Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

Barbara ran her finger across the spines of the books. She never went into a house without seeing what the residents read, or at least displayed. Vallins’s taste ran to mostly nonfiction. History, politics. He even had a copy of that sports star’s memoir, the one Barbara had ghostwritten.

Maybe I should autograph it, she thought.

She stopped and looked at one of the photos. A young, grinning Chris, maybe seven years old, standing between what she presumed were his mother and father, the three of them leaning up against a rusted minivan. It looked like a vacation shot, and whoever’d snapped it was one of those amateur photographers who thought you must show the entire person, from shoes right up to their heads. All three were in cutoffs, short sleeves, and sneakers, and there was what looked like camping gear strapped to the roof racks. Everyone looked happy. You didn’t need to vacation at the Ritz to have a good time.

Barbara glanced into the kitchen. Sleek cupboards, small granite-topped island, Wolf stove with the red knobs, Sub-Zero fridge. If Vallins had come from humble beginnings, he appeared to be doing okay now.

Vallins pointed to the small, round table tucked into the corner of the kitchen by the window. There were two open laptops with darkened screens sitting there. “Let me make some space,” he said, closing them, setting one atop the other, and moving them to the kitchen counter. “Sit,” he ordered.

Barbara sat.

He brought over a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer, set it on the table, and gently lifted Barbara’s arm and rested her right elbow on it.

“Oriental stir fry,” she said, glancing at the bag. “So this is like Chinese medicine?” She winced. “Fuck, that’s cold.” She’d rolled her sleeve up, but the bag was too cold on bare skin. She rolled her sleeve down and put her elbow back on it.

“I still think you should go to the hospital.”

“I’m not dying.” She almost managed a grin. “I’m not that bad. You tackle like a girl. What about your hand? Doesn’t it need some frozen veggies, too?”

He waggled his fingers in the air. “They work fine.” He went back to the freezer. “Hey, this might be better.” He held up a pliable, blue-gel ice pack.

“The veggies are doing the job,” she said.

He closed the freezer. “You want a coffee? I got a one-cup maker.”

“You never have company?” she asked.

Vallins ignored the question. “Yes or no on the coffee?”

“Actually, just some water, and some Tylenols, if you’ve got them.”

He opened one cupboard to get a glass, and another to get a small bottle of pills. He filled the glass from the tap and shook out two pills onto the kitchen table. She popped the pills into her mouth and washed them down with her free hand.

“I’ve yet to encounter a problem that can’t be solved with drugs and/or alcohol,” she said.

“So you want a beer with that, then?”

She shook her head. “Water’s fine.” She paused. “Tell me about your friend.”

“Nothing to tell, really. Served his country. Came back. PTSD. Couldn’t hold a job. Lost his family. No support. End of story. There’s a million of them.”

“But you help him,” Barbara said.

He shrugged. “Not really. Not as much as I could, or should.”

Barbara narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, as if intensifying her focus would provide some greater insight.

“So,” she said slowly.

“Yeah?” Chris looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“You were following me,” she said.

“Nope.”

“You had to be.”

He shook his head very slowly. “You think you’re that important?”

“Why are you dressed like this?”

“Like what?”

“Baseball cap. Leather jacket. Jeans. Give me a break. You didn’t want to look like you did in the limo yesterday.”

“On my day off,” Chris said, “I lose the suit and tie.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“The mayor has weekend events. Sometimes I work Saturday or Sunday. So I get a day off midweek instead.”

“Not buyin’ it,” Barbara said.

“Okay, so let’s say I was following you, which I was not. This kind of blows my cover, doesn’t it?”

Barbara considered that. “Maybe the whole thing was a setup, a way to gain my confidence. So you rescued me.”

“Yeah. I cleverly arranged for that truck to come along at just the right moment as you were crossing the street, and you helped immeasurably by staring at your phone the whole time like a complete and total idiot.”

Barbara bit her lower lip. “Okay, so, where were you going if you weren’t following me?”

“There’s a bar up the street where I have lunch sometimes.” He cast a suspicious glance her way. “What are you doing in my neighborhood? How do I know you weren’t nosing around up here looking for me?”

“Please,” she said.

“Let me ask you this,” Chris said. “Is this your routine when someone saves your life? Interrogate them? A simple thank-you would do.”

Barbara was quiet for several seconds, as though working up her nerve to say something nice. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Thanks. And I’m sorry you scraped your hand.”

“Stop gushing,” he said. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“You could still have been following me, but had to do the right thing when I nearly bought it. Felt you had no choice. That’s why you tried to take off without my seeing you.”

“The veggies working?” he asked.

She lifted up her elbow momentarily. “I think a piece of frozen cauliflower is digging into a bone.”

He got up, went to the freezer, and brought back the proper icepack. As she set her elbow on it, he tossed the bag of frozen vegetables back in.

“You got any real food here?” she asked.

He opened the fridge compartment wide enough for her to see. It was nearly empty.

“This could be my place,” Barbara said. “You don’t get to the store much?”

Vallins shrugged.

“Let me ask you something,” Barbara said.

“More questions about how I staged your near-death experience?”

She shook her head. “Sit down.” He did. “So, Headley. What exactly do you do for him? What’s your title?”

“I was recently knighted, so you might want to call me Sir Vallins.”

“Funny, I would have pegged you for the court jester.”

“I’m an assistant to the mayor. I assist.”

Barbara smiled. “In what ways do you assist?”

Chris leaned in closer. “Any way I can. Security, policy implementation, research, whatever.”

“Security?”

He nodded.

“You got a conceal and carry license?”

“I’m sorry?”

Barbara rolled her eyes. She knew he knew what she was talking about. “Are you packing?”

“Did you seriously say ‘are you packing?’ Are we in a Scorsese movie?”

“Show me your gun,” Barbara said.

“First of all,” Chris said, “I am not going to answer that question, and if I were packing, which I am not saying I am, I wouldn’t be doing it on my day off.”

Barbara sighed. “Fine. So you assist the mayor. So following me around, that would fall into the category of assisting .”

“You’re a one-trick pony.”

“Okay,” she said, switching gears. “Tell me about him.”

“Off the record?”

“Off the record. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Vallins shrugged. “He’s an asshole.”

“I wouldn’t call that a keen insight. A lot of us have figured that out.”

“But even if he is, you don’t get how things work in the real world.”

“I think I’ve heard this speech before,” Barbara said.