pencil flashlight, but even with that he needed more than a minute to

locate the keys.

As he got up, angry with himself, he wondered if Harris and the woman

were waiting here for him. He put away the flashlight and snatched the

pistol from his ocket. He stood quite still. He studied the darkp

ness. If they were hiding there, they would have been silhouetted by

the bright spot farther along at the alcove.

When he thought about it, he realized that they couldn't have known on

which floor he'd left the elevator.

Furthermore, they couldn't have gotten down here in time to surprise

him.

The thirty-first floor was a different story. They might have time to

set a trap for him up there. When the elevator doors slid open, they

might be waiting for him; he would be most vulnerable at that moment.

Then again, he was the one with the pistol. So what if they were

waiting with makeshift weapons? They didn't stand a chance of

overpowering him.

At the elevator he put the key in the control board and activated the

circuit.

He looked at his watch. 9:19.

If there were no more delays, he could kill Harris and still have twenty

minutes or half an hour with the woman.

Whistling again, he pushed one of the buttons: 31.

The lab technician disconnected the garbage disposal, wrapped it in a

heavy white plastic sheet, and carried it out of the apartment.

Preduski and Enderby were left alone in the kitchen.

in the foyer, a grandfather clock struck the quarter hour: two soft

chimes, running five minutes late. In accompaniment, the wind fluted

musically through the eaves just above the kitchen windows.

"If you find it hard to accept the idea of two psychopaths working so

smoothly together," Enderby said, "then consider the possibility that

they aren't psychopaths of any sort we've seen before."

"Now you sound like Graham Harris."

"I know."

"The Butcher is mentally ill, Harris says. But you wouldn't know it to

took at him Harris says. Either the symptoms of his mania don't show,

or he knows how to conceal them. He'd pass any psychiatric exam, Harris

says.

"I'm beginning to agree with him."

"Except you say there are two Butchers."

Enderby nodded.

Preduski sighed. He went to the nearest window and drew the outline of

a knife in the thin gray-white film of moisture that coated the glass.

"If you're right, I can't hold onto my theory. That he's just your

ordinary paranoid schizophrenic. Maybe a lone killer could be operating

in a psychotic fugue. But not two of them simultaneously.

"They're not suffering any psychotic fugue," Enderby agreed.

"Both of these men know precisely what they're doing. Neither of them

suffers from amnesia."

Turning from the window, from the drawing of the knife which had begun

to streak as droplets of water slid down the pane, Preduski said,

"Whether this is a new type of psychotic or not, the crime is familiar.

Sex murders are-"

"These aren't sex murders," Enderby said.

Preduski cocked his head. "Come again?"

"These aren't sex murders."

"They only kill women."

"Yes, but-"

"And they rape them first."

"Yes. It's murder with sex associated. But these aren't sex murders."

"I'm sorry. I'm lost. My fault. Not yours."

"Sex isn't the motivating force. Sex isn't the whole or even the

primary reason they have for attacking these women. The opportunity for

rape is there. bo they take it. Going to kill the women anyway. They

aren't adding to their legal risks by raping them first. Sex is

secondary. They aren't killing out of some psychosexual impulse."

Shaking his head, Preduski said, "I don't see how you can say that.

You've never met them. What evidence do you have that their motives

aren't basically sexual?"

"Circumstantial," Enderby said. "For instance, the way they mutilate

the corpses."

"What about it?"

"Have you studied the mutilations carefully?"

"I had no choice."

"All right. Found any sign of anal mutilation?"

"No."

"Mutilation of the genitalia?"

"No."

"Mutilation of the breasts?"

"In some cases he's cut open the abdomen and chest cavity.

utilation of the breasts alone?"

"When he opens the chest-"

"I mean has he ever cut off a woman's nipples, or perhaps her entire

breasts, as jack the Ripper did?"

A look of loathing came over his face. "No.

"Has he ever mutilated the mouth of a victim?"

"The mouth?"

"Has he ever cut off the lips?"

"No. Never."

"Has he ever cut out a tongue?"

T i "God, no! Andy, do we have to go on like this? It's morbid.

And I don't see where it's leading."

"If they were maniacal sex killers with a desire to cut their victims,"

Enderby said, "they'd have disfigured one of those areas."

"Anus, breasts, genitalia or mouth?"

"Unquestionably. At least one of them. Probably all of them.

But they didn't So the mutilation is an afterthought. Not a sexual

compulsion. Window dressing."

Preduski closed his eyes, pressed his fingertips to them, as if he were

trying to suppress unpleasant images. "Window dressing? I'm afraid I

don't understand."

"To impress us."

"The police?"

"Yes. And the newspapers."

Preduski went to the window where he had drawn the knife. He wiped away

the film of moisture and stared at the snow sheeting through the glow

around the street lamp. "Why would he want to impress us?"

"I don't know. Whatever the reason, whatever the need behind his desire

to impress-that is the true motivation.

"If we knew what it was, we might be able to see a pattern in the

killings. We might be able to anticipate him."

Suddenly excited, Enderby said, "Wait a minute. Another case.

Two killers. Working together. Chicago. Nineteen twenty-four. Two

young men were the murderers. Both sons of millionaires. In their late

teens."

"Leopold and Loeb."

"You know the case?"

"Slightly."

"They killed a boy, Bobby Franks. Fourteen years old. Son of anot er

rich man. They had nothing against him. None of the usual reasons.

No classic motive. Newspapers said it was for kicks. For thrills.

Very bloody murder. But they killed Franks for other reasons.

For more than kicks. For a philosophical ideal."

Turning away from the window, Preduski said, "I'm sorry. I must have

missed something. I'm not making sense of this. What philosophical

ideal?"

"They thought they were special. Supermen. The first of a new race.

Leopold idolized Nietzsche."

Frowning, Preduski said, "One of the quotes in there on the bedroom wall

is probably from Nietzsche's work, the other from Blake.

There was a quote from Nietzsche written in blood on Edna Mowry's wall

last night."

"Leopold and Loeb. Incredible pair. They thought that committing the

perfect crime was proof that they were supermen. Getting away with

murder. They thought that was proof of superior intelligence, superior

cunning."

"Weren't they homosexuals?"

"Yes. But that doesn't make Bobby Franks the victim of a sex killing.

They didn't molest him. Never had any intention of molesting him. They

weren't motivated by lust. Not at all. It was, as Loeb called it, 'an

intellectual exercise.

In spite of his excitement, Enderby noticed that his shirt cuffs were

not showing beyond the sleeves of his suit jacket. He pulled them out,

one at a time, until the proper half inch was revealed.

Although he had worked for some time in the blood-splashed bedroom and

then in the messy kitchen, he didn't have a stain on him.

His back to the window, leaning against the sill, conscious of his own

scuffed shoes and wrinkled trousers, Preduski said, "I'm having trouble

understanding. You'll have to be patient with me. You know how I am.

Dense sometimes. But if these two boys, Leopold and Loeb, thought that

murder was an intellectual exercise, then they were crazy.

Weren't they? Were they mad?"

"In a way. Mad with their own power. Both real and imagined power."

"Would they have appeared to be mad?"

"Not at all."

"How is that possible?"

"Remember, Leopold graduated from college when he was just seventeen. He

had an IQ of t*o hundred or nearly so. He was a genius.

So was Loeb. They were bright enough to keep their Nietzschean

fantasies to themselves, to hide their grandiose self-images."

"What if they'd taken psychiatric tests?"

"Psychiatric tests weren't very well developed in nineteen twenty-four."

"But if there had been tests back then as sophisticated as those we have

today, would Leopold and Loeb have passed them?"

"Probably with flying colors."

"Have there been others like Leopold and Loeb since nineteen

twenty-four?" Preduski asked.

"Not that I know of. Not in a pure sense, anyway.

The Manson family killed for murky political and religious reasons. They

thought Manson was Christ. Thought killing the rich would help the

downtrodden. Unmitigated crazies, in my book.

Think of some other killers, especially mass murderers. Charles

Starkweather. Richard Speck. Albert DeSaivo. All of them were

psychotic. All of them were driven by psychoses that had grown and

festered in them, that had slowly corrupted them since childhood. In

Leopold and Loeb, there were apparently no serious childhood traumas

that could have led to psychotic behavior. No black seed to bear fruit

later."

"So if the Butcher is two men," Preduski said forlornly, "we've got a

new Leopold and Loeb. Killing to prove their superiority."

Enderby began to pace. "Maybe. But then again, maybe it's more than

that. Something more complex than that."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. But I feel it's not exactly a Leopold and Loeb sort of

thing." He went to the table and stared at the remains of the meal that

had never been eaten. "Have you called Harris?"

Preduski said, "No."

"You should. He's been trying to get an image of the killer.

Hasn't had any luck. Maybe that's because he's focusing on a single

image, trying to envision just one face. Tell him there are two

killers. Maybe that'll breit open for him. Maybe he'll finally get a

handle on the case."

"We don't know there are two. That's just a theory. "Tell him anyway,"

Enderby said. "What harm can it do? "

"I should tell him tonight. I really should. But I just can't,"

Preduski said. "He's gotten behind in his work because of this case.

That's my fault. I'm always calling him, talking to him, pressuring him

about it. He's working late, trying to get caught up.

I don't want to disturb him." In the foyer by the front door, the

grandfather clock chimed the half hour, five minutes late again.

Preduski glanced at his wristwatch and said, "It'll soon be ten o'clock.

I've got to be going."

"Going? There's work to do here."

"I'm not on duty yet."

"Graveyard?"

"Yeah."

"I never knew you to hesitate about a bit of overtime."

"Well, I just got out of bed. I was cooking spaghetti when Headquarters

called me about this. Never got a chance to eat any of it. I'm

starving."

Enderby shook his head. "As long as I've known you, I don't believe

I've ever seen you eat a square meal. You're always grabbing sandwiches

so you don't have to stop working to eat. And at home you're cooking

spaghetti. You need a wife, Ira."

"A wife?"

"Other men have them."

"But me? Are you kidding?"

"Be good for you."

"Andy, look at me."

"I'm looking."

"Look closer."

"So?"

"You must be blind."

"What should I see?"

"What woman in her right mind would marry me?"

"Don't give me your usual crap, Ira," Enderby said with a smile.

"I know that under all of that selfdeprecating chatter, you've got a

healthy and proper respect for yourself."

"You're the psychiatrist."

"That's right. I'm not a suspect or a witness; you can't charm me with

that blather."

Preduski grinned.

"I'll bet there have been more than a few women who've fallen for that

calculated little-boy look of yours."

"A few," Preduski admitted uncomfortably. "But never the right woman."

"Who said anything about the right one? Most men are happy to settle

for half-right."

"Not me." Preduski looked at his watch again. "I really have to be

going. I'll come back around midnight. Martin probably won't even have

finished questioning the other tenants by then. It's a big building."

Dr. Enderby sighed as if the troubles of the world were on his

shoulders alone. "We'll be here too. Dusting the furniture for prints,

vacuuming the carpets for hairs and threads, finding nothing, but

working hard. The same old circus."

*Dim Graham's foot slipped off the rung.

Although he was still holding tightly with both hands, he panicked. He

struck out at the ladder with his feet, scrabbling wildly, as if the

ladder were alive, as if he had to kick it into submission before he

could regain his foothold on it.

"Graham, what's wrong?" Connie asked from her position on the ladder

above him. "Graham?"

Her voice sohered him. He stopped kicking. He hung by his hands until

he was breathing almost normally, until the vivid memories of Everest

had faded.

"Graham?"

With his feet he probed for a rung, found one after several seconds that

seemed like hours. "I'm all right. My foot slipped. I'm okay now."

"][)on't look down."

"I didn't. I won't."

He sought the next rung, stepped to it, continued the descent.

He felt feverish. The hair was damp at the back of his neck.

Perspiration beaded his forehead, jeweled his eyebrows, stung the

corners of his eyes, filmed his cheeks, brought a salty taste to his

lips. In spite of the perspiration, he was cold. He shivered as he

moved down the long ladder.

He was as much aware of the void at his back as he would have been of a

knife pressed between his shoulder blades.

On the thirty-first floor, Frank Bollinger entered the maintenance

supply room.

He saw the red door. Someone had put down the doorstop that was fixed

to it, so that it was open an inch or two. He knew immediately that

Harris and the woman had gone through there.

But why was the door ajar?

It was like a signpost. Beckoning him.

Alert for a trap, he advanced cautiously. He held the Walther PPK in

his right hand. He kept his left hand out in front of him, arm extended

all the way, to stop the door in case they tried to throw it open in his

face. He held his breath for those few steps, listening for the

slightest sound other than the soft squeak of his own shoes.

Nothing. Silence.

He used the toe of his shoe to push up the doorstop; then he pulled open

the door and walked onto the small platform. He had just enough time to

realize where he was, when the door closed behind him and all the lights

in the shaft went out.

At first he thought Harris had come into the maintenance room after him.

But when he tried the door, it was not locked. And when he opened it,

all the lights came on. The emergency lighting didn't burn twenty-four

hours a day; it came on only when one of the service entrances was open;

and that was why Harris had left the door ajar.

Bollinger was impressed by the system of lights and platforms and

ladders. Not every building erected in the 1920s would have been

designed with an eye toward emergencies. In fact, damned few

skyscrapers built since the war could boast any safety provisions.

These days, they expected you to wait in a stalled elevator until it was

repaired, no matter if that took ten hours or ten days; and if the lift

couldn't be repaired, you could risk a manually cranked descent, or you

could rot in it.

The more time he spent in the building, the deeper he penetrated it, the

more fascinating he found it to be. It was not on the scale of those

truly gargantuan stadiums and museums and highrises that Hitier had

designed for the "super race" just prior to and during the first days of

World War Two. But then Hitler's magnificent edifices had never been

realized in stone and mortar, whereas this place had risen.

He began to feel that the men who had designed and constructed it were

Olympians. He found his appreciation strange, for he knew that had he

been restricted to the halls and offices during the day, when the

building was full of people Dew R Kooniz and buzzing with commerce, he

would not have noticed the great size and high style of the structure.

One took for granted that which was commonplace; and to New Yorkers,

there was nothing unusual about a forty-two-story office building. Now,

however, abandoned for the night, the tower seemed incredibly huge and

complex; in solitude and silence one had time to contemplate it and see

how magnificent and extraordinary it was. He was like a microbe

wandering through the I'veins and bowels of a living creature, a

behemoth almost beyond measurement.

He felt in league with the minds that could conceive of a monument-like

this. He was one of them, a mover and shaker, a superior man. The

Olympian nture of 'i the building-and of the architects responsible for

itstruck a responsive chord in him, made him reverberate il 1 with the

knowledge of his own special godlike stature.

Brimming with a sense of glory, he was more deter- 4 mined than ever to

kill Harris and the woman. They were animals. Lice.

Parasites.

Because of Harris's freakish psychic gift, they posed a threat to

Bollinger. They were trying to deny him his rightful place in this new

and forceful current of history: the at first gradual but

ever-quickening rise of the new men.

He pushed the doorstop against the floor to keep the door open and the

lights burning. Then he went to the edge of the platform and peered

down the ladder.

They were three floors under him. The woman on top, nearest by a few

rungs. Harris below her, going first. Neither of them looked up.

Thiey certainly were aware of the momentary loss of light and understood

the significance of it. They were hurrying toward the next platform,

where they could get out of the shaft.

Bollinger knelt, tested the railing. It was strong. He leaned against

it, using it like a safety harness to keep him from tumbling to his

death.

He didn't want to kill them here. The place and method of murder were

extremely important tonight. Here, they would drop to the bottom of the

well, and that would ruin the scheme that he and Billy had come up with

this afternoon. He wasn't here just to kill them any way he could; he

had to dispose of them in a certain manner. If he brought it off just

right, the police would be confused, misled; and the people of New York

would begin to experience a spiraling reign of terror unlike anything in

their worst nightmares. He and Billy had worked out a damned clever

gambit, and he wouldn't abandon it so long as there was a chance of

bringing it off as planned.

it was a quarter of ten. In fifteen minutes Billy would be in the

alleyway outside, and he would wait on y until ten-thirty. Bollinger

saw that he probably wouldn't have time for the woman, but he was pretty

sure he'd be able to carry out the plan in forty-five minutes.

