Elevator Pitch Read online

  She brightened. “Oh, right, Jaws. That’s one of Otto’s favorites.” She looked curious. “I bought him some socks online with a shark on them. For his birthday.”

  Bourque exchanged a brief glance with Delgado. “Yeah, great movie.”

  Eileen said, “If he had gone to a movie, he’d have been home before midnight.” She took a tissue from a box on the table next to her and dabbed the corner of her right eye.

  “Do you think he was meeting with someone?” Delgado asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  Delgado leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “This is a difficult question to ask, Mrs. Petrenko, but is it possible your husband is seeing someone?”

  “You mean, a woman?” She looked aghast. “An affair?”

  Delgado nodded.

  “Oh, no, that’s … I don’t think so.” She seemed to close in on herself, squeezing her arms closer to her body. “That wouldn’t be like him, I don’t think.”

  The room went quiet for a moment while the detectives let Eileen think about that one a little longer. Finally, Delgado asked, “Why did you say you thought he might have gone to Cleveland?”

  She shrugged. “He doesn’t like it here. He doesn’t like New York. He doesn’t like the big cities very much. At least, not the ones on the ocean.” She sniffed, touched the tissue to her nose.

  “The ocean?” Bourque said. “He doesn’t like to swim? He hates boats?”

  “No, no, it’s not like that. There’s the cities on the coast and then there’s the rest of the country.”

  “I don’t follow,” Delgado said.

  “Otto says one day there’s going to be another civil war, but it won’t be between the north and the south. It’ll be between all the snooty people, you know, the elites, and all the other people, the real Americans.”

  “So people who live in, like, New York and Los Angeles and places like that aren’t real Americans?” Delgado asked.

  “They don’t hold true American values,” Eileen Petrenko said. “Otto would say they all want everyone to have abortions, to turn children into homosexuals, that kind of thing. But mostly, they look down their noses at everyone else.” She shrugged, then tried to smile through the tears she was holding back. “But that’s not me. I like people. I try to get along. I like people here. I like my neighbors. They’re nice.”

  “Your husband’s views,” Bourque said slowly, “sound similar to those espoused by the Flyovers.”

  Eileen nodded. “That sounds like something Otto might have mentioned, but when he started in on this, I didn’t listen to much. What are Flyovers?”

  Bourque said, “It’s an alt-right group that says the real Americans are the ones the elites fly over when they go from coast to coast.”

  Eileen looked confused. “It can’t be the same group. I was watching the news yesterday, wondering if there might have been a car accident or something that might have involved Otto, and there was something about a bombing in Boston, and they mentioned that group. But Otto wouldn’t want anything to do with people like that.”

  “Does Otto spend a lot of time on the net?”

  Eileen’s face darkened. “Maybe. But he’s not some pervert if that’s what you’re asking. He’s not on any of those porno sites. And he’s not in some chat room talking to women, either. Not Otto.”

  Bourque glanced at Delgado, who was no doubt thinking what he was thinking. If Otto was their guy, and it was looking as though he might be, when they left this house they’d be taking his computer with them.

  “Mrs. Petrenko,” Bourque said, “do you know whether your husband was having any disagreements with anyone? Personally or professionally? Maybe there was someone who had a grudge against him?”

  “No. Otto is a good man.”

  “Has he ever been in any kind of trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “With the police? Has he ever been arrested?”

  She bit her lip. “It was a long time ago.”

  Delgado asked, “When was this?”

  “Ten, eleven years, I think? It was a misunderstanding. Otto and a friend, they were on an out-of-town job, had too much to drink, and broke some furniture in a motel. The police were called. But Otto and the other man, they agreed to pay for the damages, and the charges were dropped.”

  Bourque slowly nodded his head. “So if he was arrested, they probably took his fingerprints.”

  Eileen shook her head. “It was long ago. He did the right thing. He paid them.”

  Delgado smiled. “I’m sure he did. Let’s move on. Can you describe his behavior the last few weeks? Did he seem any different to you? Did he seem worried about something?”

  Eileen thought about that. “Maybe a little.” They waited. She put a hand to her forehead, then took it away, as if taking her own temperature. “He’s been in touch with his family.”

  “Is that odd?” Bourque asked.

  She shrugged. “Usually, at Christmas maybe, he calls his brother, asks how his kids are, or he’ll check in with his sister if it’s her birthday. But these last few weeks, he’d just call to say hi, or he’d send them an email. I mean, he likes them, they’re family, but he’s never shown all that much interest before.”

  “Did he say why he was doing that?” he asked.

  She shook her head slowly. “It was like … it was like he was worried about them. I heard him say to his sister that they should have an alarm system. And I heard him ask his brother if he’d noticed anyone watching the house. I asked Otto about that, when he got off the phone, and he said we live in an age when we need to be careful, that was all.”

  “Where do his brother and sister live?” Delgado asked.

  “His brother’s back in Cleveland. His house is around the block from where ours used to be. And his sister lives in Vegas. She’s a blackjack dealer.”

  “Have you talked to them since your husband went missing?”

