Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

She tapped Start on the timer app and held the phone up to show him.

Vallins smiled. “Don’t you go pausing it on me now, or I’m gonna be mad.”

“Okay.”

“We’ve got some time to kill while we wait for Richard to return,” he said to everyone. “Go ahead and enjoy yourselves, have a good time, enjoy the food.” He pursed this lips. “I’ll tell you this. If anyone’s offering, I wouldn’t say no to a shrimp.”

Jerry Bourque was hunched over, hands on his knees, looking down into the shaft where he’d lost his inhaler.

“Oh, fuck,” he said. But then he craned his neck around to get a peek up the shaft instead of down. “What the hell was that?”

“I heard four blasts,” Delgado said, standing beside him and briefly placing a comforting hand on his back. She felt it rise and fall in rhythm with the wheezes emanating from his throat.

She glanced back down the hallway, at the four apartment doors.

“I can’t believe no one came out to see what’s going on,” she said.

Bourque, slowly standing back up, said, “I read that people weren’t moving in until after the opening bash. And anyone who’s moved in already is probably at the party. Except for the top floor, the building’s probably deserted.”

Delgado slowly shook her head. “Some folks are gonna want their deposit back.” She took a phone from the purse slung over her shoulder, tapped it. “This is Detective Lois Delgado. I’m with Detective Jerry Bourque and we are on the sixty-fifth floor of the Top of the Park. The elevators have been disabled and we heard explosions that sound like they’re coming from the top. Send everything. ” She listened to the person on the other end, said, “Got it,” and then ended the call.

“What?” Bourque asked.

“They know. Tons of 911 calls coming in. Look, how are you doing? You sound like a tea kettle.”

Bourque took several breaths, listened to the air struggling to get through his windpipe.

“I’ll be okay. Come on, we have to get up there.”

Delgado shook her head adamantly. “No. No way. It’s like forty more stories. You take the stairs down, I’ll head up.”

“You’re not going up there alone. God knows what’s happened.”

“You’ll fucking kill yourself if you go up there.”

“No,” he said, and wheezed. “I can do it.”

“There’s backup coming. You don’t—”

“Yeah, well, we’re about sixty flights of stairs ahead of whoever’s coming next to help out.” He reached out and put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “It’s in my head. There’s—” and he stopped for another breath “—nothing actually wrong with me. I just... I just have to focus, and maybe I can get my wind back.”

“No, you have—”

“Quiz me,” he said.

“What?”

“Give me a category.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“It’s a trick my doctor gave me. I think about something else, other than my breathing. Concentrate on a subject. Like the city’s tallest buildings — although, right now, that’s probably a bad choice. You know, five Spielberg movies. Name all the different Star Trek series, or what years the Yankees have won the World Series, or—”

“I’ve got one,” Delgado said.

Bourque blinked. “Okay. Good. Hit me.”

“Name five Ryan Gosling movies.”

The corner of his mouth curled up. “Good one.”

Wheeze.

“Okay. Um, the Blade Runner sequel, whatever they called that.”

“That’s one.” Delgado held up one finger.

“And La La Land ,” he said.

Wheeze.

“That’s two. Three to go.”

“Uh... the one where he was driving the car.”

“I need a title,” Delgado said. “I’m cutting you some slack, missing the title of the Blade Runner sequel. But for this I want the title.”

Bourque closed his eyes for a second. “Oh, fuck, of course. Drive .”

“That’s three.”

“Okay,” he said.

Wheeze.

“There was that funny detective one he did, with Russell Crowe. Good Guys. No, The Nice Guys .”

“Well done,” Delgado said. “Just one more.”

“God, this is tough. Maybe if I dreamt about him every night like you do I’d—”

“No excuses,” Delgado said.

“Oh!” he said, snapping his fingers. “That funny superhero. Deadpool .”

Wheeze.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “That was Ryan Reynolds.”

“They’re not the same actor?”

Delgado’s eyes softened. “You’re still short of breath. I can hear it. It sounds like you’re getting worse. Jerry, how bad can this get? Without your puffer?”

“Bad,” he said. He had moved to a sitting position, his back to a short stretch of wall behind open elevator doors.

“We need to get you help. We need to get paramedics up here.”

“Too long,” he wheezed. “Too far up.”

“Well, shit, what do we do? Christ, you need mouth-to-mouth?”

He had just enough air to chuckle. “That sounds lovely, but I don’t think it’ll do anything.”

“There’s got to be something. Look, I don’t want to leave you here, but I’ve got to head up. If you don’t move, if you don’t exert yourself, can you get enough air into your lungs that you’re not going to fucking die on—”

They heard a scream.

It had come from one of the elevator shafts.

Bourque managed to shift his position in time to see, a heartbeat later, a tuxedoed man past the open door immediately to their right.

Going down. In a hurry.

Bourque and Delgado gasped, staring for several seconds into the space where the man had appeared for only a millisecond. If they had blinked, they would have missed him.

Together, they moved tentatively to the opening and peered over the edge, Delgado standing and Bourque on his knees. Then Delgado looked up, as if checking to see whether more were headed their way.

They both moved back from the opening and looked at each other, each taking several breaths as they waited for their pulses to stop racing.

“Hey,” said Delgado.

“What?” Bourque said.

“Listen.”

Bourque thought, Didn’t we just do this a minute ago?

He tilted his head, raised his chin, as if putting his ear to the wind.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“Me neither,” Delgado said.

He looked at her, confused. Then it hit him.

“The wheezing,” he said. He took several deep breaths without making a sound. “Son of a bitch.”

What had the doctor told him? About how a sudden shock might reverse the psychosomatic condition?

Just to be sure, he breathed in and out half a dozen more times, and felt no restrictions in his air passages.

“I know where the stairs are,” he said. “I’ve got the book.”

When the elevator doors opened onto the lobby of Top of the Park, Richard Headley was met with a crowd. Police officers, firefighters, and paramedics blocked his path.

“Out of my way!” he said. “Out of my way!”

As a few emergency workers stepped back to allow him to get off the elevator, others were getting on.

“No!” he said. “He’s controlling it! If you get on it, you’ll die!”

Once he was out of the car, and the others had exited, it began to go up.

Headley wasn’t waiting around to watch. He was already looking for the closest stairwell door.

“Mr. Mayor.” A woman’s voice. Headley ignored it as he spotted a sign pointing to the stairs.

“Mr. Mayor!” Sharper this time, but he still did not respond as he looked for a way back to the top.