Besides, he didn't know what Harris looked like, and he felt there was

something cowardly about killing a man whose face he'd never seen.

It was akin to shooting someone in the back. That sort of killingven of

an animal, even of a louse like Harris-Aidn't fit Bollinger's image of a

superman. He liked to meet his prey head-on, to get close, so that

there was at least a hint of danger.

The trick was to force them out of the shaft without killing them; to

herd them to other ground where the plan could be carried out. He

pointed the pistol down, aimed wide of the woman's head and squeezed the

trigger.

The shot exploded; ear-splitting noise assaulted Connie from every side.

Over the diminishing echoes, she could hear the bullet ricocheting from

one wall to the other, farther down the shaft.

The situation was so unreal that she had to wonder if it was transpiring

in her mind. She supposed it was possible that she was in a hospital

and that all of this was the product of a fevered imagination, the

delusions of madness.

Descending the ladder, she repeatedly caught herself murmuring softly:

sometimes it was jumbled phrases that made little sense, sometimes

strings of utterly meaningless sounds. Her stomach rolled over like a

fish on a wet boat dock. Her bowels quivered. She felt as if a bullet

had already ripped into her, already had torn apart her vital organs.

Bollinger fired again.

The shot seemed less sharp than the one before it. Her ears were

desensitized, still ringing from the first explosion.

For a woman who had experienced little emotionaland no physical-terror

in her life, she was handling herself surprisingly well.

When she looked down, she saw Graham let go of, the ladder with one

hand. He grabbed the railing that ringed the platform. He took one

foot off the ladder; hesitated, leaning at a precarious angle; started

to bring his foot back; suddenly found the courage to put it on the edge

of the platform. For a moment, fighting his own terror, he stayed that

way, crucified between the two points of safety. She was about to call

to him, urge him on, when he finally freed himself of the ladder

altogether, wobbled on the brink of the platform as if he would fall,

then got his balance and climbed over the railing.

She descended the last dozen rungs much too fast and reached the

platform as Bollinger fired a third shot. She hurried through the red

door that Graham held open for her, into the maintenance supply room on

the twenty-seventh level.

The first thing she saw was the blood on his trousers. A bright spot of

it. As big as a silver dollar. Glistening on the gray fabric.

"What happened?"

"Had these in my pocket," he said, holding up the scissors. "A couple

of floors back, when I almost fell, the blades tore through the lining

and gouged my thigh.

"Is it bad?"

"No."

urt?

"Not much."

"Better get rid of them."

"Not just yet."

Bollinger watched until they left the shaft.

They had gotten out two platforms down. Because there was only a

service entrance at every second floor, that put them on the

twenty-seventh level.

He got up, hurried toward the elevator.

"Come on," Graham said. "Let's make a run for the stairs.

"No. We've got to go back up the shaft."

Incredulity showed on his face, anguish in hi s eyes. "That's crazy! "

"He won't be looking for us in the shaft. At least not for a couple of

minutes. We can go up two floors, then use the stairs when he comes

back to check the shaft."

She opened the red door through which they'd come only seconds ago.

"I don't know if I can do it again," he said.

"Of course you can."

"You said up the shaft?"

"That's right."

"We have to go down to escape."

She shook her head; her hair formed a brief dark halo. "You remember

what I said about the night guards?

'."They might be dead."

"If Bollinger killed them so he could have a free hand with us, wouldn't

he also have sealed off the building?

What if we get to the lobby, with Bollinger hot on our heels, and we

find the doors are locked? Before we could break the glass and get

out, he'd have killed us."

lee "But the guards might not be dead. He might have gotten past them

somehow."

"Can we take that chance?"

He frowned. "I guess not."

"I don't want to get to the lobby until we're certain of having a long

lead on Bollinger."

"So we go up. How's that better?"

"We can't play cat and mouse with him for twenty-seven floors. The next

time he catches us in the shaft or on the stairs, he won't make any

mistakes. But if he doesn't realize we're going up, we might be able to

alternate between the shaft and the stairs for thirteen floors, long

enough to get to your office."

"Why there?"

"Because he won't expect us to backtrack."

Graham's blue eyes were not as wide with fear as they had been; they had

narrowed with calculation. In spite of himself, the will to survive was

flowering in him; the first signs of the old Graham Harris were becoming

visible, pushing through his shell of fear.

He said, "Eventually, he'll realize what we've done. It'll buy us only

fifteen minutes or so."

"Time to think of another way out," she said. "Come on, Graham.

We're wasting too much time. He'll be on this floor any second now."

Less reluctantly than the first time, but still without enthusiasm, he

followed her into the elevator shaft.

On the platform he said, "You go first. I'll bring up the rear, so I

won't knock you off the ladder if I fall."

For the same reason, he had insisted on going first when they descended.

She put her arms around him, kissed him, then turned and started to

climb.

As soon as he got off the elevator on the twentyseventh floor, Bollinger

investigated the stairs at the north end of the building.

They were deserted ' He ran the length of the corridor and opened the

door to the south stairs. He stood on the landing for almost a minute,

listening intently for movement. He heard none.

In the corridor again, he searched for an unlocked office door until he

realized they might have gone back into the elevator shaft.

He located the maintenance supply room; the red door was ajar.

He approached it cautiously, as before. He was opening the door all the

way when the shaft beyond was filled with the sound of another door

closing on it.

On the platform, he bent over the railing. He stared down into the

vertiginous depths, wondering which one of the doors they had used.

How many floors had they gained on him?

Dammit!

Cursing aloud, overcoat flapping around his legs, Bollinger went back to

the south stairs to listen for them.

By the time they had climbed two flights on the north stairs, Graham was

wincing with each step. From sole to hip, pain coruscated through his

bad leg. In anticipation of each jolt, he tensed his stomach. Now his

entire abdomen ached. If he had continued to work out and climb after

his fall on Mount Everest, as the doctors had urged him to do, he would

have been in shape for this.

He had given his leg more punishment tonight than it ordinarily received

in a year. Now he was paying in pain for five years of inactivity.

"Don't slow down," Connie said. "Trying not to."

"Use the rail as much as you can. Pull yourself along.

"How r are we going?"

"One more floor."

"Eternity.

"After that we'll switch back to the elevator shaft."

He liked the ladder in the shaft better than he did the stairs.

On the ladder he could use his good leg and pull with both hands to keep

nearly all of his weight off the other leg. But on the stairs, if he

didn't use the lame leg at all, he would have to hop from one step to

the other; and that was too slow.

"One more flight," she said encouragingly.

Trying to surprise himself, trying to cover a lot of ground before the

pain transmitted itself from leg to brain, he put on a burst of speed,

staggered up ten steps as fast as he could. That transformed the pain

into agony. He had to slow down, but he kept moving.

Bollinger stood on the landing, listening for sound in the south

stairwell.

Nothing.

He looked over the railing. Squinting, he tried to see through the

layers of darkness that filled the spaces between the landing.

Nothing.

He went back into the hall and ran toward the north stairs.

Billy drove into the alley. His car made the first tracks in the new

snow.

A forty-foot-long, twenty-foot-deep service courtyard lay at the back of

the Bowerton Building. Four doors opened onto it. One of these was a

big green garage door, where delivery could be taken on office furniture

and other items too large to fit through the public entrance.

A sodium vapor lamp glowed above the green door, casting a harsh light

on the stone walls, on the rows of trash bins awaiting pickup in the

morning, and on the snow; the shadows were sharply drawn.

There was no sign of Bollinger.

Prepared to leave at the first indication of trouble, Billy backed the

car into the courtyard. H'e switched off the headlights but not the

engine. He rolled down his window, just an inch, to keep the glass from

steaming up.

iss When Bollinger didn't come out to meet him, Billy looked at his

watch. .

Clouds of dry snow swirled down the alley in front of him. In the

courtyard, out of the worst of the wind, the snow was relatively

undisturbed.

Most nights, squad cars conducted random patrols of poorly lighted back

streets like this one, always on the lookout for business-district

burglars with half-filled vans, muggers with half-robbed victims, and

rapists with half-subdued women. But not tonight. Not in this weather.

The city's uniformed patrolmen would be occupied elsewhere. The

majority of them would be busy cleaning up after the usual foul-weather

automobile accidents, but as much as a third of the evening shift would

be squirreled away in favorite hideouts, on a side street or in a park;

they would be drinking coffee-in a few cases, something stronger-and

talking about sports and women, ready to go to work only if the radio

dispatcher insisted upon it.

Billy looked at his watch again. 10:04.

He would wait exactly twenty-six minutes. Not one minute less, and

certainly not one more. That was what he had promised Dwight.

Once again, Bollinger reached the elevator shaft just as it was filled

with the sound of another door closing on it.

He bent over the railing, looked down. NOthing but other railings,

other platforms, other emergency light bulbs, and a lot of darkness.

Harris and the woman had gone.

I" He was tired of playing hide-and-seek with them, of dashing from

stairwell to stairwell to shaft. He was sweating profusely.

Under his overcoat, his shirt clung to him wetly. He left the platform,

went to the elevator, activated it with a key, pushed the button marked

"Lobby."

On the ground level, he took off his heavy overcoat and dropped it

beside the elevator doors. Sweat trickled down his neck, down the

center of his chest. He didn't remove his gloves. With the back of his

left hand and then with his shirt sleeve he wiped his dripping forehead.

Out of sight of anyone who might come to the street doors, he leaned

against the marble wall at the end of the offset that contained the four

banks of elevators. From that position, he could see two white doors

with black stenciled letters on them, one at the north end and one at

the south end of the lobby. These were the exits from the stairwells.

When Harris and the woman came through one of them, he would blow their

goddamned brains out. Oh, yes. With pleasure.

Hobbling along the fortieth-floor corridor toward the light that came

from the open reception-room door of the Harris Publications suite,

Harris saw the fire-alarm box. It was approximately nine inches on a

side, set flush with the wall. The metal rim was painted red, and the

face of it was glass.

He couldn't imagine why he hadn't thought of this before.

ILS7 Ahead of him, Connie realized that he had stopped.

"What's the matter?"

"Look here."

She came back.

"If we set it off," Graham said, "it'll bring the security guards up

from downstairs."

"If they aren't dead."

"Even if they are dead, it'll bring the fire department on the double.

Bollinger will have the crimps put to him.

"Maybe he won't run when he hears the bells. After all, we know his

name. He might hang on, kill us, sneak out past the firemen."

"He might," Graham agreed, unsettled by the thought of being stalked

through dark halls full of clanging, banging bells.

They stared through the glass at the steel alarm lever that glinted in

the red light.

He felt hope, like a muscle relaxant, relieve a fraction of the tension

in his shoulders, neck and face. For the first time all night, he began

to think they might escape.

Then he remembered the vision. The bullet. The blood. He was going to

be shot in the back.

She said, "The alarms will probably be so loud that we won't hear him if

he comes after us."

"But it works both ways," he said eagerly. "He won't be able to hear

us.

She pressed her fingertips to the cool plate of glass, hesitated, then

took her hand away. "Okay. But there's no little hammer to break the

glass." She held up the lag iL chain that was supposed to secure a

hammer to the side of the alarm. "What do we use instead?"

Smiling, he took the scissors from his pocket and held them up as if

they were a talisman.

"Applause, applause," she said, beginning to feel just enough hope to

allow herself a little joke.

"Thank you."

"Be careful," she said.

"Stand back."

She did.

Graham held the scissors by the closed blades. Using the heavy handles

as a hammer, he smashed the thin glass. A few pieces held stubbornly to

the frame. So as not to cut himself, he broke out the jagged splinters

before he put one hand into the shallow alarm box and jerked the steel

lever from green to red.

No noise.

No bells.

Silence.

Christ!

"Oh, no," she said.

Frantically, the flame of hope flickering in him, he pushed the lever

up, back to the green safety mark, then slammed it down again.

Still nothing.

Bollinger had been as thorough with the fire alarm as he had been with

the telephones.

The wipers swept back and forth, clearing the snow from the windshield.

The rhythmic thump-thumptbump was getting on his nerves.

Billy glanced over his shoulder, through the rear window, at the green

garage door, then at the other three doors.

The time was 10: 15.

Where in the hell was Dwight?

Graham and Connie went to the magazine's art department in search of a

knife and other sharp draftsmen's tools that would make better weapons

than the scissors. He found a pair of razor-edged scalpel-like

instruments in the center drawer of the art director's big metal desk.

When he looked up from the drawer, he saw that Connie was lost in

thought. She was standing just inside the door, staring at the floor in

front of a light blue photographic backdrop. Climbing equipment-coils

of rope, pitons, etriers, carabiners, klettershoes, nylon jackets lined

with down, and perhaps thirty other items-lay in a disordered heap

before the screen.

"See what I found?" he said. He held up the blades.

She wasn't interested. "What about this stuff?" she asked, pointing to

the climbing equipment.

Coming from behind the desk, he said, "This issue we're running a

buyer's guide. Each of those pieces wis photographed for the article.

Why'd you ask?" Then his face brightened. "Never mind. I see why."

He hunkered in front of the equipment, picked up an ice ax. "This makes

a better weapon than any draftsman's tool.

"Graham?"

He looked up.

Her expression was peculiar: a combination of puzzlement, fear and

amazement. Although she clearly had thought of something interesting

and important, her gray eyes gave no indication of what was going

through her mind. She said, "Let's not rush out to fight him. Can we

consider all of our options?"

"That's why we're here."

She stepped into the short, private hallway, cocked her head and

listened for Bollinger.

Graham stood up, prepared to use the ice ax.

When she was satisfied that there was nothing to listen for but more

silence, she came back into the room.

He lowered the ax. "I thought you heard something."

"Just being cautious." She glanced at the climbing equipment before she

sat down on the edge of the desk. "As I see it, there are five

different things we can do. Number one, we can make a stand, try to

fight Bollinger.

"With this," he said, hefting the ice ax.

"And with anything else we can find."

"We -can set a trap, surprise him."

"I see two problems with that approach."

"The gun."

"That's sure one."

"If we're clever enough, he won't have time to shoot.

"More important," she said, "neither of us is a killer.

"We could just knock him unconscious."

1 "If you hit him on the head with an ax like that, you're bound to

kill him."

"If it's kill or be killed, I suppose I could do it."

"Maybe. But if you hesitate at the last instant, we're dead." He didn't

resent the limits of her faith in him; he knew that he didn't deserve

her complete trust. "You said there were five things we could do."

"Number two, we can try to hide."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Maybe look for an office that someone forgot to lock, go

inside and lock it after us."

"No one forgot."

"Maybe we can continue to play cat and mouse with him."

"For how long?"

"Until a new shift of guards finds the dead ones."

"if he didn't kill the guards, then the new guards won't know what's

going on up here."

"That's right."

"Besides, I think maybe they work twelve-hour shifts, four days a week.

I know one of the night men. I've heard him curse the long shifts and

at the same time praise the eight hours of overtime he gets each week.

So if they come on duty at six, they won't be off until six in the

morning."

"Seven and a half hours."

"Too long to play cat and mouse in the elevator shaft and on the stairs.

Especially with this bum leg of mine.

"Number three," she said. "We could open one of your office windows and

shout for help."

"From the fortieth floor? Even in good weather, they probably couldn't

hear you on the sidewalk. With this wind, they wouldn't hear you even

two floors away."

"I know that. And on a night like this, there's not going to be anyone

out walking anyway."

"Then why'd you suggest it?"

"Number five is going to surprise you," she said. "When I get to it, I

want you to understand that I've thought of every other possible out."

"What's number five?"

"Number four first. We open the office window and throw furniture into

the street, try to catch the attention of anyone who's driving past on

Lexington."

"If anyone is driving in this weather."

"Someone will be. A taxi or two."

