Kitabı oku: «Elevator Pitch», sayfa 4

Yazı tipi:

Six

By late afternoon, just about everything anyone could want to know about the elevator accident at the Lansing Tower was available. Everything, that is, except for why it had happened.

Various news sources had posted brief profiles on the dead. They were:

Paula Chatsworth, twenty-two, single. Tribeca resident, originally from Vermont, worked for Webwrite, a firm that produced copy for firms working on their online presence. Paula had initially survived the elevator plunge, but later died at the hospital.

Stuart Bland, thirty-eight. Lived with his mother in Bushwick. He’d held a variety of odd jobs, none for very long, including a stint at a dry-cleaning operation. That, police speculated, might have been where he acquired a FedEx ID. The courier company reported that he was not, and never had been, an employee, which got the police wondering what he was up to. Found on the floor of the elevator was a script with his name attached. Initial speculation was that Bland hoped to meet with someone in the building to discuss the project, although there was no record of him having made an appointment.

Sherry D’Agostino, thirty-nine. Vice president of creative at Cromwell Entertainment. Married to Wall Street stockbroker Elliott Milne. Mother of two children: a daughter, five, and a son, eight. She lived in Brooklyn Heights. “An immense loss,” said Cromwell president Jason Cromwell, “both personally and professionally. Sherry had an unerring eye for talent in all fields and was not only a vital member of our team, but a close, personal friend. We are beyond devastated.”

Barton Fieldgate, sixty-four. Estate lawyer at Templeton Flynn and Fieldgate. Married forty years, father of five. Lived in an $8 million brownstone on West Ninety-Fifth. Said Michael Templeton: “That something like this could happen, in our own building, is unimaginable. Barton was a friend and colleague of the highest order. He will be missed.” There was also a report that the firm was already in the process of suing the owners of the Lansing Tower for failure to maintain the elevators properly.

The cause of the accident was under investigation by multiple agencies, including the fire department and the city body that oversaw the licensing and operation of elevators and escalators. New York, it was pointed out, had thirty-nine inspectors to check on some seventy thousand of them.

Richard Headley was flopped on the office couch in Gracie Mansion, the official New York mayoral residence, jacket off, feet on the coffee table with his shoes still on, tie loosened, and remote in hand. He was looking at the large screen bolted to the wall, flipping back and forth between the various six o’clock news reports. He’d decided to stay awhile on NY1.

They had a few seconds of his arrival at the Lansing Tower, then a clip of him conferring briefly with Morris Lansing, the major New York developer—and long-time friend of the mayor’s—who owned the skyscraper.

The door opened and Valerie Langdon walked in, moving quickly so as not to obstruct the mayor’s view of the news.

“Get me Morris,” Headley said, muting the TV and handing her his cell phone. “I want to see how he’s doing.” He glanced at his aide. “You know who he is now?”

“I know he gave half a million to your campaign,” Valerie said. “It slipped my mind before.” She added, “You have a lot of donors.”

Valerie tapped the screen and put the phone to her ear. She spoke to someone, said she had the mayor on the line for Lansing, then looked at Headley. “They’re getting him.”

While he waited, Headley continued to watch the news. They were on to another story, out of Boston. A reporter stood out front of a building Headley recognized as Faneuil Hall. When he saw the word “bomb” in the crawl he turned the volume back on.

“—four injured when what police are calling an explosive device of some kind went off inside the market. Of the injured, one is reported in serious condition. Police believe the device was left in a backpack inside a trash container in one of the food court areas. The incident brought back memories of the horrific Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, in which three people were killed and hundreds injured. If this most recent event had been during the busier lunch hour period, it’s very likely more people would have been injured and possibly killed. The Marathon bombers, two brothers, were motivated by Islamist extremism, but this event may find its roots far closer to home. It’s similar to other acts linked to the domestic extremist group known as the Flyovers, although authorities have not yet confirmed that the group is involved, despite some vague claims of responsibility on Twitter that—”

“Richard,” Valerie said.

He muted the set again as she handed his phone back to him.

“Morris?” he said.

“Hello, Richard,” Lansing said.

“We didn’t have long to talk today. I wanted to check in, see how you were, see what else they’ve learned.”

“It’s horrible,” Lansing said. “Beyond horrible. Sherry was a friend. We were out to her place on Long Island three weeks ago. And Barton was a good man. The other two, I have no idea who they were. This one guy, posing as a courier, that sounds fishy to me. Someone at security is going to be fired, I can promise you.”

