Elevator Pitch (UK)

by Linwood Barclay

  She said, “A lot of people think if you’re in an elevator that’s hurtling downward, and you jump off the floor just before it hits the bottom of the shaft, that somehow that’s going to save you. Well,” and at this point she chuckled, “there’s a whole lot wrong with that supposition. The first is, you’re not really going to be able to time it right. You can be looking at the numbers next to the door and figure, okay, we’re just about to hit the basement, jump now! But even if you could do that, which is pretty much impossible, it wouldn’t save you. Your body is still traveling downward at the same rate of speed as the elevator, so one way or another, you’re going to hit bottom and you’re going to hit it hard. The only real hope you have of surviving is to lie down on the floor of the elevator, on your back, spreading out your arms and legs like you’re a starfish. What this does is more evenly distribute your weight across the surface of the elevator floor.”

  The host asked, “Okay, but what if you’re in an elevator with ten other people and can’t do that?”

  The expert shrugged. “Well, in that case, you’re going to become elevator pizza.”

  On MSNBC, the elevator crisis was a financial story.

  “The New York Stock Exchange has closed three hours before the ringing of the bell,” one analyst said. “The business of the city has effectively ground to a halt. Millions of dollars are being lost every second that this goes on. Mayor Richard Headley has created a panic. He needs to get back out there in front of the cameras and come up with something better than ‘I don’t know’ and ‘We’re shutting down the elevators.’ This has to be the most astonishing example of incompetence I have ever seen.”

  The only group alleged to have taken responsibility for anything that had happened in New York in the previous three days was the U.S.-based Flyovers, and even its connection to the taxi bombing had not been independently confirmed. But that did not stop many individuals, including more than a few politicians at very senior levels, from arguing that this was more evidence that America needed to curb immigration and tighten its borders.

  “We cannot,” said one bombastic talk radio host, “allow these illegals into our country to wage war on us. But yet, that’s what we do! Just how stupid are we, ladies and gentlemen?”

  Nearly every TV channel—with the possible exceptions of those devoted to weather updates, cartoons, and repeats of The Big Bang Theory—was featuring nonstop talking heads offering plenty of opinions based on almost no information whatsoever.

  In that sense, it was pretty much like any other day.

  Forty-Four

  Barbara had not left the City Hall media room after the mayor’s statement. She’d taken a chair in a back corner, sat down, and written her piece with her two amazing thumbs. The room had pretty much cleared out, but reporters started filing back in when word got out that the mayor’s son was going to make a follow-up statement. So Barbara was already sitting there when Glover went to the podium to announce the mayor’s decision to shut down all city elevators.

  “Holy shit,” Barbara said under her breath. The magnitude of this story was growing exponentially by the hour.

  She wasn’t surprised Headley had sent the boy to deliver this latest bulletin. The mayor had done enough damage to himself in his earlier appearance when, in response to Barbara’s question, he could not say whether it was safe to ride a New York elevator. Glover’s statement had pretty much made it clear that the answer was no.

  Glover declined to take questions after making the announcement, but as he tried to escape the room he was cornered by several news crews and reporters shouting out more questions. He kept raising his hand in front of his face, as much to keep the blinding lights out of his eyes as to keep the media hounds at bay.

  Barbara saw nothing to be gained by joining the scrum. No reporter ever got an exclusive by following the pack. She glanced out the media room door and spotted Chris Vallins’s bald head. He was walking speedily, as though he wanted to distance himself from the chaos as quickly as possible.

  Barbara chased after him. When she was within a couple of feet she reached out and grabbed his arm, spinning him around. His startled expression lasted only until he realized who it was that had a hold on him.

  “Hey,” she said. “Tell me. Just how bad is this?”

  He glanced about nervously. “You’re the last person I should be seen talking to.”

  Barbara turned her head to the closest door, a sign screwed to it that read Ladies. She hooked her arm deeper into his and dragged him toward it.

  “You gotta be kidding,” he said. By the time he got his arm free, they were already inside, in an area with some cushioned chairs ahead of where the room opened up and the stalls could be found.

  Barbara pushed Chris into a chair and dropped into one next to it.

  “Spill,” she said.

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” he told her as he turned his head to the door, clearly worried that another woman might walk in at any moment.

  “How big is this? Who’s behind it?” she asked.

  “They don’t have any idea,” he said.

  “What about these Flyover nuts?”

  Vallins shrugged. “They’re looking at them. But no one really knows anything.”

  “What’s connecting the elevator events? Is there some commonality?”

  Vallins pressed his lips tightly together, as though conducting an inner debate. “Okay, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but …”

  “Come on,” she said anxiously.

  “Cameras,” he said.

  “Cameras?”

  “Someone installed tiny cameras to monitor what was happening in the elevators that killed people.”

  Barbara’s eyes went wide. “Jesus. Why would someone do that?”

  Another shrug. “Maybe to see that someone was inside before making them go haywire. No sense dropping an elevator if there’s no one inside to fuck with.” He sighed. “You really made Headley look like a fool in there.”