"But if we toss out a chair, we won't be able to calculate the effect of

the wind on it. We won't be able to gauge where it'll land.

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.

"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

lovely face was lined with sorrow. He could see that it hurt her to

have to speak to him so bluntly. She came across the room, put one hand

to his face. "You've surrendered your dignity and your selfrespect.

Piece by piece." Her voice was low, almost a whisper; it wavered.

"I'm afraid for you, afraid that if you don't stop throwing it away,

you'll have nothing left. Nothing."

"Connie . . ." He wanted to cry.

But he had no tears for Graham Harris. He knew precisely what he had

done to himself. He had no pity; he despised the man he'd become.

He felt that, deep inside, he had always been a coward, and that his

fall on Mount Everest had given him an excuse to retreat into fear.

Why else had he resisted going to a psychiatrist? Every one of his

doctors had suggested psychoanalysis. He suspected that he was

comfortable in his fear; and that possibility sickened him. "I'm afraid

of my own shadow.

I'd be no good to you out there.

Dem P- Koontr "You're not so frightened today as you were yesterday,"

she said tenderly. "Tonight, you've coped damned well.

What about ' the elevator shaft? This morning, the thought of going

down that ladder would have overwhelmed you."

He was trembling.

"This is your chance," she said. "You can overcome the fear. I know

you can."

He licked his lips nervously. He went to the pile of gear in front of

the photographic backdrop. "I wish I could be half as sure of me as you

are."

Following him, she said, "I understand what I'm asking of you. I know

it'll be the hardest thing you've ever done."

He remembered the fall vividly. He could close his eyes any time-even

in a crowded room-and experience it again: his foot slipping, pain in

the chest as the safety harness tightened around him, pain abruptly

relieved as the rope snapped, breath caught like an unchewed lump of

meat in his throat, then floating and floating and floating.

The fall was only three hundred feet, and it had ended in a thick

cushion of snow; it had seemed a mile.

She said, "If you stay here, you'll die; but it'll be an easier death.

The instant Bollinger sees you, he'll shoot to kill. He won't hesitate.

It'll be over within a second for you." She took hold of his hand. "But

it won't be like that for me."

He looked up from the equipment. Her gray eyes radiated a fear as

primal and paralyzing as his own.

"Bollinger will use me," she said.

He was unable to speak.

"He'll cut me," she said.

Unbidden, an image of Edna Mowry came to him. She had been holding her

own bloody navel in her hand.

"He'll disfigure me."

"Maybe-"

"He's the Butcher. Don't forget. Don't forget who he is.

What he is."

"God help me," he said.

"I don't want to die. But if I have to die, I don't want it to be like

that." She shuddered. "If we're not going to make the climb, if we're

just going to wait for him here, then I want you to kill me. Hit me

across the back of the head with something. Hit me very hard."

Amazed, he said, "What are you talking about?"

"Kill me before Bollinger can get to me. Graham, you owe me that much.

You've got to do it."

"I love you," he said weakly. "You're everything. There's nothing else

for me." She was somber, a mourner at her own execution.

"If you love me, then you understand why you've got to kill me."

"I couldn't do it."

"We don't have much time," she said. "Either we get ready for the climb

right nowr you kill me. Bollinger will be here any minute."

Glancing at the main entrance to see if anyone was trying to get in,

Bollinger crossed the marble floor and opened the white door. He stood

at the bottom of the north stairs and listened for footsteps. There were

none. No footsteps, no voices no noise at all. He peered up the

narrow, open core of the shaft, but he didn't see anyone moving

alongside the switchback railing.

He went to the south stairs. Those too were deserted.

He looked at his watch. 10:38.

Running some of Blake's verses through his mind to calm himself, he went

to the elevator. 31 Well-made boots are essential to a serious climber.

They should be five to seven inches high, crafted from the best grade of

leather, lined with leather, preferably hand-sewn, with foam-padded

tongues. Most important of all, the soles should be hard and stiff,

with tough lugs made of Vibram.

Graham was wearing just such a pair of boots. They were a perfect fit,

more like gloves than footwear. Although putting them on and lacing

them up brought him closer to the act that he regarded with terror, he

found the boots strangely comforting, reassuring. His familiarity with

them, with climbing gear in general, seemed like a touchstone against

which he could test for the old Graham Harris, test for a trace of the

courage he'd once shown.

Both pairs of boots in the pile of equipment were four sizes too large

for Connie. She couldn't wear either of them. If she stuffed paper

into the toes and along the " sides, she would feel as if she were

wearing blocks of concrete; and she would surely misstep at some crucial

point in the climb.

Fortunately, they found a pair of klettershoes that fitted well enough.

The klettershoe-an anglicization of Kletterschuh, German for "climbing

shoe"-was lighter, tighter, more flexible, and not so high as standard

climbing boots. The sole was of rubber, and the welt did not protrude,

making it possible for the wearer to gain toeholds on even the narrowest

ledges.

Although they would have to serve for want of something better, the

klettershoes weren't suited for the climb that lay ahead. Because they

were made of suede and were not waterproof, they should be used'only in

the fairest weather, never in a snowstorm.

To protect her feet from becoming wet and from the inevitable frostbite,

Connie wore both socks and plastic binding. The socks were thick, gray,

woolen; they came to mid-calf. The plastic was ordinarily used to seal

up the dry food that a climber carried in his rucksack.

Graham had wrapped her feet in two sheets of plastic, securing the

waterproof material at her ankles with rubber bands.

They were both wearing heavy, bright red nylon parkas with hoods that

tied under the chin. Between the outer nylon surface and the inner

nylon lining, his jacket was fitted with man-made insulation, sufficient

for autumn climbing but not for the cold that awaited them tonight. Her

parka was much better-although he hadn't explained that to her for fear

she would insist that he wear it-because it was insulated with one him

EL dred percent goose down. That made it the warmest garment, for its

size and weight, that she could have worn.

over the parka, each of them was wearing a Klettergiirtel, a climbing

harness, for protection in the event of a fall. This piece of equipment

was a great improvement over the waistband that climbers had once used,

for in a fall the band sometimes jerked so tight that it damaged the

heart and lungs. The simple leather harness distributed the pressure

over the entire body trunk, reducing the risk of a severe injury and

virtually guaranteeing the climber that he would not turn upside down.

Connie was impressed by the Klettergiirtel. As he strapped her into it,

she said, "It's perfect insurance, isn't it? Even if you fall, it

brings you up short."

Of course, if she didn't just slip or misplace her foot, if instead the

rope broke, and if she was on a single line, the harness would not stop

her fall. However, Connie didn't have to worry about that, for he was

taking extraordinary safety measures with her: she would be going down

on two independent lines. In addition to the main rope, he intended to

fix her to a second which he would belay all the way to the street.

He would not be so well looked after as she was. There was no one to

belay him. He would be descending last-on a single line.

He didn't explain that to her. When she got outside, the less she had

to worry about, the better her chances were of coming out of this alive.

Tension was good for a climber; but too much tension could cause him to

make mistakes.

Both harnesses had accessory loops at the waist. Graham was carrying

pitons, carabiners, expansion bolts, a hammer, and a compact

battery-powered drill the size of two packs of cigarettes. In her

harness loops, Connie had a variety of extra pitons and carabiners.

Besides the equipment hung on their harnesses, they were both burdened

with rope. Connie had hundredfoot lengths of it at each hip; it was

heavy, but so tightly coiled that it did not restrict her movements.

Graham had another hundred-foot coil at his right hip.

They were left with two shorter lengths: and these they would use for

the first leg of the descent.

Last of all, they put on their gloves.

At every floor, Bollinger got off the elevator. If the entire level was

occupied by one business firm, he tried the locked doors at opposite

ends of the alcove. If it was an "open" floor, he stepped out of the

alcove to make certain there was no one in the corridor.

At every fifth floor, he looked not only into the corridor but into the

stairs and the elevator shafts as well. On the first twenty floors,

four elevator shafts served the building; from the twentieth to the

thirty-fifth floors, two shafts; and from the thirty-fifth to the

fortysecond, only one shaft. In the first half of his vertical search,

he wasted far more time than he could afford, opening the emergency

doors to all of those shafts.

At ten-fifty he was on the fifteenth floor.

He had not found a sign of them. He was beginning to wonder if he was

conducting the search properly.

However, at the moment he was unable to see any other way to go about

it.

He went to the sixteenth floor.

Connie pulled on the heavy cord and drew back the office draperies.

Graham unlatched the center window. The two rectangular panes wouldn't

budge at first, then abruptly gave with a squeal, opened inward like

casement windows.

Wind exploded into the room. it had the voice of a living creature; its

screams were piercing, demonic. Snowflakes swirled around him, danced

across the top of the conference table and melted on its polished

surface, beaded like dew on the grass-green carpet.

Leaning over the sill, he looked down the side of the Bowerton Building.

The top five floors-and the four-story decorative pinnacle above

them-were set back two yards from the bottom thirty-seven levels.

just three floors below, there was a six-foot-wide ledge that ringed the

structure. The lower four-fifths of the building's face lay beyond the

ledge, out of his line of sight.

The snow was falling so thickly that he could barely see the street

lamps on the far side of Lexington Avenue. Under the lights, not even a

small patch of pavement was visible.

In the few seconds he needed to survey the situation, the wind battered

his head, chilled and numbed his exposed face.

"That's damned cold! " As he spoke, breath pluming out of him, he

turned from the window. "We're bound to suffer at least some

frostbite."

"We've got to go anyway," she said.

"I know. I'm not trying to back out."

"Should we wrap our faces?"

"With what?"

"Scarves-"

"The wind would cut through any material we've got handy, then paste it

to our faces so we'd have trouble breathing.

Unfortunately, the magazine didn't recommend any face masks in that

buyer's guide. Otherwise, we'd have exactly what we need."

"Then what can we do?"

He had a sudden thought and went to his desk. He stripped off his bulky

gloves. The center drawer contained evidence of the hypochondria that

had been an ever-growing component of his fear: Anacin, aspinn, half a

dozen cold remedies, tetracycline capsules, throat lozenges, a

thermometer in its case ... He picked up a small tube and showed it to

her.

"Chap Stick?" she asked.

"Come here."

She went to him. "That stuff's for chapped lips. If we're going to be

frostbitten, why worry about a little thing like chapped lips?"

He pulled the cap off the tube, twisted the base to bring up the waxy

stick, and coated her entire faceforehead, temples, cheeks, nose, lips

and chin. "With even a thin shield of this, the wind will need more

time to leech the warmth out of you. And it'll keep your skin supple.

Loss of heat is two-thirds of the danger. But loss of moisture along

with loss of heat is what causes severe frostbite. The moisture in

bitterly cold air doesn't get to your skin; in fact, subzero wind can

dry out your face almost as thoroughly as desert air."

"I was right," she said.

"Right about what?"

"There's some Nick Charles in you."

At eleven o'clock, Bollinger entered the elevator, swing Itched it on,

and pressed the button for the twentysecond floor.

The window frame was extremely sturdy, not coldpressed and not of

aluminurii as were most of the window frames in buildings erected during

the past thirty years. The grooved, steel center post was almost an

inch thick and appeared to be capable of supporting hundreds of pounds

without bending or breaking loose from the sash.

Harris hooked a carabiner to the post.

This piece of hardware was one of the most important that a climber

carried. Carabiners were made of steel or alloy and came in several

shape val D, offset D, and pear or keyhole-but the oval was used more

often than any of the others. It was approximately three and a half

inches by one and three-quarter inches, and it resembled nothing so much

as an oversized key ring or perhaps an elongated chain link. A spring-.

loaded gate opened on one side of the oval, making it possible for the

climber to connect the carabiner to the eye of a piton; he could also

slip a loop of rope onto the metal ring. A carabiner, which was

sometimes referred to as a "snap link," could be employed to join two

ropes at any point along them, which was essential when the ends of

those lines were secured above and below. A vital-but not the

only-function of the highly polished snap links was to prevent ropes

from chaffing each other, to guard against their fraying through on the

rough, unpolished eye of a piton or on the sharp edge of a rock;

carabiners saved lives.

At Graham's direction, Connie had stripped the manufacturer's plastic

bands from an eighty-foot coil of red and blue hawser-laid nylon rope.

"It doesn't look strong," she said.

"It's got a breaking strength of four thousand pounds."

"So thin."

"Seven-sixteenths of an inch."

"I guess you know what you're doing."

Smiling reassuringly, he said, "Relax."

He tied a knot in one end of the rope. That done, he grasped the double

loop that sprouted above the knot and slipped it through the gate of the

carabiner that was attached to the window post.

He was surprised at how quickly he was working, and by the ease with

which he had fashioned the complex knot. He seemed to be operating on

instinct more than on knowledge. in five years he had not forgotten

anything.

"This will be your safety line," he told her.

The carabiner was one of those that came with a metal sleeve that fitted

over the gate to guard against an accidental opening. He screwed the

sleeve in place.

He picked up the rope and pulled it through his hands, quickly measuring

eleven yards of itHe took a folding knife from a pocket of his parka and

cut the rope, dropped one piece to the floor. He tied the cut end of

the shorter section to her harness, so that she was attached to the

window post by a thirty-foot umbilical. He took one end of the other

piece of rope and tied it around her waist, usirig a bowline knot.

Patting the windowsill, he said, "Sit up here."

She sat facing him, her back to the wind and snow.

He pushed the thirty-foot rope out of the window; and the loop of slack,

from the post to Connie's harness, swung in the wind. He arranged the

forty-five-foot length on the office floor, carefully coiled it to be

certain that it would pay out without tangling, and finally tied the

free end around his waist.

He intended to perform a standing hip belay. On a mountain, it was

always possible that a belayer might be jerked from his standing

position if he was not anchored by another rope and a well-placed piton;

he could lose his balance and fall, along with the person whom he was

belaying. Therefore, a standing belay was considered less desirable

than one accomplished from a sitting position. However, because Connie

weighed sixty pounds less than he, and because the window was waist

high, he didn't think she would be able to drag him out of the room.

Standing with his legs spread to improve his balance, he picked up the

forty-five-foot line at a point midway between the neatly piled coil and

Connie. He had knotted the rope at his navel; now, he passed it behind

him and across the hips at the belt line. The rope that came from

Connie went around his left hip and then around his right; therefore,

his left hand was the guide hand, while the right was the braking hand.

From his anchor point six feet in front of her he said, "Ready?"

She bit her lip.

"The ledge is only thirty feet below."

"Not so far," she said weakly.

"You'll be there be ore you ow it."

She forced a smile.

She looked down at her harness and tugged on it, as if she thought it

might have come undone.

"Remember what to do?" he asked.

"Hold the line with both hands above my head.

Don't try to help. Look for the ledge, get my feet on it right away,

don't let myself be lowered past it."

"And when you get there?"

"First, I untie myself."

"But only from this line."

"Yes."

"Not from the other."

She nodded.

"Then, when you've untied yourself-l' "I jerk on this line twice."

"That's right. I'll put you down as gently as I can."

In spite of the stinging cold wind that whistled through the open window

on both sides of her, her face was pale. "I love you," she said.

"And I love you."

"You can do this."

"I hope so."

"I know His heart was pounding.

"I trust you," she said.

He realized that if he allowed her to die during the climb, he would

have no right or reason to save himself. Life without her would be an

unbearable passage through guilt and loneliness, a gray emptiness worse

than death. If she fell, he might as well pitch himself after her.

He was scared.

All he could do was repeat what he had already said, "I love you."

Taking a deep breath, leaning backward, she said, "Well ... woman

overboard!"

The corridor was dark and deserted.

Bollinger returned to the elevator and pressed the button for the

twenty-seventh floor.

The instant that Connie slipped backward off the windowsill, she sensed

the hundreds of feet of open space beneath her.

She didn't need to look down to be profoundly affected by that great,

dark gulf. She was even more terrified than she had expected to be.

The fear had a physical as well as a mental impact on her. Her throat

constricted; she found it hard to breathe. Her chest felt tight, and

her pulse rate soared. Suddenly acidic, her stomach contracted

sickeningly.

