The Face of Fear (11 page)

Bollinger pointed to the open registry on the lectern. “I’d like all four names.”

“Let’s see here ... Harris, Davis, Ott and MacDonald.”

“Where would I find Ott?”

“Sixteenth floor.”

“What’s the name of the office?”

“Cragmont Imports.”

The guard’s face was round and white. He had a weak mouth and a tiny Oliver Hardy mustache. When he tried for an expression of curiosity, the mustache nearly disappeared up his nostrils.

“What floor for MacDonald?” Bollinger asked.

“Same. Sixteenth.”

“He’s working with Ott?”

“That’s right.”

“Just those four?”

“Just those four.”

“Maybe someone else is working late, and you don’t know it.”

“Impossible. After five-thirty, anyone going upstairs has to sign in with me. At six o’clock we go through every floor to see who’s working late, and then they check out with us when they leave. The building management has set down strict fire-prevention rules. This is part of them.” He patted the registry. “If there’s ever a fire, we’ll know exactly who’s in the building and where we can find them.”

“What about maintenance crews?”

“What about them?”

“Janitors. Cleaning women. Any working now?”

“Not on Friday night.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.” He was visibly upset by the interrogation and beginning to wonder if he should cooperate. “They come in all day tomorrow.”

“Building engineer?”

“Schiller. He’s night engineer.”

“Where is Schiller?”

“Downstairs.”

“Where downstairs?”

“Checking one of the heat pumps, I think.”

“Is he alone?”

“Yeah.”

“How many other security guards?”

“Are you going to tell me what’s up?”

“For God’s sake, this is an emergency!” Bollinger said. “How many security guards besides you?”

“Just two. What emergency?”

“There’s been a bomb threat.”

The guard’s lips trembled. The mustache seemed about to fall off. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were.”

The guard slid off his stool, stepped from behind the lectern.

At the same time Bollinger took the Walther from his pocket.

The guard blanched. “What’s that?”

“A gun. Don’t go for yours.”

“Look, this bomb threat ... I didn’t call it in.”

Bollinger laughed.

“It’s true.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Hey ... that gun has a silencer on it.”

“Yeah.”

“But policemen don’t—”

Bollinger shot him twice in the chest.

The impact of the bullets threw the guard into the sheet marble. For an instant he stood very straight, as if he were waiting for someone to measure his height and mark it on the wall. Then he collapsed.

Bollinger turned immediately from the dead man and looked at the revolving doors. Nobody was there, no one on the sidewalk beyond, no one who might have seen the killing.

Moving quickly but calmly, he tucked the pistol into his pocket and grabbed the body by the arms. He dragged it into the waiting area between the first two banks of elevators. Now, anyone coming to the doors would see only an empty lobby.

The dead man stared at him. The mustache seemed to have been painted on his lip.

Bollinger turned out the guard’s pockets. He found quarters, dimes, a crumpled five-dollar bill, and a key ring with seven keys.

He returned to the main part of the lobby.

He wanted to go straight to the door, but he knew that was not a good idea. That would put him in camera range. If the men monitoring the closed-circuit system saw him locking the door, they would be curious. They’d come to investigate, and he would lose the advantage of surprise.

Keeping in mind the details of the plans he had studied at City Hall that afternoon, he walked quietly to the rear of the lobby and stepped into a short corridor on the left. Four rooms led off the hall. The second on the right was the guards’ room, and the door was open.

Wondering if the squeaking of his wet shoes sounded as loud to the guards as it did to him, he edged up to the open door.

Inside, two men were talking laconically about their jobs, complaining, but only halfheartedly.

Bollinger took the pistol from his coat pocket. He walked through the doorway.

The men were sitting at a small table in front of three television screens. They weren’t watching the monitors. They were playing two-handed pinochle.

The older of the two was in his fifties. Heavy. Grayhaired. He had a prizefighter’s lumpy face. The name “Neely” was stitched on his left shirt pocket. He was slow. He looked up at Bollinger, failed to react as he should have to the gun, and said without fear, “What’s this?”

The other guard was in his thirties. Trim. Ascetic face. Pale hands. As he turned to see what had caught Neely’s attention, Bollinger saw “Faulkner” stitched on his shirt.

He shot Faulkner first.

Reaching with both hands for his ruined throat, too late to stop the life from gushing out of him, Faulkner toppled backward in his chair.

“Hey!” Fat Neely was finally on his feet. His holster was snapped shut. He grappled with it.

Bollinger shot him twice.

Neely did an ungraceful pirouette, fell on the table, collapsed it, and went to the floor in a flutter of pinochle cards.

Bollinger checked their pulses.

They were dead.

When he left the room, he closed the door.

At the front of the big lobby, he locked the last revolving door and put the keys into his pocket.

He went to the lectern, sat on the stool. He took the box of bullets from his left coat pocket and replenished the pistol’s magazine.

He looked at his watch. 8:10. He was right on schedule.

“That was good pizza,” Graham said.

“Good wine, too. Have another glass.”

“I’ve had enough.”

“Just a little one.”

“No. I’ve got to work.”

“Dammit.”

“You knew that when you came.”

“I was trying to get you drunk.”

“On one bottle of wine?”

“And then seduce you.”

“Tomorrow night,” he said.

“I’ll be blind with desire by then.”

“Doesn’t matter. Love is a Braille experience.”

She winced.

He got up, came around the table, kissed her cheek. “Did you bring a book to read?”

“A Nero Wolfe mystery.”

“Then read.”

“Can I look at you from time to time?”

“What’s to look at?”

“Why do
men
buy
Playboy
magazine?” she asked.

“I won’t be working in the nude.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“Pretty dull.”

