smooth. 'Your victim is right behind you,' Drogan said softly.
Halston moved quickly. His reflexes were his life and they were
always set on a filed pin. He was off the couch, falling to one knee,
turning, hand inside his specially tailored sport coat, gripping the
handle of the short-barreled .45 hybrid that hung below his armpit
in a spring-loaded holster that laid it in his palm at a touch. A
moment later it was out and pointed at ... a cat.
For a moment Halston and the cat stared at each other. It was a
strange moment for Halston, who was an unimaginative man with
no superstitions. For that one moment as he knelt on the floor with
the gun pointed, he felt that he knew this cat, although if he had
ever seen one with such unusual markings he surely would have
remembered.
Its face was an even split: half black, half white. The dividing line
ran from the top of its flat skull and down its nose to its mouth,
straight-arrow. Its eyes were huge in the gloom, and caught in each
nearly circular black pupil was a prism of firelight, like a sullen
coal of hate.
And the thought echoed back to Halston: We know each other, you
and I. Then it passed. He put the gun away and stood up. 'I ought
to kill you for that, old man. I don't take a joke.'
'And I don't make them,' Drogan said. 'Sit down. Look in here.'
He had taken a fat envelope out from beneath the blanket that
covered his legs.
Halston sat. The cat, which had been crouched on the back of the
sofa, jumped lightly down into his lap. It looked up at Halston for a
moment with those huge dark eyes, the pupils surrounded by thin
green-gold rings, and then it settled down and began to purr.
Halston looked at Drogan questioningly.
'He's very friendly,' Drogan said. 'At first. Nice friendly pussy
has killed three people in this household. That leaves only me. I am
old, I am sick ... but I prefer to die in my own time.'
'I can't believe this,' Halston said. 'You hired me to hit a cat?'
'Look in the envelope, please.'
Halston did. It was filled with hundreds and fifties, all of them old.
'How much is it?'
'Six thousand dollars. There will be another six when you bring
me proof that the cat is dead. Mr. Loggia said twelve thousand was
your usual fee?'
Halston nodded, his hand automatically stroking the cat in his lap.
It was asleep, still purring. Halston liked cats. They were the only
animals he did like, as a matter of fact. They got along on their
own. God - if there was one - had made them into perfect, aloof
killing machines. Cats were the hitters of the animal world, and
Halston gave them his respect.
'I need not explain anything, but I will,' Drogan said. 'Forewarned
is forearmed, they say, and I would not want you to go into this
lightly. And I seem to need to justify myself. So you'll not think
I'm insane.'
Halston nodded again. He had already decided to make this
