Graveland: A Novel by Alan Glynn

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