Elevator Pitch

Fifty-Six

No elevators plummeted Thursday morning.

No bombs exploded.

But the day was young.

Fifty-Seven

Eugene Clement, seated one table over from where they were in the hotel dining room the day before, asked, “Are you all packed?”

Estelle didn’t look up from her menu. “Yes. I’m good to go.”

“I’ll get us a car to the airport around ten,” he said. “I’ll have someone bring our bags down.”

“That sounds fine,” she said.

Things were less frosty than they’d been twenty-four hours earlier. They were speaking. Current events had brought about a thaw in relations.

After Estelle had toured the Guggenheim the day before, she’d crossed Fifth Avenue and strolled through Central Park for a couple of hours. It was while wandering the park’s paths that she heard people talking about something to do with elevators. She went onto her phone and read about the crisis engulfing the city. It was then that she suppressed the animosity she was feeling toward her husband and called to ask if he knew what was happening, to warn him not to use the hotel’s elevators. Or any other elevators in the city, for that matter.

“Good thing we’re on one of the lower floors,” he said.

So that evening they walked over to Pera, both ordering the lamb chops — their last New York dinner before heading home — and that evening, Clement even made love to her.

The things you had to do sometimes.

Clement still had another matter to take care of before they departed. One more meeting.

“I think I’ll have the eggs benny,” Estelle said.

“Sounds good. If the waiter comes while I’m away, make it two. And would you ask him to bring more cream for the coffee?”

As he started to push back his chair, she asked, “Where are you going?”

“Where do you think I’m going?”

“You haven’t even had a second cup yet,” she said. “You already have to go?”

“I’d love to discuss my urinary tract with you, dear, but could it wait till I get back?”

He strode off.

Clement exited the dining room, crossed the lobby, then entered a hallway around the corner from the elevators. He pushed open the door to the men’s room. Standing at the last in a row of sinks was Bucky, leaning in close to the mirror, trying to pluck a hair from his nostril.

Bucky turned and offered the hand he’d just been working with to his boss, who declined to take it.

Bucky grinned as he withdrew his hand. “Sorry.”

“We leave at eleven,” Clement said.

“Sure, that’s fine,” Bucky said. “So you won’t be here for the next ones.”

“No, but I’ve been thinking, maybe the timing’s not right. We’ve been overshadowed. I think we should hold off for a while, or try a new location. There’s too much else going on here. Everyone’s on high alert.”

Bucky frowned. “I’m ready to go. I wanted to talk locations. What do you think about a subway station in rush hour? Or maybe a department store?”

Clement motioned Bucky over to the far wall. They each leaned a shoulder into it as they continued to confer.

“Listen,” Clement said, “you’ve done good work. And there’s more to be done. But it’s time to take this show someplace else, cities we haven’t hit before.”

Bucky couldn’t hide his disappointment. Clement offered a regretful smile. While he didn’t want to shake the man’s hand, a pat on the shoulder seemed appropriate. As he lay his hand there, he said, “We’ll find a way to talk when I get home.”

“Okay, that’s a good—”

“I knew it,” someone said.

They both turned. Estelle Clement was standing just inside the door of the men’s room.

“Jesus Christ,” Eugene said, taking his hand off Bucky’s shoulder. “You can’t be in here.”

She took five slow steps into the room. She glanced, briefly, at her reflection in the massive mirror that ran along the wall.

“It all makes sense now,” she said. “I think I’ve known all along. At least, for a while. The... lack of interest. How distant you’ve been. I... didn’t want to see the signs.”

“Shit,” said Bucky.

“How long?” Estelle asked, looking at her husband. “How long has it been going on? Is he the first, or just the latest?”

Clement was on the verge of a smile. “Wait, what is it you think—”

“I hid down the hall,” she said. “Yesterday. This man came out seconds after you did. The same man I’d seen before. Too many times for it to be a coincidence.” She shook her head sadly, then eyed her husband pityingly. “It’s all so pathetic. An entire hotel at your disposal, and still you meet in here. Is there some thrill attached to that? Tell me. I really want to know. God, it’s such a stereotype. Such a cliché.”

“Dear, you’ve misunderstood,” Clement said. “Bucky here—”

At the mention of his name, Bucky cleared his throat and gave Clement a disapproving look. Clement, realizing his mistake, paused to start again. But he didn’t get a chance.

“I kept wondering, why New York?” Estelle said, her voice shaking. “At first I thought, maybe you were trying to make a point. That it was some bizarre Flyovers statement, walking into the enemy camp, looking — I don’t know — for some kind of dialogue or confrontation or whatever. Then,” and she suddenly laughed, a short, almost hysterical hoot, “I even wondered, was it you? Did you make those elevators crash? Hire some genius to do it?”

“That’s absurd, Estelle,” Clement said.

“Well, I know that now!” she said. “I almost wish that was what you’d been up to.” She touched the corner of her eye to catch a tear. “It would certainly be less humiliating than this.” Her lip quivered. “God, I feel like such a fool. How long, Eugene. How many other men?”

Behind her, a man came striding into the room, already tugging at the top of his zipper. But he hit the brakes when he saw Estelle, then spun around and left.

Clement began to laugh.

“Oh, this is too much,” he said, and the laughs turned into guffaws. “Really, really, this is beyond outrageous.”

He looked at Bucky, clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder again and continued laughing. Bucky, however, did not see the humor in the situation. He pushed Eugene’s hand away and started heading for the door.

Estelle sidestepped to block his path. When he attempted to dodge around her, she moved again.

“Bucky, is it?” she asked. “Are you married, too? Does your wife know she’s married to a queer?”

“For fuck’s sake,” he said, glancing back at Clement. “Mr. Clement, with all respect, you need to straighten out your lady here.”

Clement nodded. “Estelle, I can tell you, in all honesty, that I am not having an affair with Bucky.” A short laugh. “If I was thinking of switching teams, it’d be with someone a little better looking.” He grinned at Bucky. “No offense intended.”

Bucky looked increasingly distressed.

“Then what the hell is going on?” Estelle demanded.

“Bucky here is... a business associate.”

“Oh, please, Eugene. Don’t treat me like a moron. What the hell business would anyone conduct in here?”

Bucky said, “Mr. Clement, I don’t think you should get into—”

“Bucky here is my number one... man in the field. An operative, you might say. He—”

“Is he one of your followers?” Estelle asked. “Goes around blowing things up?”

Clement blinked. Bucky said, “Shit.”

“You think I don’t know?” Estelle said, looking at her husband. Her voice rose. “The thing is, I don’t know which is worse. If he’s your boyfriend, or one of your bombers?”

“Lady — Mrs. Clement — you need to shut the fuck up,” Bucky said.

Clement shot him a look. “Don’t speak to my wife that way, Bucky.”

Bucky looked at Clement as though he’d never set eyes on him before. He was seeing him in a new light. No longer the mentor. Now a threat.

“Or maybe he’s both,” Estelle said, not shutting up, and definitely not getting any quieter. She glared at her husband and shrieked, “Maybe makes your bombs, and then he gets down on his knees and—”

That was when Bucky shot her.

He’d quickly taken the silencer-equipped Glock from where he’d tucked it into the back of his jeans, hidden under his jacket, pointed it at Estelle and pulled the trigger.

The bullet caught her in the throat, passed through her neck and struck the closest urinal, shattering porcelain and spilling the deodorizing urinal puck to the floor.

Estelle went down.

Clement screamed “NOOOOO!” and, momentarily paralyzed by what he’d seen, looked at Bucky, eyes wide, mouth open.

“What in God’s—”

Bucky shot Clement in the chest. He staggered back a step, looked down disbelievingly at the blossom of red on his shirt. He dropped to one knee.

Bucky put another bullet into him, this one into the forehead. Clement went down.

“I’m real sorry, Mr. Clement,” Bucky said. “Especially this being your anniversary and all.” He tucked the gun back into his pants, straightened his jacket, and walked out of the men’s room.

Fifty-Eight

Barbara threw back the covers and padded quietly on her bare feet to the kitchen.

There was a pounding in her head demanding coffee, but it was calling out for painkillers even more insistently. Barbara opened the cupboard, tapped out two pills from a container, popped them into her mouth, and washed them down with a handful of tap water.

She put a paper cone into the coffee maker and spooned in twice as much ground dark roast as she usually put in each morning. Once the water had been added, she pushed the button and waited for the first drops of coffee to appear. The pot could not fill quickly enough. She glanced at the four empty wine bottles on the counter. She was, to put it mildly, very hung over.

When the coffee was ready, she filled a mug and stirred in some sweetener. Then she stepped quietly back into the bedroom and sat down gingerly on one side of the bed.

“Hey,” Barbara whispered. “I made some coffee.”

Arla, sleeping on her stomach, had her face buried in the pillow. She made a low, barely audible grunting noise, then slowly rolled over, her hair dragging across her face.

Blinking several times as she adjusted to the light coming in through the window, Arla said, “I feel like a piece of shit that’s been stuffed inside another piece of shit.”

“Join the club,” Barbara said. “You want some Tylenol or aspirin or anything? You want it, I’ve got it.”

Arla started to pull herself up, her back resting against the headboard. As she reached for the mug, she said, “Let me see if this does the trick first.”

She glanced at the cell phone on the bedside table, picked it up. “It’s dead. What time is it?”

“Nearly ten,” Barbara said.

Arla snorted. “Looks like I’m gonna be late for work.”

Barbara said nothing. With her free hand, Arla patted her mother’s knee. “Joke.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that enough.” Arla took a sip of coffee, closed her eyes briefly. “Bliss. You did it just right. What time did we finally fall asleep?”

“Around five, I think,” Barbara said.

“God.”

“Let me get a cup. I’ll be right back.”

Barbara slipped out to the kitchen, filled a mug for herself, and returned. Arla hadn’t moved. Barbara went around to the opposite side of the bed and got in it, back to the headboard, next to her daughter.

“I haven’t got much in the way of breakfast,” she said apologetically. “Does Uber Eats deliver this early?”

“I need a hangover breakfast bad,” Arla said. She glanced down at herself, took in the blue T-shirt and white pajama bottoms she was wearing. “Thanks for the PJs,” she said.

“No problem,” Barbara said, her shoulder touching Arla’s. It was, she thought, the greatest feeling in the world.

“It’s all really fucked up, isn’t it?” Arla said.

“That’s an understatement.”

“The mayor of New York is my father.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s never known anything about me.”

“That’s right.”

“And Glover is my half brother.”

“Yup.”

“And he’s never known about me, either.”

“That’s right.” Barbara paused. “And that’s all on me.”

Arla ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup. “I wonder if that’s why I was feeling this, I don’t know, kind of attraction. To Glover. Maybe I saw something of myself in him. We were connecting on some genetic, sibling-like level.”

“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?”

Fifty-Nine

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.

When Agent Geller and her husband went out to dinner, that was how they did it. One at a time. You didn’t want the waiter to think you’d walked out. You didn’t want to lose your table.