She resisted the urge to clutch the windowsill before it was out of her

grasp. Instead, she reached overhead and gripped the rope with both

hands.

The wind rocked her from side to side. It pinched her face and stung

the thin rim of ungreased skin around her eyes.

In order to see at all, she was forced to squint, to peer out through

the narrowest of lash-shielded slits. Otherwise, the wind would have

blinded her with her own tears.

Unfortunately, the pile of climbing equipment in the art director's

office had not contained snow goggles.

She glanced down at the ledge toward which she was slowly moving.

It was six feet wide, but to her it looked like a tightrope.

His feet slipped on the carpet.

He dug in his heels.

judging by the amount of rope still coiled beside him, she was not even

halfway to the ledge. Yet he felt as if he had lowered her at least a

hundred feet.

Initially, the strain on Graham's arms and shoulders had been tolerable.

But as he payed out the line, he became increasingly aware of the toll

taken by five years of inactivity. With each foot of rope, new aches

sprang up like sparks in his muscles, spread toward each other, fanned

into crackling fires.

Nevertheless, the pain was the least of his worries. More important, he

was facing away from the office doors. And he could not forget the

vision: a bullet in the back, blood, and then darkness.

Where was Bollinger?

The farther Connie descended, the less slack there was in the line that

connected her to the window Post. She hoped that Graham had estimated

its length correctly. if not, she might be in serious trouble. A

toolong safety line posed no threat; but if it was too short, she would

be hung up a foot or two from the ledge. She would have to climb back

to the window so that Graham could rectify the situationr she would have

to give up the safety line altogether, proceed to the setback on just

the belayer's rope.

Anxiously, she watched the safety line as it gradually grew taut.

overhead, the main rope was twisting and untwisting with lateral

tension. As the thousands of nylon strands repeatedly tightened,

relaxed, tightened, she found herself turning slowly in a semicircle

from left to right and back again. This movement was in addition to the

pendulumlike swing caused by the wind; and of course it made her

increasingly ill.

She wondered if the rope would break. Surely, all of that twisting and

untwisting began where the rope dropped away from the window. Was the

thin line even now fraying at its contact point with the sill?

Graham had said there would be some dangerous friction at the sill. But

he had assured her that she would be on the ledge before the nylon

fibers had even been slightly bruised. Nylon was tough material.

Strong. Reliable. It would not wear through from a few minutes-or even

a quarter-hour-of heavy friction.

Still, she wondered.

At eight minutes after eleven, Frank Bollinger started to search the

thirtieth floor.

He was beginning to feel that he was trapped in a surreal landscape of

doors; hundreds upon hundreds of doors. All night long he had been

opening them, anticipating sudden violence, overflowing with that

tension that made him feel alive. But all of the doors opened on the

same thing: darkness, emptiness, silence. Each door promised to deliver

what he had been hunting for, but not one of them kept the promise.

It seemed to him that the wilderness of doors was a condition not merely

of this one night but of his entire life. Doors. Doors that opened on

darkness. On emptiness. On blind passages and dead ends of every sort.

Each day of his life, he had expected to find a door that, when flung

wide, would present him with all that he deserved. Yet that golden door

eluded him. He had not been treated fairly. After all, he was one of

the new men, superior to everyone he saw around him. Yet what had he

become in thirty-seven years? Anything? Not a president.

Not even a senator. Not famous. Not rich. He was nothing but a lousy

vice detective, a cop whose working life was spent in the grimy

subculture of whores, pimps, gamblers, addicts and petty racketeers.

That was why Harris (and tens of millions like him) had to die.

They were subhumans, vastly inferior to the new breed of men. Yet for

every new man, there were a million old ones. Because there was

strength in numbers, these pitiful creatures-risking thermonuclear

destruction to satisfy their greed and their fondness for childish

posturing-held on to the world's power, money and resources. Only

through the greatest slaughter in history, only in the midst of

Armageddon, could the new men seize what was rightfully theirs.

The thirtieth level was deserted, as were the stairs and the elevator

shafts.

He went up one floor.

Connie's feet touched the ledge. Thanks to the scouring wind, the stone

was pretty much free of snow; therefore, there had been no chance for

the snow to be pressed into ice. She wasn't in any danger of sliding

off her perch.

She put her back to the face of the building, staying as far from the

brink as she could.

Surprisingly, with stone under her feet, she was more impressed by the

gulf in front of her than when she was dangling in empty space.

Swinging at the end of the rope, she had not been able to see the void

in the proper perspective. Now, with the benefit of secure footing, she

found the thirty-eight-story drop doubly terrifying; it seemed a

bottomless pit.

She untied the knot at her harness, freed herself of the main line. She

jerked on the rope twice, hard. Immediately Graham reeled it up.

in a minute he would be on his way to her. Would he panic when he got

out here?

I trust him, she told herself. I really do. I have to.

Nonetheless, she was afraid he would get only part of the way out of the

window before he turned and fled, leaving her stranded.

Graham took off his gloves, leaned out of the window, and felt the stone

below the sash. It was planed granite a rock meant to withstand the

ages. However, before the icy wind could numb his fingertips, he

discovered a tiny horizontal fissure that suited his purpose.

Keeping one hand on the crack in order not to lose it, he took the

hammer and a piton from the tool straps at his waist. Balanced on the

sill, leaning out as far as he dared, he put the sharp tip of the steel

peg into the crack and pounded it home.

The light he had to work by was barely adequate. It came from the

aircraft warning lights that ringed the decorative pinnacle of the

building just thirty feet, above him; it alternated between red and

white.

From his upside-down position, the work went more; slowly than he would

have liked. When he finished at'i last, he looked over his shoulder to

see if Bollinger was behind him. He was still alone.

The piton felt as if it were well placed.

He got a good grip on it, tried to wiggle it. It was firm.

He snapped a carabiner through the eye of the piton.

He snapped another carabiner to the center post of the window, above the

one that secured Connie's safety line.

Next, he pulled the knots out of the belaying rope. He took it from

around his waist and dropped it on the floor by the window.

He closed one of the tall, rectangular panes as best he could; the

carabiners fixed to the center post would not permit it to close all the

way. He would attempt to shut the other half of the window from the

outside.

He hurried to the draw cords and pulled the green velvet drapes into

place.

Eventually, Bollinger would come back to this office and would realize

that they had gone out of the window. But Graham wanted to conceal the

evidence of their escape as long as possible.

Stepping behind the drapes, he sidled along to the window. Wind roared

through the open pane and billowed the velvet around him.

He picked up an eleven-yard line that he had cut from another

hundred-foot coil. He tied it to his harness and to the free carabiner

on the window post. There was no one here to belay him as he had done

Ct)nnie, but he had worked out a way to avoid a singleline descent; he

would have a safety tether exactly like Connie's.

He quickly tied a figure-eight knot in one end of the forty-five-foot

line. Leaning out of the window once more, he hooked the double loops

of rope through the carabiner that was linked to the piton. Then he

screwed the sleeve over the gate, locking the snap link. He tossed the

rope into the night and watched to be sure that it hung straight and

unobstructed from the piton. This would be his rappelling line.

He was not adhering strictly to orthodox mountain climbing procedure.

But then this "mountain" certainly was not orthodox either.

The situation called for flexibility, for a few original methods.

After he had put on his gloves again, he took hold of the thirty-foot

safety line. He wrapped it once around his right wrist and then seized

it tightly with the same hand. Approximately four feet of rope lay

between his hand and the anchor point on the window post. In the first

few seconds after he went through the window, he would be hanging by,

his right arm, four feet under the sill.

He got on his knees on the window ledge, facing the lining of the office

drapes. Slowly, cautiously, reluctantly, he went out of the room

backward, feet first.

just before he overbalanced and slid all the way out, he closed the open

half of the window as far as the carabiners would allow. Then he

dropped four feet.

Memories of Mount Everest burst upon him, clam-A ored for his attention.

He shoved them down, desperately forced them deep into his mind.

He tasted vomit at the back of his mouth. But he swallowed hard,

swallowed repeatedly until his throat was clear. He willed himself not

to be sick, and it worked. At least for the moment.

OL With his left hand he plucked the rappelling line from the face of

the building. Holding that loosely, he reached above his head and

grabbed the safety rope that he already had in his right hand.

Both hands on the shorter line, he raised his knees in a fetal position

and planted his boots against the granite. Pulling hand over hand on

the safety tether, he took three small steps up the sheer wall until he

was balanced against the building at a forty-five-degree angle. The

toes of his boots were jammed into a narrow mortar seam with all the

force he could apply.

Satisfied with his precarious position, he let go of the safety tether

with his left hand.

Although he remained securely anchored, the very act of letting go of

anything at that height made the vomit rise in his throat once more.

He gagged, held it down, quickly recovered.

He was balanced on four points: his right hand on the shorter rope, now

only two feet from the window post; his left hand on the line with which

he would rappel down; his right foot; his left foot. He clung like a

fly to the side of the highrise.

Keeping his eyes on the piton that thrust up between his spread feet, he

jerked on the rappelling line several times. Hard. The piton didn't

move. He shifted his weight to the longer line but kept his right-hand

grip on the safety tether. Even with a hundred and fifty pounds of

downward drag, the piton did not shift in the crack.

Convinced that the peg was well placed, he released the safety tether.

Now he was balanced on three points: left hand on the long line, both

feet on the wall, still at a forty-five.

degree angle to the building.

Although he would not be touching it again before he reached the ledge,

the safety rope would nevertheless bring him up short of death if the

longer line broke while he was rappelling down to Connie.

He told himself to remember that. Remember and stave off panic.

Panic was the real enemy. It could kill him faster than Bollinger

could. The tether was there. Linking his harness to the window post.

He must remember ...

With his free hand, he groped under his thigh, felt behind himself for

the long rope that he already held in his other hand. After a maddening

few seconds, he found it. Now, the line on which he would rappel came

from the piton to his left hand in front of him, passed between his legs

at crotch level to his right hand behind him. With that hand he brought

the rope forward, over his right hip, across his chest, over his head,

and finally over his left shoulder. It hung down his back, passed

through his right hand, and ran on into empty space.

He was perfectly positioned.

The left hand was his guiding hand.

The right hand was his braking hand.

He was ready to rappel.

For the first time since he had come through the window, he took a good

look around him. Dark monoliths, gigantic skyscrapers rose eerily out

of the winter storm. Hundreds of thousands of points of light, made

hazy and even more distant by the falling snow, marked the night on

every side of him. Manhattan to his left.

Manhattan to his right. Manhattan behind him. Most important-Manhattan

below him. Six hundred feet of empty night waiting to swallow him.

Strangely, for an instant he felt as if this were a miniature replica of

the city, a tiny reproduction that was forever frozen in plastic; he

felt as if he were also tiny, as if he were suspended in a paperweight,

one of those clear hemispheres that filled with artificial snow when it

was shaken. As unexpectedly as it came, the illusion passed; the city

became huge again; the concrete canyon below appeared to be bottomless;

however, while all else returned to normal, he remained tiny,

insignificant.

When he first came out of the window, he had focused his attention on

pitons, ropes and technical maneuvers. Thus occupied, he had been able

to ignore his surroundings, to blunt his awareness of them.

That was no longer possible. Suddenly, he was too aware of the city and

of how far it was to the street.

Inevitable, such awareness brought unwanted memories: his foot slipping,

harness jerking tight, rope snapping, floating, floating, floating,

floating, striking, darkness, splinters of pain in his legs, darkness

again, a hot iron in his guts, pain breaking like glass in his back,

blood, darkness, hospital rooms....

Although the bitterly cold wind pummeled his face, sweat popped out on

his brow and along his temples.

He was trembling.

He knew he couldn't make the climb.

Floating, floating ...

He couldn't move at all.

Not an inch.

In the elevator, Bollinger hesitated. He was about to press the button

for the twenty-third floor, when he realized that, after he lost track

of them, Harris and the woman apparently had not continued down toward

the lobby. They had vanished on the twenty-seventh level. He had

searched that floor and all those below it; and he was as certain as he

could be, short of shooting open every locked door, that they were not

in the lower three-fourths of the building. They'd gone up.

Back to Harris's office? As soon as that occurred to him, he knew it

was true, and he knew why they had done it. They'd gone up because that

was the last thing he would expect them to do. If they had continued

down the stairs or elevator shaft, he would have nailed them in minutes.

Sure as hell. But, in going up, they had confused him and gained time.

Forty-five minutes of time, he thought angrily. That bastard has made a

fool out of me. Forty-five minutes. But not one goddamned minute more.

He pushed the button for the fortieth floor.

Six hundred feet.

Twice as far as he had fallen on Everest.

And this time there would be no miracle to save him, no deep snowdrift

to cushion the impact. He would be a bloody mess when the police found

him. Broken. Ruined. Lifeless.

Although he could see nothing of it, he stared in tently at the street.

The darkness and snow obscured the pavement.

Yet he could not look away. He was mesmerized not by what he saw, but

by what he didn't need to see, transfixed by what he knew lay below the

night and below the shifting white curtains of the storm.

He closed his eyes. Thought about courage. Thought about how far he

had come. Toes pressed into the shallow mortar-filled groove between

two blocks of granite. Left hand in front. Right hand behind.

Ready, get set ... but he couldn't go.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Connie on the ledge.

She motioned for him to hurry.

If he didn't move, she would die. He would fail her utterly. She

didn't deserve that after the eighteen months she'd given him, eighteen

months of tender care and saint-like understanding. She hadn't once

criticized him for whining, for his paranoia or his self-pity or his

selfishness. She had put herself in emotional jeopardy that was no less

terrifying than the physical risk demanded of him. He knew that mental

anguish was every bit as painful as a broken leg. In return for those

eighteen months, he had to make this climb for her. He owed her that

much; hell, he owed her everything.

The perspiration had dissolved some of the coating of Chap Stick on his

forehead and cheeks. As the wind dried the sweat, it chilled his face.

He realized again how little time they could spend out here before the

winter night sapped their strength.

He looked up at the piton that anchored him.

Connie will die if you don't do this.

He was squeezing the line too tightly with his left hand, which ought to

be used only to guide him. He should hold the line loosely, using his

right hand to pass rope and to brake.

Connie will die....

He relaxed his left-hand grip.

He told himself not to look down. Took a deep breath. Let it out.

Started to count to ten. Told himself he was stalling. Pushed off the

wall.

Don't panic!

As he swung backward into the night, he slid down the rope. When he

glided back to the wall, both feet in front of him and firmly planted

against the granite, pain zigzagged through his game leg. He winced,

but he knew he could bear it. When he looked down, he saw that he had

descended no more than two feet: but the fact that he had gotten

anywhere at all made the pain seem unimportant.

He had intended to thrust away from the stone with all his strength and

to cover two yards on each long arc. But he could not do it. Not yet.

He was too scared to rappel as enthusiastically as he had done in the

past; furthermore, a more vigorous descent would make the pain in his

leg unbearable.

instead, he pushed from the wall again, swung backward, dropped two feet

along the line, swooped back to the wall. And again: just a foot or

eighteen inches this time. Little mincing steps. A cautious dance of

fear along the face of the building.

Out, down, in; out, down, in; out, down, in ...

The terror had not evaporated. It was in him yet, bubbling, thick as

stew. A cancer that had fed upon him and grown for years was not likely

to vanish through natural remission in a few minutes. However, he was

no longer overwhelmed by fear, incapacitated by it. He could see ahead

to a day when he might be cured of it; and that was a fine vision.

When he finally dared to look down, he saw that he was so near the ledge

that he no longer needed to rappel. He let go of the rope and dropped

the last few feet.

Connie pressed close to him. She had to shout to be heard above the

wind. "You did it!"

" I did it!"

"You've beaten it."

"so far."

"Maybe this is far enough."

"What?"

She pointed to the window beside them. "What if we break in here?"

"Why should we?"

"It's somebody's office. We could hide in it."

"What about Bollinger?"