  “He doesn’t make it that hard. What else can you tell me?”

  “Nothing. I shouldn’t even have told you that much. But it’s going to come out. Landlords are being told what to look for. They see one of those cameras mounted on top of an elevator, they know it’s an elevator that might be targeted.”

  “This is insane,” Barbara said. “Why would anyone do this?”

  “You can be sure there’s a reason,” Vallins said. “And I’m betting that eventually it’ll come out.”

  Barbara said, “You have my number?”

  “Oh, I think everyone’s got your number.”

  “Fuck off. My phone number.”

  “I’ve got it. And your email.”

  “How’d you get that?”

  Vallins gave her a duh look. “It’s at the end of your column.”

  “Oh, right.” She rolled her eyes at her stupidity. “If there’s anything else you can tell me, off the record, get in touch.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” His face softened as he asked, “How’s the elbow?”

  “Aches like a motherfucker,” Barbara said with a hint of smile. “But it’s fine.”

  The door started to swing open. A woman took one step in and stopped when she saw Chris. Before he could say anything, Barbara pointed to the hall and said, “Find another one.”

  The woman disappeared.

  Chris said, “You really are a piece of work.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself. And I still say you were following me.”

  Chris shook his head and sighed. “Lucky for you. Or you wouldn’t be here, now, being a pain in the ass.”

  She eyed him slyly. “He’s got you checking up on me. Looking for some way to discredit me.”

  “I’m not saying that’s true,” Chris said, “but even if it was, I think he’s got bigger things to worry about now.”

  “So I better stop looking at my phone when I cross the street, then. My guardian angel is otherwise engaged.”

&
nbsp; “Something like that,” he said.

  “Too bad,” Barbara said.

  The sound of a text came from inside his jacket. He dug out the phone, looked at the message, grimaced.

  “What?”

  “They need me,” he said, then rolled his eyes. “The mayhem has begun.”

  Forty-Five

  Amad Connor, fourteen years old, and his friend, Jeremy Blakelock, who had turned fifteen the week before, were pulling the same stunt they’d pulled several times before.

  They had both left their Hell’s Kitchen apartment building after breakfast, supposedly on their way to a full day of school, where they were both in the ninth grade. Their parents—Amad lived with both of his, but Jeremy lived with his mother during the week and then went to live with his father, in Brooklyn, most weekends—always left for work later. Amad’s dad was employed in the massive shoe department at Macy’s, while his mother was a secretary for a condo development firm in the Upper West Side. Jeremy’s mother was the head, dayside chef for a restaurant just off Union Square.

  Amad and Jeremy actually showed up for homeroom, when attendance would be taken, but they vanished on their way to first period. That way, it would take longer for school officials to figure out they were absent, at which point there was a chance they would call their parents and ask where they were.

  But they also knew, from past experience, that often the school didn’t make that call. After all, they were teenagers. They weren’t some kindergarten toddlers who’d failed to show up. So what if they didn’t get to class? Odds were they hadn’t been kidnapped.

  With an entire city at their disposal, one might have thought they’d explore it. Ride the subways, go to Midtown Comics and steal some graphic novels, then hit the multiplex and take in the latest adventure featuring the stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

  But they did none of these things. They headed home.

  They were going to surf.

  From watching various YouTube videos, the two had learned that once you were inside an elevator, if you kept the doors open, looped a wire over a small bracket tucked in the upper corner where the doors retracted, and pulled down on it, the outer doors would remain open even after the elevator had moved on. So, they’d send the elevator one floor down, jump out, and once the elevator had stopped one floor below, step through the opening and stand atop the car.

  To cover their tracks, they would make sure the door closed behind them. (Later, when the elevator stopped for long enough, they would pry open the doors one floor above the car and leap out.)

  Up and down the shaft they’d go. They had no control over the elevator at this point. That would be determined by whoever got on it, and it was the unpredictability that made it so much fun. The elevator would be summoned to a floor, but which one? Someone would board, but where would they want to go? Whispering back and forth so as not to alert anyone they were there, they would take bets on where they might end up.

  They’d recorded some of their earlier adventures on their phones and posted them anonymously to YouTube. The site was filled with this kind of stuff. They only wished they lived in an even taller building, so they could go on longer, wilder rides.

  It sure beat school.

  Except that afternoon, something odd happened.

  It seemed that no one needed the elevator. They had been sitting on the roof of the car, at the top of the shaft, crouched below the ceiling and above the exit to the twenty-fifth floor without a door beside them to crack open. Ten minutes had gone by and they had not moved. And they could hear neither of the other elevators moving, either.

  That had never happened before.

  “What the fuck?” Jeremy said to Amad.

  Amad said, “Maybe there was a fire drill and everyone’s outside.”

  “There was no fire alarm, dipshit,” Jeremy said.

  After twenty minutes, they started to get worried.

