Elevator Pitch

by Linwood Barclay

  “I’m just getting more details now …” Headley said.

  A woman was doing a remote outside the York Avenue apartment building, but the report was little more than her talking head. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read One Dead in Grisly Elevator Mishap.

  “Of course,” Headley said, “the incident on York. Horrible, just horrible.”

  “Fanya Petrov,” the ambassador said, “could very well have been on the cusp of some startling scientific discoveries. We have been in touch with her family in Moscow, and they are devastated.”

  “I’ve no doubt. Please pass on our deepest sympathies.”

  “How could something like this happen?” Vesolov asked. “Her head cut right off! A decapitation.”

  Jesus, Headley thought. “It’s a terrible tragedy. These types of accidents are very, very rare.”

  “Doesn’t seem that way,” the ambassador said. “One yesterday and one today?”

  Headley struggled for an explanation. “I guess it’s like airplane crashes,” he said weakly. “We don’t have any for months, then two or three in quick succession. Mr. Ambassador, I’m going to personally check on the progress of this investigation and will report back to you myself.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor,” Vesolov said. “I look forward to hearing from you.” He ended the call.

  Headley glared at Valerie. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “I’d only just found out about it seconds before the ambassador called.”

  “What’s the actual address where this happened?”

  Valerie looked to her phone for details, and told him.

  “I’ve been in that building,” he said. Headley put a finger to his chin, trying to remember. “A fund-raiser, I think. Last year.”

  “How would you like to proceed?”

  Headley sighed. “Get the car,” he said.

  Alexander Vesolov took his hand from the receiver and leaned back in an oversized leather chair. He clasped his hands together over his considerable stomach and glanced at the large portrait of Vladimir Putin hanging on the wall to his right.

  The door opened and a young, dark-haired woman with the most perfect posture in the world walked in.

  “You were able to speak to the mayor directly?” she asked.

  “I was,” Vesolov said.

  “And how did it go?”

  Vesolov wore a satisfied smile. “I was suitably outraged.”

  The woman returned the smile and glanced, for half a second, at the portrait. “Would you like me to inform him?”

  Vesolov shook his head. “No, I would like to do that myself.”

  “Of course,” the woman said. “I will set up the call.”

  Vesolov took his hands from their resting place atop his belly and leaned forward over the desk.

  “How do the Americans say it?” he asked.

  The woman was not sure what the ambassador was referring to, and waited.

  He smiled, remembering. “We caught a break.”

  Fifteen

  What we’re trying to do,” Glover Headley explained to Arla Silbert as they entered a windowless City Hall office stocked with a dozen cubicles, “is not tell the public what it wants to hear, but gauge whether they’re getting the message we’re hoping to send. Are our policy proposals resonating? Is the message being heard?”

  “Sure,” said Arla. “And is it?”

  Glover offered half a shrug as they walked into the room, which was eerily quiet. There was no one working at any of the desks. “It’s mixed. That’s why we’re investing so much in the analytics. And we’re also studying New Yorkers’ feelings about Mayor Headley himself. This is one of my primary roles here in the mayor’s administration, this assessing of public opinion.”

  “I looked you up,” Arla said, smiling. “I went to some of the same marketing courses as you did, I think.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I noticed that on your résumé, which was one of the reasons you were a leading candidate from the start. There are a lot of very good people in this department. You’ll learn a lot. Although,” and he grimaced, “you’re not going to learn much today. I’m really sorry there’s no one here right now. I forgot everyone’s off to a seminar this morning.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Anyway, the mayor thinks very highly of the team down here. The work you’ll be doing for him is critical for future strategizing.”

  Arla smiled. “You ever just call him Dad?”

  Glover tucked his index finger between his neck and collar, as though his tie was too tight. “When it’s business, I try to be as professional as possible. But yeah, some days, he’s Dad.”

  “He’s not Dad every day?”

  Glover gave his dry lips a lick. “Well, of course he is.”

  Arla sensed she was making Glover uncomfortable, so she shifted gears. “I read that before you got into all this marketing analysis, you were in high-tech.”

  “I actually spent some time in Seattle, at Microsoft,” he said. “I even worked for Netflix for a while. When I was twelve, I could take apart just about any device and put it back together with my eyes closed.” He grinned. “If you’re having trouble with your modem, I’m the man to call.”

  “Noted,” Arla said. “So, all the work you’ve done so far, what does it say about how New Yorkers feel about the mayor?”

  “Depends what side of the fence you’re on, I guess. My father didn’t run on a Republican or Democratic ticket, but historically he has more ties to the Democrats. His father served back in the sixties in Congress as one. But Mayor Headley is not an ideological guy. He’s a pragmatist. He goes into a situation looking at both sides. He hasn’t got his mind made up beforehand. And there’s a lot he wants to do for the city. Improve transit. Keep taxes low. Boost tourism. And he has an ambitious environmental agenda. Electric cars, that kind of thing.”

  “It seems that he has—can I really speak my mind here?”

  “Yeah, sure. That’s what we’re going to be paying you for.”