She raised her voice a notch to compensate for a new gust of wind.

"Sooner or later, he'll go to your office."

"So?"

"He'll see the window. Carabiners and ropes."

"I know."

"He'll think we went all the way to the street."

"Maybe he will. I doubt it. "Even if he doesn't think that, he won't

know where we stopped. He can't blast open every door in the building,

looking for us."

The wind whooshed between them, rebounded from the building, rocked them

as if they were toy figures.

it wailed: a banshee.

Snowflakes sliced into Graham's eyes. They were so fine and cold that

they affected him almost as grains of salt would have done. He squeezed

his eyes shut, trying to force out the sudden pain. He had some

success; but the pain was replaced by a copious flow of tears that

temporarily blinded him.

They pressed their foreheads together, trying to get closer so they

wouldn't have to yell at each other.

"We can hide until people come to work," she said.

"Tomorrow's Saturday."

"Some people will work. The custodial crews, at least.

"The city will be paralyzed by morning," he said.

"This is a blizzard! No one will go to work."

"Then we hide until Monday."

"What about water? Food?"

"A big office will have water coolers. Coffee and sodavending machines.

Maybe even a candy and cracker vendor."

"Until Monday?"

"if we have to."

"That's a long time."

She jerked one hand to the void at her left side. "And that's a long

climb!"

"Agreed."

"Come on," she said impatiently. "Let's smash in the window."

Bollinger stepped over the fallen liquor cabinet and looked around

Harris's office.

Nothing out of the ordinary. No sjgn of the prey.

Where in the name of God were they?

He was turning to leave when the green velvet drapes billowed out from

the wall.

He brought up the Walther PPK, almost opened fire.

Before he could squeeze off the first shot, the drapes fell back against

the wall. Nobody could be hiding behind them; there wasn't enough room

for that.

He went to one end of the drapes and found the draw cords. The green

velvet folded back on itself with a soft hiss.

As soon as the middle window was revealed, he saw that something was

wrong with it. He went to it and opened the tall, rectangular panes.

The wind rushed in at him, fluttered his unbuttoned collar, mussed his

hair, moaned to him. Hard-driven flakes of snow peppered his face.

e saw t e carabiners on the center post, and the ropes leading from

them.

He leaned out of the window, looked down the side of the building.

"I'll be damned!" he said.

Graham was trying to unhook the hammer from the accessory strap on his

safety harness, but he was hampered by his heavy gloves. Without the

gloves, it would have been an easy chore, but he didn't want to take

them off out here for fear they would slip away from him and disappear

over the edge. If something went wrong and they were forced to continue

the climb, he would need gloves desperately.

Above him, the wind made a strange sound. Whump! A loud, blunt noise.

Like a muffled crack of thunder.

He finally got the hammer off the strap.

Whump!

Connie grabbed his arm. "Bollinger!"

At first he didn't know what she meant. He looked up only because she

did.

Thirty feet above them, Bollinger was leaning out of the window.

To Connie, Graham said, "Stand against the wall!"

She didn't move. She seemed stunned. This was the first time ' she had

ever looked frightened.

"Don't make a target of yourself!" he shouted.

She pressed her back to the building.

'Untie yourself from the safety line," he said.

overhead, a tongue of flame licked out of the pistol's muzzle: whump!

Graham swung the hammer, struck the window.

Glass exploded inward.

Frantically, unable to forget the vision of himself being shot in the

back, he smashed the stubborn, jagged shards that clung to the frame.

Whump!

The sharp sound of a ricochet made Graham jump.

The bullet skipped off the stone inches from his face.

He was sweating again.

Bollinger shouted something.

The wind tore his words apart, transformed them into meaningless sounds.

Graham didn't look up. He kept working at the spiked edges of the

window.

Whump!

"Go." he shouted as he shattered the last dangerous piece of glass.

Connie scrambled over the windowsill, disappeared into the dark office.

He slipped the safety line knot at his harness.

Whump!

The shot was so close that he cried out involuntarily. The slug plucked

at the sleeve of his parka. He was unbalanced by the surprise, and for

an instant he thought he would fall off the ledge.

Whump!

Whump!

He plunged forward, through the broken window, expecting to be stopped

at the last second by a bullet in the spine.

In the unlighted office on the thirty-eighth floor, the glass crunched

under their feet.

Connie said, "How could he miss us?"

As he patted the sweat from his face with the palm of his glove, Graham

said, "Wind's near gale force. Could have deflected the bullets

slightly."

"In just thirty feet?"

"Maybe. Besides, he was firing from a bad angle. Leaning out the

window, shooting down and in. Light was bad. Wind was in his face.

He'd have been damned lucky if he'd hit us."

"We can't stay here as we planned," she said. "Of course not. He knows

which floor we're on. He's probably running for the elevator right

now."

"We go back out?"

"I sure don't want to.

"He'll keep popping up along the way, trying to shoot us off the side of

the building."

"Do we have a choice?"

"None," she said. "Ready to climb?"

"As I'll ever be."

"You've done well."

"I'm not all the way down yet."

"You'll make it."

"Are you the clairvoyant now?"

"You'll make it. Because you aren't afraid anymore."

"Who? Me?"

"You."

"I'm scared to death."

"Not like you once were. Not that bad. Anyway, there's good reason to

be afraid right now. It's a healthy fear you've got this time."

"Oh, yeah. I'm brimming with healthy fear."

"I was right."

"About what?"

"You're the man I've always wanted."

"Then you haven't wanted much."

In spite of what he said, she detected pleasure in his voice. He didn't

sound as if he were seriously denigrating himself; at worst, he was

poking fun at the sort of inferiority complex he'd displayed before

tonight. Already, he had regained some of his self-respect.

He pulled open the second half of the window and said, "You wait here.

I'll set another piton, tie up a new line." He took off his gloves.

"Hold these for me."

"Your hands will freeze."

"Not in just a minute or two. I can work faster with bare hands.

Cautiously he put his head out of the window, looked up.

"Is he still there?" she asked.

"No."

He crawled onto the six-foot-wide ledge, stretched out on his stomach.

His feet were toward her, his head and shoulders over the brink.

She took a few steps away from the window. Stood very still.

Listened for Bollinger.

In the Harris Publications suite, Bollinger paused to reload the Walther

PPK before going to the elevator.

Graham hammered the piton into the tight horizontal mortar line between

two granite blocks. He tested it, found it to be secure, and snapped a

carabiner to it.

Sitting up, he took the hundred-foot length of rope from his right hip

and quickly arranged it in a coil that would unravel without a hitch.

The wind had sufficient force to disturb the coil; he would have to

watch it all the while he was belaying Connie. If it got fouled on

itself, they would both be in trouble. He tied a knot in one end of the

line, a knot with two small loops rising above it.

Lying down again, he reached over the brink and hooked the loops of rope

through the carabiner. He shut the gate on the snap link and screwed

the sleeve in place.

He sat up, his back to the wind. He felt as if strong hands were trying

to shove him off the ledge.

Already, his fingers were numb with cold.

The two safety lines they had used during their descent from the

fortieth floor were dangling beside him. He took hold of one.

overhead, the line had been fixed to the carabiner in such a fashion

that it could be tugged loose and retrieved from below. As long as

there was heavy tension on the line, the knot remained tight and safe;

in fact, the more tension there was-and the greater the climber's

weight, the greater the tension-the firmer the knot.

However, when the climber left the rope, releasing the tension, and when

the rope was tugged in the proper manner, the knot would slip open. He

jerked on the line, then again, and a third time. Finally it freed

itself from the snap link and tumbled down into his lap.

He took a folding knife from a pocket of his parka, opened it. He cut

two five-foot pieces from the elevenyard safety line, then put the knife

away.

He stood up, tottering slightly as pain shimmered through his bad leg.

One of the five-foot lines was for him. He tied an end of it to his

harness. He tied the other end to a carabiner and snapped the carabiner

to the window post.

Leaning in the window, he said, "Connie?,"," She stepped out of the

shadows, into the wan fan of light. "I was listening."

"Hear.anything?"

"Not yet."

"Come out here."

He wished Billy could be here for the kill. He felt that Billy was half

of him, fifty percent of his flesh and and mind.

Without Billy, he wasn't fully alive at moments like this. Without

Billy, he could experience only a part of the thrill, half of the

excitement.

On his way to the elevator, Bollinger thought about Billy, mostly about

the first few nights they had known each other.

They had met on a Friday and spent nine hours in a private all-night

club on Forty-fourth Street. They had left well after dawn, and they

were amazed at how the time had flown. The bar was a favorite hangout

for .city detectives and was always busy; however, it seemed to

Bollinger that he and Billy had been the only people in the place, all

alone in their corner booth.

From the start they weren't awkward with each other. He felt as if they

were twin brothers, as if they shared that mythical oneness of twins in

addition to years of daily contact. They talked rapidly, eagerly. No

chitchat or gossip. Conversation. Honest-to-God conversation. It was

an exchange of ideas and sentiments that Bollinger had never enjoyed

with anyone else. Nothing was taboo. Politics.

Religion. Poetry. Sex. Selfappraisal. They found a phenomenal number

of things about which they held the same unorthodox opinions.

After nine hours, they knew each other better than either of them had

ever known another human being.

The following night they met at the bar, talked, drank, picked up a

good-looking whore and took her to Billy's apartment. The three of them

had gone to bed together, but not in a bisexual sense. in fact, it

would be more accurate to say that the two of them had gone to bed with

her, for although they performed, some times separately and sometimes

simultaneously, a wide variety of sex acts with and upon her, Billy did

not touch Bollinger, nor did Bollinger touch Billy.

That night, 'sex was more dynamic, exhilarating, frenzied, manic, and

ultimately more exhausting than Bollinger had ever imagined it could be.

Billy certainly didn't look like a stud. Far from it. But he was

precisely that, insatiable. He delighted in withholding his orgasm for

hours, for he knew that the longer he denied himself, the more

shattering the climax when it finally came. A sensualist, he preferred

to refuse immediate satisfaction in favor of a far greater series of

sensations later on. Bollinger realized from the moment he climbed into

the bed that he was being tested. Rated. Billy was watching. He found

it difficult to match the pace set by the older man, but he did. Even

the girl complained of being worn out, used up.

He vividly recalled the position in which he'd been when he'd climaxed,

because afterward he suspected that Billy had maneuvered him into it.

The girl was on hands and knees in the center of the bed.

Billy knelt in front of her. Bollinger knelt behind, stroking her

dog-fashion. He faced Billy across her back; later, he knew that Billy

had wanted to finish while confronting him.

He watched himself moving in and out of the girl, then looked up and saw

Billy staring at him. Staring intently. Eyes wide, electric.

Eyes that weren't entirely sane. Although he was frightened by it, he

returned the stare-and was plunged into an hallucinogenic experience.

He imagined he was rising out of his body, felt as if he were floating

toward Billy. And as he floated, he shrank until he was so small he

could tumble into those eyes. Knowing that it was an illusion in no way

detracted from the impact of it; he could have sworn that he actually

was sinking into Billy's eyes, sinking down,down....

His climax was considerably more than a biological function; it joined

him to the whore on a physical level, but it also tied him to Billy on a

much higher plane. He spurted deep into her vagina, and precisely at

that moment Billy spilled seed into her mouth. In the throes of an

intense orgasm, Bollinger had the odd notion that he and Billy had grown

incredibly inside of the girl, had swelled and lengthened until they

were touching at the center of her. Then he went one step further, lost

all awareness of the woman; so far as he was concerned, he and Billy

were the only people in the room. In his mind he saw them standing with

the tips of their organs pressed together, ejaculating into each other's

penis. The image was powerful but strangely asexual. There was

certainly nothing homosexual about it.

Absolutely nothing. He wasn't queer. He had no doubt about that.

None at all. The imaginary act that preoccupied him was similar to the

ritual by which members of certain American Indian tribes had once

become blood brothers. The Indians cut their hands and pressed the cuts

together; because they believed that the blood flowed from the body of

one into that of the other, they felt that they would be part of each

other forever. Bollinger's bizarre vision was like the Indians'

bloodbrother ceremony. It was an oath, a most sacred bond.

And he knew that a metamorphosis had taken place; henceforth, they were

not two men but one.

Now, feeling incomplete without Billy beside him, he reached the

elevator cab and switched it on.

Connie clamhered through the window, onto the thirty-eighth-floor

setback.

Graham quickly tied the free end of the hundred foot main line to her

harness.

I "Ready?" she asked.

"Not quite."

His hands were getting numb. His fingertips stung, and his knuckles

ached as if they were arthritic.

He tied carabiners to both ends of one of the five-foot pieces of rope

he had cut. He snapped both carabiners to a metal ring on her harness.

The rope between them looped all the way to her knees.

He clipped the hammer to the accessory strap on the waist belt of her

harness.

"What's all this for?" she asked.

"The next setback is five stories down. Looks about half as wide as

this one. I'll lower you the same way I got you here. I'll be anchored

to the window post."

He tugged on his own five-foot tether. "But we don't have time to rig a

seventy-five-foot safety line for you. You'll have to go on just a

single rope."

She chewed her lower lip, nodded.

"As soon as you reach that ledge," Graham said, "look for a narrow,

horizontal masonry seam between blocks of granite. The narrower the

better. But don't waste too much time comparing cracks. Use the hammer

to pound in a piton."

"This short rope you just hooked onto me: is that to be my safety line

when I get down there?"

"Yes. Unclip one end of it from your harness and snap the carabiner to

the piton. Make sure the sleeve is screwed over the gate."

"Sleeve?"

He showed her what he meant. "As soon as you've got the sleeve in

place, untie yourself from the main line so that I can reel it up and

use it."

She gave him his gloves.

He put them on. "One more thing. I'll be letting the rope out much

faster than I did the first time. Don't panic. just hold on, relax,

and keep your eyes open for the ledge coming up under you."

"All right."

"Any questions?"

"No."

She sat on the edge of the setback, dangled her legs over the gulf.

He picked up the rope, flexed his cold hands several times to be certain

he had a firm grip. A meager trace of warmth had begun to seep into his

fingers. He spread his feet, took a deep breath, and said, "Go!"

She slid off the ledge, into empty space.

Pain pulsated through his arms and shoulders as her full weight suddenly

dragged on him. Gritting his teeth, he payed out the rope as fast as he

dared.

in the thirty-eighth-floor corridor, Frank Bollinger had some difficulty

deciding which business lay directly under Harris's office. Finally, he

settled on two possibilities: Boswell Patent Brokerage and Dentonwick

Mail Order Sales.

Both doors were locked.

He pumped three bullets into the lock on the Dentonwick office.

Pushed open the door. Fired twice into the darkness. Leaped inside,

crouched, fumbled for the wall switch, turned on the overhead lights.

The first of the three rooms was deserted. He proceeded cautiously to

search the. other two.

The tension went out of the line.

Connie had reached the ledge five stories below.

Nevertheless, he kept his hands on the rope and was prepared to belay

her again if she slipped and fell before she had anchored her safety

tether.

He heard two muffled shots.

The fact that he could hear them at all above the bowling wind meant

that they were frighteningly close.

But what was Bollinger shooting at?

The office behind Graham remained dark; but suddenly, lights came on

beyond the windows of the office next door.

Bollinger was too damned close.

Is this where it happens? he wondered. is this where I get the bullet

in the back?

Sooner than he had expected, the signal came on the line: two sharp

tugs.

He reeled in the rope, wondering if he had as much as a minute left

before Bollinger found the correct office the broken window-and him.

li he was going to reach that ledge five stories below before Bollinger

had a chance to kill him, he would have to rappel much faster than he

had done the first time.

Once more, the rope passed over regularly spaced windows. He would have

to be careful not to put his feet through one of them.

Because he'd have to take big steps rather than little ones, and because

he'd have to descend farther on each arc and take less time to calculate

his movements, avoiding the glass would be far more difficult than it

had been from the fortieth to the thirty-eighth floor.

His prospects rekindled his terror. Perhaps it was fortunate that he

needed to hurry. If he'd had time to delay, the fear might have grown

strong enough to immobilize him again.

