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impossible,” said Guilfoyle. He remained seated, his voice collected, untroubled.
    “What would be impossible?”
    “We know the two of you are working together.”
    “On the same team,” Bolden suggested, throwing up his arms.
    “I haven’t heard it put that way before, but yes . . .
the same team.
Crown,” repeated Guilfoyle. “Bobby Stillman. You will tell us, please.”
    “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about!”
    With surprising speed, Guilfoyle stood and pulled a snub-nosed .38 Police Special from his jacket pocket. Taking a step forward, he pressed the muzzle against Bolden’s forehead. “Wolf,” he called, without unscrewing his gaze from Bolden. “Some assistance.”
    Massive hands clutched Bolden’s arms, pinning them to his sides. Guilfoyle opened a door at the far end of the room. Wind howled from the darkness beyond. “Looks like the storm’s on its way.”
    “Walk,” said Wolf.
    Digging his heels into the carpet didn’t help. Wolf lifted Bolden off his feet as if he were no heavier than a case of beer and carried him outside. He set Bolden down on a wood platform twenty feet by twenty, spread across two girders. The door flapped noisily against a metal wall and Bolden realized that he’d been in the construction foreman’s temporary office. Above him, the skyscraper’s unfinished exoskeleton rose another ten stories or so, the taut girders clutching at the sky like a drowning man’s hand. He was facing north, the view over Harlem and into the Bronx obscured by fast-moving clouds.
    This was bad,
he thought.
This was definitely lousy.
    “Now, listen . . .” Bolden turned his head to look behind him. A kidney punch dropped him to a knee.
    “Stand up,” said Guilfoyle. He waved the pistol toward the opposite side of the wooden platform.
    Bolden raised himself to his feet. Haltingly, he crossed the platform. A girder extended from beneath the wood, and beyond the skyscraper’s superstructure like a diving board. A heavy chain was anchored to its end. A pulley of some sort.
    “As I said, you’re quite good, but my patience has worn thin. It’s your choice. Tell me about ‘Crown’ and your relationship with Bobby Stillman, and you’re free to come back inside. We’ll all go downstairs together and I’ll see to it that you get home safely. It’s a matter of security. I can’t leave here until I know for certain the full extent of your involvement.”
    “And if I can’t?”
    “You can’t or you won’t?” Guilfoyle shrugged, and his eyes dived over the platform to the ground, seventy floors below. “Even you must know the answer to that question.”
    Glancing down, Bolden saw only a void, the building’s empty guts, and far below, the reflected white of the wooden fence surrounding the construction site. A street ran parallel to the building. Taillights sprinted from block to block, stopping at red lights. A gust lashed his face. The wind unsettled the platform, and Bolden’s knees buckled, before he regained his balance.
    Wolf walked confidently across the platform, a lead pipe in his hand. “Now’s the time, Mr. Bolden. Talk. Tell Mr. Guilfoyle what he needs to know.”
    Bolden took another step back, his heel dipping into air, then finding the wood. It came to him that Guilfoyle did not want to shoot him. A body that fell from the seventieth floor was a suicide. Add a bullet and you have murder.
    “Crown. I want an answer. Three seconds.”
    Bolden racked his brain. Crown. Crown of England. Crown Cola.
The Thomas Crown Affair.
He’d always thought Steve McQueen in that glider was the coolest guy on the planet.
The Jewel in the Crown.
Wasn’t that some book he’d been force-fed in college? Crown . . . crown . . . What was the use?
    “Two,” said Guilfoyle.
    “I don’t know. I swear to you.”
    “Three.”
    “I don’t know!” he shouted.
    Guilfoyle raised the gun. Even in the dark, Bolden could see the tips of the bullets loaded in the firing