Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

Vesolov first wandered over to the newsmagazines. He glanced at the covers of Time and The Economist , leafed through the pages of The New Yorker and read the captions on the cartoons and didn’t laugh at a single one. He’d never understood them.

He put The New Yorker back and moved to the car section. Articles about cars needed no cultural translation. Vesolov reached for a copy of Automobile , lightly bumping shoulders with another man who was glancing through the pages of Motor Trend .

The other man was several inches taller than Vesolov, and in much better physical shape. Vesolov’s shoulders were permanently hunched; he was round in the middle and thick in the neck, his skin sickly pale. The other man was lean and trim, tanned, and his black business suit fit him perfectly.

“So,” Vesolov said quietly, his eyes focused on the magazine.

“Yes,” said the other man, his voice low.

“It’s done. There’s nothing else for you at this time.” Vesolov flipped the page, saw an article about an upcoming, all-electric Porsche. “If we need you, we’ll be in touch. A deposit has been made in the usual account.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“We had a deal. Petrov is no longer a threat.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t protest. We had an arrangement. Things turned out a little differently than expected, but we have the result we wanted. Maybe the next one, you’ll give us a discount.”

“Seems fair,” the other man said.

“You have a bit of extra time. See the sights.”

The man chuckled. “Maybe not the Empire State Building.”

“No, it does not seem like a good week for those kinds of attractions.”

“You know where I would like to go? Iowa.”

“Iowa?” said Vesolov. “Nobody comes to America and goes to Iowa.”

“You see Field of Dreams ? It is my favorite movie.”

Vesolov shrugged. “Fine. Go to Iowa. See corn.”

The ambassador put the car magazine back, turned, and walked away without saying another word. The second man waited the better part of a minute before heading back out into the terminal.

A third man, who’d had his back to the other two as he leafed through the pages of a Sports Illustrated , took out his cell phone.

He entered a number, placed the phone up to his ear. Someone answered before the first ring had finished.

“Get me Cartland,” he said.

Jerry Bourque had staked out a spot on Grove Street, leaning up against a tree growing out of the sidewalk between Bedford and Bleecker. Beautiful old brownstones, tall, leafy trees. Plenty of interesting shops and cafés and restaurants. Bourque had always loved Greenwich Village and wished he lived here. You could almost imagine that you were in a world separate from the rest of New York City. Maybe it was the trees that worked to muffle the horns and sirens and growling engines that were only a block away.

Some mornings, like this one, he’d come here before the start of his shift to see how she was doing.

Amanda.

She would have had her second birthday by now. She was only a year and a half old when her mother, Sasha Woodrow, was shot to death by Blair Evans.

Bourque had been here enough times to know the routine. The nanny — a young woman in her twenties — would arrive at half past seven, on the dot, every morning, Monday to Friday. Sasha’s husband, Leslie, would leave roughly fifteen minutes later. The front door would open, and Leslie, dressed nattily in suit and tie, would carefully bring out a bike and gingerly roll it down the steps to the sidewalk. He would then mount it and pedal off to his Wall Street job.

Bourque thought it was foolish of him not to wear a helmet. Amanda had already lost one parent. Why was he willing to take the risk that she might lose two? It was all he could do, every morning he was here and saw this, not to say something to him.

But he held his tongue, because if he were Leslie Woodrow, his comeback would be, “Well, maybe if you hadn’t dived out of the way, Amanda wouldn’t already be down one parent.”

Bourque surmised that Leslie got Amanda up and dressed, and that he also gave her breakfast, because most mornings that he was there, he witnessed the nanny emerging from the brownstone within twenty minutes of the father’s departure. Clearly, there was not enough time for the nanny to accomplish all those things. Bourque often imagined Leslie sitting at breakfast with his daughter, sharing a piece of toast with her, giving her some Cheerios to play with, hopeful that more of them would end up in her mouth than on the floor.

The nanny — Bourque wished he knew her name, and even though he had the skills to find out, he had resisted doing so — liked to take Amanda out for a stroll first thing every morning, unless it was raining.

Today was no exception.

The door to the brownstone opened and out came the nanny with Amanda in one arm, and a small, folded-up stroller in the other. Once she had locked the door and made her way down to the sidewalk, the nanny set Amanda down briefly and quickly unfolded the stroller before the child could wander off. Once Amanda settled into it, the nanny buckled her in.

Very smart, Bourque thought.

Bourque believed the nanny was from France. Here on a visa, perhaps, maybe a student taking courses at night while she worked for Leslie Woodrow through the day. Bourque often heard her speaking French to the child as they went past. How nice for Amanda, to acquire some proficiency in a second language at such an early age. Too bad about the way it had to happen, of course.

Bourque was discreet. He kept his distance. He turned away, or crossed the street, when the nanny approached with the stroller. He knew he shouldn’t be spying this way, but Bourque needed constant assurance. He needed to know Amanda was okay.

He needed to know she was happy. That she was not traumatized.

Like him.

If Amanda happened to be kicking her feet, or babbling cheerfully, or looking at the world with wonder and curiosity, Bourque felt hopeful. Those were all good signs, weren’t they? If you were consumed with the memory of your mother being shot, of her blood spilling directly onto you like warm, red rain, those things would not be possible, right? Bourque wanted to believe Amanda had a chance of being a normal, healthy, happy child. Sure, not having a mother put her behind the eight ball from the get-go, but Bourque had to believe that eventually she would get past that. And who knew? Perhaps, one day, Leslie would find someone else. A new wife, a mother for Amanda.

Hell, maybe he’d marry the nanny. It had happened before.

Bourque watched Leslie for signs every morning, too.

Those first couple of months, Leslie did not ride his bike. After the arrival of the nanny — and Bourque believed the woman had been hired only after the mother’s death — he would come down the steps to the street like a dead man walking. He shuffled more than walked. The man was visibly consumed with grief.

The next time Bourque staked out a spot in the morning, Leslie had the bike. To Bourque, the bicycle represented some level of recovery. A desire to face the day with more energy, to embrace it with speed .

In fact, as the weeks and months went on, he took off from his Grove Street residence with what struck Bourque as enthusiasm.

Good, Bourque had thought. That’s good.

Guilt-ridden as he was over the woman’s death, he was desperate for evidence that Leslie and Amanda were moving forward. Not that Sasha’s death wouldn’t haunt them forever. It certainly would Bourque. Maybe he was kidding himself. Seeing signs that were not there in a bid to ease his conscience. He wasn’t looking for forgiveness. He had no reason to expect that. But if Leslie and Amanda could build a future together, maybe Bourque could breathe a little easier.