“If anybody can get into the building that easily, yeah, you’re going to want to look into it. But is there anything that connects that guy to the elevator malfunction?”

“Well, no, not at this time,” Morris Lansing said. “They don’t know what the fuck happened there. There’s so many safeguards built into the damn things, but once in a while, they still let you down. Jesus, no pun intended.”

“I just wanted you to know that if there’s anything you need, all you have to do is call,” Headley said. “The office of the mayor is here to help you in any way it can.”

There was a pause from Lansing’s end.

“Morris?”

“Yeah, well, about that,” Lansing said. “There’s gonna be lawsuits comin’ outta my ass on this one. Fieldgate’s firm is already making noises. But we’ve got our own ax to grind. We’re going to be turning our sights on the city.”

“Christ, Morris.”

“It’s nothing personal, but damn it. I don’t intend to take the fall—shit, there I go again—the blame for this. We’re seeing a major liability issue for the city here. Whatever was wrong with that elevator the city inspectors should have caught.”

Now it was Lansing’s turn to go quiet.

“You must believe these things can’t work both ways,” Headley said through gritted teeth. “You don’t think elevator inspectors did due diligence in your building? Maybe what I should do is send every fucking inspector—food, air quality, rodent infestation—your way and do a complete inspection from roof to basement. And not just in that building, but every other one you’ve got across the city. That seems to be what you’re asking for here.”

“Richard, for God’s—”

“That’s Mr. Mayor to you, you fuckin’ ass pimple.”

“No wonder so many people call you Dick,” Morris said.

Headley ended the call and tossed the phone onto the coffee table. Valerie looked at him expectantly, but he did not fill her in.

There was a light rap on the door and Valerie went to answer it. Chris Vallins strode in with a touch screen tablet in his left hand, his right tucked casually into his pocket.

Headley looked up but said nothing.

“Mr. Mayor, something you might want to see,” Chris said, handing him the tablet. “Matheson’s latest column just dropped.”

Headley grabbed a pair of reading glasses that were sitting on the coffee table and slipped them on. The headline on the page, “Headley Takes Me for a Ride,” was enough to make him wince.

“Christ almighty,” he said. He tossed the tablet in the direction of the table, but missed. Chris didn’t wait for the mayor to pick it up. He bent over and got it himself.

“Give me the gist,” Headley said.

Chris said, “She tells about the offer. To write your bio. That she’d get mid–six figures to do it. That she’d have to take a break from Manhattan Today. Implying this was your way of getting her to stop writing critical stories of your administration. That you were buying her off. Bribing her, essentially.”

Headley said, “We deny the whole thing. It’s a total fabrication.”

Chris slowly shook his head. “She quotes everything that was said in the car so perfectly I’m betting she recorded it.”

“Shit,” Valerie said. “I remember her doing something with her phone just before she got into the car. I thought she was just turning it off.”

Headley slumped further into the couch. “Glover,” he said under his breath.

Neither Chris nor Valerie said a word.

Headley, feigning a cheerful tone, said, “Bring her into the loop, Glover says. Get her on our side. Throw enough money at her that she’ll jump at the chance.” Headley shook his head, then managed a wry smile. “I guess this means she’s not taking the job.”

“Nothing against Glover,” Valerie said, “but you know I advised against this from the beginning.”

“I know,” Headley said, grimacing.

“Matheson’s piece also raises the question of why you want to do a book. It encourages speculation that you’re giving serious consideration to running for something besides reelection for mayor, before you’re ready to tip your hand. That was the other reason why I didn’t want to pursue this matter with Matheson.”

“I shouldn’t have listened to him,” Headley said. “I should have known better.”

“At the risk of stepping over the line, sir,” Valerie said tentatively, “I’m not sure Glover has enough experience to be advising you on these sorts of matters. He understands you better than any of us, of course, but where he’s most valuable is in the data mining end of things. Analyzing trends, surveying.” She shrugged. “There’s nobody in the whole building who can help me with a computer problem the way he can. But when it comes to advising you on matters like—”

Headley raised a silencing hand and Valerie went quiet.

Chris said, “There’s a bit at the end of the column.”

Headley gave him a pained look, expecting even more bad news.

“No, it’s not about you,” he said. “Someone Matheson knew was killed in that elevator accident.”

