window posts as their last anchor points.
At the fourth level, Graham smashed in both rectangular panes. He
snapped a carabiner to the post, hooked, his safety tether to the
carabiner, and jerked involuntarily as a bullet slapped the stone a foot
to the right of his head.
He knew at once what had happened. He t-slightly and looked down.
Bollinger, in shirt sleeves and looking harried, stood on the
snow-shrouded sidewalk, sixty feet below.
Motioning to Connie, Graham shouted, "Go in! Get inside! Through the
window!"
Bollinger fired again.
A burst ollight, pain, blood.- a bullet in the back....
Is this where it happens? he wondered.
Desperately, Graham used his gloved fist to punch out the shards of
glass that remained in the window frame. He grabbed the center post and
was about to drag himself inside when the street behind him was suddenly
filled with a curious rumbling.
A big yellow road grader turned the corner into Lexington Avenue.
Its large black tires churned through he slush and spewed out an icy
liquid behind. The t plow on the front of the machine was six feet high
and ten feet across. Emergency beacons flashed on the roof of the
operator's cab. Two headlights the size of dinner lates popped up like
the eyes of a frog, glared through p the failing snow.
It was the only vehicle in sight on the storm-clogged street.
Graham glanced at Connie. She seemed to be having trouble disentangling
herself from the lines and getting through the window.
He turned away from her, waved urgently at the driver of the grader.
The man could barely be seen behind the dirty windshield. "Help!
Graham shouted. He didn't think the man could hear him over the roar of
the engine. Nevertheless, he kept shouting. "Help! Up here!
Help us!"
Connie began to shout too.
Surprised, Bollinger did exactly what he should not have done. He
whirled and shot at the grader.
The driver braked, almost came to a full stop.
"Help!" Graham shouted.
Bollinger fired at the machine again. The slug ricocheted off the steel
that framed the windshield of the cab.
The driver shifted gears and gunned the engine.
Bollinger ran.
Lifted by hydraulic arms, the plow rose a foot off the pavement.
It cleared the curb as the machine lumbered onto the sidewalk.
Pursued by the grader, Bollinger ran thirty or forty feet along the walk
before he sprinted into the street. Kicking up small clouds of snow
with each step, he crossed the avenue, with the plow close behind him.
Connie was rapt.
Bollinger let the grader close the distance between them. When only two
yards separated him from the shining steel blade, he dashed to one side,
out of its way. He ran past the machine, came back toward the Bowerton
Building.
The grader didn't turn as easily as a sports car. By the time the
driver had brought it around and was headed back, Bollinger was standing
under Graham again.
Graham saw him raise the gun. It glinted in the light from the street
lamp.
At ground level where the wind was a bit less fierce, the shot was very
loud. The bullet cracked into the granite by Graham's right foot.
The grader bore down on Bollinger, horn blaring.
He put his back to the building and faced the mechanical behemoth.
Sensing what the madman would do, Graham fumbled with the compact,
battery-powered rock drill that was clipped to his waist belt. He got
it free of the strap.
The grader was fifteen to twenty feet from Bollinger, 2 who aimed the
pistol at the windshield of the operator's cab.
From his perch on the fourth floor, Graham threw the rock drill.
It arched through sixty feet of falling snow and hit Bollinger-not a
solid blow on the head, as Graham had hoped, but on the hip. It glanced
off him with little force.
Nevertheless, the drill startled Bollinger. He jumped, put a foot on
ice, pitched forward, stumbled off the curb, skidded with peculiar grace
in the snow, and sprawled facedown in the gutter.
The driver of the grader had expected his quarry to run away; instead,
Bollinger fell toward the machine, into it. The operator braked, but he
could not bring the rader to a full stop within only eight feet.
The huge steel plow was raised twelve inches off the street; but that
was not quite high enough to pass safely over Bollinger. The bottom of
the blade caught him at the buttocks and gouged through his flesh,
rammed his head, crushed his skull, jammed his body against the raised
curb.
Blood sprayed across the snow in the circle of light beneath the nearest
street lamp.
2!PS 43 MacDonald, Ott, the security guards and the building engineer
had been tucked into heavy plastic body bags supplied by the city
morgue. The bags were lined up on the marble floor.
Near the shu"ered newsstand at the front of the lobby, half a dozen
folding chairs had been arranged in a semi-circle. Graham and Connie
sat there with Ira Preduski and three other policemen.
Preduski was in his usual condition: slightly bedraggled. His brown
suit hung on him only marginally better than a sheet would have done.
Because he had been walking in the snow, his trouser cuffs were damp.
His shoes and socks were wet. He wasn't wearing galoshes or boots; he
owned a pair of the former and two pairs of the latter, but he never
remembered to put them on in bad weather.
"Now, I don't mean to mother you," Preduski said to Graham. "I know
I've asked before. And you've told me. But . I worry unnecessarily
about a lot of things. That's another fault of mine.
But what about your arm? Where you were shot. Is it all right?"
Graham lightly patted the bandage under his shirt. A paramedic 'm just
fine."
"What about your leg?"
Graham grimaced. "I'm no more crippled now than I was before all this
happened."
Turning to Connie, Preduski said, "What about you?
The doc with the ambulance says you've got some bad bruises."
"Just bruises," she said almost airily. She was holding Graham's hand.
"Nothing worse."
"Well, you've both had a terrible night. just awful. And it's my
fault. I should have caught Bollinger weeks ago. If I'd had half a
brain, I'd have wrapped up this case long before you two got involved."
He looked at his watch. "Almost three in the morning." He stood up,
tried unsuccessfully to straighten the rumpled collar of his overcoat.
"We've kept you here much too long. Much too long. But I'm going to
have to ask you to hang around fifteen or twenty minutes more to answer
any questions that the other detectives or forensics men might have. Is
that too much to ask? Would you mind? I know it's a terrible,
terrible imposition. I apologize."
"It's all right," Graham said wearily.
Preduski spoke to another plain-clothes detective sit ting with the
group. "Jerry, will you be sure they aren't kept more than fifteen or
twenty minutes?"
"Whatever you say, Ira." Jerry was a tall, chunky man in his late
thirties. He had a mole on his chin.
"Make sure they're given a ride home in a squad car."
Jerry nodded.
"And keep the reporters away from them."
"Okay, Ira. But it won't be easy."
To Graham and Connie, Preduski said, "When YOU get home, unplug your
telephones first thing. You'll have to deal with the press tomorrow.
But that's soon enough. They'll be pestering you for weeks.
One. more cross to bear. I'm sorry. I really am. But maybe we can
keep them away from you tonight, give you a few hours of peace before