presented with such a dramatic choice; but she was convinced that Graham
would find his courage gradually in the weeks and months ahead, would
find it without the help of a crisis.
Suddenly the wind exploded against the window, howled and moaned and
pasted snow, like specks of froth and spittle, to the cold glass.
The room was long and narrow with a brown tile floor, beige walls, a
high ceiling and fluorescent lights. Two metal desks stood just inside
the door; they held typewriters, letter trays, vases full of artificial
flowers, and the detritus of a day’s work. The two well-dressed
matronly women behind the desks were cheerful in spite of the drab
institutional atmosphere. There were five cafeteria tables lined up,
short end to short end, so that whoever sat at them would always be
sideways to the desks. The ten metal chairs were all on the same side
of the table row. Except for the relationship of the tables to the
desks, it might have been a schoolroom, a study hall monitored by two
teachers.
Frank Bollinger identified himself as Ben Frank and said he was an
employee of a major New York City firm of architects. He asked for the
complete file on the Bowerton Building, took off his coat and sat at the
first table.
The two women, as efficient as they appeared to be, quickly brought him
the Bowerton material from an adjacent storage ‘ room: original
blueprints, amendments . .
to the blueprints, cost estimates, applications for dozens of different
building permits, final cost sheets, remodeling plans, photographs,
letters … Every form-and everything else required by law-that was
related to the Bowerton highrise and that had passed officially through
a city bureau or department was in that file. It was a formidable mound
of paper, even though each piece was carefully labeled and both
categorically and sequentially arranged.
The forty-two-story Bowerton Building, facing a busy block of Lexington
Avenue, had been completed in 1929 and stood essentially unchanged. It
was one of Manhattan’s art deco masterpieces, even more effectively
designed than the justly acclaimed art deco Chanin Building which was
only a few blocks away. More than a year ago a group of concerned
citizens had launched a campaign to have the building declared a
landmark in order to keep its most spectacular art deco features from
being wiped away during sporadic flurries of “modernization.” But the
most important fact, so far as Bollinger was concerned, was that Graham
Harris had his offices on the fortieth floor of the Bowerton Building.
For an hour and ten minutes, Bollinger studied the paper image of the
structure. Main entrances. Service entrances. One-way emergency
exits. The placement and operation of the bank of sixteen elevators.
The placement of the two stairwells. A minimal electronic security
system, primarily a closed-circuit television guard station, had been
installed in 1969; and he went over and over the paper on that until he
was certain that he had overlooked no detail of it.
At four forty-five he stood up, yawned and stretched. Smiling, humming
softly, he put on his overcoat.
Two blocks from City Hall he stepped into a telephone booth and called
Billy. “I’ve checked it out.”
” Bowerton?
“Yeah.
“What do you think?” Billy asked anxiously.
“It can be done.”
“My God. You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be until I start it.”
“Maybe I should be more help. I could-”
“No,” Bollinger said.
“if anything goes wrong, I can flash my badge and say I showed up to
investigate a complaint. Then I can slip quietly away. But if we were
both there, how could we explain our way out of it?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“We’ll stick to the original plan.”
“All right.”
“You be in that alleyway at ten o’clock.”
Billy said, “What if you get there and discover it won’t work? I don’t
want to be waiting-”
“If I have to give it up,” Bollinger said, “I’ll call you well before
ten. But if you don’t get the call, be in that alley.
“Of course. What else? But I won’t wait past ten thirty. I can’t
wait longer than that.
“That’ll be long enough.”