The mayor was about to look relieved, but quickly adopted a look of moderate concern. “Sherry D’Agostino, I bet. Everybody knew Sherry.” He managed a wry grin. “I even went out with her a few times, back in the day.”

Valerie looked slightly pained, as though only Headley could boast about dating someone who’d recently died.

“No,” Chris said. “Paula somebody. She’d interned at Manhattan Today.”

“Oh,” Headley said. There didn’t seem to be much else to say. He looked at Valerie, then Chris, then back to Valerie. “Can you give us the room?” he asked her.

She looked momentarily taken aback, but said nothing as she headed for the door and closed it behind her.

“Chris,” he said, “have a seat.”

The man sat.

“Chris, in the time you’ve been with us, you’ve shown yourself to be very valuable. One part bodyguard, one part detective, one part political strategist.” He chuckled. “And whenever Glover isn’t here to fix my printer, you know just what to do.”

Chris smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re good at finding things out. Turns out not all the great hackers are teenagers living in their parents’ basements. You’ve been very helpful for someone in my position.”

“Of course,” he said.

“I might not be in this office today if it weren’t for you.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Mr. Mayor.”

“Don’t be modest. You found that woman, talked her into coming forward, telling her story to the Daily News. Wouldn’t be sitting here now if she hadn’t told the world how my opponent forced him self on her when she was fourteen and he was forty. Even dug up the emails he wrote to his lawyer where he as much as admitted it.”

Chris only smiled.

Headley grinned. “Thank Christ you weren’t digging into my own history.”

Chris shook his head dismissively. “I guess if someone’s looking hard enough, they’ll find a few skeletons in anyone’s closet.”

“Yeah, well, I might need a walk-in closet for all of mine. But I believe you understand where I’m coming from, that I want to make a difference. I’ve been an asshole for much of my life, Chris, but I hope I’m doing what I can to make up for that now.”

Chris nodded, waiting.

Headley’s face went dark. “I’m worried about a couple of things.”

“Yes, sir?”

“The first is … Glover.”

“He’s eager to please you. He means well. He wants your approval, sir.”

“Yeah, well, that may be. But his instincts … just let me know if you see him doing something particularly stupid, would you?”

“Of course. And the other thing?”

“Barbara.”

Chris nodded slowly.

“Let’s face it. She’s good at what she does. People feed her stuff. She has good sources. Some working right here at City Hall, people who’ve not been loyal to me. She’s a pit bull. If she bites down on your leg you’ve as good as lost it.”

“I understand your frustration,” Chris said.

“If there were some way to get her off my back, some way to neutralize her …”

Chris was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about here, sir.”

Headley looked at him, puzzled at first, then horrified. “Christ, you didn’t think I meant …”

Chris gave him a blank stare. “Of course not.”

“Jesus, no.” He shook his head. “No, I’m thinking more … about those skeletons in the closet. If there were a way to discredit her somehow.” The mayor put a hand to the back of his neck and tried to squeeze out the tension, like he was wringing a sponge dry.

“Let me nose around,” Chris said.

“Good, that’s good,” the mayor said. “You had me worried there for a minute.”

Chris Vallins tilted his head to one side, as if to say, Yes?

“That you might have thought, even for a second, that I was suggesting we push the woman out a window or something.”

“Forgive me,” Chris said. “I know you’d never hurt a soul.”

Seven

Jerry Bourque’s first stop on the way home had been an art supplies place down on Canal Street. Then he’d gone into a grocery store with hot table service and filled a container with a few steamed vegetables, lasagna, a dollop of mashed potatoes, two chicken fingers, and some shrimp chow mein. The fact that some of these items did not typically go together did not bother Bourque. They charged by the weight of the container, so you could throw in a bit of whatever you liked.

As he came through the door of his fifth-floor, two-bedroom apartment in the Lower East Side, he tossed his keys in a bowl on a table in the hall, then went into the kitchen. He took his phone from his jacket pocket and set it, and his food, on the counter. He placed the bag from the art store on the already cluttered kitchen table. He slid out ten sheets of white illustration board, each twenty by thirty inches. He stacked them neatly at one end of the table by several small, screw-top bottles of art paint, a selection of box cutter–type knives, a metal ruler, some brushes and pencils, several three-foot-long strips of balsa wood, a glue gun, and a large, eighteen-inch-square paper cutter with an arm strong enough to slice through the art board. Or his fingers, if he wasn’t careful.