Oh, well, Agent Geller thought. When you have to go, you have to go.

Two minutes went by. Then three. Neither Clement nor his wife returned.

Shit, Agent Geller thought. The Clements knew they were being watched, and had given them the slip. They weren’t coming back to their table. They’d found a back way out of the hotel. How was she going to explain this to her—

And then she heard the scream.

A man’s scream.

“NOOOOO!”

She started running down the hallway toward the washrooms.

A man came charging out of the men’s. Midthirties, scraggly hair. He was tucking something into the back of his jeans. Agent Geller was pretty sure what it was.

She looked at him, raised her weapon, and barked: “Stop! FBI!”

The man looked at her, wide-eyed, then reached for the gun he’d slipped under his belt. Before he could raise it, Agent Geller fired.

The man’s body spun so quickly that the gun flew out of his hand. He hit the hallway floor. Writhing, he looked for the gun, which was some ten feet away. He started crawling toward it, leaving a red, bloody streak on the hotel floor.

But within a second Agent Geller was standing between him and the weapon.

“Do. Not. Move.”

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Shit, shit.”

Blood continued to drain out of him. The bullet had gone into his right shoulder.

“The Clements,” she said. It was a question.

“She shouldn’t... have come into the men’s,” the man said, struggling to get the words out. “You’re... not supposed to do that.”

Sixty

Mayor Richard Headley was about to come out of the stairwell on the twelfth floor of an East Ninetieth Street apartment building, clutching a takeout bag from Brew Who, a coffee shop on Lexington. Inside the bag were a granola parfait, a butter brioche, and an Americano.

Waiting in the hallway for him was a camera crew from NY1. They were posted outside the apartment door of Dorothy Stinson, eighty-two. Dorothy was standing in the open doorway, waiting for the mayor’s arrival. She looked as excited as a young girl waiting for Santa to come down the chimney.

Valerie Langdon and Chris Vallins were huddled behind the news crews. At the sound of an incoming text, Valerie glanced down at her phone. It was Glover, who was coming up the stairs with the mayor.

One floor away.

“They’re almost here,” Valerie whispered to the cameraman.

The news reporter holding the mike had already done her setup. She’d interviewed Dorothy, who told the story of how every normal morning she took the elevator down to the lobby, then walked to Brew Who for her treat. She’d been doing this daily for five years, ever since her husband had died. He used to make her breakfast every morning, and after his passing, she’d decided she wasn’t going to start doing it for herself.

She might have dared to walk down the twelve flights to the lobby, although this gave her pause, given that she’d had a couple of tripping incidents in the past year. But even if she could get to street level without incident, there was no way she could the climb twelve flights back up to her place. One of Dorothy’s neighbors had written about her situation on the City Hall website, and it was Glover who’d spotted it.

Despite Headley’s renewed reluctance to embrace Glover’s suggestions, he thought this one was worth a shot.

“Let’s do it.”

As Valerie and Chris huddled, waiting for the mayor to appear, Valerie whispered, “Has he seemed a bit... off lately?”

Chris leaned in close to her so as not to be heard by the camera crew. “A little, maybe.”

“I noticed it after Matheson left yesterday,” she said. “He seemed, I don’t know, preoccupied.”

“There is kind of a lot going on,” Vallins said. “Could be—”

He stopped talking when he saw the stairway door open at the end of the hall. Headley emerged, all smiles. He walked briskly to Dorothy, giving her a hug, and then handing her the bag with a Brew Who logo on the side. A few seconds later, Glover entered the hall.

Dorothy giggled. “It’s not every day the mayor pays a visit. Won’t you come in?”

“Love to,” Headley said, following her into the small apartment. The TV crew slipped in after him.

Dorothy didn’t have so much a kitchen as a nook. The apartment, except for a bathroom off to one side, was a studio. A bed on the far wall, a couple of chairs and a television, and just inside the main door, a short counter, hot plate, and cupboards. Dorothy directed the mayor to a small, badly chipped, Formica-topped table and two padded chairs with aluminum framing. They both sat.

“This is so kind of you,” she said.

Valerie and Chris and Glover huddled in the doorway, behind the cameras, watching.

“I wish I could do this for everyone in the city like yourself, Dorothy,” he said. “And I want you to know that we’re going to have everything back to normal very, very soon.”

She reached into the bag and took out the granola parfait, then two cups. A slender string and a tiny label was hanging from under the lid on one.

“Mine’s the tea,” the mayor said.

“This looks delightful,” she said. “How much do I owe you?”

Headley chuckled. “It’s on me.”

She peered down into the bag at the one remaining item. It was the butter brioche, wrapped in wax paper. “My favorite,” she said. “But I usually start with the parfait, while the yogurt is still cold.”

“Makes sense to me,” Headley said. A plastic spoon had been tossed into the bag. He handed it to her.

“So, Dorothy, how have you been managing through the crisis?” he asked. He already knew the answer. Dorothy had been interviewed ahead of time by the staff, and her answers passed along to the mayor.

“My landlord, Janos, is checking out the elevators right now. If he gets them up and running soon, I think I’m going to go out for lunch.”

“Sounds like a good man,” Headley said as Dorothy dug into her parfait. She slid a spoonful of yogurt, strawberry, and granola into her mouth.

The mayor took the lid off his tea, lifted out the bag, and let it drain against the top edge of the cup before setting it on the lid. “We think just about every elevator in the city will be back in service by the afternoon. Everyone’s really pulled together to—”

“Oh my God!” Dorothy said.

She had her spoon back in the yogurt and had unearthed something small and dark that appeared to have tiny legs and a tail attached to it.

It was a dead mouse.

Dorothy started to make gagging sounds, turned away from the table, and vomited onto the floor.

“You can be sure we’re going to be taking this up with Brew Who,” Glover said, trailing after his father as they came out of the apartment building, headed for his limo. “This is outrageous. I’ll call the health department, get the inspectors in there, shut them down.”

Valerie was already in the back of the car, phone in hand. The two TV stations covering the event had posted the video within minutes. By the time the mayor had raced down twelve flights of stairs, it was already trending.

“How bad is it?” Headley asked as he got in the car.

“It’ll blow over,” Valerie said. “You can make a joke about it later. I don’t see that you have any choice.”

“It’ll be on every late-night show,” Headley said.

Glover came around the other side of the car and opened the door.

“No,” his father said, raising a hand.

“What?” Glover said.

“Find your own way back,” he said. “This stunt was all your idea. I never learn.”

“Dad!” he said. “It should have worked. How could I know there was a mouse in her yogurt? You think I put it there?”

“Close the door!”

“Richard,” Valerie said softly. “You can’t—”

“Now!” Headley shouted.

Glover closed the door. Through the window, Valerie gave him a sympathetic tip of the head as the car pulled away. Then she shifted in her seat to look at her boss.

“Don’t start with me,” he said.

“He’s your son,” she said.

“He walked me right into that. God damn it, if he excels at anything, it’s making me look like a fool.”

“Look, if you—”

Valerie’s phone shouted out news of an incoming text. She quickly dug it out of her purse and looked.

“Something’s happened,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s Chris. Details just coming in.”

“Of what? Christ, not another elevator thing.”

“No, it’s a shooting. In a hotel.” She waited as more words appeared on her phone’s screen. “Two dead. The FBI took down the shooter. He’s... still alive.”

“Who’s dead?”

“Hang on... there’s a link.” She tapped on the screen. “That Flyovers guy. And a woman. It’s not clear. Wait, Chris is writing something else. The man the FBI shot, he could be the one who shot the Flyovers person.”

“This isn’t clear at all,” Headley said.

“Let me make some calls. But from what Chris is saying, this guy the FBI got, they like him for the taxi bombing, and maybe the elevator stuff, too. You’re gonna want to make a statement. That mouse in the parfait just got kicked off the six o’clock news.”

Sixty-One

Jerry Bourque and Lois Delgado had spent the morning working the phones, tracking where city-owned cars were garaged, and working up a list of vehicles that were not only part of the “green” pool but had plates ending in 13. Once they’d tracked down the car, they wanted to know who’d taken it to Simpson Elevator for a chat with Otto Petrenko.

But then the captain showed up and told them to get their asses over to the Westerly Hotel in Fort Lee, on the other side of the George Washington Bridge, in New Jersey. There was a chance, the captain said, that what was going on there might have something to do with what he and Delgado were working on.

Bourque made the case that just one of them should go. The other should stay back and try to make headway on finding that car.

“Flip for it,” the captain said.

They didn’t have to. Delgado said she was happy staying on the car, so Jerry headed off to New Jersey.

On the way, he found out what made the Westerly a place of interest, beyond its usual charm.

A week ago, a forty-four-year old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, by the name of Garnet Wooler had rented a room on the second floor. This same Garnet Wooler, had, two hours earlier, been shot in the shoulder by an FBI agent in the lobby of the InterMajestic Hotel in midtown Manhattan as he was drawing a weapon. It was believed this same gun had been used to kill Eugene Clement and his wife, Estelle, just moments earlier in the men’s bathroom just off the hotel lobby.

Wooler had been rushed to the hospital, where he was listed in serious but stable condition. And while he was able to talk, he had so far chosen not to. But police had found, in his pocket, a key card for the Westerly in Fort Lee.

A quick check found that Mr. Wooler was not unknown to police, at least out in Tulsa, who knew him better as Bucky. There were two minor assault charges. One, on an ex-wife, was five years ago, and the second, eight years back, stemmed from a disagreement in a bar with someone who had opened his door into the side of Wooler’s pickup truck.

Four years ago, Wooler had also been treated and released for burns to his upper body after goofing around with explosives on a buddy’s farm. He had, off and on, worked for a company that removed tree stumps by using dynamite. Given his history, it wasn’t a stretch to think he had the wherewithal to blow up a New York cab.

Bourque’s captain had dispatched him to the scene because Clement had been, up until the moment he was fatally shot, the head of the Flyovers activist group, which might or might not have had something to do with taxi explosions and elevator plunges, and maybe even the murder of Otto Petrenko.

While police had arrived on the scene nearly ninety minutes earlier, it was only moments before Bourque’s arrival that they gained access to Wooler’s room. Given that this man might be their bomber, they were proceeding with great caution. First, they didn’t know whether Garnet Wooler had been acting alone, or if he might have associates holed up at the hotel. Second, they needed to determine that the room had in no way been booby-trapped. No one wanted to trigger an explosion when they entered it.

So a crane was used to lift police up to the second floor hotel room’s window so that they could scope the place out. In addition, a high-tech camera on the end of a wire was inserted under the door to give a full view of the room’s interior.

Confident, at last, that the room was safe to enter, police did so.

Similar precautions were taken with the 2004 Dodge minivan registered to Wooler that was sitting in the hotel parking lot. As Bourque arrived, the van was being loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck and being taken to a forensics lab for examination.