  Eileen Petrenko shook her head. “I didn’t want to alarm anyone. And … and if Otto’s just done something stupid, I don’t want to have to explain it later.”

  “Stupid how?” Bourque asked.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes men do stupid things. They have too much to drink, they … have some midlife crisis or something.” She tried to laugh. “Maybe he bought a motorcycle and decided to drive across the country.” But her laughter turned immediately to tears. “He would never do that. It’s not … it’s not like him.”

  Bourque took out his pad. “Could you give me your brother-and sister-in-laws’ names and numbers?”

  “Anatoly Petrenko, and Misha Jackson. That’s her married name.” She left the room briefly and returned with a cell phone. She sat back down, opened up the contacts on the phone, and recited two phone numbers for Bourque.

  The two detectives gave each other a subtle glance. It was time.

  “Mrs. Petrenko,” Delgado said, “you provided a picture and a general description of your husband when you first called the police.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wonder if you could provide a few more specifics. Perhaps, identifying marks.”

  “Identifying marks? Like …”

  Bourque said, “You know, birthmarks, perhaps a scar, a tattoo maybe.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Otto does have a tattoo.”

  “There you go,” Delgado said. “Can you describe it?”

  “I can do better than that,” she said, picking up the phone again. She tapped on photos.

  “Last summer, we went up to Cape Cod for a couple of days to see my cousin and her husband.” She swiped through the pictures until she found the ones she was looking for. “Here we go.”

  She handed the phone to Delgado, who leaned in closer to Bourque so they could look at the picture together.

  The photo showed Otto standing on the beach, ocean behind him, hands on his hips. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of black swimming trunks, his belly hanging over the waist.

  The photo off
ered a clear shot of his shoulder, and the coiled cobra tattooed on it.

  “Ah,” said Delgado. “That is distinctive. What’s the story behind that?”

  “He got it when he was in his early twenties and didn’t know better,” she said. “He and some of his stupid friends, they were at some bar where they had a cobra in a big cage, and if you could stay in the cage with it for five minutes, you got free drinks.”

  “Jesus,” Bourque said.

  “Otto was the only one who lasted that long, so he got the tattoo as a reminder.” Her voice dropped, as though someone were listening. “I bet it was defanged, or whatever they call it. The bar couldn’t risk having their customers poisoned.”

  “You’re probably right,” Bourque said.

  He looked into the woman’s face. He hated this part, always had. Telling someone a loved one was dead. It was the worst part of the job. He felt a slight constriction in his windpipe.

  He had a couple more questions before he’d break the news.

  “So why did you move here from Cleveland if your husband hates New York so much?” he asked.

  “The company he worked for went out of business,” she said. “He sent out résumés all over the place, and the only firm that responded was here in New York. So even though he didn’t want to move, there really wasn’t much choice.” She smiled sadly. “Have to put food on the table, you know. I’ve been working, too. I got a job waiting tables, but I haven’t gone in since Otto’s been gone.”

  “Right,” Delgado said. “You said earlier he didn’t show up for work yesterday or today?”

  She nodded worriedly.

  “We’d like the name of that boss,” Bourque said.

  “Sure, of course,” Eileen said.

  “What sort of work does your husband do, anyway?” Delgado asked.

  “Elevator repair,” she said. “Otto services elevators.”

  Fourteen

  Mayor Richard Headley had arrived at his City Hall desk early and had made it clear to Valerie and the rest of his staff that unless the Statue of Liberty hiked up her skirt and waded over to Jersey City, he did not want to be disturbed. He muted his phone and brought up onto his screen a speech he was to deliver to the New York Conservation Authority the following week. Headley had speechwriters, but he hadn’t been happy with their attempts at this one, and he wanted to take a run at it himself. The speech was one of a series the mayor had been giving to various groups about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city. That included everything from establishing more charging stations for electric cars throughout the five boroughs to making all the cars in the city’s fleet 100 percent electric. It was easier said than done, but Headley had made a greener city one of his campaign planks and he wasn’t going to back down on it.

  Converting larger vehicles, such as garbage trucks and fire engines, to electric power was a more formidable task, but scrapping conventional gas-powered cars, those that ran on fossil fuels, to battery power was an achievable goal. The city had already converted nearly 25 percent of its cars—basic four-door sedans—to electric power. They could be spotted by the small, green “NYG” logo on the back bumper. Glover had tried to talk his father into a big sticker that would cover most of the driver’s door, really give people the message, but Headley had thought that too over the top.

  While he had the speech on his computer screen, the mayor made a few changes. Just a line here and there so it didn’t sound like he was giving the same speech he’d given the week before to a different group. He liked to work something fresh into each one so that the media would have something new to lead with. That assumed, of course, that the media was paying any attention at all. You tried to do what you thought was right, to make the city a better place, but did the media give you any credit for it? Not often. Certainly not when people like Barbara Matheson were making a big deal out of nothing. Sure, he gave a contract to Steelways, and yes, Arnett Steel had been a major contributor to his campaign, but Steelways had the best proposal for upgrading the subway’s switching system. What was he supposed to do? Recommend a less competent company that came in with a lower bid?

  Journalists didn’t understand how the real world worked. They never had and never would.

