she’d be an easy target.
As she slips the key into the lock, a man with a muffler over his lower face and a Russian hat jammed down to his eyebrows passes her almost close enough to jostle. Ondowsky? No. At least probably no. How can she be sure?
The shoebox of a lobby is empty. The lights are low. Shadows stretch everywhere. She hurries to the elevator. This is one of downtown’s older buildings, only eight floors, Midwest to the core, and there’s only the one for passengers. Roomy and supposedly state-of-the-art, but one is one. Tenants have been known to grumble about this, and those in a hurry often take the stairs, especially those with offices on the lower floors. Holly knows there’s also a freight elevator, but that one will be locked off for the weekend. She pushes the call button, suddenly sure the elevator will once more be out of order and her plan will collapse. But the doors open immediately and a female robo-voice welcomes her in. “Hello. Welcome to the Frederick Building.” With the lobby empty, it sounds to Holly like a disembodied voice in a horror movie.
The doors close and she pushes for 5. There’s a TV screen that shows news items and ads during the week, but now it’s off. No Christmas music either, thank heaven.
“Going up,” the robo-voice says.
He’ll be waiting for me, she thinks. He’s gotten in somehow, he’ll be waiting for me when the elevator doors open, and I’ll have nowhere to run.
But the doors open on an empty hall. She walks past the mail-drop (as old-fashioned as the talking elevator is newfangled), past the women’s and men’s, and stops at a door marked STAIRS. Everybody complains about Al Jordan, and with cause; the building’s superintendent is both incompetent and lazy. But he must be connected somehow, because he keeps his job in spite of the way the trash piles up in the basement, the broken side entrance camera, and the slow—almost whimsical—delivery of packages. Then there’s the matter of the fancy Japanese elevator, which pissed everybody off.
This afternoon Holly is actively hoping for more of Al’s carelessness, so she doesn’t have to waste time getting a chair to stand on from the office. She opens the door to the stairs, and she’s in luck. Clustered there on the landing—and blocking the way to the sixth floor, probably a fire code violation—is a cache of cleaning supplies which include a mop leaning against the stair rail and a squeegee bucket half-filled with wash water.
Holly considers dumping the bucket’s murky contents down the stairs—it would serve Al right—but in the end she can’t bring herself to do it. She pushes it into the women’s, removes the squeegee attachment, and dumps the filthy water down one of the sinks. She then rolls it to the elevator with her satchel of a purse hanging awkwardly from the crook of her arm. She pushes the call button. The doors open and the robo-voice tells her (just in case she’s forgotten), “This is five.” Holly remembers the day when Pete came puffing into the office and said, “Can you program that thing to say ‘Tell Al to fix me, then kill him’?”
Holly turns the bucket over. If she keeps her feet together (and is careful), there’s just room for her to stand on it between the rollers. From her purse she takes out a Scotch tape dispenser and a small package wrapped in brown paper. Standing on tiptoe, stretching until the bottom of her shirt pulls free of her pants, she tapes the package in the far left corner of the elevator car’s ceiling. It’s thus high above eye level, where (according to the late Bill Hodges) people tend not to look. Ondowsky better not. If he does, she’s hung.
She takes her phone out of her pocket, holds it up, and snaps a picture of the package. If things go as she hopes, Ondowsky will never see this photo, which isn’t much of an insurance policy in any case.
The elevator’s doors have closed again. Holly pushes the open button and rolls the mop bucket back up the hall, returning it to where she found it on the stair landing. Then she goes past Brilliancy Beauty Products (where no one seems to work except for one middle-aged man who reminds Holly of an old cartoon character named Droopy Dog) to Finders Keepers, at the end. She unlocks the door and lets herself in with a sigh of