"Oh, young man, young man!" she cried in a high falsetto voice. "You must help me! My cat! My cat!" and broke off sobbing.
I went into instant shock. Falsetto or no falsetto, I knew that voice.
GUNSALMO SILVA!
He had used a woman's guise to murder the Director of the CIA and here he was repeating the trick.
It was HELLER who was the million-dollar contract nobody else would take!
Who had offered it? Not Bury: Madison was doing a great job and Bury wasn't even in town!
I sat there suffering. I did not yet have Heller's platen; I could not forge his reports to Captain Tars Roke back on Voltar. And Silva with his Apparatus training would make short work of Heller! After all, hadn't Silva wasted the impossible target—the Director of the CIA– plus two Russians, a dictator and Jimmy "The Gutter" Tavilnasty? And for that matter, hadn't he even wasted Babe's husband, the capo, "Holy Joe" Corleone? Oh, Heller was a dead duck!
There is a very heavy liability to being a gentleman. That's why I never was one. For Heller, the gentleman, the perfect Fleet officer, was patting the "old lady" on the back, saying, "There, there. What about your cat?" Blubbering brokenly, the "old lady" was pointing as she sobbed. Then, tottering along, she led the way to the extreme other end of the platform, pointing up.
Sure enough! There was a cat there!
It was white and orange and black. It had on a small red harness. And it was hanging by the harness from the top of the ten-foot, open wrought-iron fence! The rods curved in at that height and the cat was outside the fence!
The cat was meowing pitifully as it dangled over eighty-six stories worth of empty space. "It jumped," falsettoed Silva. "It got frightened and it jumped!" To get to it, one would have to climb the three-foot concrete parapet and then seven or eight feet of spaced wrought iron and then go over the inward bulge and reach down outside.
Silva had obviously been tailing Heller and under other guises had learned of this silly habit of climbing things. Exactly how he was going to do this hit, I could not even guess. To leave bullets in a body makes people suspicious.
Heller looked up at the yowling cat. Then he backed about twenty feet from the fence toward the central snack bar and souvenir stand outside wall. There was a seat there and beside the seat were two suitcases.
He looked at the "old lady" and then at the huge purse. Some balls of yarn were sticking out of the top of the purse.
"Sit down here," said Heller and the "old lady" sat down, sobbing away.
Heller sat down beside her. "I don't have any rope. I need something to drop a loop over the cat from the top of the fence. Otherwise it might leap again."
He reached for the yarn and began, with rapid hand motions, to make a rope by weaving it. "A cat's cradle is what we need," he said. And he was quickly making one.
I vividly remembered Bury's warning about being kind. Here was an awful example. Heller was sitting next to death, complete even to widow's weeds!
The night winds blew. The lights of New York rose upward with a blue fatality.
Heller wove the cat's cradle.
The "old lady" sobbed.
Finally Heller was through. He had a very open basket on a long cord.
"Everything will be all right in just a moment now,"
he said.
"Oh, I hope so," falsettoed Silva.
Heller went over and stepped up on the parapet. He nimbly went up the inside of the fence. He moved over the top bulge.
With a deft cast he dropped the basket below the cat and pulled up. The cat's legs extended through the open weave but it was securely meshed. He drew it up.
Some sound must have caught his ear above the wind. Teetering on top of the fence, he turned his head and looked.
Silva was just that moment ten feet away, laying something down upon the pavement!
Heller saw what it was. A Voltar concussion grenade.
I recognized it at the same instant. It was one of those I had given Terb! It would make a fantastic concussion blast without a single fragment. It would blow Heller off that fence and into the depths eighty-six stories below.
Silva's hand left the grenade.
"And one," whispered Heller. He was going to count!
Silva straightened up.
Heller threw the cat!
"And two," said Heller.
The cat hit Silva in the face!
It was screeching and clawing!
Obviously, Silva had meant to withdraw behind the barricade of suitcases and chair to escape the concussion. Beating at the cat, trying to get it off of him, he backed up!
"And four," said Heller. I realized he knew that that grenade had a fifteen-second lag!
Down came Heller off the fence and onto the platform!
Silva was still fighting the cat. But with one hand he was reaching into his purse.
Out came my Colt Bulldog!
The cat was still on him, screeching like a nightmare.
Heller was swiftly circling. "And seven."
Silva himself was howling now, shouting obscenities! He began to hit at the cat with the purse!
The cradle burst!
The cat leaped away and fled toward the souvenir stand's open door.
Maddened with pain, Silva heaved the purse after the cat!
Silva crouched into a deadly pose, the Colt Bulldog pointing this way and that.
Heller had reached the barricade of the chair and suitcases against the snack-bar wall.
"And ten," said Heller.
He ducked down!
Silva spotted him. He knew better than to rush. He could not count on a lucky shot when he had just the top of a head and eyes as a target.
He backed up.
He got up on the parapet to get height to shoot down.
"And twelve," whispered Heller.
Silva fired!
The bullet thunked into the suitcase in front of Heller.
Silva climbed up higher on the fence!
He fired again!
"And fourteen," said Heller. And at that he ducked very low and all sound went off as he cupped his hands solidly over his ears and stuck his face hard against the suitcase side.
BLOWIE!
The sound even went through his protecting hands.
He looked up.
And there was Silva flying high into the air!
The wind caught the body as it rose, and there went Silva, soaring away over nighttime New York, but mostly down! Heller went over to the fence and looked.
It was only emptiness and blackness below.
He came back to the center. He looked around. There was a slight concavity where the grenade had exploded. Nothing noticeable. He went over and picked up Silva's huge purse.
There didn't seem to be any other evidence around except the grips.
Heller raised his head to the sky. He said, "I hope you noticed, Jesus Christ, that I didn't have much to do with that. But if I ever happen to wind up in your Heavens by mistake, remember to chalk me up with having saved a cat. Amen."
Heller threw the purse strap over his shoulder. He put one heavy grip under his left arm and picked up the other with his left hand. He grabbed the bucket and broom in his right and moved through the door and into the souvenir and snack-bar enclosure, kicking the door shut behind him.
The elevator was barred off for the night. He turned to the stairwell and stepped down.
And there was the cat! It had apparently been inside and partway down the stairs when the concussion went off, for it didn't seem disturbed. When Heller went down the steps, the cat followed him.
But the distance from the Observatory to the ground is eighty-six floors. In fact, New Yorkers every year have a race from the bottom to the top, up these 1,860 steps. And Heller must have thought he was racing the other way. Six at a time, he was doing the closest thing to free fall down that stairway.
He got two floors lower. Then he heard a yowl behind him. He stopped and looked back.
The cat was halted on the last landing Heller had left, yowling and looking reproachful.