Elevator Pitch

by Linwood Barclay

  The detectives exchanged looks. Delgado said, “Mr. Petrenko is dead.”

  Willem’s face fell. “Shit. What the hell happened?”

  “That’s what we’re looking into,” she said.

  He shook his head sadly. “Man oh man. There’s so many ways to get killed on the job here, and he buys it on his day off? Was it a car accident? Something like that?”

  “Like I said, we’re looking into the circumstances.”

  “Son of a bitch. I should give his wife a call. Soon as I get out from under all this other shit that’s going on.”

  “What other shit would that be?” she asked.

  “Like I said, the city’s on my ass. When two elevators go down in two days, and your company was one of the ones that ever did service calls in both those buildings over the past decade, that’s a fucking problem. They’ll be looking for someone to blame it on, you can be sure of that. But we do good work. And it might have been another company, or maybe we serviced an elevator there but not that one. No one is going to hang this on us, believe me.”

  “Two elevators in two days?” Bourque asked.

  “I heard about one yesterday,” Delgado said. “Was there one before that?”

  “One since,” Willem said. “Few hours ago.”

  “Would Otto Petrenko have worked on them?” Delgado asked.

  “I hope no one here worked on them. But if anyone did, I hope it was Otto.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  Willem shrugged. “First rule at engineering school. Whenever something bad happens, you blame it on the dead guy.”

  Seventeen

  You almost ready?”

  Eugene Clement was standing outside the bathroom of the InterMajestic Hotel room he and his wife, Estelle, had rented for their New York stay. The door was open an inch, giving her privacy, but still allowing her to carry on a conversation with her husband.

  “Three minutes,” she called out.

  Clement knew that meant at least ten, so he stopped hovering by the door and walked over to the small desk, where his phone was recharging. He detached it from the charging cord, took a seat on the end of the bed, and opened one of his news apps.

  “I’m starving,” Estelle said. Her words were immediately followed by the sound of a hair dryer.

  “Me too. If you’d hurry up, we could eat,” he said, thumbing through the latest news stories.

  “What?” she shouted over the roar.

  He didn’t respond. He was scanning the most recent headlines. One, in particular, caught his eye. An elevator accident. The second in two days. There were few details. The story was developing.

  “My my,” Clement said softly.

  The hair dryer went silent. “What did you say?” Estelle asked, opening the bathroom door wide.

  “Nothing,” he said, turning to look at her. She was wearing one of the robes supplied by the hotel.

  “You know where I’d like to go?” she said.

  “Where?”

  “I’d like to see Radio City Music Hall. I think they have tours.”

  Clement nodded. “We can look into that. We could walk it from—”

  The room phone started ringing.

  “Who would that be?” Estelle asked.

  Clement got up, walked around the side of the bed, and snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Clement?” A woman’s voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Eugene Clement?”

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “I’m Sheila Drake. I’m a booker for New York Day. It’s a—”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Who is it?” Estelle asked.

  He covered the mouthpiece and snapped at her, “TV show.”

  “Mr. Clement?” Drake said.

  “Here.”

  “We know you are in New York and would like to have you on the show today. We can send a car.”

  “How did you know—”

  “The Flyovers group is believed to be responsible for several recent bombings in—”

  “That’s ridiculous. We can’t control people saying we had anything to do with those events. They’re horrible tragedies. We’re all about awareness, raising issues.”

  “We’d like to talk to you about that. Give you a chance to make that point.”

  “We’re here celebrating our anniversary. I don’t have time for—”

  “Let me try to lay it out for you, Mr. Clement. We can pursue you down the sidewalk, shouting questions at you, and when we broadcast that you’re going to look like some kind of criminal. I think you’d be doing yourself a favor to come into the studio for a sit-down interview where you could make your case calmly, without creating some negative impressions. What do you say?”

  Clement thought for a moment.

  “Mr. Clement?”

  He cleared his throat and asked, “What time?”

