Graham stretched out on the yard-wide ledge, parallel to the side of the
building.
His bad leg was filled with a steady, almost crippling pain from ankle
to hip. Considering all the rappelling he would have to do to reach the
street, he was certain the leg would give out at some crucial point in
the climb, probably just when his life most depended on surefootedness.
He took a piton from one of the accessory straps at his waist. He held
out one hand to Connie. “Hammer.”
She gave it to him.
He twisted around a bit, lay at an angle to the building/ his head and
one arm over the edge of the setback.
Far below, an ambulance moved cautiously on Lexington Avenue, its lights
flashing. Even from the thirtythird floor, the street was not entirely
visible. He could barely make out the lines of the ambulance in the
wash f its own emergency beacons. It drew even with the Bowerton
Building, then drove on into the snowy night.
He found a mortar seam even without removing his bulky gloves, and he
started to pound in a piton.
Suddenly, to one side, two floors below, movement caught his eye.
A window opened inward. One of two tall panes. No one appeared at it.
However, he sensed the man in the darkness of the office beyond.
A chill passed along his spine; it had nothing to do with the cold or
the wind.
Pretending that he had seen nothing, he finished hammering the piton in
place. Then he slid away from the edge, stood up. “We can’t go down
here,” he told Connie.
She looked puzzled. “Why not?”
“Bollinger is below us.”
“What?”
“At a window. Waiting to shoot u as we go past him.”
Her gray eyes were wide. “But why didn’t he come here to get us?”
“Maybe he thought we’d already started down. Or maybe he thought we’d
run out of his reach along this r at least you setback the moment he
came into an office on this floor.
“What now?”
“I’m thinking.”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be.”
“Can’t help it.”
Her eyebrows were crusted with snow, as was the: fringe of fur lining
that escaped her hood. He held her, The wind moaned incessantly.
He said, “This is a corner building.”
“Does that matter?”
“It faces on another street besides Lexington.”
“So?”
“So we follow the setback,” he said excitedly. “Turn the corner on the
setback.”
“And climb down the other face, the one that overlooks the side street?”
“You’ve got it. That’s no harder to climb than this wall.
“And Bollinger can only ee Lexington Avenue from his window,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“Brilliant.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Sooner or later he’ll figure out what we’ve done.”
“Later.”
“It had better be.”
“Sure. He’ll wait right where he is for a few minutest expecting to
pick us off. Then he’ll waste time checking this entire floor.”
“And the stairwells.”
,And the elevator shafts. We might get most of the way down before he
finds us.”
,Okay,” she said. She unhooked her safety tether from the window post.
At the open window on the thirty-first floor, Frank Bollinger waited.
Apparently they were preparing the rope which they would hook to the
piton that Harris had, just pounded into place.
He looked forward to shooting the woman as she came past him on the
line. The image excited him. He would enjoy blowing her away into the
night.
When that happened, Harris would be stunned, emotionally destroyed,
unable to think fast, unable to protect himself. Then Bollinger could
go after him at will. If he could kill Harris where he chose, kill him
cleanly, he could salvage the plan that he and Billy had devised this
afternoon.
As he waited for his prey, he thought again of that second night of his
relationship with Billy….
After the whore left Billy’s apartment, they ate dinner in the kitchen.
Between them they consumed two salads, four steaks, four rashers of
bacon, six eggs, eight -ces of toast, and a large quantity of Scotch.
They ap ached the food as they had the woman: with inten _ty, with
singling mindedness, with appetites that were those of men but those of