Graveland: A Novel (11 page)

Or might have had.

The train pulls into Seventy-second Street. The Japanese tourists get off and are replaced by three randoms—business guy in a suit, sultry teen boy, and a woman about Ellen’s own age but considerably better dressed.

And saner-looking.

The train rattles on.

Ellen doesn’t really have any option here, does she? There’s no obvious solution that presents itself. She’s going to have to give this up.

Sultry teen boy stifles a sneeze, which seems to hurt. He then looks around scowling, as if it was someone else’s fault.

She’ll go into the
Parallax
offices and lay it all out for Max. She has a contact in the NYPD, and if it comes to it, she can make the call from there.

She stares down at the floor.

But first she’ll swing by the Rygate.

Train pulls in at Fifty-ninth Street.

It can’t hurt. She’ll wander around for a while, see what’s going on, play it by ear. Maybe inveigle her way in to the conference.

She runs through a couple of scenarios in her head.

A short time later, as the train is pulling out of Forty-second Street, she looks up again, at the seats opposite. Only one of the original three randoms is left.

Her enhanced doppelgänger.

They both get out at Thirty-fourth Street, and as Ellen trails behind, along the platform, she fantasizes briefly about having this woman’s life—the confidence to wear those clothes, the because-she’s-worth-it hair, the Jell-O-on-springs gait. But as they approach the stairs weariness prevails, slowing Ellen down, and the fantasy fragments, disassembles.

The woman vanishes into the crowd.

Up at street level, heading east, Ellen regroups, sort of. Even if she were to change her mind about the Rygate, she could still pass close by it on her way to the
Parallax
offices. She wouldn’t have to turn north for at least another few blocks.

But she hasn’t changed her mind.

A little sunshine has broken through, and the city is wet and glistening from the earlier rain.

She walks on.

A few minutes later she turns a corner and there it is, on the other side of Broadway—the Herald Rygate, town cars and limos lining the curb in front of it, drivers and doormen gathered under its awning.

Pedestrians streaming by.

Ellen pulls out her phone, checks the time, looks around, and starts crossing the street.

*   *   *

“So, you’d say five, six feet?”

“Yeah, five, six.”

“Five or six feet at the
widest
point?”

“That’s correct, sir. The widest point.”

“Which is at the bottom.”

“Yeah.”

“The bottom of the staircase?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

Out on the floor, Frank Bishop has one eye on a row of flat-screen LCD units tuned to live coverage of the Connie Carillo murder trial and one eye on the door. Lance took the call about an hour ago. It was while Frank was dealing with a customer.

The regional manager, it seems, is going to be stopping by for a brief unscheduled visit.

“On a Wednesday morning?” Lance said after the call. “What’s
that
about?”

Frank shrugged, his insides turning, Monday’s conversation replaying one more time in his head. There’s no doubt about it, he had a legitimate grievance. Those fifty LudeX consoles? Any manager would have been up in arms about that.

But how many would have called it a
fucking joke
?

On top of various other insults.

Pretty tense now, Frank is grateful for the intermittent distraction of the Carillo stuff on the store’s multiple TV screens. In his second week on the stand, Joey Gifford, the so-called celebrity doorman, is being cross-examined by prosecution counsel Ray Whitestone. For reasons Frank is unclear about, questions are currently focusing on particular architectural features of the lobby in the Park Avenue apartment building where Gifford has worked for nearly forty years—and through which Connie Carillo herself is in the habit of passing every morning at seven with her two dogs.

“Now, Mr. Gifford,” Whitestone is saying, “would you please describe for the court the decorative brass radiator grille that is set in the wall of the lobby at the bottom of the staircase.”

As Gifford clears his throat to speak, Frank detects some movement from behind, and turns.

Walking across the floor, directly toward him, is Mike, the baby-faced regional manager, and another guy. Mike is in a suit, and the other guy, who looks even younger than Mike, is wearing a zipped-up leather jacket, but with a Paloma shirt on underneath it.

Frank can see the logo sewn into the collar.

