What if it goes through the windshield of a car and kills someone?”
“I’ve thought of that.”
“We can’t do it.”
“I know.”
“What’s number five?”
She slid off the desk and went to the pile of climbing equipment.
“We’ve got to get rigged out in this stuff.”
“Rigged out?”
“Boots, jackets, gloves, ropes-the works.”
He was perplexed. “Why?”
Her eyes were wide, like the eyes of a startled doe.
“For the climb down.”
“Down what?”
“Down the outside of the building. All the way to the street.
part four FRIDAY 10:30 P.Mo SATURDAY 4:00 A.M.
Promptly at ten-thirty, Billy drove out of the service courtyard behind
the highrise.
The snowfall had grown heavier during the past half hour, and the wind
had become downright dangerous. Roiling in the headlight beams, the
sheets of powderdry flakes were almost as dense as a fog.
At the mouth of the alley, as he was pulling onto the side street, the
tires spun on the icy pavement. The car slewed toward the far curb.
He turned the wheel in the direction of the slide and managed to stop
just short of colliding with a panel truck parked at the curb.
He had been driving too fast, and he hadn’t even been aware of it until
he’d almost crashed. That wasn’t like him. He was a careful man.
He was never reckless. Never. He was angry with himself for losing
control.
He drove toward the avenue. The traffic light was with him, and the
nearest car was three or four blocks away, a lone pair of headlights
dimmed and diffused by the falling snow. He turned the corner onto
Lexington.
In three hundred feet, he came to the front of the Bowerton Building.
Ferns and flowers, molded in a twenty-foot-long rectangular bronze
plaque, crowned the stonework above the four revolving doors.
Part of, the enormous lobby was visible beyond the entrance, and it
appeared to be deserted. He drove near the curb, in the parking lane,
barely moving, studying the building and the sidewalks and the
calcimined street, looking for some sign of trouble and finding none.
Nevertheless, the plan had failed. Something had gone wrong in there.
Terribly, terribly wrong.
Will Bollinger talk if he’s caught? Billy wondered uneasily.
Will he implicate me?
He would have to go to work without knowing how badly Dwight had failed,
without knowing whether or not Bollinger would be-had been?-apprehended
by the police. He was going to find it difficult to concentrate on his
job tonight; but if he was going to construct an alibi to counter a
possible confession from Dwight, it would help his case if he was calm
tonight, as much like himself as he could be, as thorough and diligent
as those who knew him expected him to be.
Franklin Dwight Bollinger was getting restless. He was bathed in a
thin, oily sweat. His fingers ached from the tight grip he had kept on
the Walther PPK. He’d been watching the stairwell exits for more than
twenty minutes, but there was no sign of Harris or the woman.
Billy was gone by now, the schedule destroyed. Bol linger hoped he
might salvage the plan. But at the same time he knew that wasn’t
possible. The situation had degenerated to this: slaughter them and get
the hell out.
Where is Harris? he wondered. Has he sensed that I’m waiting here for
him? Has he used his carnival act, his goddamned clairvoyance to
anticipate me?
He decided to wait five minutes more. Then he would be forced to go
after them.
Staring out of the office window at an eerie panorama of gigantic,
snow-swept buildings and fuzzy lights, Graham said, “It’s impossible.”
Beside him, Connie put one hand on his arm. “Why is it impossible?”
“It just is.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I can’t climb it.”
“It’s not a climb.”
“What?”
“It’s a descent.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Can it be done?”
“Not by me.”
“You climbed the ladder in the shaft.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Besides, you’ve never climbed.”
“You can teach me.”
“No.”
“Sure you can.”
“You can’t learn on the sheer face of a forty-story building in the
middle of a blizzard.”
“I’d have a damned good teacher,” she said.