  “He has a lot of positives, like you say. The pragmatism, speaking his mind. But he’s seen as brusque and dismissive at times.”

  Glover couldn’t stop himself from slightly rolling his eyes.

  “That’s … certainly true.”

  “And he’s been taking heat for favoring friends when it comes to awarding contracts.”

  “You can’t believe everything you hear,” Glover Headley said. “There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people never know about. So many things factor into the decision making. It may not make sense to the general public, but there are reasons things are done the way they’re done.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Arla said.

  “That’s why what we’re doing here is so important. One of our jobs is to counter the negativity, the false impressions that are created in the media. It doesn’t matter what the mayor says or does, there are some media outlets that will always find the negative angle.”

  He stopped and waved his arm theatrically. “Anyway, this is your home away from home, right here.”

  It was little more than a cubicle with cloth-covered dividers on three sides that offered a token amount of privacy from coworkers.

  “Awesome,” Arla said.

  Glover scanned the workerless room again. “I really wanted to introduce you to some people, but there’s not much sense interrupting their seminar. They should all be here after lunch and then—”

  The sound of a text came from inside his suit jacket. “Excuse me,” he said, taking out the phone and reading the message. His forehead creased.

  “What is it?” Arla asked.

  “I’m going to have to cut your orientation session short,” he said apologetically. “There’s been an incident and the mayor wants to attend. I have to go.”

  “What kind of incident?”

  “I can’t believe it. Another elevator accident.” He looked at his phone again as another text came in. “And thi
s one may have diplomatic overtones. Look, I really have to go. Let me grab a few reports you can sift through before everyone comes back later.”

  Arla glanced about the empty room. “Let me toss out an idea.”

  Glover waited.

  “What if I came along? Watch the mayor do his thing?”

  Glover’s expression bordered on fearful. “I’m not exactly in his good books today. I couldn’t, I mean, no offense, but I couldn’t, you know, take you in the mayor’s limo, someone who’s just been—”

  Arla lightly touched his arm. “Relax. Tell me where you’re headed and I’ll get there on my own. I’ll just observe. I won’t get in the way. What better way to get a sense of the boss than to see him in action?”

  Glover thought about it for two more seconds, then nodded. “It’s up near Rockefeller University. I’ll text you the exact address when I know it.”

  Arla nodded. “See you there.”

  Glover gave her a smile before spinning on his heels and running out the door.

  Wow, Arla thought. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

  Sixteen

  Bourque put Otto Petrenko’s laptop, sealed in an evidence bag, on the floor in front of him as he got into the passenger seat. Delgado got behind the wheel. Both were subdued. Eileen Petrenko stood at her front door, watching them through eyes filled with tears.

  Moments earlier, they had told her about the body found on the High Line. While a positive identification had yet to be made, evidence suggested it could be her husband. The dead man was the approximate age and weight of Otto Petrenko. There was the cobra tattoo. The shark socks.

  They’d attempted to ask her a few more questions. Did her husband often walk the High Line? Could he have gone there to meet someone? But the woman was too distraught to handle any more of their inquiries.

  Delgado turned the key and headed south.

  “So Otto’s killer,” Bourque said, “somehow knows Otto’s prints are on file somewhere.”

  “So he makes sure we can’t take any,” Delgado said. “But we should be able to get those prints, see if we can get a match on the tip our guy left behind.”

  “Confirmation’ll be nice,” Bourque said. “But it’s him.”

  They were on their way to Petrenko’s employer, Simpson Elevator Maintenance. Bourque looked on his phone to see how many firms in New York did that kind of work. “There’s a shitload of them,” he said to Delgado. “I guess if you were Otto Petrenko, an out-of-work elevator fix-it man from Cleveland, New York would be the place to go to.”

  “Yeah,” Delgado said.

  “Went to Cleveland once. The downtown’s got a few tall buildings, but there’s this one huge skyscraper, looks like a mini–Empire State Building. Key Tower. Fifty-seven stories. Tallest building in Ohio.”

  Delgado glanced at him. “Only you would know that.”

  Their drive took them into the Hunters Point area of Queens. Vernon Boulevard was a north-south industrial street that followed the East River, just south of the Queensboro Bridge. When they found Simpson Elevator, Delgado drove through the open chain-link gate and parked between two pickup trucks. They’d learned from Eileen that the name of Otto’s boss was Gunther Willem.

  They opened the door to the office. A chest-high counter topped with peeling linoleum greeted them. Bourque rested his elbows on it and called out “Excuse me” to a heavyset, gray-haired woman sitting at a desk.

  When she turned, Bourque could see she was on the phone. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Help you?”

  “Looking for Gunther Willem,” Lois said.

  “Not a good time,” she said. Before she could go back to her call, Bourque waved his badge. “Oh,” she said.

  She rested the receiver on her desk and shouted, “Gunth!”

  From an adjoining office, a gruff voice replied, “What?”

  “Visitors.”

  There was a grumbled yet still audible, “Fuck,” and seconds later, Gunther Willem appeared. He had a crew cut, a round face, stood about five-five, and was nearly as broad as he was tall. His meaty arms hung out from his body and seemed to bounce as he walked. He spotted Delgado and Bourque and squinted.

