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.
