Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

Everyone was being herded toward two banks of elevators, which were just off the main atrium. There were five elevators on one side, five on the other. The numbers above the doors, etched in granite, indicated where they went. The five on the left were for the floors below the fiftieth, the ones on the right for floors fifty-one to ninety-eight, also known as the Observation Level.

It was before the doors on the right where everyone lined up. All five doors opened simultaneously. Barbara and Arla were close enough to be among the first wave of riders.

Headley and his team stepped into the first one, accompanied by, Barbara noticed, Rodney Coughlin himself. The doors closed and the elevator departed.

Barbara and Arla boarded their car, and were followed by another eight people in tuxes and gowns.

As the doors closed, there was a palpable sense of unease inside the car. Someone chuckled nervously.

“They did get the guy, right?” a woman said.

“That’s what I saw on the news,” a man said. “I think they’re pretty sure.”

The elevator began its ascent.

Bourque and Delgado had spent the rest of the afternoon trying to track down Glover Headley. They’d had no luck raising him with repeated calls to his cell phone. They did not find him at his apartment. And a search of bars and restaurants in the blocks near City Hall also proved fruitless.

Bourque had given his card to the doorman of the building where Glover lived and asked him to get in touch should Glover return.

Just before seven, Bourque’s cell rang.

“He just returned,” the doorman said.

He and Delgado had been checking restaurants at the time. They ran back to the car and started the drive back uptown to Glover’s Upper West Side residence. But as was more often the case than not, the drive north was a traffic nightmare. By the time Delgado brought the car to a screeching halt out front of the building, and Bourque ran in, Glover had already left.

“He wasn’t here long,” the doorman said. “He was in and out in about fifteen minutes. Looked like he just came back to get changed. Left in a tux.”

When Bourque got back in the car, he turned and looked at Delgado and said, “How do we look?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Looks like we’re going to have to crash the party.”

“He wasn’t there?”

“He’s on his way to the Top of the Park opening. Left in his penguin suit.”

Delgado glanced down at herself. Black jeans, plain white blouse, jacket. “Oh, yeah, I’m good to go.”

Along the way, she glanced over a couple of times at her partner, who had a big smile on his face.

“You look like a kid on Christmas morning,” she said.

He grinned. “Okay, I’m excited. I’ve been following the progress of this building since before they broke ground, but have never had an excuse to get inside. I bought a book about it on Monday. Studied every page. Can’t wait to see it. Ask me anything about it. Go ahead, ask me. You want to know the architects?”

“Not particularly.”

“Svengali and Associates. I know. Svengali? But it’s the guy’s real name.”

Delgado said, “Uh, wasn’t Svengali a kind of evil dude? A real manipulative fucker?”

“Yeah. But it’s a great-sounding name. The building was first conceived fifteen years ago, and it was going to be ninety stories, but then 432 Park Avenue came in at ninety-seven, so Coughlin—”

“Coughlin?”

“Rodney Coughlin, the developer?” Bourque said. “And then this other project got announced last year, at the bottom of Central Park, isn’t finished yet, and it’s going to surpass 432, so Coughlin said, add eight more floors, bringing it in at ninety-eight, and a height of one thousand five hundred and sixty feet, which tops anything out there, built or not-yet built. All of which makes it the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere, and the second tallest building in New York, after One World Trade.”

“They’re just architectural penises,” Delgado said. “Whose concrete-and-glass dick is bigger?”

Delgado took Central Park West all the way up to Central Park North. At that point, they encountered the police barricade that was keeping everything but VIP limos from proceeding. Delgado flashed her badge and was waved through.

She pulled the car up onto the south sidewalk about a hundred yards west of the building. Bourque was out first, and he stood there for several seconds, admiring the structure.

“I’m going to make it,” he said.

Delgado, out of the car, slammed the door and said, “What?”

“Out of art board,” he said. “For my collection.”

Delgado had seen pictures on her partner’s phone of his creations. “You’re gonna need a bigger apartment.”

Bourque shrugged. “A taller apartment.”

“Ready to party?”

Bourque nodded. They headed toward the building.

The elevator softly chimed as its destination — the ninety-eighth floor — was reached, and the doors parted.

A collective gasp erupted from inside the car. The doors opened onto a vast expanse of openness, across which could be seen a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and beyond that lay an even more vast expanse of sky. Looking westward, there was a distant orange sliver on the horizon as the last glimmer of the setting sun bled away.

Barbara and Arla and their fellow passengers stepped from the car and into what amounted to a ballroom in the sky. They moved hesitantly, almost fearfully, testing the solidity of the marble floor beneath them as if to be sure they weren’t walking on a cloud. A reverent hush had fallen over the guests, who, only moments before, had been chatting amiably in the confines of their elevator car. It was as if each had been struck dumb, overwhelmed by the magnificent view from atop this tower in the sky.

“There are no words,” someone whispered.

It was true. There were not enough superlatives in the English language to convey how dramatic, how wondrous, how absolutely miraculous, the experience was.

Arla circumnavigated the room, weaving her way around buffet tables laden with elegant displays of food and drink, and another table with a stunning, ten-foot tall architectural model of Top of the Park, until she was at the southern exposure that overlooked Central Park and, beyond that, the skyscrapers of midtown, including the building’s closest rival, 432 Park. Beyond that could be seen Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, and, even farther in the distance, One World Trade Center.

“It’s like we’re in a plane that’s holding its position in the air,” Arla said, touching her fingertips to the glass as her mother came up behind her.

“Don’t stand so close,” Barbara said nervously. She’d never considered herself to be afraid of heights, but up here, at this moment, she felt a touch of vertigo. “Come back,” she said, pulling gently on her daughter’s arm.

“It’s okay,” Arla said, resisting. She looked down. “There’s nothing around here that even comes close. We’re up here all alone.” She giggled and turned her head so her mother could better hear her. “You wouldn’t have to worry about walking around naked with the curtains open.”

“Except for maybe a jet full of passengers heading into LaGuardia.”

That prompted Arla to look east. “You can see them,” she said. “The planes, coming in and taking off.” She shook her head in wonder. “What do you think it costs to get an apartment in this building?”

“We might not be the target demographic,” Barbara said.

“But if you could, if you had millions of dollars, would you want to live here?”