Fingers.

He tossed his sport jacket and the book filled with photos of old New York onto his bed in the bedroom. The other book, about the nearly completed Manhattan skyscraper, he set on the kitchen counter. He took his dinner out of a bag, opened the lid of the rigid cardboard container, and took a fork out of the cutlery drawer. He picked up a remote to turn on a small television that hung from the underside of the cabinetry.

He went through the stations until he landed on a local newscast, took a bottle of beer from the fridge, then leaned up against the counter and ate his dinner while standing. There’d been a truck rollover on the Van Wyck, spilling a load of bananas across two lanes. Four were dead in an elevator accident. The mayor was fighting allegations of giving a big city contract to a friend.

“So what else is new,” Bourque said, his mouth full of chow mein.

Some nut set off a bomb in Boston. England was still being battered by high winds.

Bourque finished his meal, put the food-stained container into a garbage bin under the sink and his fork into the dishwasher, next to three other forks, the only other items in the appliance. He took five minutes and looked at the pictures in the skyscraper book.

“Wow,” he said to himself several times.

Then he went into his bedroom to take off his tie and dress shirt and suit pants. He tossed the shirt into a bag that would be dropped off at the dry cleaner at week’s end. The pants he lay carefully on the bed, then took a gripper hanger from the closet, clamped it to the cuffs, and hung them up. He stripped off his socks and tossed them in a laundry basket. Come Sunday morning, he’d fill his pocket with quarters, head to the basement laundry room, and do a wash.

Now, dressed only in boxers and a T-shirt, he went back into the kitchen and sat at the table. Next to the paints was a twelve-inch metal ruler, which Bourque used to draw several long, straight lines on the cardboard sheets, then several small boxes in a grid formation.

Standing, he sliced off some of the cardboard sheets with the oversized paper cutter, then with the box cutter lightly scored the art board along some of the pencil lines, allowing him to bend the cardboard to a right angle without separating the pieces. Sitting back down, he cut some strips of the balsa wood to match the length of the scored lines, applied some hot, drippy adhesive from the glue gun, and used them to brace the corners. The tip of his index finger touched some of the hot glue.

“Shit!” he said. He peeled the set glue off and sucked briefly on the finger.

He spent the next hour making three rectangular boxes of different sizes, painting them various shades of gray, then detailing the perfectly arranged boxes on the sides, making them look like windows. At the bottom edge, he drew detailed entrances and oversized windows. He did all of this without drawings or plans or blueprints of any kind. What he saw in his head he turned into three dimensions.

One of the purposes of this exercise, beyond the fact that he just liked doing it, was to push out of his head the events of the day. Some evenings it worked, some evenings it did not.

This was one of those nights when it did not.

Bourque’s mind kept coming back to the body with the smashed-in face on the High Line. After his appointment with Bert, he and Delgado had paid a visit to the coroner’s office. The naked body, minus fingertips, yielded at least one clue that might lead to an identification. On the dead man’s right shoulder was a two-inch-long tattoo of a coiled cobra.

A DNA sample had been taken. A search of his clothes yielded nothing helpful. No credit card or time-stamped gas bar receipts had been found in the dead man’s pockets. His jeans and top were cheap off-the-rack items from Old Navy.

Bourque had taken another look at the socks. They looked relatively new; the area around the big toes did not show signs of an imminent hole. And the corpse’s toenails had been due for a trim. Bourque had heard back from the bookstore and been told the shark socks were made somewhere overseas, sold online and in countless stores across the city, but if he still cared, they had sold twelve pairs in the last month. Six were put on credit, six were paid for with cash. Bourque took down the credit card information.

His one pleasant memory of the visit to the coroner’s office had been standing close enough to Delgado to smell her hair. Whatever shampoo she used had a scent—mango?—that was strong enough to overrule the lab’s stench of bleach and antiseptic.

Bourque forced the investigation from the front of his mind as he held out at arm’s length the first completed building of the evening. He turned it around and admired it. If he noticed a spot where the paint was thin, he gave it a touch-up.

“Okay,” he said to himself. “Installation time.”

He got up from the kitchen table and opened the door to the second bedroom. But there was no bed, or dresser, or even a chair. There were four metal card tables, arranged into a large square roughly six by six feet, and almost entirely covered in boxes similar to the ones Bourque had just made. They were arranged in a grid, with space between to replicate streets.