Judging by the number of official vehicles in the hotel lot and the surrounding streets, one could be forgiven for thinking a Newark-bound jet must have come down here. There were countless New York and New Jersey state police cruisers, cars bearing the NYPD logo, fire emergency vehicles, and enough black Tahoe and Suburban SUVs — most likely Homeland and FBI — to start a GM dealership.

Bourque found a spot for his unmarked car and killed the engine.

Flashing his badge, he got into the hotel and up to the second floor. The hallway outside Wooler’s room had been turned into a law enforcement convention. He made his way to the door, flashing his badge again. A rosy-cheeked FBI agent named Ben Baskin invited him in once Bourque had explained his interest.

“Oh, yeah,” said Baskin. “I saw you at the meeting.”

“What have you found?”

“Shitload of stuff. The guy did not travel light. We’ve found rifles, couple more handguns, in addition to the one found on him. Ammunition. We think we’re going to find more weapons in the van. Also, some ammonium nitrate, Tannerite, some wire and—”

“Bomb-making materials,” Bourque said.

“Yeah.”

“Same materials used in the taxi?”

Baskin shrugged. “To be determined.”

“How about any kind of electronics?”

“Plenty. Couple of laptops. Burner phones. Other stuff.”

“Anything that might be used, say, to hack into an elevator’s control system?”

“Still searching. And like I say, we’ve still got the van to get through. We’re also trying to find out if our friend here was working with anyone else.”

“What happened at the InterMajestic?”

Baskin shook his head. “Our guy shot and killed Clement and his wife but we don’t know why, because it looks like Wooler was on the same team as Clement. Maybe Clement was telling him what to do, or came to New York to be closer to the action when it went down.”

“But if they were somehow working together, why’d he shoot Clement and the wife?” Bourque asked.

“Good question. Wooler’s said next to nothing, but he made one comment, something along the line that Clement’s wife thought they were gay. Wanted us to know that was not the case, at least where he was concerned.”

“Guy’s facing terrorism charges, but that’s what he’d worried about.” Bourque shook his head. “You come across anything yet that connects Wooler to a guy named Otto Petrenko?”

“No. If we do, you’ll be the first to hear about it. Anything else?” Baskin asked.

Bourque thought a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t want to know if I have a partner named Robbins?”

Bourque grinned. “No.”

“You’re the first.”

Before crossing back over the George Washington, Bourque pulled into a McDonald’s lot on Lemoine Avenue. He was starving, and didn’t have the time or inclination to find anything of higher nutritional value.

He was wolfing a Big Mac and slurping down a Diet Coke when his cell phone, which he had placed on the table, rang.

“Bourque,” he said, although with his mouth full it came out more like Burfk.

“Get the marbles out of your mouth,” Lois Delgado said.

“I’m grabbing a bite,” he said.

“Where?”

“McDonald’s.”

“Yeah, thought I could smell it,” she said. “What’d you find?”

He filled her in. When he was done, she said, “So, guess where I am.”

Bourque took a sip of Coke. “In a room at the Plaza with Ryan Gosling.”

“I mean right now, not where I was last night,” she said.

“Tell me.”

“I’m in the City Hall garage looking at a boring sedan with a license plate that ends in 13, and it’s got a dent in the bumper identical to the one in our picture.”

“Whoa,” Bourque said, feeling his pulse quicken. “Now we just have to find out who signed it out that day.”

“Already have,” she said.

“Are you going to make me beg?” Bourque asked.

“That’s exactly what Ryan said.”

“Tell me.”

“Here’s a question. Why do you think the mayor’s son would be wanting to meet with Otto Petrenko?”

Bourque set down his drink. “The mayor’s son?”

“Glover. Glover Headley. He’s one of his dad’s aides or advisers or whatever.”

“Huh,” Bourque said. “I guess we should ask him.”

Sixty-Two

Thanks for coming.”

Richard Headley gazed out over the assembled media. He couldn’t recall the press room ever being this crowded. There were even more representatives from TV and radio and print here today than there had been the day before. He hadn’t had very good news for them then. Today was looking a little better.

“I just want to say a few words before Chief Washington arrives. She’ll be able to answer a lot of your questions in more detail. But there has been an arrest. Most of you already know about the shooting at the InterMajestic.”

He quickly told them that the man who’d been arrested was a suspect in the taxi bombing.

“At this time,” he said, “we can’t say this person is connected to the elevator tragedies, but I can confirm he is a person of interest. There is a strong link with the Flyovers group, which has, in recent months, established a pattern of fomenting chaos in coastal cities, of which we are definitely one. So with that possibly hopeful news, and reports coming in from across the city about the progress that is being made in restoring elevator service, I think it’s fair to say that things are looking up.”

Several questions were shouted out, and Headley did his best to answer them, but in most cases said they would have to wait for the chief. To his relief, there was not one question about the granola parfait rodent.

On the pretext of having to leave for another meeting, Headley offered his apologies and excused himself from the press room. When he returned to his office, Glover was there. Sitting on the couch, a remote in hand, watching CNN on the new TV that had been installed after the mayor had shattered the other one the day before.

Glover stood.

“I see you got back okay,” Headley said.

Glover nodded. “I walked.”

Headley’s eyes went wide. “From Ninetieth Street?”

“Took me about two and a half hours. But it gave me lots of time to think.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a white envelope, which he handed to his father. “About this.”

“What’s this?” he asked. Written, in hand, on the front of the envelope was the word Dad.

“I wasn’t sure who to make it out to,” Glover said. “I didn’t know whether to write ‘Dad,’ or ‘Father,’ or ‘Mayor Headley.’”

The envelope was not sealed. Headley withdrew the single sheet of paper tucked inside, unfolded it, tossed the envelope onto the coffee table. He scanned the words. It didn’t take him more than ten seconds to read it.

“What the hell is this?” Headley asked.

“You’ll notice, on the actual letter, I made it out to the position, to Mayor Richard Headley. I guess, between that and the envelope, I covered all bases.”

“You’re resigning?”

Glover nodded. “Yes. As it says, in the letter, effective tomorrow. Or, I guess, midnight tonight.”

“Why? You don’t give a reason in your letter.”

“Because I’m tired of disappointing you. And I simply can’t take it anymore.”

“Can’t take what?”

“The constant belittling. The put-downs. The eye rolls. Anyone else with an ounce of self-respect would have quit long ago, wouldn’t have put up with it for so long. Maybe that’s what took me so long. I’m all out of self-respect.”

Headley was shaking his head. “This is ridiculous.”

“More likely a relief, for you. Now you don’t have to actually fire me.” He took a breath. “Mom’s been dead a long time, Dad. If you’ve kept me on out of guilt, thinking maybe you owed it to her, you don’t have to feel that way any longer. I want to leave. Maybe my quitting will be my one chance to make you happy.”

“Christ, Glover.”

“The resignation, as it says in the letter, is effective at midnight. I’d still like to attend the Top of the Park event tonight, however. If it’s still on.”

“It is,” Headley said. “Coughlin messaged me a while ago. He’s got the elevators working. Of course you can come.” He paused, then said, “That woman you hired. Arla Silbert.”

“The one you fired,” Glover said. “Because she’s Barbara Matheson’s daughter.”

Headley nodded quickly, as though wanting to brush over that part. “What else do you know about her?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“No reason. I just... wondered.”

Glover turned and started heading for the door. He was almost out of the office when his father called out his name.

“Yes?” Glover said, stopping and looking at the mayor.

“I’m sorry about kicking you out of the limo.” He swallowed, hard. “That was wrong. It wasn’t your fault there was a goddamn mouse in that old lady’s breakfast.”

“Actually, it was,” Glover said. “I put it there.”

The mayor was standing by his desk, numb, when Valerie came into the room three minutes later.

“What did Glover want?” she asked. “I saw him leaving and he looked kind of shook up.”

He handed her the resignation letter. She scanned it quickly, then said, “Oh. Did you accept it?”

Headley nodded. “He told me something that he did... I should be angry. I should be livid. But I’m not. I feel like I had it coming.”

“What did he tell you?”

The mayor shook his head. “Maybe you’re right. What you’ve been telling me, that I’ve been too hard on him. I’m seeing now how that can end up biting you in the ass.”

“Richard, I wish you’d tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Glover may think I’ll have changed my mind about letting him come to Coughlin’s thing tonight, but I haven’t.” He smiled grimly. “I want him there.”

Valerie was about to press harder about what had gone on between him and his son, but she was interrupted by a text. “What’s this?” she said, reading it.

The mayor raised his head, waiting.

“It’s reception,” Valerie said. “The police are here.”

“Probably Chief Washington,” Headley said. “Maybe she knows more about this Wooler guy they’ve arrested.”

Valerie slowly shook her head. “No. It’s two detectives.” She looked up. “They’re looking for Glover.”

The mayor went ashen-faced. “They have detectives in the health department?”

“What?” Valerie said. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” Headley said.

Valerie entered a number, then put the phone to her ear.

“Hey, it’s Valerie. Are those detectives still there? Okay, yeah, put one of them on.” She waited a few seconds, then said, “Yes, hello? Who’s this? Delgado? What can I do for you, Detective Delgado?” She listened, then said, “Well, I’m sorry but Glover is not here right now. Perhaps this is something I can help you with?”

She listened some more. “I see.”

“What is it?” Headley asked.

Valerie put her hand over the phone and said, “They specifically want to talk to Glover.”

“You better call him,” Headley said, his voice weak, tipping his head at the landline on his desk.

Valerie told Delgado to hold on, picked up the receiver for the mayor’s phone, and entered the number for Glover’s cell.

She waited several seconds before finally saying, “Glover, it’s Valerie. Can you call me the minute you get this?”

She went back onto her cell and said, “I tried his cell but he’s not answering. I’m sorry. His home address? I don’t—”

Headley reached across the desk and snatched the phone out of Valerie’s hand.

“This is Mayor Headley,” he said, with more courtesy than usual. “Who’s this I’m talking to?” He listened for a second. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

He held the phone to his ear for another five seconds, said, “Okay,” then, without saying anything further, handed it back to Valerie. She put it to her own ear, said, “Hello?”

“She hung up,” the mayor said.

Valerie lowered the phone. “What did she say?”

“They’re coming here. To talk to me.”

Sixty-Three

Bourque and Delgado had never before been in the office of the mayor of New York City. If they were impressed, they were trying very hard not to show it. Valerie had met them just outside the door, and when she took them in, Headley was pacing the room. He had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie.

“Detectives Bourque and Delgado,” Valerie announced.

The two detectives each introduced themselves so the mayor would know who was Bourque and who was Delgado.

“What’s this about?” the mayor asked.

“It’s really your son we want to talk to,” Delgado said.

“About?”

Bourque said, “It’s tied to an investigation we’re working on.”

“So this has nothing to do with the mouse.”

Bourque glanced at his partner, as if to ask Did I hear that right? But instead, he said, “We’re investigating a homicide, sir.”

