'Maybe I dreamed it.'
'You've got dark rings under your eyes.'
'My Rudolph Valentino look.'
'You should go home to bed.'
'And have the printer down my throat tomorrow?'
'They're quarterly magazines. A few days one way or the other won't
matter.'
'You're talking to a perfectionist.'
'Don't I know it.'
'A perfectionist who loves you.'
She blew him a kiss.
Frank Bollinger parked his car on a side street and walked the last
three blocks to the Bowerton Building.
A skin of snow, no more than a quarter inch but growing deeper, sheathed
the sidewalks and street. Except for a few taxicabs that spun past too
fast for road conditions, there was not much traffic on Lexington
Avenue.
The main entrance to the Bowerton Building was set back twenty feet from
the sidewalk. There were four revolving glass doors, three of them
locked at this hour. Beyond the doors the large lobby rich with marble
and brasswork and copper trim was overflowing with warm amber light.
Bollinger patted the pistol in his pocket and went inside.
Overhead, a closed-circuit television camera was suspended from a brace.
It was focused on the only unlocked door.
Bollinger stamped his feet to knock the snow from his shoes and to give
the camera time to study him. The man in the control room wouldn't find
him suspicious if he faced the 'camera without concern.
A uniformed security guard was sitting on a stool behind a lectern near
the first bank of elevators.
Bollinger walked over to him, stepped out of the camera's range.
'Evening,' the guard said.
As he walked, he took his wallet from an inside pocket and flashed the
gold badge. 'Police.' His voice echoed eerily off the marble walls and
the high ceiling. 'Something wrong?' the guard asked.
'Anybody working late tonight?'
'Just four.'
'All in the same office?'
'No. What's up?'
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?'
