Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

“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.”

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?”

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.