Bourque placed that evening’s effort onto one of the tables. He moved some of the existing ones to make way for the new one. He viewed his work from various angles. Some of the boxes soared as tall as four feet, others only a foot or so. Many were recognizable. There were crude interpretations of the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

The model city was in no way exact. The landmark structures he was re-creating were, in his version, within steps of each other, rather than scattered across the city. This was more an appreciation of the city, not a replica.

Bourque leaned up against one wall and crossed his arms, admiring his handiwork. At first, his gaze took in the project as a whole, but then his focus narrowed on one spot near the edge.

He stepped away from the wall, knelt down so that his eye was at the model’s street level. He studied the street in front of his recreation of the Waldorf Astoria.

His airway began to constrict.

If only I hadn’t moved. If only I hadn’t dived out of the way.

The drops.

He breathed in, then out, heard the wheeze.

He wasn’t expecting it to happen now. Here, at home, working on his project. Away from people with bashed-in faces and missing fingertips. But then he had to look at the sidewalk in front of the Waldorf Astoria.

Bourque immediately thought of grabbing the inhaler from his sport jacket in the other room, but then remembered what his doctor had suggested.

“Okay, Bert, we’ll give it a try.” He closed his eyes and concentrated.

Find a category.

Got it. The city’s tallest structures, starting with the highest.

Aloud, he said, “One World Trade Center. Top of the Park. 432 Park Avenue. 30 Hudson Yards. Empire State Building.” He stopped himself.

Could he include Top of the Park? The luxury apartment building on Central Park North, the subject of his new book, didn’t officially open until later this week. Erected between Malcolm X Boulevard, otherwise known as Lenox Avenue, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, or Seventh Avenue, the building came in at ninety-eight stories, making it two floors taller than the astonishing, and relatively recent, 432 Park Avenue, which towered over Central Park looking like some monolithic, vertical heat grate.

Did it really matter for the purposes of this exercise? He was still wheezing. He continued with his list.

“Uh, Bank of America Tower. 3 World Trade Center, uh, 53 West Fifty-Third. New York Times. No, wait. Chrysler Building, then the New York Times Building.”

The tightening in his chest was not easing off.

“Fuck it,” he said.

He went into the other bedroom, picked up his jacket, and reached into the left inside pocket.

The inhaler was not there.

“What the …”

He always tucked it into the left pocket. But maybe, just once …

The inhaler was not in the right pocket, either. Nor was it in either of the outside pockets.

Bourque felt his lungs struggling harder for air. The wheezing became more pronounced.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he whispered.

Had he taken the inhaler out of his jacket when he first got home? He went back to the kitchen to check. It wasn’t on the kitchen table or on the counter by the sink. Bourque returned to the bedroom, wondering if the inhaler had slipped out of his coat when he had thrown it onto the bed.

He got down on his hands and knees, patting beneath the bed where he could not see.

“Come on,” he wheezed.

He found nothing.

In his head, he had an image of a snake coiling itself around his windpipe. Like that cobra tattoo on the deceased.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. If he didn’t find his inhaler soon, he was going to have to use his last breaths talking to a 911 operator.

And that would be if he could find his phone. Where the hell had he left his phone? He hadn’t noticed it in his jacket pockets as he searched for the inhaler. Had he left it in the kitchen?

He started to stand, and as his eyes were level with the top of the bed, he spotted something. Something small and dark, just under the edge of the pillow.

He grabbed the inhaler, uncapped it. He exhaled, weakly, then put the device into his mouth and, at the moment he squeezed it, drew in a breath. Held it for ten seconds. He breathed out, then prepared for a second hit.

He wrapped his mouth around the inhaler again. Squeezed. Started counting.

His cell phone rang. Out in the kitchen. He got to his feet, had the phone in his hand by the time he’d counted to four.

The name DELGADO came up on the screen. Lois Delgado.

Five, six, seven …

Delgado had not given up on him yet. Bourque had his finger ready to take the call.

Eight, nine, ten.

Bourque exhaled, tapped the screen. “Yeah, hey,” he said, holding the phone with one hand and gripping the inhaler with the other.

“It’s me,” Delgado said. “You okay? Can barely hear you.”

He got some more air into his lungs. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Anyway, sorry to call so late.”

“It’s okay. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a tip for you.”