up the way he liked. It was here that he’d put the finishing touches to the bomb he’d left in the Prius. It was here that he was preparing two more. And it was from the laptops he did any necessary research, and watched reports about what he’d accomplished.
Bucky was going to have another talk with Mr. Clement tomorrow. He had some ideas about what to do next, maybe up their game, but he wanted to clear them with the boss. It was a conversation they would have in person. Mr. Clement didn’t like communicating through landlines or cell phones. The old man avoided texting. He didn’t like when things were written down. The guy wouldn’t even take an Uber. Only cabs he could pay for in cash. So they’d set up meetings at the zoo, or on the street, or in the hotel men’s room.
They’d have another meeting there in the morning. He’d just have to be careful not to be seen by Mrs. Clement. She’d spotted him, Mr. Clement said. She was getting a little suspicious.
Bucky didn’t like that. He knew Mr. Clement kept her in the dark about the worst of his activities. But women often had ways of figuring things out. They were sneaky. They couldn’t be trusted.
Bucky wondered what Mrs. Clement would do if she knew the things her husband had set in motion.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe something.
Anyway, he couldn’t worry about that now. He had work to do.
Fifty-One
Jerry Bourque and Lois Delgado had already put in a twelve-hour day and were both starting to get a bit punchy. Delgado had phoned her mother-in-law to babysit, again, because her husband had pulled a late shift at the firehouse. She’d talked to him a couple of times, the two of them wondering what the night might bring in a city without elevators.
On Delgado’s computer screen was the picture Jerry had emailed to himself from Otto Petrenko’s coworker’s phone. It showed, in the distance, Otto talking to the tall man leaning up against the dark sedan.
Elevator Pitch (UK) Page 27
