An Alien Affair

  Yes, Madison was coming through. Heller had been dealt another heavy blow, for the press was definitely favoring the universities. They even showed the bodies of some students beaten to death by riot police. A favorable sign.

  I might have found even more favorable evidences in my analysis except that that very night, my attention was rudely snapped in another direction.

  Chapter 2

  I might have missed it entirely if I had not been extraordinarily alert. I knew it was important for me to pick up every possible clue I could about Heller. He had an inkling, I am sure, after Connecticut, that I was out to get him and even though I was not moving around much in New York, I didn't want to run the slightest risk of turning a corner and running into him. In fact, every time I rode anywhere near the Empire State Building or the UN area, I scrunched way down in the cab just in case he happened to be on the street.

  Thus, I had been making it a habit to rapid-scan the recorded strips of the viewer lately. Ordinarily, I would not have bothered with the night strips due to that strange electronic interference around his suite, but after Gunsalmo Silva had calmly walked up and knocked on my door, I knew I couldn't be too careful.

  It paid off!

  I was amazed! Apparently Heller's rescue of Izzy had turned his attention to the Observatory of the Empire State Building. I have never seen a man so interested in soot. Who really cared what happened to the atmosphere of this planet? After Lombar had taken over Voltar, he would make very sure there was no population left on Earth: Lombar had enough riffraff at home without a full, additional planet of it to cause him trouble. Probably at the most he'd put in a little colony in Turkey to keep the opium coming. So who cared about the atmosphere of Earth? Let them choke on their own soot or get wiped out with exterminator sprays—who cared?

  Yet Heller had begun a routine. Each night he would leave the Gracious Palms dressed in heavy cleaner's clothes, carrying a bucket and broom, and have Bang-Bang drive him down to the Empire State Building Observatory entrance.

  The last car went up at 11:30 P.M. He would take it, and with a transfer arrive at the 86th floor.

  At that hour the snack bar and souvenir counter would be closed and the place deserted. And who, I suppose, ever stops a cleaner in a New York building?

  The snack bar and souvenir counter are housed, with the elevators and staircase, in a structure which stands in the middle of the large platform.

  He would go up on the top of this central structure and plant three new wind cones and take the ones left the night before and put them in his bucket.

  Although the platform extended out widely all around the central structure and although even the platform edge itself was amply guarded by a ten- or twelve-foot wrought-iron fence, the sight of him teetering around up there, fixing those cones to catch the wind, made me quite giddy.

  The area had considerable light, coming up as it did from the city down below and all about and from the aircraft-warning and other lights on the higher tower. But to watch him fiddling with wind cones on those buttresses was a lot more than I could stand.

  He was catching soot specimens or spores or something. He was probably analyzing them minutely and making all sorts of valuable conclusions, no doubt, but in my opinion it was just plain silly. Crazy as he was on the subject of height, it was probably recreation.

  So tonight, I almost didn't look at the viewer when the time came. But some keen sense that is bred into you in the Apparatus told me that before I went to sleep, I better make sure he was up there again and not knocking on my door.

  Yes, he was up there.

  He put the old cones in his bucket and put some new ones in place and climbed down to the platform. And then it happened!

  Heller was just about to walk down the stairs when an old lady rushed up to him!

  She had a huge purse on a strap over her shoulder. She was dressed all in black. She had on a black hat and was wearing a black veil.

  "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."

  Chapter 3

  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.

  "Oho," said Heller. "Too fast for you, eh?"

  He went back up to the cat, picked him up and put him into the bucket. Heller turned and started catapulting down again. The cat put his paws on the bucket rim and watched the descent with interest.

  Heller emerged onto 34th Street. Bang-Bang was there with the old cab. He reached over and opened the door for Heller but his attention was on something way ahead. He said, "They're prying somebody off the sidewalk on the other side of Fifth Avenue. What have you been up to?"

  Heller said, "Drive."

  Bang-Bang U-turned the cab and rocketed west. He glanced back. "Well, at least tell me what the cat's name is."

  "Drive," said Heller.

  "Jesus," said Bang-Bang, "ain't nobody talking, not even the cat."

  They drove a couple blocks and then the cat started yowling.

  Heller said, "Pull over."

  "Where?"

  "By that delicatessen, of course. Holy blast, Bang-Bang, don't you even talk cat?" Bang-Bang mounted the curb and stopped. Heller said, "Now go in and get some milk." He threw Bang-Bang a bill and then turned on the cab's overhead light.

  Heller looked at the cat. It had on a harness but there were no marks on it. He found a string, apparently too tight, around the cat's neck. Heller took out a pair of snips and cut it. The string had a paper tag on it.

