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.
"Oh, yeah. One who hasn't climbed in five years."
"You still know how. You haven't forgotten."
"I'm out of shape."
"You're a strong man." -"You forget my leg."
She turned away from the window and went back to the door so that she
could listen for Bollinger while she talked. "Remember when Abercrombie
and Fitch had a man scale their building to advertise a new line of
climbing equipment?"
He didn't look away from the window. He was transfixed by the night.
"What about it?"
"At that time, you said what that man did wasn't really so difficult."
"Did I?"
"You said a building, with all its ledges and setbacks, is an easy climb
compared to almost any mountain."
He said nothing. He remembered telling her that, and he knew he had
been right. But when he'd said it he never thought he'd be called upon
to do it. Images of Mount Everest and of hospital rooms filled his
mind.
"This equipment you chose for the buyer's guide-"
"What about it?"
"It's the best, isn't it?"
"The best, or close to it."
"We'd be perfectly outfitted."
"if we try it, we'll die."
"We'll die if we stay here." "Maybe not."
"I think so. Absolutely."
"There has to be an alternative."
"I've outlined them already."
"Maybe we can hide from him."
"Where?"
"I don't know. But-"
"And we can't hide for seven hours."
"This is crazy, dammit!"
"Can you think of anything better?"
"Give me time."
"Bollinger will be here any minute."
"The wind speed must be forty miles an hour at street level. At least
when it's gusting. Fifty miles an hour up this high."
"Will it blow us off?"
"We'd have to fight it every inch."
"Won't we anchor the ropes?"
He turned away from the window. "Yes, but-"
"And won't we be wearing those?" She pointed to a pair of safety
harnesses that lay atop the pile of equipment.
"It'll be damned cold out there, Connie."
"We've got the down-lined jackets."
"But we don't have quilted, insulated pants. You're wearing ordinary
jeans. So am I. For all the good they'll do us, we might as well be
naked below the waist."
"I can stand the cold."
"Not for very long. Not cold as bitter as that."
"How long will it take us to get to the street?"
"I don't know."
"You must have some idea."
"An hour. Maybe two hours."
"That long?"
"You're a novice."
"Couldn't we rappel?"
"Rappel?" He was appalled.
"It looks so easy. Swinging out and back, dropping a few feet with
every swing, bouncing off the stone, dancing along the side of the
building .
"It looks easy, but it isn't."
"But it's fast."
"Jesus! You've never climbed before, and you want to rappel down."
"I've got guts."
"But no common sense."
"Okay," she said. "We don't rappel."
"We definitely don't rappel."
"We go. slow and easy."
"We don't go at all."
Ignoring him, she said, "I can take two hours of the cold. I know I
can. And if we keep moving, maybe it won't bother us so much."
"We'll freeze to death." He refused to be shaken from that opinion.
"Graham, we have a simple choice. Go or stay. If we make the climb,
maybe we'll fall or freeze to death. if we stay here, we'll sure as
hell be killed."
"I'm not convinced it is that simple."
"Yes, you are."
He closed his eyes. He was furious with himself, sick of his inability
to accept unpleasant realities, to risk pain, and to come face to face
with his own fear. The climb would be dangerous. Supremely dangerous.
It might even prove to be sheer folly; they could die in the first few
minutes of the descent. But she was correct when she said they had no
choice but to try it.
"Graham? We're wasting time."
"You know the real reason why the climb isn't possible."
"No," she said. "Tell me."
He felt color and warmth come into his face. "Connie, you aren't
leaving me with any dignity."
"I never took that from you. You've taken it from yourself." Her