Levine twisted around, sat on the windowsill, hooked one arm under the open window, leaned out slightly so that the breeze touched his face. He looked down.
Six stories. God, who would have thought six stories was so high from the ground? This is the height when you really get the feeling of height. On top of the Empire State building, or flying in a plane, it’s just too damn high, it isn’t real any more. But six stories — that’s a fine height to be at, to really understand the terror of falling.
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 along, 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 muscular but now padded with the flesh of years. Black hair with a natural 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. We’ll 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.”