  He looked at the tag. It said #7A66 City Pound. Heller addressed the cat, "Oho, a jailbird, huh? Well, don't worry, we'll just remove the evidence and they can't get you for complicity."

  Heller took the purse and spilled the contents on the floor. A jumbled assortment fell out, tangled up in knitting yarn. Heller began to inventory it.

  "An obsolete Voltar Fleet grenade. An Apparatus Knife Section knife. Russian rubles. Travellers checks on a Panama bank. Assorted Canadian, Swiss and U.S. passports. A baggage check." He had his hands on packets of money. "And U.S. dollars done up in Turkish bank bands." He sat back. "This is CRAZY!"

  Oh, my Gods, I recognized the money. It was my $100,000! How cruel fate is! There were the hundred big ones in Heller's hands! I tore at my hair.

  Bang-Bang opened the door. "What's all this worry over the cat?"

  "He saved my life. I'm responsible for him now."

  Bang-Bang had half a pint of cream. He cut off the top of the carton and was putting it on the floor for the cat when he saw the money. "Jesus, Jet. Did the cat give you that?"

  Heller said, "He's a very wealthy cat."

  "Ain't he kind of young to have all that dough?" He was watching the cat tie into the cream.

  Heller snapped open one of the suitcases. It seemed to have some strange things in it. He pulled out something that looked like a close-fitting jump suit. It had a little undetached label:

  Proofed to 3600 foot-pounds of impact energy

  CIA Test Lab, Langley, Virginia

  Heller said, "Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. Items from all over the place: Russia, Panama, Canada, Switzerland and wherever, including Turkey and Washington."

  Bang-Bang said, "That's an African-type cat. My aunt had one with the same white, orange and black markings. They're great fighters, supposed to be awful bright for cats. They're called calicos. Male calicos are very rare. Oh, yeah, they're also supposed to bring good luck. So anyway," he continued learnedly, "if you've got Russia and Washington and all them, you can add Africa. If that's his purse, I'd say he was a very well-travelled cat."

  Heller was opening up passports. They all had the same face in the pictures but different names. He came to the U.S. one. His hands jolted.

  GUNSALMO SILVA!

  Heller covered up the type with his hands, leaving only the picture showing and turned it to Bang-Bang. "Who is this?"

  Bang-Bang's eyes bugged. "Jesus Christ! It's GUNSALMO SILVA!"

  Heller looked back at the passport and said, "Thanks. I just wanted to be sure. But Gunsalmo Silva from where, for whom?" br />
  "Sangue di Cristo!" said Bang-Bang with awe. "You just rubbed Gunsalmo Silva!"

  "The cat did it," said Heller. "He's a hit man. Got a record as long as his tail. Wanted posters in every post office. And he just broke out of the slammer. So don't turn squealer on him: they could send him up for life."

  "Gunsalmo Silva," whispered Bang-Bang, still in awe. "Top of the hit parade. Jesus, Jet, that must've been Gunsalmo plastered all over Fifth Avenue! You threw him off the Observation Platform!" he added in sudden comprehension.

  "It's my word against the cat's," said Heller. "And he'll take the Fifth. But quit changing the subject, Bang-Bang. This bulletproof suit is too small for me. It looks like it would fit you exactly."

  "Wait a minute," said Bang-Bang. "What's coming off here?"

  "It isn't what's coming off," said Heller. "It's what's going on. You know that rental costume shop up on West 37th Street in the garment district? Get going."

  Bang-Bang did, while the cat, having demolished the cream, climbed up on Heller's lap and with a deep sigh went to sleep.

  They halted in front of an old two-story building with a costume shop on the ground floor and, apparently, living quarters on the second. It was well after midnight and the shop was closed and barred.

  Heller got out and forcefully pushed a bell behind the iron grate.

  A window shot up on the second floor and a bald head jutted out. "Ve iss closed yet! Go avay!"

  Heller stepped back. He called, "Won't a hundred-dollar bill open you up?"

  "Dot iss a goot key! Down right I'll be yet. Don't noplace go!"

  Presently they were in the shop. The proprietor was in a white nightgown and slippers with a black jacket thrown over his shoulders.

  Heller handed him a hundred-dollar bill. "I want to look," he said.

  "For a hundred dollars business iss so bad you can buy the shop," said the proprietor.

  Heller was going through racks of all kinds of costumes. He came to a rack where everything was black. Black dresses, black hats, black veils. He kept looking at them and then back at Bang-Bang, locating a size. He pulled one out.