  “Yeah?”

  Bourque still had his badge out. “Detective Bourque, and this is Detective Delgado.”

  “I’m up to my eyeballs in shit,” he said. “Whatever this is, can it wait?”

  “No,” Delgado said.

  Willem took a second, accepted defeat, and waved for them to follow him back to his office. He dropped himself into an office chair that creaked under his weight, and the detectives sat in two plain wood chairs opposite his cluttered desk.

  “I’m shorthanded and I got the city breathing down my neck, so make it quick,” he said. “This about some of the robberies along the street here? Guys stealing tools? Because we’re okay. I got two Dobermans in the yard at night, got no trouble on that score.”

  “No,” said Delgado. “We’re here about Otto Petrenko.”

  “Oh, him. He was a no-show yesterday and today. His wife’s goin’ bananas. He finally come home? Was he out on a bender or something?”

  “We’re investigating,” Delgado said.

  “Investigating what?”

  “What happened to him.”

  “What has happened to him? Because, like I said, I’m shorthanded.”

  “What can you tell us about Mr. Petrenko?” Bourque asked.

  Willem looked from one detective to the other. He quickly figured out the drill. They would ask the questions and he would answer them.

  “I don’t know,” Gunther Willem said. “Reliable. Understands how things work, you know? Some people are born with it. They look at a machine and it’s like they’ve got X-ray vision. They can see the parts inside it. He’s pretty smart that way.”

  “He came to you from Cleveland?” Delgado asked.

  “Yeah. The company he worked for, they were mismanaged, went bankrupt. We were hiring. So he moved here. Guy’s good. Got two people out of a stuck elevator in the new Trade Center Tower one time.”

  “Any problems?” Bourque asked.

  “Like?”

  “You tell us.”

  “No, no problems. He does his job.”

  “How about when he was off the clock?” Delgado asked. “Any issues you’re aware of? Drugs? Women? Trouble on the home front?”

  “Like I said, nuthin’.”

  “He socialize with the other guys who work here?”

  Willem shrugged. “Some. They go out for a drink sometimes. Give each other the gears. Maybe they get together with the wives once in a while, do some barbecue.”

  “You part of that?” Delgado asked.

  Willem shrugged. “Not so much.”

  “You got along with him?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes narrowed when Delgado used the past tense. “What’s this about, anyway?”

  “You know anything about who he might have hung out with who’s not with the company?”

  Willem shook his head. “No. Not really.” He paused, as if remembering. “Well, there was that one guy.”

  “What guy?” Delgado asked.

  “Dropped by to see him once in a while.”

  Bourque felt as though he’d gotten a carpet shock. “Who was he?”

  “Just some guy, is all. I’d see the car pull up on the street there and Otto would go out and talk to him.”

  “Did Mr. Petrenko say who he was?”

  “I didn’t ask. You want to go talk to somebody, it’s none of my business.”

  “Can you describe him?” Delgado asked.

  Willem sighed with exasperation. “It was a guy. Whaddya want from me?”

  “White? Black?” she asked, persisting.

  “White. Uh, grayish hair.”

  “Old guy?”

  Willem looked up at the ceiling, as though the answer were written there. “No idea. He was too far away to tell.”

  “Car?�
�� Bourque asked.

  “Jesus,” Willem said. “I don’t know. Something blue. Basic sedan, I think.”

  “How many times did you see Petrenko meet with this man?”

  “Two, maybe three times? Definitely more than once. I think I might have asked Otto once what the guy wanted.”

  “What’d he say?” Delgado asked.

  “I don’t remember exactly. I got the idea maybe Otto was helping him, like he was giving the guy some kind of advice.”

  “About elevators?” Delgado asked. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to talk to you? Being the boss?”

  Gunther shrugged. “Otto knows as much about elevators as I do. Probably more. And maybe it wasn’t advice about this kind of work. Maybe it was about something else. Maybe it was his long-lost cousin. I don’t know.” He paused, thinking. “There was one thing, though.”

  They waited.

  “Whenever he’s come back in from talking to that guy, Otto’s kind of quiet.”

  “What do you mean, quiet?” Delgado asked.

  “Just … like he’s got something on his mind.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Worried, like. Maybe he owes this guy money or something and is having trouble meeting his payments. Although I don’t know why he’d have money problems. He’s pulling down seventy grand a year from me.”

  “You got cameras?” Bourque asked.

  “What?”

  “On the property. Surveillance. That would pick up someone on the street.”

  “Yeah, sure, of course. But the last time he was here was weeks ago. They don’t go back more than forty-eight hours.”

  Delgado asked, “Did he ever talk about the Flyovers?”

  “What’s that? A singing group?”

  “Did Otto have strong political views?”

  “We don’t talk a lot of politics here,” Willem said. “Well, other than shittin’ all over our useless president and useless governor and useless senators and useless mayor. But that’s about it. Listen, if you’re looking for Otto, I hope you find him. He’s one of the best guys I got. But the way you guys are talking about him, sounds like something’s happened.”