Harris and the woman were not in the offices of Dentonwick Mail Order

Sales.

Bollinger returned to the corridor. He fired two shots into the door of

the Boswell Patent Brokerage suite.

Boswell Patent Brokerage Gccupied three small rooms, all of them

shabbily furnished-and all of them deserted.

At the broken window, Bollinger leaned out, looked both ways along the

snow-swept six-foot-wide setback. They weren't there either.

Reluctantly, he brushed the shards of glass out of his way and crawled

through the window.

The storm wind raced over him, pummeled him, stood his hair on end,

dashed snowflakes in his face and shoved them down his shirt, under his

collar, where they melted on his back. Shivering, he regretted having

taken off his overcoat.

Wishing he had handholds of some sort, he stretched out on his belly.

The stone was so cold that he felt as if he had lain down bare-chested

on a block of ice.

He peered over the edge. Graham Harris was only ten feet below,

swinging away from the building on a thin rope, slipping down the line

as he followed his arc, swinging back to the building: rappelling.

He reached down, gripped the piton. It was so cold that his fingers

almost froze to it. He tried to twist it loose but discovered it was

well planted.

Even in the pale, almost nonexistent light, he could see that there was

a gate in the snap link that was fixed to the piton. He fingered it,

tried to open it, but couldn't figure out how it worked.

Although he was right on top of Harris, Bollinger knew he could not get

off an accurate shot. The cold and the wind had brought tears to his

eyes, blurring his vision. The light was poor. And the man was moving

too fast to make a good target.

Instead, he put down the Walther PPK, rolled onto his side, and quickly

extracted a knife from his trousers pocket. He flicked it open.

It was the same razor-sharp knife with which he had murdered so many

women. And now, if he could cut the rappelling line before Harris got

down to the ledge, he would have claimed his first male victim with it.

Reaching to the piton, he began to saw through the loop of the knot that

was suspended from the jiggling carabiner.

The wind struck the side of the building, rose along the stone, buffeted

his face.

He was breathing through his mouth. The air was so cold that it made

his throat ache.

Completely unaware of Bollinger, Harris pushed away from the building

once more. Swung out, swung back, descended six or eight feet in the

process. Pushed out again.

The carabiner was moving on the piton, making it difficult for Bollinger

to keep the blade at precisely the same cutting point on the rope.

Harris was rappelling fast, rapidly approaching the ledge where Connie

waited for him. In a few seconds he would be safely off the rope.

Finally, after Harris had taken several more steps along the face of the

highrise, Bollinger's knife severed the nylon rope; and the line snapped

free of the carabiner.

As Graham swooped toward the building, his feet in front of him,

intending to take brief possession of a narrow window ledge, he felt the

rope go slack.

He knew what had happened.

His thoughts accelerated. Long before the rope had fallen around his

shoulders, before his forward momentum was depleted, even as his feet

touched the stone, he had considered his situation and decided on a

course of action.

The ledge was two inches deep. Just the tips of his boots fit on it. It

wasn't large enough to support him.

Taking advantage of his momentum, he flung himself toward the window and

pushed in that direction with his toes-up and in, with all of his

strength-the instant he made contact with the window ledge. His

shoulder hit one of the tall panes. Glass shattered.

He had hoped to thrust an arm through the glass, then throw it around

the center post. If he could do that, he might hold on long enough to

open the window and drag himself inside.

However, even as the glass broke, he lost his toehold on the icy

two-inch-wide sill. His boots skidded backward, sank through empty air.

He slid down the stonework. He pawed desperately at the window as he

went.

His knees struck the sill. The granite tore his trousers, gouging his

skin. His knees slipped off the impossibly shallow indention just as

his feet had done.

He grabbed the sill with both hands as gravity drew him over it.

He held on as best he could. By his fingers. Dangling over the street.

Kicking at the wall with his feet. Trying to find a toehold where there

was none. Gasping.

The setback where Connie waited was only fifteen feet from the sill to

which he clung, just seven or eight feet from the bottoms of his boots.

Eight feet. It looked like a mile to him.

As he contemplated the long fall to Lexington Avenue, he hoped to God

that his vision of a bullet in the back had been correct.

His gloves were too thick to serve him well in a precarious position

like this. He lost his grip on the icesheathed stone.

He dropped onto the yard-wide setback. Landed on his feet. Cried out

in pain. Tottered backward.

Connie shouted.

With one foot he stepped into space. Felt death pulling at him.

Screamed. Windmilled his arms.

Connie was tethered to the wall and willing to test the piton that she

had hammered between the granite blocks. She jumped at Graham, clutched

the front of his parka, jerked at him, tried to stagger to safety with

him.

For what must have been only a second or two but seemed like an hour,

they swayed on the brink.

The wind shoved them toward the street.

But at last she proved sufficiently strong to arrest his backward fall.

He brought his foot in from the gulf. They stabilized on the last few

inches of stone. Then he threw his arms around her, and they moved back

to the face of the building, to safety, away from the concrete canyon.

ML 37 "He may have cut the rope," Connie said, "but he isn't up there

now."

"He's coming for us."

"Then he'll cut the rope again."

"I guess he will. So we'll just have to be too damned fast for him."

Graham stretched out on the yard-wide ledge, parallel to the side of the

building.

His bad leg was filled with a steady, almost crippling pain from ankle

to hip. Considering all the rappelling he would have to do to reach the

street, he was certain the leg would give out at some crucial point in

the climb, probably just when his life most depended on surefootedness.

He took a piton from one of the accessory straps at his waist. He held

out one hand to Connie. "Hammer."

She gave it to him.

He twisted around a bit, lay at an angle to the building/ his head and

one arm over the edge of the setback.

Far below, an ambulance moved cautiously on Lexington Avenue, its lights

flashing. Even from the thirtythird floor, the street was not entirely

visible. He could barely make out the lines of the ambulance in the

wash f its own emergency beacons. It drew even with the Bowerton

Building, then drove on into the snowy night.

He found a mortar seam even without removing his bulky gloves, and he

started to pound in a piton.

Suddenly, to one side, two floors below, movement caught his eye.

A window opened inward. One of two tall panes. No one appeared at it.

However, he sensed the man in the darkness of the office beyond.

A chill passed along his spine; it had nothing to do with the cold or

the wind.

Pretending that he had seen nothing, he finished hammering the piton in

place. Then he slid away from the edge, stood up. "We can't go down

here," he told Connie.

She looked puzzled. "Why not?"

"Bollinger is below us."

"What?"

"At a window. Waiting to shoot u as we go past him."

Her gray eyes were wide. "But why didn't he come here to get us?"

"Maybe he thought we'd already started down. Or maybe he thought we'd

run out of his reach along this r at least you setback the moment he

came into an office on this floor.

"What now?"

"I'm thinking."

"I'm scared."

"Don't be."

"Can't help it."

Her eyebrows were crusted with snow, as was the: fringe of fur lining

that escaped her hood. He held her, The wind moaned incessantly.

He said, "This is a corner building."

"Does that matter?"

"It faces on another street besides Lexington."

"So?"

"So we follow the setback," he said excitedly. "Turn the corner on the

setback."

"And climb down the other face, the one that overlooks the side street?"

"You've got it. That's no harder to climb than this wall.

"And Bollinger can only ee Lexington Avenue from his window," she said.

"That's right."

"Brilliant."

"Let's do it."

"Sooner or later he'll figure out what we've done."

"Later."

"It had better be."

"Sure. He'll wait right where he is for a few minutest expecting to

pick us off. Then he'll waste time checking this entire floor."

"And the stairwells."

,And the elevator shafts. We might get most of the way down before he

finds us."

,Okay," she said. She unhooked her safety tether from the window post.

At the open window on the thirty-first floor, Frank Bollinger waited.

Apparently they were preparing the rope which they would hook to the

piton that Harris had, just pounded into place.

He looked forward to shooting the woman as she came past him on the

line. The image excited him. He would enjoy blowing her away into the

night.

When that happened, Harris would be stunned, emotionally destroyed,

unable to think fast, unable to protect himself. Then Bollinger could

go after him at will. If he could kill Harris where he chose, kill him

cleanly, he could salvage the plan that he and Billy had devised this

afternoon.

As he waited for his prey, he thought again of that second night of his

relationship with Billy....

After the whore left Billy's apartment, they ate dinner in the kitchen.

Between them they consumed two salads, four steaks, four rashers of

bacon, six eggs, eight -ces of toast, and a large quantity of Scotch.

They ap ached the food as they had the woman: with inten _ty, with

singling mindedness, with appetites that were those of men but those of

supermen. -t midnight, over brandy, Bollinger had talked about the years

when he had lived with his grandmother.

Even now he could remember any part of that conversation he wished. He

was blessed with virtually total -,."recall, a talent honed by years of

memorizing complex poetry.

,So she called you Dwight. I like that name.

"Why are you talking that way?"

"The Southern accent? I was born in the South. I bad an accent until

I was twenty. I made a concerted effort to lose it. Took voice

lessons. But I can recall it when I want. Sometimes the drawl amuses

me."

"Why did you take voice lessons in the first place?

The accent is nice."

"Nobody up North takes you seriously when you've got a heavy drawl. They

think you're a redneck. Say, what if I call you Dwight?"

"If you want."

"I'm closer to you than anyone's been since your grandmother. Isn't

that true?"

"Yeah."

"Ishouldcallyou Dwight. In fact, I'm closer to you than your

grandmother was.

"I guess so."

"And you know me better than anyone else does.

"Do I? I suppose I do."

"Then we need special names for each other.

"So call me Dwight. I like it.

"And you call me-Billy- "Billy?"

"Billy lames Plover.

"Where'd you get that?"

I was born with it.

"You changed your name?"

"just like I did the accent.

"When?"

"A long time ago.

"Why?"

"I went to college up North. Didn't do as well as I should have done.

Didn't get the grades and Finally dropped out. But by then I knew why I

didn't make it. In those days, Ivy League professors didn't give you a

chance if you spoke with a drawl and hag a redneck name like Billy lames

Plover.

"You're exaggerating.

How would you know? How in the hell would you know? You've always

had a nice white All Protestant Northern name. Franklin D; boulinger.

What would you know about it?"

"I guess you're right."

"At that time, all the Ivy League intellectuals were involved in a

conspiracy of sorts against Southerners. They still are, except the

conspiracy isn't so broad or so vicious as it once was Back then, the

only way you could succeed in a Northern university or community was to

have ai Saxon name like yours-or else one that was out and out Jewish.

Frank Bollinger or Sol Cohen.

THE F OF FEM 'be accepted with either name. But not with Billy Lames

Plover.

,So you stopped being Billy.

"As soon as I could.

"And did your luck improve?"

,The same day I changed my name.

"But you want me to call you Billy.

"It wasn't the name that was wrong. It was the people who reacted

negatively to the name.

"Billy "Shouldn't we have special names for each other?"

"Doesn't matter. if you want.

"Aren't we special ourselves, Frank?"

,i think so."

"Aren't we different from other people?"

"Quite different.

"So we shouldn't use between us the names they call us by.

"If you say so.

"We're supermen, Frank.

"What?"

"Not like Clark Kent.

"We sure don't have X-ray vision."

"Supermen as Nietzsche meant.

"

"Nietzsche?"

"You aren't familiar with his work?"

"Not particularly."

"I'll lend you a book by him.

"Okay- "

"In fact, since Nietzsche should be read over and Over again, I'll give

you a book by him.

"Thank you ... Billy.

"You're welcome, Dwight.

At the half-open window, Bollinger glanced at his watch. The time was

12:30.

Neither Harris nor the woman had started dow from the thirty-third-floor

setback.

He couldn't wait any longer. He had squandered too much time already.

He would have to go looking for them. Connie hammered a piton into a

horizontal mortar seam. She hooked the safety tether to the piton with

a carabiner, then untied herself from the main line.

The moment it was free, Graham Feeled up the rope.

Climbing this face of the building was proving easier than scaling the

front on Lexington Avenue. Not that there was a greater number of

setbacks, ledges or footholds here than there; the distribution of those

was the same. However, the wind was much less fierce on the side street

than it had been on Lexington. Here, the snowflakes that struck her

face felt like snowflakes and not like tiny bullets. The cold air

hugged her legs, but it did not press through her jeans; it didn't pinch

her thighs and stab painfully into her calves as it had done earlier.

She had descended ten floors-and Graham fivesince they had seen

Bollinger waiting for them at the window. Graham had lowered her to the

yard-wide twenty-eighth-floor setback and had rappelled down after her.

Below that point there was only one other setback, this one at the sixth

floor, three hundred and thirty feet down. At the twenty-third level,

there was an eighteen-inch-wide decorative ledge-quintessential art

deco; the stone was carved into a band of connected, abstract bunches of

grapes-and they made that their next goal. Graham belayed her, and she

found that the carved ledge was large and strong enough to support her.

In less than a minute, powered by his new-found confidence, he would be

beside her.

She had no idea what they would do after that. The sixth-floor setback

was still a long way off; figuring five yards to a floor, that haven lay

two hundred and fifty-five feet below. Their ropes were only one

hundred feet long. Between this ledge of stone grapes and the sixth

story, there was nothing but a sheer wall and impossibly narrow window

ledges.

Graham had assured her that they were not at a dead end.

Nevertheless, she was worried.

Overhead, he began to rappel through the falling snow. She was

fascinated by the sight. He seemed to be creating the line as he went,

weaving it out of his own substance; he resembled a spider that was

swinging gracefully, smoothly on its own silk from one point to another

on a web that it was constructing.

In seconds he was standing beside her.

She gave him the hammer.

He placed two pitons in the wall between the windows, in different

horizontal mortar seams.

He was breathing hard; mist plumed from his open mouth.

"You all right?" she asked.

"So far."

Without benefit of a safety line, he sidled along the ledge, away from

her, his back to the street, his hands pressed against the stone.

On this side of the building, the gentler wind had formed miniature

drifts on the ledges and on the windowsills. He was putting his feet

down in two or three inches of snow and, here and there, on patches of

brittle ice.

Connie wanted to ask him where he was going, what he was doing; but she

was afraid that if she talked she would distract him an he would fall.

Past the window, he stopped and pounded in another piton, then hung the

hammer on the accessory strap at his waist.

He returned, inch by inch, to where he had placed the first two pegs. He

snapped his safety harness to one of those pitons.

"What was all that for?" she asked.

"We're going to rappel down a few floors," he said. "Both of'us.

At the same time. On two separate ropes."

Swallowing hard, she said, "Not me."

"Yes, you."

Her heart was thumping so furiously that she thought it might burst. "I

can't do it."

"You can. You will."

She shook her head: no.

"You won't rappel the way I've done."

"That's for damned sure."

"I've been doing a body rappel. You'll go down in a seat rappel. It's

safer and easier."

Although none of her doubts had been allayed, Connie said, "What's the

difference between a body rappel and a seat rappel?"

"I'll show you in a minute."

"Take your time."

He grabbed the hundred-foot line on which he had descended from the

twenty-eighth-floor setback. He tugged on it three times, jerked it to

the right. Five stories above them, the knot came loose; the rope

snaked down.

He caught the line, piled it beside him.

He examined the end of it to see if it was worn, and was satisfied that

it wasn't. He tied a knot in it, looped the rope through the gate of

the carabiner. He snapped the carabiner to the free piton that was one

mortar seam above the peg that anchored his safety tether.

"We can't rappel all the way to the street," Connie said.

"Sure we can."

"The ropes aren't long enough."

"You'll rappel just five floors at a time. Brace yourself on a window

ledge. Then let go of the rappelling line with your right hand-"

"Brace myself on a two-inch sill?"

"It can be done. Don't forget, you'll still be holding onto the line

with your left hand."

"Meanwhile, what will my right hand be doing?"

"Smashing in both panes of the window."

"And then?"

THEFmm oFFEm "First, attach your safety tether to the window.