  Barbara Matheson was a perfect example of that. Never worked in business. Never hired or fired people. Never had to make distasteful, backroom payoffs with union leaders to make sure a job site wasn’t sabotaged.

  Headley didn’t always like the way the world worked, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think he could change it. Journalists were. They expected more of those in charge than they did of themselves.

  Hypocrites, the lot of them.

  And yet, when you were in a job like Headley’s, you had to find a way to work with them. The media was one more obstacle to getting things done, like those unions, and government regulation.

  Which was why Headley had been open to considering his son’s idea to bring Matheson into the tent with that lucrative offer to write his bio.

  An idea that had blown up in their faces. For the time being, the project was on hold. Meetings with prospective publishers had been canceled.

  The mayor had brought Glover into his office earlier that morning to tell him how badly he’d screwed up.

  “She made us all look like fools,” Headley had said angrily while his son sat on the couch, knees together, head slightly bowed. “You should have known she’d say no, and that she’d go off and write about our proposal. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  His son had raised his head long enough to say, “But you said to give it a—”

  “So it’s my fault,” Headley had said. “You come up with a strategy that doesn’t work, and it’s my fault.” He paused. “Maybe it is. Who I pick to advise me, that’s on me.”

  Before Glover could say anything else, his father had pointed to the door and said, “That’s all.”

  There’d been no point trying to completely refute Matheson’s piece about what had transpired in the limo. As Chris had said, she’d probably recorded it. Valerie had issued a short statement to say that Matheson’s experience made her a leading candidate for a possible project, and had nothing to do with undermining her work at Manhattan Today. Valerie also had to clarify what the mayor’s political ambitions were. And that, she said, was to be the best mayor of New York that he could be.

  As he reworked the speech, Headley found it difficult to concentrate. He hated personnel matters, especially when they involved Glover. He was still staring at the screen, struggling to find a way to give the speech some new life, when Valerie Langdon strode into the room. She pointed to the flashing light on his phone.

  Valerie said, “It’s Alexander Vesolov.”

  “Should I know who that is?” Headley said, slowly turning his head to look at her.

  “The Russian ambassador.”

  “What does he want? A reception or something? Just take down the details.”

  “He wants to speak with you. Personally. He’s quite insistent. He sounds pretty agitated.”

  Headley took his fingers off the keyboard and sighed. “Christ, somebody not notice his diplomatic plates and give him a parking ticket?”

  Valerie said nothing. Headley sighed and reached for the phone. A smile came to his lips as instantly as if a switch had been thrown.

  “Mr. Ambassador, always a pleasure.”

  “Mr. Mayor,” said the heavily accented Vesolov on the other end.

  “What can I do for you today?”

  “We are very concerned, of course, about what has happened to Fanya Petrov.”

  The mayor didn’t speak for several seconds, trying to place the name, wondering whether it was one he should know.

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat that, Mr. Ambassador?”

  As the ambassador did so, Headley scribbled the name on a scratch pad and held it up for Valerie to see. She made a Huh? face, but immediately got out her phone to do a search.

  “This
is a terrible, terrible thing,” Vesolov said. “This is a terrible blow to my country. It’s a terrible blow to the scientific community. Not just for Russia, but for the entire world.”

  Valerie set her phone on the desk, screen up, under Headley’s nose. She’d found a Wikipedia page about the woman. Headley scanned it while he carried on the conversation.

  “I can understand that,” the mayor said, speaking slowly and deliberately while he struggled to get up to speed. “Dr. Petrov’s work is certainly … groundbreaking. One of the leaders in her field.”

  “Not anymore,” the ambassador said.

  Headley decided he could not bluff any longer.

  “I’m going to have to be frank here, Mr. Ambassador. You have me at a disadvantage. I’ve been in something of a bubble this morning. I do not know what has happened to Dr. Petrov. Has she been asked to leave the country? Is this a diplomatic issue? Because if it is, I’m not sure that I am the best one to talk to. I’d be more than happy to connect you with the State Department or any other appropriate agency.”

  “Fanya Petrov is dead, Mr. Mayor.”

  “I’m sorry. I did not know. My condolences. Perhaps you could bring me up to speed about what happened.”

  “You know about the elevator accident?”

  Ah, Headley thought. Something he did know a little about.

  “Yes, of course. Very tragic. A horrible thing. I did not know Dr. Petrov was among the casualties. I somehow missed her name in the accounts of the incident. I knew one of the victims. Sherry D’Agostino. I visited the scene personally yesterday, and have directed my staff to—”

  “Yesterday?” said Vesolov. “No, not that elevator accident. This happened this morning.”

  Headley sat up in his chair, tossed the TV remote toward Valerie and pointed to the screen mounted on the wall. “This morning?” Headley said as Valerie started pushing buttons to bring the screen to life.

  “You do not know this?”

  One of the news channels popped up, but instead of local news there was a weather update. The mayor mouthed, Fuck!

  Valerie came around the desk, forcing the mayor out of her way so she could start typing on his keyboard. She opened a browser and within seconds found an online news video, hit play with the volume off, and stepped back so Headley could watch it.