seconds it was going much faster than it was designed to go.
Stuart and Sherry and the two others felt their feet lifting off the floor.
The elevator was in free fall.
Until it hit bottom.
Barbara Matheson was impressed by the size of the crowd. The usual suspects, more or less, but the fact that they’d turned out meant her story had made an impression.
This was a TV event, really. Get the mayor walking out of City Hall, lob a few questions his way, get video of him denying everything. The Times, the Daily News, the Post could all write their stories without being here. But NY1 and the local ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates had crews waiting for Richard Wilson Headley to show. He might try sneaking out a back way, or leaving in a limo with windows so deeply tinted you wouldn’t know whether he was inside or not. But then the evening newscasts would say he made a point of avoiding the media, imply that he was a coward, and Headley never wanted to come across as a coward.
Even if he could be one at times.
Barbara was here on the off chance that something might actually happen. And yes, she was enjoying the shit she’d stirred up. This show of media force was her doing. She’d broken the story. Maybe Headley would take a swing at somebody who put a camera in his face, although that seemed unlikely. He was too smart for that. The TV stations were here for a comment, but she’d already gotten one and put it in her column.
“That’s a load of fucking horseshit,” Headley had said when Barbara ran the allegations past him. Her editors at Manhattan Today printed the response without asterisks to disguise the profanity, but that was hardly daring these days. The Times still avoided curse words except in the most extreme cases, but even The New Yorker, that staid institution, didn’t blink an eye about f-bombs and hadn’t for years.
“You really put his dick into the blender this time.”
She turned. It was Matt Timmins, instantly recognizable by his multidirectional black hair and glasses thick enough to see life on Mars. He worked for an online site that covered city issues, but she knew him back when he worked for NBC, before he got laid off. He had a phone in hand, waiting to take video, which would be good enough for the political blog he wrote.
“Hey, Matt,” Barbara said.
“Wearin’ Kevlar?”
Barbara shrugged. She liked Matt, vaguely remembered sleeping with him nearly ten years ago when they were both in their early thirties. The local press had been camped out in front of the house of a congressman in the midst of a bribery scandal. Barbara and Matt had shared a car to keep warm while waiting for the feds to arrive and walk the politician out the front door. After, they went to a bar, had too much to drink, and went back to his place. It was all a bit foggy. Barbara was pretty sure Matt was married now, with a kid, maybe two.
“Headley won’t shoot me,” she said. “He might hire someone to shoot me, but he wouldn’t do it himself.”
A woman with a mike in one hand looked up from the phone in her other. She’d been reading a text. “Dickhead’s on the move,” she said to the cameraman standing beside her, loud enough that it created a low-level buzz among the collected media. The mayor was on his way.
Of course, Mayor Richard Wilson Headley always went by “Richard,” sometimes “Rich,” but never “Dick.” But that didn’t stop his detractors from referring to him that way. One of the tabs, which had it in for him nearly as much as Manhattan Today did, liked to stack DICK over HEADLEY on the front as often as it could, usually with as unflattering picture as they could find of the man. They also took delight in headlines that coupled GOOD with HEADLEY.
Headley knew it was a losing battle, so sometimes he’d embrace the word so often used against him, particularly when it came to the city’s various unions. “Am I going to be a total dick with them on this new contract?” he asked the other day. “You bet your ass I am.”
“Here we go,” someone said.
The mayor, accompanied by Glover Headley, his twenty-five-year-old son and adviser, communications strategist Valerie Langdon, and a tall, bald man Barbara did not think she’d seen before, was coming out the front door of City Hall and heading down the broad steps toward a waiting limo. The media throng moved toward him, and everyone stopped halfway, allowing Headley a makeshift pulpit, standing two steps above everyone else.
But it was Glover who spoke. “Hey, guys, we’re on our way to the mansion, no time for questions at this—”
Headley shot his son a disapproving look and raised a hand. “No, no. I’m more than happy to take a few.”
Barbara, hanging at the back of the pack, smiled inwardly. Standard operating procedure for Headley. Overrule your aides; don’t hide behind them. Act like you want to talk to the press. The whole thing would have been rehearsed earlier. Valerie touched the mayor’s arm, as though asking him to think twice about this. He shook it off.
Nice touch, Barbara thought.
Even though the bald guy was standing back of the mayor and trying to be invisible, Barbara was sizing him up. Trim, over six feet, skin the color of caramel. Of the three men standing before the assembled media, this guy had the most style. Long dress coat over his suit, leather gloves even though it wasn’t that cold out. Looked like he’d stepped off the cover of GQ.
A looker.
She thought of the people she knew in City Hall, the ones who regularly fed her information. Maybe one of them could tell her who this guy was, what the mayor had hired him to do.
Then again, she could just go up and introduce herself, ask him who he was. But that would have to wait. NY1’s correspondent, a man Barbara knew to be in his fifties but could pass for midthirties, led things off.
“How do you respond to allegations that you strong-armed the works department to hire an independent construction firm owned by one of your largest political donors for major subway upgrades?”
Headley shook his head sadly and smirked, like he’d heard this a hundred times before.
“There is absolutely nothing to that allegation,” he said. “It’s pure fiction. Contracts are awarded based on a long list of factors. Track record—no pun intended—and ability to get the work done, cost considerations, and—”
The NY1 guy wasn’t done. “But yesterday Manhattan Today printed an email in which you told the department to hire Steelways, which is owned by Arnett Steel, who organized large fund-raisers for your—”
Headley raised a shushing hand. “Now hold on, right there. First of all, the veracity of that email has not been determined.”
Barbara closed her eyes briefly so no one would have to see them roll.
“I would not put it past Manhattan Today to manufacture something like that. But even if it turns out to be legitimate, the content of that message hardly qualifies as a directive. It’s more along the lines of a suggestion.”
In