Headley almost looked relieved. “By my count, there’s what, ten of them? Seven deaths by elevator, three in the explosion.”

“We’re looking into the death of Otto Petrenko,” Delgado said. “His body was found on the High Line Monday morning.”

“Petrenko?”

“An elevator technician,” Bourque said.

Now they had Headley’s attention. “Elevator technician? Is there a connection between his death and what’s been going on?”

“Possibly,” Delgado said. “Before he died, Petrenko became very worried about the safety of his relatives in other parts of the country. It’s possible he was being coerced to provide details on how elevators function, that he feared these relatives would be harmed if he didn’t go along. At the moment, it’s just a theory. Not long before he was killed, Petrenko met with a man who visited him at his place of work. No one else knew who this man was, and Petrenko didn’t talk about him to anyone. We’ve been trying to find out who that man might be.”

“Why do you think Glover might be able to help you with that?” the mayor asked.

Bourque said, “We managed to track down the car this man was driving. It came from the City Hall car pool.”

Valerie, who’d been standing off to one side through the discussion, said, “It did?”

“It had one of those stickers on the back,” Delgado said. “Part of your green campaign, sir. We had a partial plate and a distinguishing mark on the bumper. With all that, we were able to find the exact car.”

“Hang on,” the mayor said. “When did you say this was? Because it’s very possible, given the events of this week, that someone from the city would be talking to an expert in how elevators work.”

Delgado said, “As I mentioned a moment ago, Mr. Petrenko died sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, before that first elevator event in the Lansing Tower. This meeting predates that.”

“Well, I guess the simplest thing to do,” Headley said, “is find out who signed the car out that day. You don’t need Glover to do that for you. We should be able to get that information. Can we do that for the detectives, Valerie?”

“Absolutely.”

“We’ve already done that,” Bourque said.

The room went quiet.

When the mayor didn’t say anything, it was Valerie who decided to ask the question. “Who signed it out?”

“Glover Headley,” Delgado said.

The mayor and Valerie exchanged glances.

“That’s why,” Bourque said, “we would like to talk to Glover. We just want to clear this up. That’s the way it is in an investigation. Tying up one loose end, then moving on to the next thing.”

“That’s right,” Delgado said. “So if you could just tell us where we might find him, so we could cross this angle of inquiry off our list.”

Headley turned, walked toward his desk. He ran his right hand up to the back of his neck, kneaded it like it was bread dough.

“He just... resigned,” Headley said.

“Why?” Bourque asked.

“Because I’m a son of a bitch,” he said. “Look, I’m sure there’s a very simple explanation for this. I’ll be talking to Glover tonight — he’s coming to the Top of the Park opening — and I’ll ask him what this is about and get back to you tomorrow.”

“We would prefer to talk to him ourselves, sir,” Delgado said. “And we need to talk to him sooner than that.”

“Look, we just tried to raise him and he’s not answering, so I don’t know what to tell you.”

Bourque said, “We need his cell number and home address.”

Valerie looked at her boss, as though waiting for permission. He gave a weary nod, and she said, “I’ll write those down for you.”

She slipped out of the office.

Delgado and Bourque both took out their business cards and placed them on the mayor’s desk. “Give us a call,” she said, “if he should happen to show up sooner.”

Headley looked down at the cards but did not touch them.

Valerie returned with a slip of paper and handed it to Delgado. “I gave you his email address, too,” she said.

“If he’s not in the building, or at home, you know any favorite places he might hang out?” Bourque asked. “Coffee shop? Bar? Park?”

The mayor looked at him blankly. “I can’t think of any. Valerie?”

“No,” she said.

“What did Glover do, before handing in his resignation?” Delgado asked.

“Um, data analysis, polling, techie stuff,” Valerie said.

“You’d call him a techie?” Bourque asked.

“Oh, yes,” Valerie said. “There’s not a program or gadget in the world Glover can’t figure out.”

Sixty-Four

Anyone would have been forgiven for thinking the Academy Awards had been moved from Hollywood to New York.

The official opening of the Top of the Park had all the earmarks of Oscar night. Huge spotlights set up across the street in Central Park cast dancing, crisscrossing beams of light into the night sky.

Central Park North was closed off between Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. Being allowed through were dozens of limousines bearing celebrities and politicians and the city’s major power brokers. Judging by the presence of TV crews from CNN, as well as Access Hollywood and Extra, this was an entertainment event as much as it was a news story.

As each vehicle rolled to a stop at the end of the red carpet that led into the cavernous atrium of Top of the Park, tuxedoed attendants rushed forward to open doors. Photographers and TV crews waited to see who might emerge. If it turned out to be a prominent actor or actress, glammed-up TV hosts would stop them as they passed for a few words of architectural insight.

“It sure is tall!” one actress said.

“I’d have gotten pretty dizzy working on that!” quipped an Oscar-nominated actor.

When New Yorkers far more powerful or influential, but whose faces did not appear on a twenty-foot-high screen at one of the city’s multiplexes, stepped out of a limo — the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the presidents of the Whitney Museum of American Art and Columbia University, to name just three — the TV types lowered their cameras and microphones until the next beautiful person came along.

Regular New Yorkers not important enough to get an invitation still came out in droves to catch a glimpse of those who’d made the cut. Smartphones flashed incessantly. Fans begged for selfies. The occasional celeb even obliged.

Barbara and Arla were not among those who arrived by limo. The closest they could get, by car, was Fifth and Central Park North.

“Shit,” Barbara said upon seeing the barricades that kept them from getting dropped off out front of Top of the Park. “If I’d known we’ve got to walk this far I’d have worn flats.”

If the 110th Street station, which was only a few steps from the brand-new skyscraper, hadn’t been closed for security reasons, they could have taken the train and saved themselves a few steps. But Barbara had had to agree with Arla: When you’re all dressed up, did you really want to trek down into the subway?

That morning, they’d opted not to order in, and instead went out for a proper hangover breakfast. Scrambled eggs, extra crispy bacon, home fries, and more coffee. Then they’d gone back to Barbara’s place to go through her closet and see if she had anything glitzy enough for the Top of the Park affair.

Going through her mother’s closet, Arla asked, “Just how many pairs of jeans do you have?” She found one black, off-the-shoulder dress tucked in the far corner and pulled it out. Holding out the dress at arm’s length, she said, “What do you think?”

Barbara said, “How many other dresses did you find in there?”

“None.”

“It’s got sleeves, so no one will see my black and blue elbow. I like it.”

“With the right accessories, it’ll work.”

“Accessories?” Barbara said.

Arla returned to her own apartment at that point, but invited her mother to come by two hours before the event, by which time she would have picked out a few necklaces and bracelets and sets of earrings for her mother to choose from.

“Maybe this is a mistake,” Arla said as they made their way from the cab to the entrance to Top of the Park. “I mean, an event like this is not exactly the best place to tell someone you’re his daughter.”

Barbara nodded. “Let’s hold back, see if he makes the first move. If he recognized your name when I said it, he might do something. If he does nothing, then we know he doesn’t remember anything about that night, including my surname. And who knows? The moment Richard sees me walking into that party, he may have my ass kicked to the curb.”

“It’d be a long way down,” Arla said. “And besides, it’s not his party.”

Barbara smiled as they reached the red carpet. “No, it isn’t.”

The two of them stopped before approaching the front doors and looked up. They had to crane their necks back as far as they could, and even then weren’t sure they could see the top of the building.

At the entrance, Barbara reached into her evening clutch and produced her invitation, which was closely scrutinized by a blond woman in a dazzling red, floor-length gown, accessorized rather incongruously by an earpiece and wires. “Have a wonderful time,” she said.

And then they were inside.

“Fuck me,” said Arla.

The lobby was a breathtaking amalgam of swooping steel and glittering glass and lights that seemed to float, untethered, in the air above them. There were a couple of hundred people milling about, taking glasses of champagne from the trays of wandering servers.

“Oh my God,” Arla whispered, nudging her mother and getting her to look to one side. “Isn’t that what’s-his-name? From that movie?”

Barbara nodded. “Yeah. But don’t get excited. He’s gay.”

“No,” Arla said.

“That’s the word.”

“Oh, and at eleven o’clock. That’s—”

“Yeah. They say she’s going to run for president. She keeps saying she isn’t, which tells me she probably is. Oh, look.”

Coming through the crowd was the mayor, dressed in black tie. He had a broad smile pasted on his face that looked, at least to Barbara, more artificial than usual. Politicians were masters at appearing delighted to see you when they really didn’t give a shit, and Headley was one of the best, but Barbara thought his bonhomie seemed particularly strained. Something about the creases coming out of the front corners of his mouth. Fault lines ready to give way.

Trailing him were Chris Vallins, also in a tux, and running shoes, a backpack hanging discreetly from his hand at his side; Valerie Langdon, in a powder blue, floor-length dress; and Glover, also in a tux, the bow tie awkwardly askew. He was engaged in what seemed to be an agitated conversation with Valerie.

“They’re going to walk right past us,” Arla said.

“Don’t worry,” Barbara said.

Arla moved so that her body was mostly shielded by her mother. “I don’t want Glover to see me. I’m not ready to talk to him about... anything.”

As Valerie and Glover walked past, the procession slowed, and Barbara heard snippets of their discussion.

“I told him,” Glover said. “I didn’t sign out that car... don’t care what the cops say. I don’t... anything about it.”

“I don’t know what... believe,” Valerie said. “He told me about... mouse. What... you thinking?”

Mouse?

“... amazed he let you... tonight,” Valerie said.

“... feels guilty, I guess. A first... gone soon.”

The crowed opened up, allowing them to move on and out of range for Barbara to hear anything else. As Vallins passed by, Barbara reached out and touched his arm. He glanced her way, startled.

“Love the shoes,” she said, looking down at his runners.

He gave the backpack a slight swing. “Got the Florsheims in here,” he said, grinning. “Hey, I sent you an email.”

“Okay,” Barbara said as Vallins moved on.

“You know that guy?” Arla asked.

“A little,” Barbara said.

“He’s kinda hot.”

“A little.”

She took out her phone and checked her email inbox. There was nothing there from Vallins. She looked in Junk, but there was no message there, either.

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.

Sixty-Five

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.

Sixty-Six

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?”

Barbara thought a moment before saying, “No. It feels... it almost feels wrong. The building feels like it’s thumbing its nose at the laws of nature. It’s too incredible, too death defying. I wouldn’t mind a huge loft in SoHo, though.”

“Yeah, well, I think I could get used to—”

“Good evening!”

The voice was emanating from speakers built into the walls and ceiling.

“Welcome to the Top of the Park!”

Arla was looking, too. “Over there,” she said, pointing.

Standing on an elevated platform, with a night sky for a backdrop, was Rodney Coughlin. Six feet tall, broad-shouldered, chiseled jaw, eyebrows like mutant caterpillars, he was a commanding presence. He held a champagne glass at shoulder height as he smiled broadly at his guests, his teeth big and bright enough that light was bouncing off them. The mayor stood to his right, looking somewhat distracted.