Second, snap another carabiner to the center post. As soon as that's

done, you take your weight off the main line and then-"

"Tug on it," Connie said, "pull apart the overhead knot like you did

just a minute ago."

"I'll show you how."

"I catch the line as it falls?"

"Yes."

"And tie it to the carabiner that I've linked to the window post."

"That's right."

Her legs were cold. She stamped her feet on the ledge. "I guess then I

unhook my safety line and rappel down five more floors."

"And brace yourself in another window and repeat the entire routine.

We'll go all the way to the streetbut only five stories at a time."

"You make it sound simple."

"You'll manage better than you think. I'll show you how to use a seat

rappel."

"There's another problem."

"What?"

"I don't know how to tie one of those knots that can be jerked loose

from below."

"It isn't difficult. I'll show you."

He untied the main fine from the carabiner in front of him.

She leaned close to him and bent over the rope that he held in both

hands. The world-famous glow of Manhattan's millions of bright lights

was screened by the storm. Below, the rimed pavement of the street

reflected the light from the many street lamps; but that illumination

scarcely affected the purple shadows twenty-three floors above.

Nevertheless, if she squinted, she could see what Graham was doing.

In a few minutes, she learned how to attach the rope to the anchor point

so that it could be retrieved. She tied it several times to make sure

she would not forget how it was done.

Next, Graham looped a sling around her hips and through her crotch. He

joined the three end-points of the rope with yet another carabiner.

"Now, about this rappelling," she said as she gripped the main line. She

manufactured a smile that he probably did not see, and she tried not to

sound terrified.

Taking another snap link from the accessory strap at his waist, Graham

said, "First, I've got to link the main line to the sling. Then I'll

show you how you should stand to begin the rappel. I'll explain-" He

was interrupted by the muffled report of a gun: whump!

Connie looked up.

Bollinger wasn't above them.

She wondered if she actually had heard a gun or whether the noise might

have been produced by the wind.

Then she heard it again: whump! There was no doubt. A shot. Two

shots. Very close. Inside the building. Somewhere on the twenty-third

floor.

Frank Bollinger pushed open the broken door, went into the office,

switched on the lights. He stepped around the receptionist's desk,

around a typewriter stand and a Xerox copier. He hurried toward the

windows that overlooked the side street.

When the lights came on behind the windows on both sides of them, Graham

unhooked his safety tether from the piton and told Connie to unhook her

own five-foot line.

There was a noise at the window on their right as Bollinger pushed up

the rusty latch.

"Follow me," Graham said.

He was perspiring again. His face was slick with sweat. Under the

hood, his moist scalp itched.

He turned away from Connie, from the window that Bollinger was about to

open, turned to his left, toward Lexington Avenue. Without benefit of a

safety line, he walked the narrow edge i Instead of sidling along it. He

kept his right hand on the granite for what little sense of security it

gave him. He had to place each foot directly in front of the other, as

if he were on a tightrope, for the ledge was not wide enough to allow

him to walk naturally.

He was fifty feet from the Lexington Avenue face of the highrise.

When he and Connie turned the corner on the ledge, they would be out of

the line of fire.

Of course, Bollinger would find an office with windows that had a view

of Lexington. At most they would gain only a minute or two. But right

now, an extra minute of life was worth any effort.

IL He wanted to look back to see if Connie was having any difficulty,

but he didn't dare. He had to keep his eyes on the ledge ahead of him

and carefully judge the placement of each boot.

Before he had gone more than ten feet, he heard Bollinger shouting.

He hunched his shoulders, remembering the psychic vision, anticipating

the bullet.

With a shock he realized that Connie was shielding him. He should have

sent her ahead, should have placed himself between her and the pistol.

If 'she stopped a bullet that was meant for him, he didn't want to live.

However, it was much too late for him to relinquish the lead.

If they stopped they would make even better targets than they already

were.

A shot cracked in the darkness.

Then another.

He began to walk faster than was prudent, aware that a misstep would

plummet him to the street. His feet slipped on the snow-sheathed stone.

The corner was thirty feet away.

Twenty-five....

Bollinger fired again.

Twenty feet....

He felt the fourth shot before he heard it. The bullet ripped open the

left sleeve of his parka, seared through the upper part of his arm.

The impact of the slug made him stumble a bit. He lumbered forward a

few quick, unplanned steps. The street appeared to spin wildly below

him. With his right hand he pawed helplessly at the side of the

building. He put one foot down on the edge of the stone, his heel in

empty air. He heard himself shouting but hardly knew what he was

saying. His boots gripped in the drifted snow, but they skidded on a

patch of ice. When he regained his balance within half a dozen steps,

he was amazed that he hadn't fallen.

At first there was no pain in his arm. He was numb from the shoulder

down. It was as if his arm had been blown off. For an instant he

wondered if he had been mortally wounded; but he realized that a direct

hit would have had more force, would have knocked him off his feet and

pitched him off the ledge. In a minute or two the wound would begin to

hurt like hell, but it wouldn't kill him.

Fifteen feet....

He was dizzy.

His legs felt weak.

Probably shock, he thought.

Ten feet....

Another shot. Not so loud as the ones that had come before it.

Not as frighteningly close. Fifteen yards away.

At the corner, as he started to inth around onto the Lexington Avenue

face of the highrise where a violent wind wrenched at him, he was able

to glance back the way he had come. Behind him, the ledge was empty.

Connie was gone.

4 Connie was four or five yards below the thirty-thirdfloor ledge of

stone grapes, swinging slightly, suspended over the street.

She couldn't bear to look down.

Arms extended above her, she held the nylon rope with both hands.

She had considerable difficulty maintaining her grip. Strain had numbed

her fingers, and she could no longer be certain that she was clutching

the line tightly enough to save herself. A moment ago, relaxing her

hands without realizing what she was doing, she had slipped down the

rope as if it were well greased, covering two yards in a split second

before she was able to halt herself.

She had tried to find toeholds. There were none.

She fixed her gaze on the ledge overhead. She expected to see

Bollinger.

Minutes ago, when he opened the window on her right and leaned out with

the pistol in one hand, she had known at once that he was too close to

miss her.

She couldn't follow Graham toward the Lexington Avenue corner.

If she tried that, she would be shot in the back. Instead, she gripped

the main line and tried to anticipate the shot. If she had even the

slimmest chance of escaping-and she was not convinced that she had-then

she would have to act only a fraction of a second before the explosion

came. If she didn't move until or after he fired, she might be dead,

and she would certainly be too late to fool him. Fortunately, her

timing was perfect; she jumped backward into the void just as he fired,

so he must have thought he hit her.

She prayed he would think she was dead. If he had any doubt, he would

crawl part of the way through the window, lean over the ledge, see

her-and cut the rope.

Although her own plight was serious enough to require all of her

attention, she was worried about Graham. She knew that he hadn't been

shot off the ledge, for she would have seen him as he fell past her.

He was still up there, but he might be badly wounded.

Whether or not he was hurt, her life depended on his coming back to look

for her.

She was not a climber. She didn't know how to rappel. She didn't know

how to secure her position on the rope. She didn't know how to do

anything but hang there; and she wouldn't be able to do even that much

longer.

She didn't want to die, refused to die. Even if Graham had been killed

already, she didn't want to follow him into death. She loved him more

than she had ever loved anyone else. At times she became frustrated

because she could not find the words to express the breadth and depth of

her feeling for him. The' language of love was inadequate. She ached

for him. But she cherished life as well. Getting up in the morning and

making French toast for breakfast.

Working in the antique shop. Reading a good book. Going out to an

exciting movie. So many small delights. Perhaps it was true that the

little joys of daily life were insignificant when compared to the

intense pleasures of love, but if she was to be denied the ultimate, she

would settle willingly for second best. She knew that her attitude in

no way cheapened her love for Graham or made suspect the bonds between

them. Her love of life was what had drawn him to her and made her so

right for him. To Connie, there was but one obscenity, and that was the

grave.

Fifteen feet above, someone moved in the light that radiated through the

open window.

Bollinger?

Oh, Jesus, no!

But before she could give in to despair, Graham's face came out of the

shadows. He saw her and was stunned.

. I Obviously, he had expected her to be twenty-three stories below, a

crumpled corpse on the snow-covered pavement.

"Help me," she said.

Grinning, he began to reel her up.

In the twenty-third-floor corridor, Frank Bollinger stopped to reload

his pistol. He was nearly out of ammunition.

,So you read Nietzsche last night. What did you think?"

"I agree with him.

,About what?"

"Everything."

"Supermen?"

"Especially that.

"Why especially?"

,He has to be right. Mankind as we know it has to be an intermediate

stage in evolution. Otherwise, everything is so pointless.

"

"Aren't we the kind of men he was talking about?"

"It sure as hell seems to me that we are. But one thing bothers me.

I've always thought of myself as a liberal. In politics.

"SO?"

"How do I reconcile liberal, left-of-center politics with a belief in a

superior race?"

"No problem, Dwight. Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior

race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent

than the general run Of mankind, better suited than the little people

are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one

true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century.

They prefer big government because that is the first step to

totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course

they see themselves as the elite. Reconcile Nietzsche with liberal

politics? That's no more difficult than reconciling it with extreme

right-wing philosophy." Bollinger stopped in front of the door to Opway

Electronics, because that office had windows that overlooked Lexington

Avenue. He fired the Walther PPK twice; the lock disintegrated under

the bullets' impact.

Suggesting ways that she could help herself, favoring his injured left

arm, Graham pulled Connie onto the ledge.

Weeping, he hugged her with both arms, squeezed her so tightly that he

would have cut off her breath if they hadn't been wearing the insulated

parkas. They swayed on the narrow ledge; and for the moment they were

unaware of the long drop beside them, temporarily unimpressed by the

danger. He didn't want to let go of her, not ever. He felt as if he

had taken a drug, an upper, something to boost his spirits.

Considering their circumstances, his mood was unrealistic.

Although they were a long way, both in time and in distance, from

safety, he was elated; she was alive.

"Where's Bollinger?" she asked.

Behind Graham, the office was full of light, the window opened.

But there was no sign of the killer.

"He probably went to look for me on the Lexington side," Graham said.

"Then he does think I'm dead."

"He must. I thought you were."

"What's happened to your arm?"

"He shot me."

"Oh, no! "

"It hurts. And it feels stiff, but that's all."

"There's a lot of blood."

"Not much. The bullet probably cauterized the wound; that's how shallow

it is." He held out his left hand, opened and closed it to show her

that he wasn't seriously affected. "I can climb."

,You shouldn't."

"I'll be fine. Besides, I don't have a choice."

"We could go inside, use the stairs again."

"As soon as Bollinger checks the Lexington side and doesn't find me,

he'll come back. If I'm not here, he'll look on the stairs. He'd nail

us if we tried to go that way.

"Now what?"

"Same as before. We'll walk this ledge to the corner. By the time we

get to Lexington, he'll have looked over that face of the building and

be gone. Then we'll rappel.

"With your arm like this?"

"With my arm like this."

"The vision you had about being shot in the back-"

"What about it?"

She touched his left arm. "Was this it?"

"No.

Bollinger turned away from the window that opened onto Lexington Avenue.

He hurried out of the Opway Electronics suite and down the hall toward

the office from which he had shot at Harris a few minutes ago.

"Chaos, Dwight.

"Chaos-I"

"There are too damned many of- these subhumans lor the supermen to take

control of things in ordinary times. Only in the midst of Armageddon

will men like us ascend "You mean ... after a nuclear war?"

"That's one way it could happen. Only men like us wouldbave the courage

and imagination to lead civilization out of the ruins. But wouldn't it

be ridiculous to wait until they've destroyed everything we should

inherit?"

"Ridiculous.

"So it's occurred to me that we could generate the chaos we need, bring

about Armageddon in a less destructive form.

"How?"

"Well... does the name Albert DeSalvo mean anything to you?"

"No.

"He was the Boston Strangler.

"Oh, yeah. He murdered a lot of women.

"We should study DeSalvo's case. He wasn't one of us, of course.

He was an inlezior and a psychotic to boot. But I taink we should use

him as a model. Singlehandedly, he created so much fear that he almost

threw the city of Boston into a state of panic. Fear would be our basic

tool. Fear can be stoked into panic. A handful of panic-stricken

people can transmit their hysteria to the entire population of a city or

country.

"

"But DeSalvo didn't come close to creating the kind of fear the degree

of-chaos that would lead to the collapse of society.

"Because that wasn't his goal.

Even if it had been-"

"Dwight, suppose an Albert DeSalvo ...

better yet, suppose a Jack the Ripper were loose in Manhattan. Suppose

he murdered not just ten women, not twenty, but a hundred two hundred.

In a particularly brutile fashion. With clear evidence of aberrant sex

in every case. So there was no doubt that they all died by the same

hand And what if he did all of this in a few months?" ,There would be

fear. But-"

"it would be the biggest news story in the city, in the state, and

probably in the country. Then suppose that after we murdered the first

hundred women, we -began to spend half of our time killing men. Each

time, we'd cut off the man's sex organ and leave behind a message

attributing the murder to a fictitious militant feminist group.

"What?"

"We'd make the public think the men were being murdered in retaliation

for the murders of the hundred women."

"Except women don't typically commit crimes like that."

"Doesn't matter. We're not trying to create a typica] situation."

"I'm not sure I understand what sort of situation we are trying to

create."

"Don't you see! There are damned ugly tensions between men and women

in this country.

Hideous tensions- Year by year, as the women's liberation movement has

grown, those tensions have become almost unbearable, because they're

repressed, hidden. We'll make them boil to the surface.

"It's not bad. You're exaggerating. "I'm not. Believe me. I know. And

don't you see what else? There are hundreds of potential psychotic

killers out there. All they need is to be given some direction, a

little push. They'll hear about and read about the killings so much

that they'll get ideas of their own. Once we've cut up a hundred women

and twenty or so men, pretending to be psychotic ourselves, we'll have a

dozen imitators doing our work for us.

"Maybe.

"Definitely. All mass murderers have had their imitators. But none of

them has ever committed crimes grand enough to inspire legions of

mimics, We will And then when we've turned out a squad of sex killers,

we'll shift the direction of our own activities.

"Shift to what?"

"We'llmurder whitepeopleatrandom anduseafictitious black revolutionary

group to claim credit. After a dozen killings of that sort-"

"We could knock off some blacks and leave everyone under the impression

they were killed in retaliation."

"You've got it. Fan the flames.

"I'm beginning to see your point. In a city this size, there are

countless factions. Blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, Orientdls, men,

women, liberals, conservatives, radicals and reactionaries, Catholics

and Jews, rich and poor, young and old... We could try to turn each

against its opposite and all of them against one another Once factional

violence begins, whether it's religious or political or economic, it

usually escalates endlessly.

"Exactly. If we planned carefu]1y enough, we could do it. In six

months, you'd have at least two thousand dead. Maybe live times that

number.

"And you'd have martial law That would put an end to it before there was

chaos on the scale you've talked about.

,We might have martial law. But we'd still have chaos. In Northern

Ireland they've had soldiers on street corners for Tears, but the

killing goes on. Oh, there'd be chaos, Dwight. And it would spread to

other cities as-"

"No. I can't swallow that.

'All over the countzy, people would be reading and beadng about New

York. They'd-"

"It wouldn't spread that easily, Billy.

"All sight. All light. But there would be chaos here, it least.

The voters would be ready to elect a toughtalking mayor with new ideas.

"Certly."

"We could elect one of us, one of the new race. The mayoralty of New

York is a good political base for a -imart man who wants the

presidency."

"The voters might elect a political strongman.

But not evezy political strongman is going to be one of our people."

"If we planned the chaos, we could also plan to run one of our men in

the wake of it. He would know what was coming; he'd have an inside

track.

"One of our men? Hell, we don't know any but you and me.

"I'd make an excellent mayor.

"You?"

"I have a good base or campaign.

f a "Christ, come to think of it, you do.

"I could win.

"You'd,have a fair chance, anyway "It would be a step up the ladder of

power for our kind, our race."