“Hi, Mike,” he says, and then adds—as though responding to some Pavlovian trigger, unable
not
to—“who’s your little friend?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Say hello to Josh, Frank. He’s the new manager here.”

“Here?”

Mike nods.

Of course. What was he expecting? Some kind of reasoned negotiation? A lively exchange of views? An
apology
? Letting it sink in, Frank just stands there and says nothing. Logically, this is where he should start groveling, begging to keep his job, but he knows now that he’s not going to do that.

After a moment, Mike says, “You have fifteen minutes to get your stuff and leave.”

Frank looks at him. “Or else?”

“No severance package. You’ll be deemed to have acted in contravention of the regulations as set down in the employee handbook.”

“I see.”

“And can basically go fuck yourself.”

Frank nods, fighting a strong impulse here to lash out, with his fists.

But he doesn’t.

“Good for you, Mike,” he says eventually, his stomach still churning. “I was worried there for a moment that you’d left your balls back at head office.” Smiling, he turns and moves off in the direction of the storeroom.

Ten minutes later, out in the parking lot, under a thin veil of rain, Frank calls Lizzie.

He needs to hear her voice now. It’s a matter of priorities, of perspective.

He waits.

She doesn’t answer.

He squeezes the phone in his hand and represses an urge to fling it to the ground.

“I appear to be busy.” Her outgoing message. “But say something if you want, after the beep.”

Languid and annoying maybe, but it’s all he’s getting, and as usual he’ll take it.

“Lizzie, it’s Dad. Call me when you get a chance, will you?”

It suddenly occurs to him that this is probably the fourth or fifth time since Saturday evening that he’s tried, without success, to contact his daughter. Which isn’t normal. So should he be panicking? He tries to keep any trace of this out of his voice.

“Any time, sweetheart, okay?” He pauses.
“Okay?”

Not much success there either.

“Just call me.” He gazes around, at the desolate parking lot, at the overcast sky. “I love you, Lizzie.”

*   *   *

The driver is leaning back against the car door, arms folded.

Baxter catches his eye and holds up an outstretched hand.

Five minutes
.

The driver nods an acknowledgment.

Then Baxter looks left and right.

Broadway.

Torrents of people and traffic.

Not exactly ideal working conditions, but he stands there anyway, under the Rygate awning next to a doorman and a couple of other drivers, and takes out his BlackBerry. He checks for e-mails. As expected there are dozens, so he tries to block out the noise and starts scrolling down through them. In a matter of minutes he manages to clear six or seven, sometimes using only a one- or two-word reply. He’s good at this kind of stuff, the guerrilla approach—not that Lebrecht would ever give him any credit for it, or thanks.

Baxter glances around.

It’s funny what Lebrecht said earlier, that some of the older guys up in the Melmotte Room think of him as
the kid
—because compared to them, that’s precisely what he is, a fucking kid. Baxter has worked for those guys, and they’re very serious, very focused, very conservative. Okay, Lebrecht is on a roll, making insane money, but none of it’s
his,
and it won’t last. He’s too volatile, too unstable, and too attached to this notion of taking Hollywood by storm.

Which is just a fantasy.

He thinks he can do it, but Hollywood will chew him up and spit out the seeds.

Baxter’s seen it before.

And he’s not sure he wants to be around when it happens this time. The abuse he can put up with, because at the moment, with things going well, it’s casual and flippant, almost unthinking. But when Lebrecht starts throwing real tantrums?

Forget about it.

Baxter clears two more e-mails and puts his BlackBerry away.

It might be time to move on, to look for something else.

But right now he could do with an espresso.

He steps forward a few paces and scopes out the immediate vicinity. Two blocks down there’s a Starbucks.

He catches the driver’s eye again. “I need some coffee,” he says, over the sound of the traffic. “You want something?”

The driver pushes himself forward from the car, clicks his tongue, and then says, “You want
me
to go? I’ll go.”

Baxter is about to take him up on the offer when the driver’s eyes widen slightly and he nods at something—indicating to Baxter that he should turn around.