Barbara and Arla threaded their way through the crowd so they could get a ringside view. Once in position, Barbara glanced around. She spotted Glover over by one of the elevators. Valerie was standing not far off. Barbara had lost sight of Vallins.

“Oh, what a glorious night this is!” Coughlin exclaimed, and the room erupted with applause. He grinned. “How do you folks like the view?”

Scattered laughter, more applause.

“Now, I know you’ve all just got here and you can’t stop yourselves from looking out the window and,” he chuckled, “looking down on the rest of New York. I need to warn you, there are going to be a few speeches, and I have a number of people to thank including — Mario! Where are you?”

Standing next to Barbara, a short, bushy-headed man with dark sunglasses the size of two coasters and wearing a bright, orange sport jacket waved his hand in the air.

“Mario Svengali!” Coughlin shouted, raising his glass even higher. “The most brilliant architect in the whole fucking universe. I’m going to be having a few words to say about him, and others, and my good friend the mayor, right here!”

He gestured to Headley beside him. “Thank you very much, Richard, for letting me use the elevators tonight.”

Headley blushed as nervous chuckles swept the room.

“Don’t worry!” Coughlin continued. “Tonight, the people who deserve our gratitude most of all are the good men and women of law enforcement — the NYPD, the FBI, you name it — who made an arrest today in connection with the horrible events of this week.”

Headley tried to interject, saying, “Actually, so far he’s only—”

Coughlin quickly cut him off. “I’ve got plenty to say tonight, and a lot of other people to thank. But we’ve also got some other people who want to say a few words.” He rolled his eyes. “Politicians, right? Well, so long as they’re saying wonderful things about me, I say give them all the time they want.”

A few more laughs.

“Most of those speeches are coming later. First, we want to have some fun. But before I command you all to eat, drink, and be merry, the mayor would like to say a few words. But you’re going to be brief, right, Richard?”

Coughlin quickly whispered something in the mayor’s ear. Barbara, who had always been pretty good at reading lips, was pretty sure he’d said, Don’t fuck this up.

The mayor, a strained grin on his face, stepped forward.

“I also just wanted to extend a welcome to everyone here on what is truly a historic night in the history of New York City as this astonishing building becomes part of the Manhattan skyline. My congratulations to everyone who played a role in making Top of the Park a reality.”

Arla leaned in close to her mother and said, “I think maybe I look a little bit like him. Around the eyes?”

As the mayor kept talking, Barbara replied quietly, “I don’t know. Possibly.”

The truth was, Barbara had always seen something of Headley in her daughter. Not just the eyes. The way her nose turned up slightly at the end, how she cocked her head when she was puzzling something out, the sharp turn in her jawbone just below the ear.

“As you all know,” Headley continued, “this has been a slightly stressful week for New Yorkers, so I would urge you to take full advantage of the open bar.” A forced chuckle. “I’ll be first in line.”

A few laughs and at least one “Hear, hear!”

“Okay!” the mayor said. “More speeches later! Let’s party! Let’s make this a night we’ll remember for the rest of our lives!”

Headley stepped off the platform, where he was met by Valerie, who was chatting to him about something. As they spoke, they both glanced, at different moments, at Glover, standing over by the elevators.

“What do you think?” Arla whispered. “Should I go up and talk to him? Just, like, introduce myself, and see what kind of reaction I get?”

Barbara was hesitant. “I’m not sure this is the right moment. This entire evening might not be the right moment.”

“I thought this was the plan. I talk to him tonight. I might not ever get this close to him again. I lost my job, remember?”

“I know, I know.”

Barbara was second-guessing her decision to give Arla that extra media pass. The last twenty-four hours had been so overwhelming, she thought. Perhaps her judgment was clouded by what had amounted to an emotional breakthrough with Arla. A breakthrough of honesty. Hours earlier, so grateful for this watershed moment in their relationship, Barbara would have been inclined to give Arla anything she asked for. A media pass to the biggest party in town? Sure, why not?

Now she wondered if it had been such a good idea.

Did Arla have a right to know who her father was? Of course. Was Arla perfectly justified in wanting to make a connection with him? No doubt about it.

But here? Now?

The mayor had broken away from Valerie and was heading their way.

“I’m going to do it,” Arla said.

But before Headley had gotten very far, an elderly woman wearing a floor-length gown and enough jewelry to open a Cartier store interceded.

“Richard!” she cried.

“Margaret!” he said, embracing her.

Barbara recognized her. Margaret Cambridge. Her name had come up when Barbara was doing her internet research.

“How do you like that view?” he asked her.

“It’s worth a million bucks,” she said. “Actually, more like a billion!”

They both laughed. The mayor gave her another hug, then moved on. Barbara could sense that Arla was ready to make a move. She placed a hand on her arm. “Wait, just wait a second. Maybe we should—”

“Mayor Headley?” Arla said.

Too late.

The mayor stopped, turned.

“Yes?” he said, looking at her.

Arla moved forward until there was barely a foot of space between the two of them. Seeing them that close together made Barbara light-headed.

No. Not here. Not now. Later. Somewhere private.

Arla extended a hand. The mayor took it, smiled, and said, “Nice to meet you.”

Then he noticed Barbara standing right behind her. She caught his eye and he said, “Ms. Matheson.”

Barbara smiled nervously. “Mayor.”

Arla said, “I wonder, would there be somewhere we could talk privately, for a couple of minutes?”

“Maybe if you talked to Valerie Langdon. She’s just over there? In the blue dress? You could tell her what this is about and she could see about setting something up.”

Arla’s face fell. “It’s not a political thing. It’s more a personal thing. You see, my name is Arla—”

She did not have a chance to finish her sentence. And even if she had, Headley would not have been able to hear it.

The explosion was far too deafening.

And not just the first one.

The one that came after.

And the one after that.

And the one after that.

Sixty-Seven

Bourque and Delgado flashed their IDs to get past security and into Top of the Park. Once inside, Bourque stopped, mouth agape, and took in the view.

“Unbelievable,” he said.

“Yeah, pretty,” Delgado said. “Let’s find our boy.”

Bourque approached a security guard, showed his badge again, and told him they were looking for Glover Headley, the mayor’s son. The guard said that pretty much everyone was now on the top floor for the festivities. The guard had seen the mayor come through the lobby, but had no idea what the son looked like.

“Let’s head up,” Bourque said to his partner.

He and Delgado found themselves standing alone in front of the bank of elevators. There were three touch screens positioned atop small, granite pillars between the elevator doors with a notice that read: Enter Your Floor.

“How’s it work?” Bourque asked.

Delgado studied it. “For the fifty-third floor, you tap in five, three...”

“But for the top?”

“Looks like... O, B. For observation deck.” She tapped the OB symbol. A message appeared on the screen: ELEVATOR 2.

There were numbers atop the elevators, and the second from the left was marked 2.

“That one,” Delgado said, pointing. They positioned themselves in front of those doors.

“What’s your take on all this?” Bourque asked his partner while they waited for their car to arrive.

“I don’t know. Glover’s made himself very hard to find today. He signed out the car used by the man who met with Petrenko. Petrenko ends up dead. What do you think?”

“If you wanted to know everything there was to know about fucking around with a building’s elevator system, someone like Petrenko would be the guy to talk to.”

“Yeah,” Delgado said.

“And if you led him to believe you could hurt his extended family, he’d probably help.”

A soft chiming noise indicated the arrival of their car. The doors opened and, with half a second’s hesitation, they stepped in.

Bourque looked for the panel of buttons to enter their floor and was momentarily alarmed when he didn’t see one.

“I already did it, remember?” Delgado said. “No buttons.”

“It’s like getting into a car without a steering wheel.”

“At least there’s no chance of some smartass kid jumping on, running his hand down all the buttons, and jumping out again.”

“Yeah,” Bourque said. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

The car began to move, slowly accelerating. Its increasing speed seemed barely perceptible. Then Bourque put his finger to his ear.

“I can feel the pressure changing,” he said, trying to gather some spit in his mouth to swallow.

“I feel it,” Delgado said, touching her own ear. “Should have brought some gum.” She eyed him with concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“’Cause... you know. Your breathing is okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said again, this time with an edge to his voice. A few seconds went by before Bourque said, “You actually think it could be him?”

“Glover?”

“Yeah. The mayor’s assistant said he was a techie.”

“Why would the mayor’s own kid decide to kill people by sabotaging elevators?” Delgado asked.

“Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask him,” he said.

They could feel the elevator decelerating.

“Wow, that was fast,” Delgado said. “We’re here already?”

Bourque looked at the digital readout that told them what floors they were passing. “Uh, no. We’re just passing the fiftieth. Fifty-two, fifty-three.”

“But we’re slowing down. I can feel it. We’ve still got more than forty floors to go.”

They both went quiet for a moment, focusing their collective attention on the sense of movement.

Bourque looked at the readout. “Sixty-five,” he said. “We’re holding at sixty-five.”

Delgado looked at the narrow strips of brushed aluminum wall on either side of the doors. “Now I want some fucking buttons. How do I reenter the observation deck?”

“No idea,” Bourque said.

“Maybe it’s voice activated.” She looked up toward the ceiling, as if there were a God of Elevators waiting to hear from her, and said loudly, “Observation deck!”

Nothing happened.

“Maybe you were supposed to say ‘please,’” Bourque said.

“Come on!” she shouted. “Let’s go!”

The elevator did not move.

“I want out,” Delgado said.

“Same here.”

He pressed the button bearing two triangles with their bases touching. The “open door” button.

The doors did not open.

“Try it again,” Delgado said.

Bourque jabbed repeatedly at the button before giving his partner a What now? look.

She pointed to the emergency button. “Give that one a try.”

Delgado stuck out a finger and was about to touch it when, suddenly, the elevator doors parted, giving them a view of a deserted hallway.

“Well,” Bourque said, looking at Delgado. “The elevator seems to be inviting us to leave.”

She hesitated. “We might have to walk up the rest of the way.”

“Or walk down the rest of the way,” he said. “If the elevators are down for the count, I’d rather head down before I start going further up.”

“I vote we get off,” Delgado said, stepping through the opening and into the hallway.

Bourque followed.

The second he’d cleared the doors, he heard the elevator move. He and Delgado spun around in time to see the car — with the doors still open — slowly descend.

“Jesus Christ,” Delgado said.

Once the car had disappeared from view, they found themselves looking directly into the shaft. They both took half a step back.

“What the hell is happening?” Bourque said.

Within seconds, the elevator doors on the far left opened, exposing the shaft. Then the one third from the left, then the fourth, and finally, the fifth.

All five doors were in the open position, but there wasn’t a car at any of them.

They were looking into five open shafts.

For several seconds, they were speechless.

Delgado crept forward to one of the open doorways and peeked over the edge. “That is one fucking long drop down,” she said.

Drop.

