Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

“I guess that’s possible.”

Arla put her coffee on the table and half turned to face her mother. “These days, like, right now, does Headley have any idea?”

“About what?”

“That this Barbara Matheson who’s writing about him, that you’re that person? The one he slept with years ago?”

Barbara slowly shook her head. “No. I’m sure of it. I don’t look much like I did at that age. My hair’s a different color and, well, I’m a little chunkier. I wrote under a different name. It was a long time ago. And we only met a couple of times. The night it happened, and then when I told him.”

“And he denied it. Said he had no memory of you, or the party, or anything.”

Barbara nodded.

This was not the first time Arla had asked the question. Barbara had told her story — the unexpurgated truth — several times since they’d arrived at her apartment the night before. After Barbara had dropped the bombshell in Maxwell’s about Glover, she’d persuaded Arla to leave with her, promising to tell her all the things she had wanted to know since she was born.

They had gone back to Barbara’s apartment — after climbing several flights of stairs, they were pretty weary by the time they got there — and opened the first of four bottles of wine. Barbara told Arla her story, stopping and answering, as honestly as she could, every question that Arla had along the way.

Arla had thought the reason there was no father listed on her birth certificate was because her mother really wasn’t sure.

“You kind of, you know, as I got older, let me think you were — God, this is going to sound so judgy — a bit of a slut,” she had said at one point. “You said my father had gone to the other side of the country, found a life there.”

“Yeah,” Barbara said. “I guess I thought that would discourage you from trying to find him, to make a connection. Telling you, when you were little, that he was out west, it was like saying he was on another planet. It was the same lie I told my parents, so they wouldn’t go looking for him, trying to get him to do the right thing. Thing is, he might as well have been a thousand miles away instead of right here in the city. I’ve always felt you can’t force someone to care. I wasn’t going to go after Richard, make him submit to a blood test, to prove what I already knew. If he didn’t want to be a father, I wasn’t going to coerce him into being one.”

“But you could have at least gotten support. Made him help financially.”

“I probably should have. I guess I was too proud. Too headstrong. Independent to a fault. I thought, ‘Fuck you, I don’t need your help.’”

“But you took your parents’ help,” Arla said. “You made me a burden to them, when you could have lightened the load for them by making Richard assume some responsibility.”

“You were never a burden to them,” Barbara said. “They loved you more than you can ever know.”

“Just a burden to you, then,” Arla said.

Barbara looked away.

“I’m sorry,” Arla said.

“That’s okay. I deserve that. I can’t change what I did. All I can do is try to make better decisions moving forward.”

Arla was quiet for several seconds before she said, “Do you think he’d want to know now?”

Barbara said, “I don’t know.” She thought for a moment. “I think he might have recognized the name.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I was in his office, all he knew was that a child of mine was working in his administration. He didn’t know your name. When I walked out, I told him. I said ‘Silbert.’”

“Which was the name he’d have known you by. If he remembered.”

“Yeah.” Barbara shrugged. “I just don’t know.”

Arla sipped some coffee. “I’d like... to talk to him.”

“I get that,” Barbara said. “But I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“It’s not really your decision.”

Barbara looked at Arla. “I know.” She looked into her cup. “I need more coffee. You?”

Arla handed over her mug. As Barbara was heading into the kitchen, Arla called out a question: “Is it revenge?”

“Is what revenge?”

“Writing about the mayor. Going after him. Is it all about getting even?”

There was silence while Barbara filled the cups. When she came back into the bedroom, she said, “No. I mean, for years I never wrote about him at all. I was already covering the New York political scene. And then he came onto it, and attracted a following, and ran for mayor, and won. I’d have written about anyone who did that.”

She handed Arla her coffee.

“Yeah, but didn’t you see that as a chance to finally go after him?”

“No,” Barbara said defensively. “I don’t believe so.”

“Have you told your editors? You sure haven’t told your readers.”

Barbara took a moment to answer. “No.”

“What do you think they’d say if they found out, if they knew?”

Another pause. “They would probably say I have a conflict. That I can’t be objective.”

“Would they be right?”

“They’d have a point,” Barbara said. “But they’d be wrong.”

“So if I confronted the mayor, and this all got out, you could lose your job,” Arla said. “Payback.”

Barbara got back onto the bed, careful not to spill her coffee.

“You know,” Arla said, “if you did lose your job, you should write a book.”

“I have written books.”

“ Ghost -written. You should write your own story. You become a reporter when you’re a kid. You get knocked up, but that doesn’t stop you. Your parents raise the baby. Okay, some people may judge. But you get a rep as a tough journalist in the craziest city in the world, and then you have to confess to your daughter that the mayor is her fucking father. It writes itself.”

“Stop,” Barbara said.

“I would read that. Like, if I were somebody else.” Her eyes lit up as she remembered something. “You know, there’s a woman in my building who’s some hotshot editor at one of the big publishing houses. You should talk to her. I bet you could get a book deal, easy.” Arla’s stomach growled. “I have got to find something to eat.”

She swung her legs down to the floor and went into the kitchen. Barbara could hear the fridge door opening.

“You weren’t kidding,” Arla said. “How do you feel about frozen pizza for breakfast? Or — hello, what’s this?”

Barbara came into the kitchen and saw Arla holding up two tickets the size of postcards, words in fancy script printed on the highstock paper.

“These were by the toaster,” Arla said.

“They’re media invites to tonight’s Top of the Park opening. The ribbon-cutting for that zillion-story condo tower that overlooks Central Park. Probably won’t even happen if the elevators are down.” She thought about that. “Although, knowing Rodney Coughlin, he’ll find a way.”

“Will the mayor be there?” Arla asked.

“ Everybody will be there,” her mother said.

“I see two passes here,” Arla said. “Have you got a plus-one yet?”

Given that the FBI were keeping tabs on Eugene Clement, there was an agency presence in the hotel.

An agent by the name of Renata Geller had observed Clement leave the dining area, where he and his wife were having breakfast, and head down the hallway where the men’s room was located. She could not exactly follow him in there, and at the moment, she was on her own. Had she been partnered with a male agent at the time, they might have discussed whether he should wander in there, too.

Only moments after Clement got up, his wife, Estelle, did the same. Within seconds, Agent Geller realized she was also heading down the hall to the washrooms. She thought that was odd. Dining couples tended to go in shifts, unless they were done with their meal. The Clements hadn’t even ordered yet.