  Jeremy suggested they open the escape hatch on the top of the car. If they could get into it, and hit the elevator buttons, they could probably get out. But the hatch did not lift off. It was bolted on, and they had not exactly brought along a tool kit.

  They did not want to get caught on top of the car. They’d be in trouble not just with the building management, but their parents. All the other times they’d elevator-surfed, they’d gotten away with it.

  But at the half-hour mark, they started shouting.

  “Help!” they cried together. “Help us! We’re in here! Somebody get us out!”

  No one heard them.

  Connie Boyle’s phone buzzed.

  It was screen side down on her desk at an investment firm in one of the uppermost floors of One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, sixth tallest in the world. Although technically 104 stories tall, there were only ninety-four actual stories, and when Connie chose to look out the window, which was not often, she felt overwhelmed by the view.

  And not in a good way.

  It had taken Connie, forty-three, a long time to get used to the idea of working up here in the clouds. First of all, she was uncomfortable with heights. It wasn’t a totally crippling fear, but it was bad enough that she had insisted, when her firm moved here, on a work station well inside the building, away from the windows. She could go entire weeks without ever looking outside. Her friends would say to her, “Wow, how cool to work up there! Do you ever get tired of that view?”

  “What view?” she often replied.

  Connie’s anxiety about working here was not due solely to her uneasiness with heights. One World Trade Center had been erected on the site of the old World Trade Center. Connie could never get over the fear that the new building was a target. Whenever she heard a passing jet she felt a wave of anxiety. She felt relief at the end of every day, when she put her feet back down on Fulton Street.

  Her phone buzzed, and she saw that it was her husband. When he asked her in a panicked tone—before she’d even had a chance to say hello—whether she was okay, her heart began to race and she almost instantly began to feel faint and dizzy.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “The elevators,” he said. “Have they shut down your elevators?”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but before she could ask him what he knew that she did not, a woman’s voice came over the building’s public address system.

  “May I have your attention, please,” she said.

  Connie’s dizziness intensified. Her heart was a jackhammer.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” her husband said. “I just wanted to be sure you were—”

  Connie was half listening to her husband, half listening to the voice emanating from the speakers.

  “They’re shutting down the elevators,” she whispered. “We … we can’t use the elevators. We’re. … Oh God, we’re stuck up here. We’re sitting ducks.”

  She dropped the phone onto her desk as she stood up out of her chair. She looked over the partitions to the north window.

  “We’re trapped,” she said. Her voice grew louder, and shakier. “We have to get out of here! We have to get out!”

  Several coworkers leapt from their chairs and gathered around Connie, attempting to console her. But the woman was in the throes of a full-scale panic attack.

  “Connie, Connie, it’s okay,” said one woman. “It’s just a precaution. Yeah, we’ve got a long walk down the stairs to get home but—”

  But Connie didn’t hear her. She had passed out and collapsed on the floor.

  Retired librarian Zachary Carrick went to Zabar’s Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

  Zachary bought only as much as he could carry. Like many New Yorkers, he did not drive. Unlike most New Yorkers, he did not like to take taxis, and hated the subway. If Zachary was going to go someplace, it had to be within walking distance. Which meant that Zachary pretty much never left the Upper West Side. His world these days had become limite
d to roughly a nine-square block area. Zabar’s was only around the corner, at Broadway and Eightieth. He liked to walk, but he didn’t like to walk far.

  So Zachary would buy what he needed for two days. On Fridays, he would buy a little extra, to get him through to Monday. It wasn’t just that Zachary Carrick only purchased what he could carry. He figured, at the age of eighty-seven, he didn’t want to buy too much food if there was a chance he might not get the opportunity to consume it. This worried him most on Fridays. Suppose, he often thought to himself, I pop my clog Friday night, and I’ve gone and bought enough provisions to get me through the entire weekend? What a waste of money that would be.

  Zachary had been on his own since his wife, Glenda, passed away nearly twenty years ago, but he had never left their eighteenth-floor apartment on West Eighty-First. Why move? The place wasn’t huge to begin with. Why mess with a perfectly good routine?

  Although he’d spent a career surrounded by newspapers and periodicals filled with current events, Zachary didn’t give a rat’s ass about what went on anymore. He didn’t get any papers and almost never turned on his TV, unless it was to watch what he called the Lobby Channel, where he could see who was coming in and out of the building. Out of the hundreds of channels available to him, this was, without question, the best reality show on TV.

  Zachary was not prepared for what awaited him upon his return to the building today.

  There were Out of Order signs taped to all three elevators.

  A dozen other residents were milling about in the lobby, grousing about the inconvenience. Most of them were, as Zachary himself might say, getting on. A few of them were even as old as he was. One of them was Mrs. Attick, who was in a wheelchair. She looked the most distressed of any of them.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked, setting down his two Zabar’s bags. Even though they weren’t that heavy, his arms felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. The other residents quickly brought him up to speed.

  “It was Headley gave the order!” one man said. “Shut ’em all down! All over the city!”