'As sure as I can be until I start it.'
'Maybe I should be more help. I could-'
'No,' Bollinger said.
'if anything goes wrong, I can flash my badge and say I showed up to
investigate a complaint. Then I can slip quietly away. But if we were
both there, how could we explain our way out of it?'
'I suppose you're right.'
'We'll stick to the original plan.'
'All right.'
'You be in that alleyway at ten o'clock.'
Billy said, 'What if you get there and discover it won't work? I don't
want to be waiting-'
'If I have to give it up,' Bollinger said, 'I'll call you well before
ten. But if you don't get the call, be in that alley.
'Of course. What else? But I won't wait past ten thirty. I can't
wait longer than that.
'That'll be long enough.'
Billy sighed happily. 'Are we going to stand this city on its ear?'
'Nobody will sleep tomorrow night.'
'Have you decided what lines you'll write on the wall?
Bollinger waited until a city bus rumbled past the booth. His choice of
quotations was clever; and he wanted Billy to appreciate them. 'Yeah.
I've got a long one from Nietzsche. 'I want to teach men the sense of
their existence, which is Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud
man.'
'Oh, that's excellent,' Billy said. 'I couldn't have chosen better
myself.'
'Thank you.'
'And Blake?'
'Just a fragment from the alternate seventh night of The Four Zoas.
'Hearts laid open to the light .
Billy laughed.
'I knew you'd like it.'
'I suppose you do intend to lay their hearts open?'
'Naturally,' Bollinger said. 'Their.hearts and everything else, from
throat to crotch.'
Promptly at six o'clock, the doorbell rang.
Sarah Piper answered it. Her professional smile slipped when she saw
who was standing in the hall. 'What are you doing here?' she asked,
surprised.
'May I come in?'
'Well .
'You look beautiful tonight. Absolutely stunning.' She was wearing a
tight burnt-orange pantsuit, flimsy, with a low neckline that revealed
too much of her creamy breasts. Self-consciously she put one hand over
her cleavage. 'I'm sorry, but I can't ask you in. I'm expecting
someone.'
'You're expecting me,' he said. 'Billy James Plover.
'What? That's not your name.'
'It surely is. It's the name I was born with. I changed it years ago,