“So what now?” she asked. Bourque said nothing. “Jerry?”

Drops.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Let’s think for a second.”

And for several seconds, neither of them spoke.

“Wait,” Delgado said. “What’s that sound?”

“What?” Bourque said.

“Shut up and listen.”

They both listened. Slowly, Delgado turned and looked at Bourque. “It’s you,” she said.

Bourque had started wheezing. He rested a palm on his chest. “Oh shit,” he said. “Shit, shit.”

“Talk to me.”

“It’s... been triggered.”

“Can you breathe?”

“For now,” he said.

“Have you got your thing?”

Bourque’s chin went up and down. He patted the pocket of his suit jacket. He reached in and brought out the inhaler, uncapped it.

“One shot should do it,” he said. “Two at the most.”

Delgado nodded sympathetically. “Sure. Go ahead.”

He was just about to insert the device into his mouth when the first explosion went off.

That first blast, which sounded well above them, was quickly followed by three others, all strong enough that they could feel the building shake ever so slightly.

Bourque was startled enough by the first explosion that he didn’t need the other three to lose his grip on the inhaler.

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.

Sixty-Eight

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.”

Barbara didn’t know what to say. This hardly seemed the time for an I told you so.

Even if she could have thought of some response, someone else had something to say first.

“It is personal.”

Chris Vallins was speaking.

He was standing only a step away from Glover and looked at him as he spoke.

“Someone in this room blames the mayor for how he treated his mother. How he neglected her. How he didn’t give a shit about her.”

Vallins turned his head to stare squarely at the mayor.

“I’m that person,” Vallins said. “Mr. Mayor, you killed my mother.”

More gasps. More whispers. Everyone was wondering what the hell was happening.

Including Glover. He looked at Vallins and said, “You signed out that car. You used my name.”

Vallins nodded. “Sins of the father and all that,” he said. “Sorry.”

At which point he swiftly placed his palm flat on Glover Headley’s chest, knocking him off his feet and through the open elevator doors.

Sixty-Nine

Mom? Mom? Say something. Mom. Please don’t die. Mom? Mom. Open your eyes. Look at me. Mom. Mom! I love you, Mom. I love you. Oh, Mom. No no no no no.”

Chris thinks she is dead, but then she opens her eyes again as she lies there on the floor of their tiny apartment.

“I need... I need your father.”

This hardly seems like the time to remind her that his father — her husband — is dead, and has been for a long time.

“I’m calling for help,” he says, on his knees beside her, rubbing his hand across her forehead.

He jumps up and goes for the phone, dialing 911. He quickly tells the operator their Bronx address, that he thinks his mother has had a heart attack, that she’s been complaining about pains in her chest for weeks, that she’s just come up six flights of stairs carrying bags of groceries, that they need to get here quickly.

“They’re coming,” he tells his mother, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You’re going to be okay. Just hold on until the ambulance gets here. Okay? Mom? Mom? Say something. Mom. Please say something.”

She makes a low, moaning noise.

“I’m gonna be gone for just a minute. I’m gonna run down and wait for the ambulance, show them how to get up here.”

Chris bolts from the room, runs down the hallway past the elevator with the Not in Service sign held to it with tape that has gone yellow with age. He nearly flies down the six flights of steps and is running out the front of the building as the ambulance comes screaming up the street.

Chris runs out between two parked cars and waves his arms in the air. The ambulance screeches to a halt out front and two paramedics — a man and a woman — leap out.

“This way!” Chris says.

They want to take half a second to confirm. “Maude Vallins?”

“Yes! Room seven-oh-three! Hurry! She’s still breathing!”

They grab their equipment and run in after the boy. As he heads for the stairwell door, the woman says, “Where are you going?”

She points to the two elevators in the lobby. She hasn’t yet noticed the Not in Service signs taped to them.

“They don’t work!” he shouts.

“Ah, Christ,” says the male paramedic.

Chris takes the steps two at a time, reaching the seventh floor more than a minute ahead of the other two. The paramedics enter the hall winded, sweat dripping down their temples. Chris is at the door to his apartment, waving them in.

While the two emergency workers kneel over his mother, Chris cannot stop babbling.

“The doctor’s always saying she has a bad heart and it’s really hard for her going up and down the stairs and I told her I’d do the shopping, you don’t have to do it, or even if she goes out I can carry all the bags up, you know, because it’s way too hard for her but she’s always saying she can do it, that it’s not my job, that my job is to go to school, but I could do it after school but she says no and I talked to the man, who comes for the rent, and I’ve asked him and asked him to please fix the elevators, that my mom can’t handle the stairs, that one day she’s going to have a really really really bad heart attack but he’s this total asshole and I told my mom not to pay the rent until he fixed them but she said she couldn’t do that because—”

The woman stands, turns, and asks, “What’s your name, kid?”

“Christopher.”

She tips her head toward the hallway.

“I can’t leave my mom,” he says.

“We need to talk, Christopher.”

Once in the hall, she walks him a few steps away from the open apartment door. “What family you got? Brothers, sisters? Where’s your father?”

“It’s just me and my mom. My dad’s dead. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

The woman’s eyes sadden. “Uncles? An aunt?”

He nods. “Fran. She’s my mom’s sister. She lives in Albany.”

“You got a number for her?”

“Does my mom have to go to the hospital?”

The woman swallows. “How old are you, Chris?”

“Twelve.”

“We’re not taking your mom to the hospital, Christopher. Maybe if we’d gotten here a little sooner...”

Chris says, “Like, if the elevator had been working.”

The woman says, “I guess we’ll never know. We need to get in touch with your aunt, tell her—”

She glances down the hallway at the sound of the stairwell door opening and closing. A young man, early twenties, dressed in a suit and tie, strides toward the paramedic.

“What’s going on?” he asks in a voice that suggests he’s entitled to know.

“That’s him,” Chris whispers.

“Him?” the woman says.

“The asshole,” he whispered.

The man is now face-to-face with the paramedic. “What’s happening here?”

“Emergency call. Heart attack. Who are you?”

“Richard Headley,” he says. “My father owns this building, among others. I’m the property manager.”

“Do you live here?” the woman asks.

Headley looks as though he’s been slapped in the face. “Hardly. I come by twice a month. Check on things, collect rent.”

“My mom’s dead,” Chris says.

Headley looks down at the boy, noticing him for the first time. “Sorry to hear that, sport.”

“If they’ d got up here sooner,” Chris says, holding back his tears, “they could have saved her. If you’d fixed the elevators. Going up and down the stairs killed her. It’s your fault.”

Headley bends down so he can look the kid in the eye. “One thing you’ll learn, when you get older, is you can’t go blaming others for your troubles. If your mom didn’t like the way things were here, she could have moved.”

He pats the boy’s shoulder as he stands back up. But he isn’t done doling out advice for the grief-stricken young man.

“We all have setbacks in life, but we move on. If there’s something you want in life, you go after it, no matter how hard it is, or how long it takes.”

These are the words Chris will always remember.

Seventy

The mayor screamed, a ragged cry of pain and grief and disbelief.

“Glover!”

The name resounded through the glass-enclosed space. The crowd, transfixed in horror, suffered a brief, collective bout of heart failure, not quite accepting what they had just seen. It was all too impossible to believe. One moment, Glover was there, and a moment later, he wasn’t.

The mayor’s son had barely had a chance to utter a scream of his own, and his plunge down the shaft took so long that no one heard a thing when he hit bottom.

Headley started pushing his way through the crowd toward Chris Vallins, a wild, murderous look in his eyes. But from somewhere, Vallins had produced a gun, and he was pointing it straight at the mayor.

“Stop, Richard,” he said. Utterly calm, utterly cold.

Headley halted, a few feet away from Barbara. A second earlier, he’d looked ready to kill Vallins, but now the enormity, the sheer horror, of what had just happened was overtaking him. The mayor was on the verge of weeping, but was too stunned, too overwhelmed, to actually cry.

“Go ahead, let it out,” Vallins said, keeping his gun trained on Headley while he crouched down and reached back with his free hand for an open backpack that was propped against the short stretch of wall between two open elevator doors. He stood slowly, hefting the backpack over one shoulder while holding the gun in his opposite hand.

A tear escaped Headley’s right eye and ran down his cheek as he stared incredulously at Vallins.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Chris said. “It hurts a lot.”

“Why... why did you...”

“You really don’t remember, do you? You have no idea.”

“I... I don’t... I don’t know what...”

“Let me give you a hint. A twelve-year-old boy. Mother dead of a heart attack. Couldn’t handle going up all those flights of stairs anymore. You wouldn’t spend a dime on that building. We had no heat half the time, rusty water coming out of the taps, mice and rats and cockroaches, holes in the ceiling where water dripped down from shitty plumbing on the upper floors. But most of all, we had no fucking elevators. The only things you ever replaced were the Not in Service signs. You killed her, Richard.”

There was a dawning realization in Headley’s eyes.

“Vallins...” he whispered. “Your mother was... Maude.”

“I wondered if you’d recognize the name when you hired me.” Chris smiled. “But it had been so long, and you never asked.”

“I... I’m sorry,” the mayor said. “But... Glover... you didn’t have to...”

“I didn’t have to do anything,” Chris said, shifting the backpack around to the front so he could see into it. “I didn’t have to mess with the elevators at your good friend Morris Lansing’s building. I didn’t have to have some fun with the elevators at the Sycamores, where one of your biggest fund-raisers was held. Pretty sure I saw Margaret earlier. And I didn’t have to fuck with the elevator at the Gormley Building, where your good friend Mr. Steel lives. But I wanted to. I wanted to send a message to all those who gave you a helping hand. The kind you never gave anyone. I wanted to send a message to the people who helped put you where you are when you so don’t deserve to be there.”

But not the taxi bombing, Barbara thought. It didn’t fit. It never had.

Vallins looked down again into the backpack and smiled. “Ah, here we go.”

What he pulled out looked like an oversized TV remote. Barbara thought back to that news conference, when that city official said there were devices out there, that same size, that could allow someone to commandeer a building’s elevators. He let the backpack drop to the floor.

“So,” Chris said, holding the remote at eye level so everyone could see it, “this is my little friend that’s your ticket out of here. With this, I can return the elevators back to their normal functions. You’ll all be able to go home. Just don’t anyone think of rushing me, or trying to jump me, or I’m going to toss it down the shaft. Are we clear on that?”

There were a few nods among the guests.

“Awesome,” he said. “But there is an if. One big if.”

“Please,” Headley said. “Don’t hurt anyone here. You want to toss me down there, let me be with my son? Fine. I’ll jump right in if you’ll let these people go.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Vallins said. “I’m going to let you go.”

“What?” Headley said, his voice cracking.

“That’s right. I’m going to bring one elevator up, and you can get on it. And I’m going to send it — very safely — back to the lobby.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you let me—”

Vallins raised a finger on the hand holding the gun. “Let me finish.”

The mayor went silent.