  Eighteen

  Chris Vallins was leaning up against the window of Blockheads, a small restaurant across from the Morning Star Café. He was tucked under the awning and, he thought, reasonably invisible, especially considering how wide Second Avenue was. The restaurant didn’t open until eleven, so no one was going to come out and tell him to move on.

  He had a phone in his hand, set to take photos. He would have liked a camera with a telephoto lens, but even in New York, standing on the sidewalk wielding one of those was likely to attract attention.

  He’d followed Barbara Matheson from her apartment to the café. Barbara, clearly, was a walker. She lived in Murray Hill on East Thirty-Seventh, between Lexington and Third. She came striding out of her place, headed for Third and turned left, staying on it for thirteen blocks, then hanging a right on Fiftieth and east one block to Second. The Morning Star was right around the corner. Chris had stayed half a block behind all the way, usually on the same side of the street. Barbara gave no indication of knowing she was being followed. She never looked back. She had met Chris only the one time, in the back of the mayor’s limo, but he figured his bald head was pretty distinctive, so he’d worn a Knicks ball cap. And unlike when he was in the limo, when he was wearing a suit, Chris had dressed this morning in old jeans, a button-down-collar blue shirt, and a brown leather jacket.

  It wouldn’t have much mattered if he’d looked exactly as he had the day before. Like a lot of people, Barbara had her eyes glued to her phone even while she was walking. She seemed to possess a requisite skill for the modern world. She knew what was in her path without looking up. Her gift, however, had yet to be perfected. When she failed to notice a dog walker’s leash stretched out across her path, she tripped and nearly hit the sidewalk. If she was at all rattled by the near miss, she didn’t show it.

  When she turned into the café, he kept on walking, then crossed the street at the next light and took up his position in front of Blockheads. Barbara had taken a seat in a booth close to the window. Chris couldn’t make out every detail, but at least he knew where she was. A few minutes later, another woman arrived. Younger, early to midtwenties. She slid into the booth opposite Barbara.

  While they talked, Vallins mentally reviewed what he had already learned about Barbara Matheson.

  The first bit of information was probably the most valuable. This thorn in the mayor’s side was not using her real name, at least not when she wrote her columns. Her real name, and the one she used for all her financial transactions, was Barbara Silbert. Vallins was well aware that novelists often chose to publish their books under pseudonyms, but was that an acceptable practice when it came to journalism? Could you really take potshots at politicians and others while hiding behind a name that was not your own?

  Once he had determined Barbara’s true last name, he was able to find out plenty of other things about her. She was living in a sublet, paying $1,100 a month, which was a pretty good deal, considering the average was more than $3,000. Just as well her rent was a deal, considering that Manhattan Today was paying her a few pennies
under a hundred thousand a year. That might have sounded like a lot to some, but you needed a lot to live right in Manhattan.

  Barbara paid off her cards every month and was rewarded for that with a decent credit score. What was interesting about the statements he’d been able to access was not so much what was on them, but what was not. No Bloomies, no Saks, no Nordstrom. When Barbara bought clothes, she was not extravagant. The Gap, Macy’s, maybe Club Monaco if she really wanted to splurge. Not a shocker. All Vallins had seen her in was jeans and a top and a light jacket. Barbara spent most of her money at bars and restaurants. It didn’t look as though she ate much at home. Lots of diners, like the Morning Star. There were a few charges at liquor stores, so even if she didn’t make many of her own meals, at least she drank at home.

  About fifteen minutes after the younger woman joined Barbara, she got up to leave.

  Chris took off his right glove so that the camera icon on his phone would work when he touched it with his finger. Barbara exited the restaurant. Chris hit the button and held it, firing off multiple shots as the unknown woman stood briefly, got her bearings, and started walking south. Chris lowered the phone as she crossed Fiftieth and hailed a cab. She got in, and the cab took off down Second.

  Barbara stayed. She appeared to be ignoring her breakfast.

