Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (10 page)

 
          
 
Place ten Levines, one standing on another's
shoulders, forming a human tower or a totem pole, and the Levine in the window
wouldn't be able to reach the cropped gray hair on the head of the top Levine
in the totem pole.

 
          
 
Down there, he could make out faces,
distinguish eyes and open mouths, see the blue jeans and high boots and black
slickers of the firemen, the red domes atop the police cars. Across the street,
he could see the red of a girl's sweater.

 
          
 
He looked down at the street, sixty-six feet
below him. It was a funny thing about heights, a strange and funny and
terrifying thing. Stand by the rail of a bridge, looking down at the water. Stand
by a window on the sixth floor, looking down at the street. And from miles down
inside the brain, a filthy little voice snickers and leers and croons,
"Jump. Go on and jump. Wouldn't you like to know how it would feel, to
fall free through space? Go on, go on,
jump
."

 
          
 
From his left,
Crawley
's voice suddenly boomed out. "Aren't
you a little old, Cartwright, for this kind of nonsense?"

 
          
 
The reassuring well-known reality of
Crawley
's voice tore Levine away from the
snickering little voice. He suddenly realized he'd been leaning too far out
from the window, and pulled himself hastily back.

 
          
 
And he felt his heart pounding within his
chest.
Three o'clock
,
he had to go see that doctor. He had to be calm; his heart had to be calm for
the doctor's inspection.

 
          
 
At night —He didn't get enough sleep at night
any more, that was part of the problem. But it was impossible to sleep and
listen to one's heart at the same time, and of the two it was more important to
listen to the heart. Listen to it plodding 2ilong, laboring, like an old man
climbing a hill with a heavy pack.
And then, all at once, the
silence.
The skipped beat.
And
the sluggish heart gathering its forces, building its strength, plodding on
again.
It had never yet skipped two beats in a row.

 
          
 
It could only do that once.

 
          
 
"What is it you want, Cartwright?"
called
Crawley
's voice.

 
          
 
Levine, for the first time, looked to the left
and saw Jason Cartwright.

 
          
 
A big man, probably an athlete in his younger
days, still niuscular but now padded with the flesh of years.
Black hair with a natursil wave in it, now mussed by the breeze.
A heavy face, the chin sagging a bit but the jawline still strong, the nose
large and straight, the forehead wide, the brows out-thrust, the eyes deep and
now wide and wild.
A good-looking man, probably in his late
forties.

 
          
 
Levine knew a lot about him already. From the
look of the son in there, this man had married young, probably while still in
his teens. From the sound of the wife, the marriage had soured. From the look
of the office and the apparent education of the son, his career had blossomed
where his marriage hadn't. So this time, one of the exceptions, the trouble
wouldn't be money. This time, it was connected most likely with his marriage.

 
          
 
Another woman?

 
          
 
It wouldn't be a good idea to ask him. Sooner
or later, he would state his terms, he would tell them what had driven him out
here. Force the issue, and he might jump. A man on a ledge goes out there not
wanting to jump, but accepting the fact that he may have to.

           
 
Cartwright had been looking at
Crawley
, and now he turned his head, stared at
Levine. "Oh, no you don't!" he cried. His voice would normally be
baritone, probably a pleasant speaking voice, but emotion had driven it up the
scale, making it raucuous, tinged with hysteria. "One distracts me while
the other sneaks up on me, is that it?" the man cried. "You won't get
away with it. Come near me and I'll jump, I swear I'll jump!"

 
          
 
"I'll stay right here," Levine
promised. Leaning far out, he would be almost able to reach Cartwright's
out-stretched hand. But if he were to touch it, Cartwright would surely jump.
And if he were to grip it, Cartwright would most likely drag him along too, all
the way down to the sidewalk sixty-six feet below.

 
          
 
"What is it, Cartwright?" demanded
Crawley
again. "What do you want?"

 
          
 
Way back at the beginning of their
partnership, Levine and
Crawley
had
discovered the arrangement that worked best for them.
Crawley
asked the questions, and Levine listened to
the answers. While a man paid attention to"
Crawley
, erected his facade between himself and
Crawley
, Levine, silent and unnoticed, could come
in on the flank, peek behind the facade and see the man who was really there.

 
          
 
"I want you to leave me alone!"
cried Cartwright.
"Everybody, everybody!
Just
leave me alone!"