“You’ll get off in the lobby and I’ll bring the elevator back up, without you. Then you’ll take the stairs and rejoin us.”

“I’m... what?”

Vallins smiled and nodded. “You’re going to walk your way back up here. Well, almost.” He paused. “See how you like it. Now, you’re in pretty good shape for a man your age, although I don’t know how often you run to the tops of skyscrapers. We’re going to make it interesting. We’re going to put a time limit on it. I’m going to give you twenty minutes.”

“Twenty—”

“That seems more than enough time. When they had a race to get to the top of the Freedom Tower, there were people who did it in under fifteen. So I think I’m being generous. The only thing is, the clock starts ticking as soon as you get on the elevator to go down.”

“This is... and what if I’m late?”

“You heard the four explosions that took out the stairwells. There’s a fifth bomb just waiting to go off that will pretty much take off the top of this building. Everyone here, including myself, will die. So, if you decide to run away, to not come back, that’s what’s going to happen.”

The mayor stood there, speechless.

Barbara leaned forward, close enough to the mayor to whisper to him and be heard.

She said, “You should get going.”

Richard Headley’s eyes met hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.”

Barbara felt as though the room was spinning.

Then the mayor looked at Arla, took both her hands in his, and squeezed. “What a wonderful young woman you’ve turned out to be. I’ve only had an instant to be proud of you.”

Arla appeared to be on the verge of fainting. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Time’s a-wastin’,” Vallins said.

Headley let go of Arla’s hands.

Vallins looked at Barbara and said, “Do me a solid and set the timer on your phone to twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” Barbara said with feigned calm. She reached into her clutch and brought out her phone. At that moment, it dinged. An incoming email.

“That’ll be from me,” Vallins told her. “Sent on a delay. You can read it later, if you get the chance. Got the timer ready?”

She fiddled with some settings, then said, “Ready.”

“Hold it up and show me,” Vallins asked, and she did. Vallins looked at the mayor. “How about you? Set to go?”

Headley swallowed and said, “I’m ready.”

“We’re on ninety-eight, but call me when you get to the ninety-seventh floor.” Vallins smiled. “You have my number. I’ll send an elevator to bring you up the last story.”

Headley nodded that he understood. He reached into his jacket to make sure he had his phone. He looked at it, brought up Vallins’s number, then returned it to his pocket.

Vallins, keeping the gun trained on him, entered some instructions into the remote control elevator device with his other hand. Seconds later, an elevator car arrived. Vallins swept his arm gracefully toward it, inviting the mayor to board.

Headley walked forward, got into the car, turned and looked at the crowd, his chin quivering.

Vallins pressed another button and the door closed. He then looked at Barbara and said, “Go.”

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.”

Seventy-One

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.”

Seventy-Two

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.

“Richard.”

He stopped, turned, and standing there was Chief Annette Washington.

She reached out, touched his arm, and asked softly, “Do you know?”

It took him a beat to understand what she was asking him. Everyone in the lobby, he realized, would have seen his son plummet past one of the open elevator doors. Glover would have had only a few below-ground-level floors left to fall after they’d seen him. Headley nodded solemnly and said, “Glover.”

She nodded back.

“Can I... can you see him?”

“There’s four levels below street level,” she said. “He’s down there. We’re going to get him out, Richard.” She paused. “I don’t think you should look.”

“I will,” he said. “But not now. I have to go back up. There’s not much time.”

“What’s going on? What were those explosions?”

He spotted a door to the stairs. “I’ll have to run and talk,” he said, breaking away from her.

She ran after him. In the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, he told her, in bullet form, what had transpired. That his aide Chris Vallins was behind the elevator events. That he’d given the mayor only a few minutes to climb his way back to the ninety-eighth floor. That if he didn’t make it, another bomb would go off, killing everyone at the party.

“Why?” asked Washington, one step behind him. “Why is he doing all this?”

Headley stopped, briefly, on the landing of the third floor and looked at her. “I’ve done terrible things,” he said.

“You can’t do this,” she said. “We’ll send up a team. We’ll find a way—”

He gripped both her arms above the wrists and forced her to look into his eyes. “Annette, there is no time. Good-bye.”

He turned and kept running up the stairs.

Washington called after him, “Look for Detectives Bourque and Delgado! They’re up there somewhere!”

If Headley heard, he gave no indication.

He just kept running. And climbing.

As he passed a door marked Floor 5, he started doing the math in his head. First, he needed to know how long it would take him to get from the fifth floor to the sixth. He counted.

Fifteen seconds.

Okay, he thought. Roughly ninety floors to go. Ninety times fifteen was 1,350.

So what was that in minutes?

Headley had always been good at doing math without a calculator. He could look at city budget projections and do calculations in his head as quickly as any of the bean counters from the financial department.

So, take 1,350 seconds and divide by the number of seconds per minute, which was, of course, sixty, and—

Twenty-two and a half minutes.

“God, no,” he said aloud, rounding the landing between the eighth and ninth floors.

Vallins had given him twenty minutes, but the clock had started ticking the moment he got onto the elevator. He couldn’t have more than fourteen or fifteen minutes left.

There was no way he was going to make it.

He increased his speed. Ten floors up now, his calves and thighs were already screaming in pain. He was still taking the steps two at a time, grabbing the railing each time and using it to pull himself upward. Like so much of the rest of his body, his shoulder was hurting like a son of a bitch.

His chest felt as though it would explode.

This is what he wants. He wants me to have a heart attack. I’m going to die the same way his mother did.

What was that last thing the chief had shouted at him? Bourque and Delgado? Weren’t those the two detectives who’d come to City Hall looking for Glover? They were already in the building, somewhere?

Glover.

Headley thought his heartache was more likely than a heart attack to do him in. He thought about those last, accusatory words he’d said to his son before Vallins had pushed him into the shaft. Believing that his son could have had anything to do with this.

How he would have to live with that forever.

However long forever was.

As he passed the door marked Floor 14, he thought about what a curse he’d been to so many around him.

All those tenants in his father’s buildings.

His wife.

His son.

All the bad luck he’d brought them.

Maybe it was fitting he’d think of that at this moment, passing the fourteenth floor. Given people’s superstitious nature, it was actually the thirteenth.

Seventy-Three

Vallins nibbled on one of the shrimps Barbara had taken from the buffet table, put on a plate, and slid across the floor to him.

“These are excellent,” he said, biting on one, then tossing the tail into the elevator shaft. He raised his voice. “Everyone, please! Eat up! Enjoy!”

While we can, Barbara thought.

While none of the guests had much of an appetite, she’d seen more than a few head over to the bar. But most were huddled in pairs, standing quietly, eyes trained on Vallins, wondering what he might do next, terrified by what he might do next.

Vallins shrugged when he didn’t see anyone taking his advice, then looked over at Barbara and Arla, who were standing closer to him than anyone else.

“Sorry,” Vallins said to Barbara. She could not take her eyes off the device in his left hand, and the gun in the other. “You were right, of course. I was following you when you stepped out in front of that van. I saw you two at breakfast earlier. Then when I saw Arla at City Hall, I put it together, and ratted her out to the boss.” He gave Arla a regretful look.

“I don’t understand, either,” said Barbara. “You want to bring the mayor down, but you still were doing his dirty work.”

Vallins nodded. “I’ve been doing his dirty work for some time. That’s how I got close. Anyway, it’s all in the email.”

Barbara said, “Why didn’t you just let the van run me down?”

He shrugged. “I told you. I like you.”

“Enough to let me — my daughter — go?”

“How would that look, playing favorites?” he said. “If anyone survives, I hope it’s you. Otherwise the email’s pointless. I’ve always thought you were a good writer. You’re the best one to tell the story.”

“Chris, please. Let everyone go.”

He shook his head. “Sometimes innocents are lost in the pursuit of a greater goal. If anyone here is really, truly innocent.”

Barbara’s head twitched. “That was you. The comments on my article. You’re the one calling himself Going Down.”

Vallins smiled. “That was a bit cute, I know.”

“Help me out here, Chris. Haven’t you sacrificed enough innocents already? Like my friend Paula? Wasn’t your mom an innocent? What’s happening to these people, is it any more unfair than what happened to her? Does anything you’ve done make sense? Does hurting all these people, here tonight, serve any purpose? You’ve taken his son from him, Chris. What more do you want?”

He was stonefaced. “How’s our time?”

Barbara looked at the phone in her hand. “Seven minutes, twenty seconds.”

Vallins nodded. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he’s even trying? Maybe he got off in the lobby and buggered off home.”

“I doubt that,” Barbara said, although she was not 100 percent sure. It hadn’t even occurred to her, until Chris had posed the question, that Headley might not even try to make the climb.

He’ll try, she thought. He’s a bastard, but no one could be that big a bastard.

“Is this how it ends for you?” Barbara asked. “I mean, you can’t be thinking you’re going to walk away from this.”

Vallins looked thoughtful. “You know, I always used to think those suicide bombers, those Islamic terrorist crazies screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ as they fire their machine guns into a crowded theater, with no chance of getting out alive, what the hell is wrong with them? But I also sort of get it, you know? Because when you’ve been angry for so long, when the only thing you care about is justice, your own life stops having much meaning. What are we down to?”

Barbara looked. “Six minutes, twenty-five seconds.”

“My mother was a wonderful woman. Strong and proud and good. Not... confrontational. She didn’t like to make waves.”

“Would your mother be proud of you now?” Barbara asked. “Would she want you to get even this way?”

He just smiled. “Save your breath.”

Barbara sighed. “I’m guessing you were something of a techie,” she said.

“Yup. Always messed about with computers. Taught myself, mostly. Same was true with elevators. Studied every manual I could find, memorized them. But I still needed some help with that. Found someone to fine-tune my skills. Help me figure out all the security stuff. But he and I, we had a bit of a falling out Sunday night. I had a feeling he was going to talk to the police. He’d stopped believing I had people watching members of his family. He was right about that. It was only ever just me.”

He paused, surveyed the room full of his hostages. Someone, over by the window, was softly crying.

“Where are we on the clock?” he asked Barbara.

She looked at the phone in her hand, the tenths of seconds flying past on the counter.

“Four minutes, fifty-five seconds,” she said.

Vallins nodded. “Doesn’t look good.” He glanced toward the bar. “Last call, folks.”

Seventy-Four

They were making good time.

They were winded, their hearts were pounding, and their legs were killing them, but Bourque and Delgado were nearing the top.

Delgado had slowed, briefly, as she took a call from someone on the ground who wanted her to know that at some point, they might run into the mayor, who was also in one of the four stairwells, heading back up. She was quickly briefed. When she got off the phone, she called out to Bourque, three steps ahead of her, “There’s some bad shit up ahead.”

She told him the body they’d seen flying by in the shaft was the man they’d come to talk to, and that he had been pushed by one of the mayor’s aides, who evidently was the guy behind all the elevator mayhem.