  Chris wondered who the young woman might be. If Barbara’d had a Facebook page, Chris might have found a picture of her there, if she was a friend. But Barbara was not on Facebook. She had a substantial Twitter following, though. Just under thirty thousand. But Twitter was not typically where one posted photos of friends. It was for mouthing off, something Barbara did plenty of.

  Five minutes after the young woman left, Barbara got up, paid the bill, and emerged onto the sidewalk. Would she head back toward home? Walk to the Manhattan Today office? These days, what with half the world working from home, there might not be much reason for Barbara to show up at an actual office.

  She headed north. As she walked, she did the same thing she’d done earlier. She took out her phone. It was welded to her palm, Chris thought.

  She glanced down at it as she crossed Fifty-First. Chris let out a derisive sigh. All these people, looking at their phones when they should be watching where they’re going. Getting hit by cars, walking head-on into other idiots who were also staring at their phones. There was a video on the news the other day of a woman falling into some open sidewalk cellar doors, the kind you saw all over the city to accommodate deliveries.

  Barbara barely took her eyes off the device the whole next block, but somehow she knew there was a red light at Fifty-Second, and she stopped instead of stepping into the path of a panel truck.

  Chris was only a few feet behind her. Close enough to hear her phone when it started to ring. A curious ringtone, at that. It sounded like someone tapping away furiously on an old manual typewriter.

  Barbara put the phone to her ear. As the light changed, she continued walking north.

  Chris couldn’t make out anything she was saying. But whatever the caller was telling her was serious enough to make Barbara stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk and listen.

  Chris had to hit the brakes to avoid walking into her. He sidestepped around her and kept on walking. When he reached the next corner, he turned and looked back. Barbara was tucking her phone into her purse and stepping out into the street to hail a cab.

  Shit.

  He looked north and saw several available ones coming their way. Second Avenue ran only southbound, so the cabs were spread out across its width. One on the far side veered across, aiming for Barbara and cutting off several other vehicles in the process.

  Chris waved and caught the attention of another cab driver. The car swerved toward him. By the time he got into the back of his taxi, Barbara was pulling away.

  “Where to?” asked the driver, a heavily bearded man with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a half-eaten apple.

  “That taxi right ahead? That picked up that woman? I’m going where she’s going.”

  “Where’s that?” the driver asked.

  “Don’t know. Just follow it.”

  “Ah, like in the movies,” the driver said, taking one last huge bite of the apple, powering down his window, and tossing the core.

  The miniscreen bolted to the back of the Plexiglas partition was playing some snippets from daytime TV. Chris made several unsuccessful attempts to mute it before giving up. He was thinking if he could get his hands on Barbara’s phone long enough to fiddle with the settings, he’d be able to track her location without having to chase after her.

  Barbara’s cab was continuing straight on down Second. Past Forty-Second, past Thirty-Fourth, finally hanging a right on Twenty-Seventh. The cab went halfway down the block toward Third before it pulled over.

  “Stop here,” Chris said when his own cab was about ten car lengths back.

  He tossed a ten through the partition window and was out of the car before Barbara had exited hers. He pulled out his phone and pretended to look at it while Barbara settled up with her cabbie. She got out, walked a few doors west on the north side, stopped to study the building she was in front of, and went in.

  Chris crossed the street so he could check out the address without standing directly in front of it.

  Barbara had gone into a funeral home. Clappison’s Funeral Services, to be exact.

  Nineteen

  Arla grabbed a cab.

  When the taxi was half a dozen blocks from her destination, it stopped dead, not going anywhere. Traffic was insane. Arla bailed and ran the rest of the way. She jogged Central Park three mornings a week, so she didn’t get winded, but she sweated through her work clothes. Glover had texted her the York Avenue address, and she got there before the mayor and his entourage.