 
          
 
"Look up at the sky. Mister
Cartwright," said Levine softly, just loud enough for the man on the ledge
to hear him. "Look how blue it is. Look down across the street. Do you see
the red of that girl's sweater? Breathe in. Mister Cartwright. Do you smell the
city? Hark! Listen! Did you hear that car-horn? That was over on
Fulton Street
, wasn't it?"

 
          
 
"Shut up!" screamed Cartwright,
turning swiftly, precariously, to glare again at Levine. "Shut up, shut
up,
shut
up. Leave me alone!"

           
 
Levine knew all he needed. "Do you want
to talk to your son?" he asked.

 
          
 
"Allan?" The man's face softened all
at once. "Allan?"

 
          
 
"He's right here," said Levine. He
came back in from the window, signalled to the son, who was no longer talking
on the phone, "He wants to talk to you."

 
          
 
The son rushed to the window.
"Dad?"

 
          
 
Crawley
came over, glowering. "Well?" he said.

 
          
 
Levine shook his head. "He doesn't want
to die."

 
          
 
"I know that. What now?"

 
          
 
"I think it's the wife." Levine motioned
to Gundy, who came over, and he said, "Is the partner here?
Anderson
?"

 
          
 
"Sure," said Gundy. "He's in
his office. He tried to talk to Cartwright once, but Cartwright got too
excited. We thought it would be a good idea if
Anderson
kept out of sight."

 
          
 
"Who thought?
Anderson
?"

 
          
 
"Well, yes.
All of us.
Anderson and McCann and me."

 
          
 
"Okay," said Levine. "You and
the boy —what's his name, Allan? —stay here. Let me know what's happening, if
anything at all does happen. Well go talk with Mister Anderson now."

 
          
 
Anderson
was short, slender, very brisk,
very
bald. His wire-framed spectacles reflected light, and
his round little face was troubled. "No warning at all," he said.
"Not a word. All of a sudden, Joan —she's our receptionist — got a call
from someone across the street, saying there was a man on the ledge. And it was
Jason. Just like that! No warning at all."

 
          
 
"The sign on your door," said
Crawley
, "says Industrial Research. What's
that, efficiency expert stuff?"

 
          
 
Anderson
smiled,
a quick nervous
flutter. "Not exactly," he said. He was devoting all his attention to
Crawley
, who was standing directly in front of him
and who was asking the questions. Levine stood to one side, watching the
movements of
Anderson
's lips and eyes and hands as he spoke.

 
          
 
"We are efficiency experts, in a
way,"
Anderson
was saying, "but not in the usual
sense of the term. We don't work with time-charts, or how many people should
work in the steno pool, things like that. Our major concern is the physical
plant itself, the structure and design of the plant buildings and work
areas."

 
          
 
Crawley
nodded. "Architects," he said.

 
          
 
Anderson
's brief smile fluttered on his face again,
and he shook his head. "No, we work in conjunction with the architect, if
it's a new building. But most of our work is concerned with the modernization
of old facilities. In a way, we're a central clearing agency for new ideas in
industrial plant procedures." It was, thought Levine, an explanation
Anderson
was used to making, so used to making that
it sounded almost like a memorized patter.

 
          
 
"You and Cartwright equal partners?"
asked
Crawley
. It was clear he hadn't understood a word
of
Anderson
's explanation and was impatient to move on
to other things.

 
          
 
Anderson
nodded. "Yes, we are. We've been
partners for twenty-one years."

 
          
 
"You should know him well, then."

 
          
 
"I should think so, yes."

 
          
 
"Then maybe you know why he suddenly
decided to go crawl out on the ledge."

 
          
 
Eyes widening,
Anderson
shook his head again. "Not a
thing," he said. "I had no idea, nothing, I —
There
just wasn't any warning at all."

 
          
 
Levine stood off to one side, watching, his
lips pursed in concentration. Was
Anderson
telling the truth? It seemed likely;
it/<
?/
/ likely.
The marriage
again.
It kept going back to the marriage.

 
          
 
"Has he acted at all funny lately?"
Crawley
was still pursuing the same thought, that
there had to be some previous
build-up,
and that the
build-up should show. "Has he been moody, anything like that?"

           
 
"Jason —"
Anderson
stopped, shook his head briefly, started
again. "Jason is a quiet man, by nature. He —he
rarely ,
forces his personality, if you know what I mean. If he's been thinking about
this, whatever it is, it —it wouldn't show,
I
don't
think it would show."