And that aide, Chris Vallins, was holding court on the ninety-eighth floor, ready to blow the whole thing up if Headley didn’t make it back up in time.

“Why?” Bourque asked between pants.

“Beats me,” said Delgado. “From what I gather, if we can’t get to this guy in the next ten minutes or so, it’s not going to matter.”

As they reached the landing between the ninety-fifth and ninety-sixth floors, Bourque stopped. Some painting equipment had been left there, tucked into the corner, a not-unfamiliar sight on their trip skyward. Paint touch-ups being done throughout the building, but for the opening, workers’ supplies had been tucked out of sight. To steady himself, Bourque placed a hand on one of the steps of a five-foot ladder and took a few breaths.

Delgado stopped. “Are you okay?”

“I just need one second,” he said.

“Wheezing?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. Just exhausted.”

“You’re a fucking medical miracle, you are,” Delgado said. “Or a psychological one. Not sure which.”

“Okay,” Bourque said, “I’m good.”

They continued on with the climb.

Bourque still couldn’t believe he was okay. His doctor, Bert, had been right on the money about how he might come out of the shortness of breath that had been plaguing him for so long. Or maybe there was another explanation. Maybe it had something to do with duty. Duty to the job. Duty to his partner.

Duty to Lois.

He was not going to abandon her. He was not going to let her continue to the top of this building and face whatever was up there without him. And maybe that determination, that sense of conviction, was stronger than the mental dysfunction that had been converting his stress into a constriction of his windpipe.

And what the fuck did it matter, anyway? He could breathe, and he was doing this.

One thing he knew with absolute certainty. If he got out of this alive, he was not going to make a cardboard replica of this goddamn building.

Delgado, behind him at this point, said, “What’s this?”

The steps were starting to be littered with tiny pebbles of concrete.

“Must have something to do with the explosions we heard,” Bourque said. “We’re almost there.” A pause, then, “Hello.”

They had just passed the door marked Floor 97. Just one floor to go. But there was a small problem.

There was a four-step gap in front of them.

“Holy shit,” Delgado said.

“There are three other stairwells,” Bourque said, reaching for the handle of the door to the ninety-sixth floor.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I told you. The plans are in the book I got.”

Delgado nodded, briefly impressed. But she was still visibly worried. “If the other stairways were passable, wouldn’t people already be scrambling down them?”

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll check. And if they’re blown up, too, I saw something that might be able to help us.”

“No, we shouldn’t split—”

“Two minutes,” he said, and started running back down the stairs.

Not much more than a minute later, he reappeared with the painter’s aluminum ladder, the one they had passed moments earlier, slung over his shoulder.

“Oh, God,” Delgado said. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“The other stairwells are no good. This is our best shot.”

He rounded the top of the stairs, nearly clocking Delgado with the ladder as he went by.

“Is it long enough?” she asked.

“It’ll have to be.”

He went to the last step before the gap and placed the ladder across it. It was long enough, but there was nothing to brace it against. Once anyone actually got on the ladder, it would slide and drop into the opening.

“I’ll hold it,” Delgado said.

“What?”

“I hold the bottom of it in place while you climb across. Then you hold it and I’ll follow.”

Bourque was skeptical. “Are you sure? I’m not the svelte athlete I once was.”

“Yeah, like you were ever an athlete. Get a move on.”

Delgado planted her feet firmly on a lower step, knelt down, and placed both hands on the bottom rung of the ladder, which lay on a forty-five-degree angle across the opening. Bourque, delicately, grabbed hold of a higher rung, then, careful not to hit his partner in the head, put his feet on a lower one that was just above her head.

Now, all his weight was on the ladder.

“You okay?” he asked.

She grunted. “Move it, fatso.”

Carefully, he made the crossing, looking ahead and not at the stairs a flight below, or the sliver of space between sets of steps that appeared to go down to the depths of hell. Gingerly, he got himself onto the step on the other side of the divide, taking his weight off the ladder.

Delgado let out a long breath as Bourque planted his butt on the second step after the gap, leaned over, and gripped the top of the ladder.

“Okay,” he said.

Delgado got onto the ladder as tentatively as her partner had. She made the crossing slowly. As she reached the other side, Bourque leaned over slightly to give her room to get a grip on the closest concrete step.

As her legs were coming off the last step of the ladder, her foot slipped, and pushed hard on the upper rung. Bourque lost his grip, and the ladder fell, hitting the lower stairwell with a loud, metallic crash.

Delgado clung to the step, her legs dangling in space.

Bourque got his hands under her arms and pulled. She scrambled to get hold of the next step, and once she had it, and her waist was over the threshold of the step below, she pulled herself up the rest of the way.

“I guess we better hope there’s another ladder at the top so we can get back down,” she said.

They both got to their feet and, after taking a second to pull themselves together, walked up the rest of the way to the door marked Floor 98.

They each took a moment to take out their weapons. Once they both had a gun in hand, Bourque grasped the handle of the fire door.

“Kinda wish I’d worn a vest,” Delgado said.

Bourque slowly opened the door.

Seventy-Five

Richard Headley knew there was no way he’d make it.

He wasn’t using anything as accurate as a stopwatch app on his phone, but he’d been glancing regularly at the Rolex strapped to his wrist, and his twenty minutes were nearly up. And he had some thirty floors to go.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Those people are all going to die. Because of me.

But even though he knew it was hopeless, he kept going. He’d taken off his bow tie around the twentieth floor so he could open up the collar of his shirt. He was soaked with perspiration. Once he’d hit the thirtieth floor, he slipped off the jacket of his tux and dropped it on the steps, making sure before he did it that he had his phone.

His white dress shirt was translucent with sweat. It was running down his neck and forehead, getting into his eyes and stinging.

Keep going. Keep going.

He glanced again at his watch. The twenty minutes had to be up.

What the hell am I going to—

And then it hit him.

Stall.

He had the messaging app open, the name Vallins at the top of the screen. He stopped long enough to text one word.

He kept going, looking every few seconds to see if there would be a reply. It came within ten seconds.

Headley kept climbing.

So the elevator was on the way. But it would be there, waiting for him, long before Headley could get to it.

How long would it take for the elevator to come from the lobby — or wherever else Vallins might have sent it in the interim — to the ninety-seventh floor? A minute?

Headley kept going, one foot ahead of the other.

His phone chimed.

Headley stopped, typed his reply with a sweaty thumb.

Several seconds passed. Headley managed to ascend another story.

Headley stopped.

Headley knew it was a lie that would not buy him much time. All Vallins had to do was look down the shaft to know the elevator was where it was supposed to be. The elevator car would be one floor below. He’d be able to see its roof.

And then, just as he feared:

Think, think, think.

What couldn’t Vallins see?

Headley put his thumb to the screen.

Let him think on that for a moment.

Headley ran past Floor 72.

Still so far to go.

Three dancing dots appeared on the mayor’s phone.

The mayor wrote back:

And then the phone in the mayor’s hand rang.

Vallins.

Headley stopped, took the call.

“What do you mean the doors aren’t open?” Vallins shouted.

“I’m right here,” Headley said. “The other four doors are wide open, but the doors in front of the elevator aren’t.”

“That’s not fucking possible!” the man said angrily.

“Look, you’re the guy hogging the remote, not me,” Headley said. “Send me one of the other elevators. And this time, if you’re such a fucking genius, make sure the doors open.” He paused. “Remember, we had a deal. I get back in time, you let everyone go. Well, I made it. Only reason I’m not up there now is you fucked up. That’s on you. Not me.”

Vallins was silent for a moment. “I don’t believe you.”

“Then why don’t you bring up another elevator for yourself and come down one floor and see it with your own eyes?”

Headley, waiting for Vallins to reply, passed Floor 76.

“Okay,” Vallins said finally. “I’ll send another elevator. Because I really, really want you to get back here.”

Seventy-Six

As quietly as possible, Detective Jerry Bourque opened the door to the ninety-eighth floor and slipped in.

He was expecting to hear screams and other sounds of panic, but instead what he heard were soft whimpers and crying, and just one man talking very loudly.

Bourque already had a finger to his lips in case any of the hostages spotted him, which a few did almost instantly. While there were some barely audible gasps, no one did anything stupid like shout: Police are here!

Everyone instinctively understood that the arrival of Bourque and Delgado might be their only hope of getting out of the Top of the Park alive.

The stairwell door was tucked around the corner from the elevators, but they could hear the man continuing to shout.

“That’s not fucking possible!” he said.

Bourque poked his head around the corner, far enough for one eye to take in the scene.

Vallins was by the elevator, gun in one hand, the phone in the other.

Amazingly, the first thing Bourque thought was: This guy is bald. The man who’d been talking to Otto Petrenko by the car had hair. But then again, it had looked like a rug.

On the floor, right by Vallins’s foot, was a black box. Some kind of device.

Bourque wondered whether it could be a bomb. It did not look like one, but then again, how many bombs had Bourque seen in his career? But it looked more like a piece of electronic equipment. The good news, if there was any, was that it was not in Vallins’s hands at this moment.

Bourque, like his partner, had his gun pointing toward the floor, but once they rounded that corner, they would have to be in a firing position. Could he take the shot? Was anyone standing close to Vallins? Anyone directly behind him?

There were some people to his right, a few steps farther away from the open elevator door he was standing beside. But there appeared to be no one behind him.

At one point, as Vallins continued to argue with someone on his phone, he glanced down into the shaft.

No one else is coming, Bourque thought. Lois and I are on our own. Backup is ninety-eight floors away. We might as well be on the moon.

He tightened his grip on his weapon.

Now or never.

It all happened in under ten seconds.

Bourque stepped out from behind the corner, gun raised. “Drop your weapon!” he shouted.

He knew Delgado had moved out, too, and was at his back.

Vallins snapped his head in Bourque’s direction. Dropped the phone. Brought up the arm holding the gun.

And Jerry Bourque thought: Lois is right behind me. Do not duck. Do not dive out of the way. Do not make the same mistake again.

Holding his ground, Bourque fired at the exact same moment as Vallins.

Vallins stumbled backward, the bullet ripping into his right shoulder. As he stumbled, his foot knocked the device closer to the open shaft.

Bourque, hit in the stomach, went down.

Screams.

Her partner having dropped to the floor, Delgado had a clear shot at Vallins, who was still standing despite being hit.

She fired.

Four times.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Vallins jerked spasmodically as the bullets slammed into his thigh, chest, and neck.

One missed and spiderwebbed one of the observation deck windows.

He dropped to the floor, once again knocking the black box.

It skittered several inches closer to the open elevator doors.

A woman holding a cell phone, who’d been standing closest to Vallins, dived forward, actually sailing through the air and landing across his bloodied body, her elbows hitting the marble floor as she scrambled to grab hold of the device before it had a chance to tumble out of sight.

The device was halfway over the sill of the open doorway when she snatched it with her right hand. She brought it close to her chest, smothering it with both hands as if it were a football.

“Touchdown,” she whispered to herself.