Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

“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.”

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 this 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.

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.”