security guards besides you?"
"Just two. What emergencyz"
"There's been a bomb threat."
The guard's lips trembled. The mustache seemed about to fall off.
"You're kidding."
"I wish I were."
The guard slid off his stool, stepped from behind the lectern.
At the same time Bollinger took the Walther from his pocket.
The guard blanched. "What's that?"
"A gun. Don't go for yours."
"Look, this bomb threat ... I didn't call it in."
Bollinger laughed.
"It's true."
"I'm sure it is."
"Hey ... that gun has a silencer on it."
"Yeah.
"But policemen don't-" Bollinger shot him twice in the chest.
The impact of the bullets threw the guard into the sheet marble.
For an instant he stood very straight, as if he were waiting for someone
to measure his height and mark it on the wall. Then he collapsed.
part FRIDAY 8:00 P.M 8:30 P.M
Bollinger turned immediately from the dead man and looked at the
revolving doors.
Nobody was there, no one on the sidewalk beyond, no one who might have
seen the killing.
Moving quickly but calmly, he tucked the pistol into his pocket and
grabbed the body by the arms. He dragged it into the waiting area
between the first two banks of elevators. Now, anyone coming to the
doors would see only an empty lobby.
The dead man stared at him. The mustache seemed to have been painted on
his lip.
Bollinger turned out the guard's pockets. He found quarters, dimes, a
crumpled five-dollar bill, and a key ring with seven keys.
He returned to the main part of the lobby.
He wanted to go straight to the door, but he knew that was not a good
idea. That would put him in camera range. If the men monitoring the
closed-circuit system saw him locking the door, they would be curious.
They'd come to investigate, and he would lose the advantage of surprise.
Keeping in mind the details of the plans he had studied at City Hall
that afternoon, he walked quietly to the rear of the lobby and stepped
into a short corridor on the left. Four rooms led off the hall.
The second on the right was the guards' room, and the door was open.
Wondering if the squeaking of his wet shoes sounded as loud to the
guards as it did to him, he edged up to the open door.
Inside, two men were talking laconically about their jobs, complaining,
but only halfheartedly.
Bollinger took the pistol from his coat pocket. He walked through the
doorway.
The men were sitting at a small table in front of three television
screens. They weren't watching the monitors. They were playing
two-handed pinochle.
The older of the two was in his fifties. Heavy. Grayhaired. He had a
prizefighter's lumpy face. The name "Neely" was stitched on his left
shirt pocket. He was slow. He looked up at Bollinger, failed to react
as he should have to the gun, and said without fear, "What's this?
The other guard was in his thirties. Trim. Ascetic face. Pale hands.
As he turned to see what had caught Neely's attention, Bollinger saw
"Faulkner" stitched on his shirt.
He shot Faulkner first.
Reaching with both hands for his ruined throat, too late to stop the
life from gushing out of him, Faulkner toppled backward in his chair.
"Hey!" 'Fat Neely was finally on his feet. His holster was snapped
shut. He grappled with it.
Bollinger shot him.m twice.
Neely did an ungraceful pirouette, fell on the table, collapsed it, and
went to the floor in a flutter of pinochle cards.
Bollinger checked their pulses.
They were dead.
When he left the room, he closed the door.
At the front of the big lobby, he locked the last revolving door and put
the keys into his pocket.
He went to the lectern, sat on the stool. He took the box of bullets
from his left coat pocket and replenished the pistol's magazine.
He looked at his watch. 8:10. He was right on schedule.
"That was good pizza," Graham said.
"Good wine, too. Have another glass."
"I've had enough."
"Just a little one."
"No. I've got to work."
"Dammit."
"You knew that when you came."
"I was trying to get you drunk."
"On one bottle of wine?"
"And then seduce you."
"Tomorrow night," he said.
"I'll be blind with desire by then."
"Doesn't matter. Love is a Braille experience."
She winced.
He got up, came around the table, kissed her cheek.
"Did you bring a book to read?"
"A Nero Wolfe mystery."
"Then read."
"Can I look at you from time to time?"
"What's to look at?"
"Why do men buy Playboy magazine?" she asked.
"I won't be working in the nude."
"You don't have to be."
"Pretty dull."
"You're even sexy with your clothes on."
"Okay," he said, smiling. "Look but don't talk."
"Can I drool?"
"Drool if you must."
He was pleased with the flattery, and she was delighted by his reaction.
She felt that she was gradually chipping away at his inferiority
complex, peeling it layer by layer.
The building engineer for the night shift was a stocky, fair-skinned
blond in his late forties. He was wearing gray slacks and a
gray-white-blue checkered shirt. He was smoking a pipe.
When Bollinger came down the steps from the lobby corridor, the gun in
his right hand, the engineer said, "Who the hell are you?" He spoke
with a slight German accent.
"Sie sind Herr Schiller, night wahr?" Bollinger asked. His grandfather
and grandmother had been German-Americans; he had learned the language
when he was young and had never forgotten it.
Surprised to hear German spoken, worried about the gun but confused by
Bollinger's smile, Schiller said, "la, which bin's.
'Es freut which sehr Sie kennenzulernen.
Schiller took the pipe from his mouth. He licked his lips nervously.
"Die Pistole?""
lis THE FAM OF FEM "Fur den Mord, " Bollinger said. He squeezed off two
shots.
Upstairs, on the lobby floor, Bollinger opened the door directly across
the hall from the guards' room. He switched on the lights.
The narrow room was lined with telephone and power company equipment.
The ceiling and walls were unfinished concrete. Two bright red fire
extinguishers were hung where they could be reached quickly.
He went to the far side of the room, to a pair of yardsquare metal
cabinets that were fixed to the wall. The lid of each cabinet bore the
insignia of the telephone company. Although the destruction of the
contents would render useless all other routing boxes, switchboards and
backup systems, neither of the cabinets was locked. Each housed
twenty-six small levers, circuit breakers in a fuse box. They were all
inclined toward the "on" mark. Bollinger switched them off, one by one.
He moved to a box labeled "Fire Emergency," forced it open, and tinkered
with the wires inside.
That done, he went to the guards' room across the hall. He stepped
around the bodies and picked up one of the two telephones that stood in
front of the closedcircuit television screens.
No dial tone.
He jiggled the cut-off spikes.
Still no dial tone.
He hung up, picked up the other phone: another dead line.
Whistling softly, Bollinger entered the first elevator.
There were two keyholes in the control panel. The top one opened the
panel for repairs. The one at the bottom shut down the lift mechanism.
He tried the keys that he had taken from the dead guard. The third one
fit the bottom lock.
He pushed the button for the fifth floor. The number didn't light; the
doors didn't close; the elevator didn't move.