Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

It slipped from his fingers, bounced off the toe of his shoe, skittered across the marble hallway floor, and through the middle set of open elevator doors.

Instinctively, he darted forward to try and catch it.

“Jerry!” Delgado screamed.

She went to grab for him but he was already moving. Just not quickly enough. By the time he reached the opening, had braced himself with one hand on the wall, and was peering down into the shaft, his inhaler was already plunging past the thirtieth floor.

Barbara grabbed Arla instinctively, sheltering her in an enveloping embrace. She wanted to run, but had no idea where to run to as people around her screamed.

The four blasts — BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! — seemed to have come from all directions. Many of the elegantly dressed guests were crying, others were staring around wildly, panicked expressions on their faces.

Once the screams died down, Headley moved toward the temporary stage, leaping onto it and grabbing the microphone.

“Everyone remain calm!” he shouted. “Please stay calm!”

That was a tall order, given that there was now a strong smell of smoke and sulfur clogging the air.

Several guests were crowding around the five elevator doors, tapping away at the digital screen, entering L for the lobby.

“We have to get out of here!” a man cried out frantically.

“The stairs!” a woman yelled.

That prompted a ministampede. Guests were following Exit signs that directed people to four sets of stairs that would, ultimately, deliver them to street level.

“What’s going on?” Arla asked her mother.

“I don’t know,” Barbara said, a protective arm still around her daughter’s shoulders.

She scanned the room. There were plenty of others holding on to one another for comfort. Many had phones out and could be heard talking in frantic tones to multiple 911 operators about what had just happened.

“I’m thinking,” Barbara said softly, “that we should get out of here.”

Arla nodded. “Okay. They’re already waiting for the elevators.”

“Yeah,” she said cautiously. “I’m not so sure I want to be first in that line.”

“Jesus!”

The high-pitched cry had come from one of the stairwell doors.

“Stay here,” Barbara said, releasing Arla and darting between other guests as she headed for the stairs. Arla did not do as she was told, and followed her mother as she squeezed past a group huddled around the door, which had been pulled wide open.

A section of the first set of stairs was missing.

Between every floor were about forty steel and concrete steps, each with a landing at the halfway point where the stairs reversed direction. What everyone had been looking at, through the smoke and dust that was still wafting throughout the stairwell, was the gap that began seven steps down from the stairwell door. Four steps were missing, their crumbled remains having fallen to the steps another flight down.

Four separate stairwells, Barbara thought. Four explosions.

When she turned around, Arla was there.

“How bad is it?” Arla whispered.

“Bad,” Barbara said, coming back into the main room. “We better hope the elevators are working.”

Not for a moment did she believe they would be.

But Barbara and Arla headed for them, anyway. They heard other guests confirming, in loud, panicked shrieks, that the other stairwells had been similarly sabotaged. Headley was still calling for calm but could barely be heard above the mayhem.

The sound of the chiming elevators brought an almost instant chill throughout the room.

The lights flashed over all five elevator doors.

“Thank God!” a woman shouted.

Another woman could be heard consoling her husband, whose entire body was shaking. “It’s going to be okay, Edmund,” she said within earshot of Barbara. “It’s going to be okay. The elevators are here.”

The five elevator doors opened simultaneously, but there wasn’t a car in a single one of them.

The guests were greeted with five ninety-eight-story elevator shafts. All the hopefuls who’d been waiting for a ride down backed suddenly away. One brave woman in a glittery silver gown crept forward and peered over the edge and down.

“My God,” she whispered. “You can’t even see the bottom.”

A man shouted. “Who’s doing this? What do they want? How are we going to get out of here?”

“Everyone!”

It was Coughlin at the mike again, his face a mask of anguish. “Everyone, please!”

The crowd slowly went quiet and turned to look at the developer.

“Okay, I understand everyone is very upset, but I’ve already been in touch with building maintenance and I’m assured this is just a glitch that can be—”

He couldn’t finish the sentence as various terrified guests drowned him out.

“Those were explosions!”

“How do we get down?”

“Who’s doing this?”

“Why didn’t you call this off? What were you thinking?”

That question prompted Coughlin to raise his hand in the air — a bid to get everyone to quiet down again — and turn and look at Headley.

“Perhaps the mayor would like to field that one.”

An anxious looking Headley approached the mike. “People, people, please, listen.”

A few people, anxious to hear the mayor over all the nervous chatter, went “Shhh!”

“Thank you,” Headley said. “What I want you to know is, I personally assigned one of my own people to oversee a thorough inspection by qualified technicians of all the elevators in this building. All five were deemed to be in excellent working order. Based on the results of that inspection, I authorized resumption of services. I was told we were good to go. Where’s Chris? Chris Vallins?”

Barbara’s eyes darted around the room, searching him out. Finally, she spotted him, standing a few steps ahead of the middle elevator’s open doors. Next to him stood Glover Headley.

Vallins raised a hand. “Here,” he said.

Glover, as well as everyone else in the room, turned and looked at him venomously. So, they all appeared to be thinking, this is your fault .

“What did you find?” Headley asked.

“Find?” Vallins said. “Nothing.”

“You were here, yesterday?”

Vallins nodded. “That’s correct, Mr. Mayor. Today, too.”

Glover was shaking his head. He looked from Chris to his father and said, “Dad always uses the best people.”

The room fell silent.

“Uh, thank you, Glover,” Headley said. “But as I was saying, the building had been checked as recently—”

“And yet here we are, trapped at the top of this fucking monstrosity,” Glover said. “Look at all that’s happened on your watch.”

Valerie was moving through the room toward the mayor’s son. She said softly, so as only to be heard by a few, “This is not the place.”

Glover was not dissuaded, even when Vallins also started moving closer to him. To the crowd, he said, “By the way, is anyone here hiring? In case you haven’t heard, I’m no longer working for the mayor of New York City.”

There were murmurs throughout the room. Barbara felt a growing unease, that Glover’s performance was not unrelated to what was happening to all of them.

Headley spoke. “Son, just tell me. Why did you meet with that man?”

“What man?” Glover said.

“That elevator expert. Weeks ago.”

A collective gasp swept the room.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” the mayor’s son said. “I don’t know anything about that.”

Headley searched the room, spotted Barbara, and said, “You tried to tell me. That it was personal. I had no idea how personal.”