"lesus, the killing we'd have to do!"

"Haven't you ever killed?"

"A Pi . mp. Two drug pushers who pulledguns on me. A whore that

nobody knows about.

"Did killing disturb you?"

"No. They were scum."

"We'd be killing scum. Our inferiors.

Animals.

"Could we get away with it?"

"We both know cops. What would cops look for? .Known mental patients.

Known criminals. Known radicals. People with some sort of motive. We

have a motive, but they'd never figure it in a million years."

"If we worked out every detail, planned carefully hell, we might do it."

"Do you know what Leopold wrote to Loeb before they murdered Bobby

Franks? 'The superman is not liable for anything he may do, except for

the one crime that it is possible for him to commit-to make a mistake.

we did something like this-" ,You're committed to it?"

"Aren't you, Dwight?"

,We'd start with women?"

"Yes."

"Kill them.

"Yes.

"Billy ... ?"

"Yes?"

"Rape them first?"

"Oh, yes- " ,it could even be filn.

Bollinger leaned out of the window, looked both ways along the ledge.

Harris was not on the face of the building that overlooked the side

street.

Although the pitons were wedged in the stone beside the window, as they

had been when he'd fired at Harris, the rope that had been attached to

one of them was gone.

Bollinger crawled onto the windowsill, leaned out much too far, peered

over the ledge. The woman's body should have been on the street below.

But there was no corpse. Nothing but the smooth sheen of fresh snow.

Dammit, she hadn't fallen! He hadn't shot the bitch after all!

Why wouldn't these people die?

Furious, he stumbled back into the room, out of the wind-whipped'snow.

He left the office and followed the corridor to the nearest stairwell.

Connie wished that she could rappel with her eyes closed. Balanced on

the side of the highrise, twenty-three stories above Lexington Avenue,

without a safety tether, she was unnerved by the scene.

Right hand behind.

Left hand in front.

Right hand to brake.

Left hand to guide.

Feet spread and planted firmly on the wall.

Repeating to herself all that Graham had taught her, she pushed away

from the building. And gasped. She felt as if she had taken a suicidal

leap.

As she swung out, she realized that she was clenching the rope too

tightly with her left hand. Left to guide. Right to brake. She

relaxed her grip on the rope in front of her and slid down a few feet

before braking.

She approached the building improperly. Her legs were not straight out

in front of her, and they weren't rigid enough. They buckled. She

twisted to the right, out of control, and struck the granite with her

shoulder. The impact was not great enough to break a bone, but it was

much too hard.

It dazed her, but she didn't let go of the rope. Got her feet against

the stone once more. Got into position. Shook her head to clear it.

Glanced to her left. Saw Graham three yards away on that side. Nodded

so he would know that she was all r. Then pushed outward. Pushed hard.

Slid down. Swung back. She didn't make any mistakes this time.

THEFAmoFFEm Grinning, Graham watched as Connie took a few more steps

down the stone. Her endurance and determination delighted him.

There really was some Nora Charles in her. And a hell of a lot of Nick

too.

When he saw that she had pretty much gotten the knack of rappelling-her

style was crude but adequate-he kicked away from the wall. He descended

farther than she did on each arc and reached the eighteenth floor ahead

of her.

He braced himself on the almost nonexistent window ledge. He smashed in

the two tall panes of glass and fixed a snap link to the metal center

post. When he had attached his safety tether to that carabiner, he

released the main line, pulled it free of the overhead anchor. He

caught the rope, tied it to the carabiner in front of him, and took up a

rappelling position.

Beside him, nine feet away, Connie was also ready to rappel.

He flung himself into space.

He was amazed not only at how well he remembered the skills and

techniques of a climber, but at how quickly the worst of his fear had

vanished. He was still afraid, but not unnaturally so. Necessity and

Connie's love had produced a miracle that no psychiatrist could have

matched.

He was beginning to think they might escape. His left arm ached where

the bullet had grazed it, and the fingers of that hand were stiff. The

pain in his bad leg had subsided to a continuous dull throb that made

him grit his teeth occasionally but which didn't interfere too much with

his rappelling.

in a couple of steps he reached the seventeenth floor.

in two more jumps he came to rest against the sixteenth-story window

ledge-where Frank Bollinger had decided to set up an ambush.

The window was closed. However, the drapes had been drawn back.

One desk lamp glowed dimly in the office.

Bollinger was on the other side of the glass, a huge silhouette.

He was just lifting the latch.

No! Graham thought.

In the same instant that his boots touched the window ledge, he kicked

away from it.

Bollinger saw him and pulled off a shot without bothering to open the

rectangular panes. Glass sliced into the night.

Although Bollinger reacted fast, Graham was already out of his line of

fire. He swung-back to the wall seven or eight feet below Bollinger,

rappelled again, stopped at the fifteenth-story window.

He looked up and saw flame flicker briefly from the muzzle of the pistol

as Bollinger shot at Connie.

The gunfire threw her off her pace. She hit the wall with her shoulder

again. Frantic, she got her feet under her and rappelled.

Bollinger fired again.

Bollinger knew that he hadn't scored a hit on either of them.

He left the office, ran to the elevator. He switched on the control

panel and pushed the button for the tenth floor.

As the lift descended, he thought about the plan that he and Billy had

formulated yesterday.

" Yo u'll kill Harris firs t. Do what you wan t with th e woman, but be

sure to cut her up."

"I always cut them up. That was my idea in the first place."

"You should kill Harris where it'll cause the least mess, where you can

clean up after.

"Clen up? "

"When you're done with the woman, you'll go back to Harris, wipe up

every speck of blood around him, and wrap his body in a plastic tarp. So

don't kill him on a carpet where he'll leave stains. Take him into a

room with a tile floor.

Maybe a bathroom.

"Wrap him in a tarp?"

"I'll be waiting behind the Bowerton Building at ten o'clock.

You'll bring the body to me. We'll put it the car. Later, we can take

it out of the city, bury it upstate someplace.

"Bury it? Why?"

"We're going to try to make the police think that Harris has killed his

own fiancee, that he's tho Butcher. I'll disguise my voice and call

Homicide. I',U claim to be Harris, and I'll tell them I'm the Butcher.

"To mislead them?"

"You've.got it.

,"sooner or later they'll smell a trick.

"Yes, they will. Eventually. But for a few weeksg maybe even for a few

months, they'll be after Harzis There wouldn't be any chance whatsoever

that they follow a good lead, one that might bring them to us."

"A classic red herring.

"ecisely."

"It'll give us time.

"Yes."

"To do everything we want.

"Nearly everything." The plan was ruined.

The clairvoyant was too damned hard to kill.

the lift slid apart.

Bollinger tripped coming out of the elevator. The pistol flew out of his

hand, clattered against the wall.

He got to his knees and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.

He said, "Billy?"

But he was alone.

Coughing, sniffling, he crawled to the pistol, clutched it in his right

hand and stood up.

He went into the dark hall, to the door of an office that would have a

view of Lexington.

Because he was worried about running out of ammunition, he used only one

shot on the door. He aimed carefully. The boom! echoed and reechoed

in the corridor. The lock was damaged, but it wouldn't release

altogether. The door rattled in its frame. Rather than use another

bullet, he put his shoulder to the panel, vressed until it gave inward.

By the time he reached the Lexington Avenue windows, Harris and the

woman had passed him. They were two floors below.

He returned to the elevator. He was going to have to go outside and

confront them when they reached the street. He pushed the button for

the ground floor.

Braced against the eighth-floor windows, they agreed to cover the final

hundred and twenty feet in two equal rappels, using the fourth-floor

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

the storm."

"Thank you," Connie said.

"Now, I've got to be going. Work to do. Things that ought to have been

done long ago. I'm always behind in my work. Always. I'm not cut out

for this job. That's the truth."

He shook hands with Graham and performed an awkward half bow in Connie's

direction.

As he walked across the lobby, his wet shoes squashed and squeaked.

Outside, he dodged some reporters and refused to answer the questions of

others.

His unmarked car was at the end of a double line of police sedans,

black-and-whites, ambulances and press vans. He got behind the wheel,

buckled his safety belt, started the engine.

His partner, Detective Daniel Mulligan, would be busy inside for a

couple of hours yet. He wouldn't miss the car.

Humming a tune of his own creation, Preduski drove onto Lexington, which

had recently been plowed. There were chains on his tires; they crunched

in the snow and sang on the few bare patches of pavement. He turned the

corner, went to Fifth Avenue, and headed downtown.

Less than fifteen minutes later, he parked on a tree-lined street in

Greenwich Village.

He left the car. He walked a third of a block, keeping to the shadows

beyond the pools of light around the street lamps. With a quick

backward glance to be sure he wasn't observed, he stepped into a narrow

passageway between two elegant townhouses.

The roofless walkway ended in a blank wall, but there were high gates on

both sides. He stopped in front of the gate on his left.

Snowflakes eddied gently in the still night air. The wind did not reach

down here, but its fierce voice called from the rooftops above.

He took a pair of lock picks from his pocket. He had found them a long

time ago in the apartment of a burglar who had committed suicide.

Over the years there had been rare but important occasions on which the

picks had come in handy. He used one of them to tease up the pins in

the cheap gate lock, used the other pick to hold the pins in place once

they'd been teased. In two minutes he was inside.

A small courtyard lay behind Graham Harris's house. A patch of grass.

Two trees. A brick patio. Of course, the two flower beds were barren

during the winter; however, the presence of a wrought-iron table and

four wrought-iron chairs made it seem that people had been playing cards

in the sun just that afternoon.

He crossed the courtyard and climbed three steps to the rear entrance.

The storm door was not locked.

As delicately, swiftly and silently as he could manage, he picked the

lock on the wooden door.

He was dismayed by the ease with which he had gained entry.

Wouldn't people ever learn to buy good locks?

Harris's kitchen was warm and dark. It smelled of spice cake, and of

bananas that had been put out to ripen and were now overripe.

He closed the door soundlessly.

For a few minutes he stood perfectly still, listening to the house and

waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, when he could

identify every object in the kitchen, he went to the table, lifted a

chair away from it, put the chair down again without making even the

faintest noise.

He sat down and took his revolver from the shoulder holster under his

left arm. He held the gun in his lap.

The squad car waited at the curb until Graham opened the front door of

the house. Then it drove away, leaving tracks in the five-inch snowfall

that, in Greenwich Village, had not yet been pushed onto the sidewalks.

He switched on the foyer light. As Connie closed the door, he went into

the unlighted living room and located the nearest table lamp.

He turned it on-and froze, unable to find the strength or the will to

remove his fingers from the switch.

A man sat in one of the easy chairs. He had a gun.

Connie put one hand on Graham's arm. To the man in the chair, she said,

"What are you doing here?"

Anthony Prine, the host of Manhattan at Midnight, stood up. He waved

the gun at them. "I've been waiting for you."

"Why are you talking like that?" Connie asked.

"The Southern accent? I was born with it. Got rid Of it years ago.

But I can recall it when I want. It was losing the accent that got me

interested in mimicry. I started in show business as a comic who did

imitations of famous people. Now I imitate Billy lames Plover, the man

I used to be."

"How did you get in here?" Graham demanded.

"I went around the side of the house and broke a window.

"Get out. I want you out of here."

"You killed Dwight," Prine said. "I drove by the Bowerton Building

after the show. I saw all the cops. I know what you did."

He was very pale. His face was lined with strain.

"Killed who?" Graham asked.

"Dwight. Franklin Dwight Bollinger."

Perplexed, Graham said, "He was trying to kill us."

"He was one of the best people. One of the very best there ever was. I

did a program about vice cops, and he was one of the guests.

Within minutes we knew we were two of a kind."

"He was the Butcher, the one who-" Prine was extremely agitated.

His hands were shaking. His left cheek was distorted by a nervous tic.

He interrupted Connie and said, "Dwight was half the Butcher.

"Half the Butcher?" Connie said.

Graham lowered his hand from the switch and gripped the pillar of the

brass table lamp.

'llwastheotherhalf,"Prinesaid."Wewereidentical personalities, Dwight and

l." He took one step toward them. Then another. "More than that. We

were incom 3W plete without each other. We were halves of the same

organism." He pointed the pistol at Graham's head.

"Get out of here!" Graham shouted. "Run, Connie!" And as he spoke he

threw the lamp at Prine.

The lamp knocked Prine back into the easy chair.

Graham turned to the foyer.

Connie was opening the front door.

As he followed her, Prine shot him in the back.

A terrible blow on the right shoulder blade, a burst of light, blood

spattering the carpet all around him ...

He fell and rolled onto his side in time to see Ira Preduski come out of

the hallway that led to the kitchen.

He floated on a raft of pain in a sea that grew darker by the second.

What was happening?

The detective shouted at Prine and then shot him in self-defense.

Once. In the chest.

The talk-show host collapsed against a magazine rack.

Pain. Just the first twitches of pain.

Graham closed his eyes. Wondered if that was the wrong thing to do. If

you go to sleep, you'll die. Or was that only with a head injury? He

opened his eyes to be on the safe side.

Connie was wiping the sweat from his face.

Kneeling beside him, Preduski said, "I called an ambulance." Some time

must have passed. He seemed to fade out in the middle of one

conversation and in on the middle of the next.

He closed his eyes.

Opened them.

AL "Medical examiner's theory," Preduski said.

"Sounded crazy at first. But the more I thought about it .

I'm thirsty," Graham said. He was hoarse. "Thirsty? I'll bet you

are," Preduski said.

'Get me . drink."

"That might be the wrong thing to do for you," Con the said.

"We'll wait for the ambulance." epil c The room spun. He smiled.

He rode the room as if it were a carousel.

,l shouldn't have come here alone," Preduski said miserably. "But you

see why I thought I had to? Bol MMDAY linger was a cop. The other

half of the Butcher might be a coP too. Who could I trustz Really.

Who Craham licked his lips and said, "P rine. Dead?

afraid not," Preduski said.

The?

"What about you?"

'Dead?"

,you'll live."

sure?

"Bullet wasn't near the spine. Didn't puncture any vital organs, I'll

bet."

"Sure?

"I'rll sure," Connie said.

Graham closed his eyes.

Ira Preduski stood with his back to the hospital window. The late

afternoon sun framed him in soft gold light. "Prine says they wanted to

start racial wars, religious wars, economic wars . . ."

Graham was lying on his side in the bed, propped up with pillows.

He spoke somewhat slowly because of the pain killers he had been given.

"So they could gain power in the aftermath."

"That's what he says."

From her chair at Graham's bedside, Connie said, "But that's crazy. In

fact, didn't Charles Manson's bunch of psychos kill all those people for

the same reason?"

"I mentioned Manson to Prine," Preduski said. "But he tells me Manson

was a two-bit con man, a cheap sleazy hood."

"While Prine is a superman.

Preduski shook his head sadly. "Poor Nietzsche. He was one of the most

brilliant philosophers who ever lived-and also the most misunderstood."

He bent over and sniffed at an arrangement of flowers that stood on the

table by the window. When he looked up again, he said, "Excuse me for

asking. It's none of my business. I know that. But I'm a curious man.

One of my faults.

But-when's the wedding?"

"Wedding?" Connie said.

"Don't kid me. You two are getting married."

Confused, Graham said, "How could you know that?

We just talked about it this morning. just the two of us.

"I'm a detective," Preduski said. "I've picked up clues."

"For instance?" Connie said.

"For instance, the way the two of you are looking at each other this

afternoon."

Delighted at being able to share the news, Graham said, "We'll be

married a few weeks after I'm released from the hospital, as soon as I

have my strength back."

"Which he'll need," Connie said, smiling wickedly.

Preduski walked around the bed, looked at the bandages on Graham's left

arm and on the upper right quarter of his back. "Every time I think of

all that happened Friday night and Saturday morning, I wonder how you

two came out of it alive."

"It wasn't much," Connie said.

"Not much?" Preduski said.

"No. Really. It wasn't so much, what we did, was it, Nick?"

Graham smiled and felt very good indeed. No, it wasn't much, Nora."

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