“You’re even sexy with your clothes on.”

“Okay,” he said, smiling. “Look but don’t talk.”

“Can I drool?”

“Drool if you must.”

He was pleased with the flattery, and she was delighted by his reaction. She felt that she was gradually chipping away at his inferiority complex, peeling it layer by layer.

The building engineer for the night shift was a stocky, fair-skinned blond in his late forties. He was wearing gray slacks and a gray-white-blue checkered shirt. He was smoking a pipe.

When Bollinger came down the steps from the lobby corridor, the gun in his right hand, the engineer said, “Who the hell are you?” He spoke with a slight German accent.

“Sie sind Herr Schiller, nicht wahr?”
Bollinger asked. His grandfather and grandmother had been German-Americans; he had learned the language when he was young and had never forgotten it.

Surprised to hear German spoken, worried about the gun but confused by Bollinger’s smile, Schiller said,
“Ja, ich bin’s.”

Schiller took the pipe from his mouth. He licked his lips nervously. “Die
Pistole?”

“Fur den Mord,
” Bollinger said. He squeezed off two shots.

 
Upstairs, on the lobby floor, Bollinger opened the door directly across the hall from the guards’ room. He switched on the lights.

The narrow room was lined with telephone and power company equipment. The ceiling and walls were unfinished concrete. Two bright red fire extinguishers were hung where they could be reached quickly.

He went to the far side of the room, to a pair of yard-square metal cabinets that were fixed to the wall. The lid of each cabinet bore the insignia of the telephone company. Although the destruction of the contents would render useless all other routing boxes, switch-boards and backup systems, neither of the cabinets was locked. Each housed twenty-six small levers, circuit breakers in a fuse box. They were all inclined toward the “on” mark. Bollinger switched them off, one by one.

He moved to a box labeled “Fire Emergency,” forced it open, and tinkered with the wires inside.

That done, he went to the guards’ room across the hall. He stepped around the bodies and picked up one of the two telephones that stood in front of the closed-circuit television screens.

No dial tone.

He jiggled the cut-off spikes.

Still no dial tone.

He hung up, picked up the other phone: another dead line.

Whistling softly, Bollinger entered the first elevator.

There were two keyholes in the control panel. The top one opened the panel for repairs. The one at the bottom shut down the lift mechanism.

He tried the keys that he had taken from the dead guard. The third one fit the bottom lock.

He pushed the button for the fifth floor. The number didn’t light
_;
the doors didn’t close
_;
the elevator didn’t move.

Whistling louder than before, he proceeded to shut down fourteen of the remaining fifteen elevators. He would use the last one to go to the sixteenth floor, where Ott and MacDonald were working, and later to the fortieth floor, where Harris and his woman were waiting.

Although Graham hadn’t spoken, Connie knew that something was wrong. He was breathing heavily. She looked up from her book and saw that he had stopped working and was staring at empty air, his mouth slightly open, his eyes sort of glazed. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re pale.”

“Just a headache.”

“You’re shaking.”

He said nothing.

She got up, put down her book, went to him. She sat on the corner of his desk. “Graham?”

“It’s okay. I’m fine now.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“I’m fine.”

“There for a minute you weren’t.”

“For a minute I wasn’t,” he agreed.

She took his hand
_;
it was icy. “A vision?”

“Yeah,” Graham said.

“Of what?”

“Me. Getting shot.”

“That’s not the least bit funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

“You’ve never had a personal vision before. You’ve always said the clairvoyance works only when other people are involved.”

“Not this time.”

“Maybe you’re wrong.”

“I doubt it. I felt as if I had been hit between the shoulders with a sledgehammer. The wind was knocked out of me. I saw myself falling.” His blue eyes grew wide. “There was blood. A great deal of blood.”

She felt sick in her soul, in her heart. He had never been wrong, and now he was predicting he would be shot.

He squeezed her hand tightly, as if he were trying to press strength from her into him.

“Do you mean shot—and killed?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe killed or maybe just wounded. Shot in the back. That much is clear.”

“Who did it—will do it?”

“The Butcher, I think.”

“You saw him?”

“No. Just a strong impression.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Someplace I know well.”

“Here?”

“Maybe...”

“At home?”

“Maybe.”

A fierce gust of wind boomed along the side of the highrise. The office windows vibrated behind the drapes.

“When will it happen?” she asked.

“Soon.”

“Tonight?”

“I can’t be sure.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Possibly.”

“Sunday?”

“Not as late as that.”

“What are we going to do?”

The lift stopped at the sixteenth floor.

Bollinger used the key to shut off the elevator before he stepped out of it. The cab would remain where it was, doors open, until he needed it again.

For the most part, the sixteenth floor was shrouded in darkness. An overhead fluorescent tube brightened the elevator alcove, but the only light in the corridor came from two dim red emergency exit bulbs, one at each end of the building.

Bollinger had anticipated the darkness. He took a pencil flashlight from an inside coat pocket, flicked it on.

Ten small businesses maintained offices on the sixteenth floor, six to the right and four to the left of the elevators. He went to the right. Two suites down the hall he found a door that bore the words CRAGMONT IMPORTS.

He turned off the flashlight and put it away.

He took out the Walther PPK.

Christ, he thought, it’s going so smoothly. So easily. As soon as he finished at Cragmont Imports, he could go after the primary targets. Harris first. Then the woman. If she was good-looking ... well, he was so far ahead of schedule now that he had an hour to spare. An hour for the woman if she rated it. He was ready for a woman, full of energy and appetite and excitement. A woman, a table filled with good food, and a lot of fine whiskey. But mostly a woman. In an hour he could use her up, really use her up.