Lebrecht.

Shit
.

The driver straightens up. Baxter turns, thinking
fuck it,
he’ll get a coffee at the Wilson, and a proper one.

With real cream.

In that moment Lebrecht emerges from the revolving doors, and Baxter can tell he’s distracted, sulky—complications with Ballantine Marche, no doubt.

He has that
look
.

But in the next second, the look changes. Everything does, the air, the weight of things, the density, the speed at which they move.

Lebrecht’s arms go up, his whole body recoiling from …
what
?

Baxter turns to the right. There’s a guy rushing toward Lebrecht, his arm outstretched, something in his hand. The doorman of the Rygate, a bulky streak of gold and red in his overcoat, epaulettes, and Pershing hat, intervenes. He deflects the outstretched arm, but wrestles the guy as well, the two figures then careening toward Baxter himself, who steps back in horror, arms up and out, glaring down at his shoes. But the entangled figures keep coming, and a full-on collision is inevitable. It’s like a football tackle, with Baxter suddenly deciding he has to resist, arms bunched in tight now, upper body pushing forward and over them. But on contact he loses his balance and falls, rolling off the doorman’s back and onto the sidewalk.

There are voices, roars, shouts, but in all the confusion, as he clambers up, hand on the front of a town car next to Lebrecht’s limo, Baxter has no clear idea of what he’s hearing. Nor, when he turns around and manages to focus, does he have much idea of what he’s seeing, either.

Because there on the ground, still struggling, are the doorman and what Baxter can only assume is a gunman, while a few feet away there appears to be a separate struggle going on, as two of the limo drivers try to restrain a second man.

Behind them, a stunned Lebrecht staggers backward, stopping at the granite wall beside the revolving doors.

Baxter doesn’t see any blood or obvious wound.

But then, why would he?

And it’s only in that moment, as he hears the gunshot ring out, that he realizes
why
he wouldn’t—

Because there was no gunshot before.

There’s certainly one now, though, and it’s followed by a general recoil, a shocked pulling away, which loosens up the two nodal points of the skirmish. In the next couple of seconds the gunman on the ground, along with his accomplice, breaks free. They start running, but in different directions—one to the nearest corner, the other out into the traffic, where he proceeds to zigzag his way through the midmorning chaos of Broadway.

Lebrecht’s driver, standing next to Baxter, decides to give chase and slides over the front of the town car onto the street.

But he is immediately thwarted—blocked by a passing MTA bus.

Baxter turns around again. Like everyone else here, he’s in shock, and having a hard time processing what has happened—in particular the fact that when the gunman discharged his weapon a few moments ago someone apparently
took the bullet
 …

It was—he sees now—one of the other drivers.

He’s alive, still standing, but clutching his side, a fellow driver giving him support. The doorman, back on his feet, is there as well, and on a cell phone, wild-eyed, waving his free hand around, calling 911.

In a sort of post-traumatic slo-mo, Baxter then does a general pan of the area. No one is walking by the front of the hotel, they’re going around it, actually stepping out onto the street to avoid the sidewalk. It’s like some collective but unspoken agreement to preserve the crime scene. There
are
onlookers, but they’ve formed a partial cordon to the left and right—a no-go area also loosely defined from above by the perimeter of the hotel’s awning.

Within this shaded rectangle of sidewalk, a handful of people stand, or move slowly, making eye contact with one another, shaking their heads in disbelief, waiting. Baxter glances over at Lebrecht, who’s still at the granite wall, looking pale and shaken.

Their eyes meet.

Lebrecht raises an index finger and points it inward, effectively poking himself in the chest, and mouthing, “Me? That was meant for
me
?”

Baxter shrugs and emits the requisite degree of incredulity, but he experiences something else here, too, a flicker of … what? Ambivalence?
Disappointment?
To deflect whatever it is he looks away, and that’s when he sees her.

She’s standing just inside the perimeter, to the left, staring at him, holding up her phone, a woman in her late thirties, early forties, dressed all in black.

Not just an onlooker, not just a bystander.