doors, dark wood with brassy fixtures, were on the right.
He stopped in front of the second door and flexed his gloved fingers. He
pulled his wallet from an inside coat pocket and took a knife from an
overcoat pocket. When he touched the button on the burnished handle,
the springhinged blade popped into sight; it was seven inches long, thin
and nearly as sharp as a razor.
The gleaming blade transfixed Bollinger and caused bright images to
flicker behind his eyes.
He was an admirer of William Blake's poetry; indeed, he fancied himself
an intimate spiritual student of Blake's. It was not surprising, then,
that a passage from Blake's work should come to him at that moment,
flowing through his mind like blood running down the troughs in an
autopsy table.
Then the inhabitants of those cities Felt their nerves change into
marrow, And the hardening bones began In swift diseases and torments, in
shootings and throbbings and grindings through all the coasts, till,
weakened, The senses inward rushed, shrinking Beneath the dark net of
infection.
I'll change their bones to marrow, sure as hell, Bollinger thought. I'll
have the inhabitants of this city hiding behind their doors at night.
Except that I'm not the infection; I'm the cure. I'm the cure for all
that's wrong with this world.
He rang the bell. After a moment he heard her on the other side of the
door, and he rang the bell again.
'Who is it?' she asked. She had a pleasant, almost musical voice,
marked now with a thin note of apprehension.
'Miss Mowry?' he asked.
'Yes? '
' Police.'
She didn't reply.
'Miss Mowry? Are you there?'
'What's it about?'
'Some trouble where you work.'
'I never cause trouble.'
'I didn't say that. The trouble doesn't involve you.
At least not directly. But you might have seen something important. You
might have been a witness.'
'To what?'
'That will take a while to explain.'
'I couldn't have been a witness. Not me. I wear blinders in that
place.'
'Miss Mowry,' he said sternly, 'if I must get a warrant in order to
question you, I will.'
'How do I know you're really the police?'
'New York,' Bollinger said with mock exasperation.
'Isn't it just wonderful? Everyone suspects everyone else.
'They have to.'
He sighed. 'Perhaps. Look, Miss Mowry, do you have a security chain on
the door?'
