“How high up is he, Gill?” asked the chief.
“Pretty high. Sixty feet anyway.”
Chief Werner looked at the others and scratched his head. “I think he’d be able to observe any evacuation activity from that height, Mr. Mayor.”
Swallowing hard, the Mayor sat down at the table near the radio.
“Could someone get a shot at him from where you are?” asked Werner into the mike.
There was a moment’s pause before Gill’s voice came back. “The range is okay. But he’s pretty well obscured by the girder. He’s got the box wedged between himself and the tank so that if you missed with the first shot he could send the whole thing up. There’d be no second shot.”
“Would they have a better shot from another house? Another angle, you know?” asked the Chief.
There was another pause before Gill spoke. “No soap. These houses back right up to the tanks. The houses to my right would have the shot blocked by the tank itself. The houses to the left would be even more blocked by the girder.”
“Look, Gill,” the Chief said, “the boys with the rifles ought to be there any minute. When they get there, report right back to me. And until you do, don’t let them do a goddam thing. Out.”
“Roger. Out.”
For a moment no one spoke and then the Commissioner said, “There’s no way we can get to him from the other side, I suppose.”
“Not without running the chance of him seeing them coming. We might get someone in the tank yard from the river, but they couldn’t get within six hundred yards without him spotting them if he s being at all watchful,” said the Chief.
Rudderham reached for his handkerchief and honked loudly into it. It was hours before he could take another pill. The heat seemed to aggravate his symptoms. If only it would rain. “Has anyone tried talking to him?” he asked.
“We batted that around,” said Werner, “and decided against it for the time being. For one thing, it’d attract a crowd if we went in there with a bull-horn. We just don’t know if it’d push him the wrong way.”
“Not to be argumentative, sir,” said Rudderham, “but I think it’s worth a try. It sounds to me like this guy is unsure of himself, despite what he says in the note.”
“How do you see that, Harry?” asked Chavez.
“Well, just the fact that he bothered to warn us beforehand. And the time lapse. It’s as if he’s giving himself time to back down or be talked out of it.”
“I don’t know...” said the Mayor.
“The guy’s just like a suicide. You know, part of him wants to, part doesn’t. Part is willing to be talked out of it. I don’t like to sound like a shrink, but I think he’s trying to say something more than what’s in the note. I think you could communicate with him. Not with a bull-horn, but someone getting in close to the guy in a nonthreatening way. You know, just talking to him.”
“But who the hell is going to get in that close to him?” asked the commissioner.
“If you mean from the danger viewpoint, we’re not much safer here than we would be on top of the tank, I’m afraid,” replied Rudderham, blowing his nose again. “I really think someone should talk to him,” he continued. “He must be hot as hell up there. He’s isolated. I think we should communicate with him. Besides,” he added, “maybe we could distract him that way so he wouldn’t notice evacuation activity.”
No one spoke. The Mayor ran his fingers through his hair and went to the window. Chief Werner lit another cigarette.
“I think it’s worth a shot,” prodded Rudderham. “For chrissake, we’ve got to try something. We can’t just sit here. We’ve got less than two hours.” He wiped his nose and considered taking another pill even though it was too early. The trouble was they made him drowsy and he was tired enough anyway.
“I’m a goddam hero. I’ll go, if you want,” he said putting away his handkerchief and remembering that a fresh one was in his jacket in the car.
The radio cracked. “This is Gill. The rifle boys are here. What do you want them to do?”
Werner picked up the mike and asked, “Has he moved? Do they have a clear shot at him?”
“Sorry Chief. He hasn’t budged. The best they could do is to get him in the shoulder. That might knock him off his perch.”
“Wait,” said the Chief into the mike. “What do you think?” he asked looking from the Mayor to the Commissioner and back.
“Too risky,” said the Mayor.
“Those rifles pack a wallop, sir. They have a lot of shocking power,” argued Chief Werner. “A solid shoulder hit would probably knock him off that tank.”
“Only probably, you say. And what if it’s not a solid hit?”
“Those guys are good,” said the Chief. “They’re well in range and they’d be firing together.”
The Mayor came from the window and sat down again. “I don’t know.”
“If I talked to him I might get him to move so they’d have a better shot,” suggested Rudderham. “I don’t think he’d push the button right away just because someone tried to talk to him.”
Werner crushed his cigarette and lighted another right away. “I think it’s worth a chance,” he said, looking at the Mayor.
The Mayor studied Harry Rudderham for a moment. “You really want to?” he asked.
“I’ll do it.”
“Well,” he said after a pause, “go ahead them. Try it.”
Picking up the mike, Chief Werner said into it, “Gill, we’ve got a man, Harry Rudderham, who’s going to the tank to talk to Weiss. He’ll try to get him to move so that the rifle boys have a clear shot. Do you read me? Over.”
“We hear you, Chief.”
“Okay. Now get this. They are not to shoot until or unless they get a definite instant kill shot. Is that clear?”
“Roger, Chief,” came the response. “We understand. And say ‘good luck’ to Harry. Out.”
Werner looked at Rudderham. “You want Mike to give you a ride?”
“Yeah. Let’s go, Mike. Let’s get the hell over there,” said Rudderham as they stepped out to the car amidst expressions of good luck.
Outside, the slight breeze did nothing to mitigate the effects of the heat. Shimmering lines rose from the sidewalk and the tops of the parked cars.
Lieutenant Harry Rudderham reached into the back seat of the sedan for his jacket and exchanged handkerchiefs before sitting down. Chavez pulled the car from the curb and headed for the tanks. As they approached the row of houses that butted the gas yard, Rudderham said, “Let me out before the car gets within his sight.”
Mike Chavez pulled the car to the curb beside piled up trash. Three young boys lolling on the sidewalk of the front stoop of a four-decker watched the two men in the car languidly. Flies buzzed around a plastic trash bag that had been ripped open by a dog, paper and cans spilling from it into the gutter.
“Harry, what can I say? Good luck, I guess, is all.”
“Right,” said Rudderham unstrapping his holster from his belt and sticking it in his rear pocket. He got from the car and walked to the end of the street toward the open area of the Gas Company yard. He could see the barbed-wire fence and cursed himself for not making sure that a gate was open somewhere. He didn’t think he’d be able to climb the fence.
He pictured himself hung up at the top with the seat of his pants ripped out. Even as a kid, he couldn’t climb fences worth a damn. But it’d be ludicrous to walk back if there was no gate open.
As he reached the last row of houses, he paused. Six gas tanks were in front of him in the huge fence-enclosed area. Running inside the enclosure, beside the tanks, were the high-tension lines. Beyond the tanks lay the river. He could faintly hear the sounds of its traffic. The sun beat down indistinctly from the hazy, yellowish sky. His legs were rubbery from fatigue and his sinuses throbbed.