  Along the way, her mind went back to the brief meeting she’d had with her mother. It had gone pretty much as she’d expected. Maybe it would have been better to break the news to her about her new job in an email. Face-to-face, things had a way of getting unpleasant in a hurry.

  Arla wondered if that awkwardness was what she’d wanted all along. To see the expression on her mother’s face when she told her whom she was going to be working for. To revel in her shock and disappointment. Of course, if that really was why Arla had told Barbara in person, it meant her mother wasn’t wrong suggesting Arla took the job just to get under her mother’s skin.

  In the moments when Arla was honest with herself, she had to admit there was something to that. Arla had, to put it mildly, conflicted feelings about her mother. At some level, yes, she loved her. After all, she was her mother. And there were even times when Arla could understand what it must have been like for Barbara, to have found herself pregnant at such a young age, to not want to have to give up a career.

  At least she didn’t abort me, Arla told herself in moments when she was inclined to be generous.

  But then there were the other times, when she just didn’t give a shit about her mother’s feelings. She should have been there for me, each and every fucking day.

  So yes, maybe she was sticking it to her mother. But the flip side of all this was: Should Arla have turned down a great opportunity just because it would make her mother unhappy? Didn’t she have her own life to live? Wasn’t she entitled to make her own choices? Arla had actually been concerned, when she’d applied, that her potential employer would make the connection. If they found out Barbara was her mother, they’d probably deny her the job. Would that have been fair?

  She stopped thinking about all that when she reached the scene.

  York Avenue was blocked off. There was no sense of pandemonium, but there were half a dozen FDNY vehicles, as many marked police cars, and two or three unmarked ones. There was one lone TV van, and not an ambulance in sight. Arla was guessing the scene had been busier earlier. A couple of hours must have gone by since the accident.

  Flimsy police tape served amazingly well to keep people from entering the building
. Without any official City Hall ID—she was hoping she’d have one before long—Arla wasn’t expecting anyone to let her pass. She’d have to wait for Glover, once he had arrived with his father and whoever else was coming, to see if she could get in.

  Looking south down York she saw a black town car approaching. It stopped and Glover got out, followed by Mayor Headley. A woman Arla knew to be Valerie Langdon emerged from the other side. One of the news crews spotted their arrival and went charging in their direction. Arla expected the mayor to stop and say something for the cameras, but instead he made a path straight toward the building.

  As the three of them got closer, Arla tried to catch Glover’s eye. But he was walking directly alongside his father, glancing down at his phone, presumably looking for updates he could pass along to the mayor. When they reached the tape line, close to where Arla was standing, she worked her way through the crowd, reached out, and tapped Glover on the arm.

  He glanced her way, reacting with mild surprise, as though it had slipped his mind that she was going to find her own way here.

  “Hey,” he said, blinking. Then, it all came back. He glanced at Headley, who was several steps ahead, having already ducked under the tape line.

  “Right,” Glover said, seizing the opportunity and lifting the tape for Arla. “Come on.”

  She slipped under it. The closest NYPD officer, having seen she was with the mayor’s party, made no attempt to stop her. Arla stuck close to Glover. He was her hall pass. If she got separated from him, the police might boot her ass out of there.

  Arla felt her pulse quickening as she headed for the entrance. Here she was, on her very first day, walking alongside one of the mayor’s key advisers, strolling right past the police barricades, a dozen steps behind the mayor himself (and hoping he would not see her and ask who the hell she was), getting an up-close look at a tragedy that would be all over that evening’s news.

  Did it get any better than this?

  They went into the building’s large atrium-style lobby. The bank of four elevators was along the back wall, and the doors to one were wide open. Standing outside, peering in, were two men and one woman in firefighter garb, and what Arla guessed were a fire department captain—in dress blues, the FDNY patches on his shoulders—and a woman Arla recognized as the city’s new chief of police. Bringing out the big guns, she thought. Sure, an elevator accident was a tragedy if someone got killed, but it wasn’t exactly John Lennon getting shot out front of the Dakota, was it?