Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 10, October 1960

Come Back, Come Back... by Donald E. Westlake

Window ledges are constructed primarily as a place upon which one may set flower pots. Should you insist on going out on one that is high above the busy streets, just remember the chance you’re taking of attracting a crowd.

Detective Abraham Levine of Brooklyn’s Forty-Third Precinct was a worried and a frightened man. He sat moodily at his desk in the small office he shared with his partner Jack Crawley, and pensively drew lopsided circles on the back of a blank accident report form. In the approximate center of each circle he placed a dot, drew two lines out from the dot to make a clock-face, reading three o’clock. An eight and a half by eleven sheet of white paper, covered with clock-faces, all reading three o’clock.

“That the time you see the doctor?”

Levine looked up, startled, called back from years away. Crawley was standing beside the desk, looking down at him, and Levine blinked, not having heard the question.

Crawley reached down and tapped the paper with a horny fingernail. “Three o’clock,” he explained. “That the time you see the doctor?”

“Oh,” said Levine. “Yes. Three o’clock.”

Crawley said, “Take it easy, Abe.”

“Sure,” said Levine. He managed a weak smile. “No sense worrying beforehand, huh?”

“My brother,” said Crawley, “he had one of those cardiograph things just a couple months ago. He’s just around your age, and man, he was worried. And the doctor tells him, ‘You’ll live to be a hundred.’ ”

“And then you’ll die,” said Levine.

“What the hell, Abe, we all got to go sometime.”

“Sure.”

Abraham Levine was fifty-three years alive, twenty-four years a cop. A short and chunky man, he wore plain brown suits and dark solid-color ties, brown or black plain shoes. His hair was pepper-and-salt gray, trimmed all around in a stiff pseudo-military crew-cut. The crew-cut didn’t go with the face, roundish, soft-eyed, sensitive-lipped, lined with fifty-three years’ accumulation of small worries.

“Listen, Abe, you want to go on home? It’s a dull day, nothing doing, I can—”

“Don’t say that,” Levine warned him. “The phone will ring.” The phone rang as he was talking and he grinned, shrugging with palms up. “See?”

“Let me see what it is,” said Crawley, reaching for the phone. “Probably nothing important. You can go on home and take it easy till three o’clock. It’s only ten now and— Hello?” The last word spoken into the phone mouthpiece. “Yeah, this is Crawley.”

Levine watched Crawley’s face, trying to read in it the nature of the call. Crawley had been his partner for seven years, since old Jake Moshby had retired, and in that time they had become good friends, as close as two such different men could get to one another.

Crawley was a big man, somewhat overweight, somewhere in his middle forties. His clothes hung awkwardly on him, not as though they were too large or too small but as though they had been planned for a man of completely different proportions. His face was rugged, squarish, heavy-jowled. He looked like a tough cop, and he played the role very well.

Crawley had once described the quality of their partnership with reasonable accuracy. “With your brains and my beauty, Abe, we’ve got it made.”

Now, Levine watched Crawley’s face as the big man listened impassively to the phone, finally nodding and saying, “Okay, I’ll go right on up there. Yeah, I know, that’s what I figure, too.” And he hung up.

“What is it, Jack?” Levine asked, getting up from the desk.

“A phony,” said Crawley. “I can handle it, Abe. You go on home.”

“I’d rather have some work to do. What is it?”

Crawley was striding for the door, Levine after him. “Man on a ledge,” he said. “A phony. They’re all phonies. The ones that really mean to jump do it right away, get it over with. Guys like this one, all they want is a little attention, somebody to tell them it’s all okay, come on back in, everything’s forgiven.”

The two of them walked down the long green hall toward the front of the precinct. Man on a ledge, Levine thought. Don’t jump. Don’t die. For God’s sake, don’t die.

The address was an office building on Flatbush Avenue, a few blocks down from the bridge, near A&S and the major Brooklyn movie houses. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk across the street, looking up, but most of the pedestrians stopped only for a second or two, only long enough to see what the small crowd was gaping at, and then hurried on wherever they were going. They were still involved in life, they had things to do, they didn’t have time to watch a man die.

Traffic on this side was being rerouted away from this block of Flatbush, around via Fulton or Willoughby or DeKalb. It was a little after ten o’clock on a sunny day in late June, warm without the humidity that would hit the city a week or two farther into the summer, but the uniformed cop who waved at them to make the turn was sweating, his blue shirt stained a darker blue, his forehead creased with strain above the sunglasses.

Crawley was driving their car, an unmarked black ’56 Chevvy, no siren, and he braked to a stop in front of the patrolman. Fie stuck his head and arm out the window, dangling his wallet open so the badge showed. “Precinct,” he called.

“Oh,” said the cop. Fie stepped aside to let them pass. “You didn’t have any siren or light or anything,” he explained.

“We don’t want to make our friend nervous,” Crawley told him.

The cop glanced up, then looked back at Crawley. “Pie’s making me nervous,” he said.

Crawley laughed. “A phony,” he told the cop. “Wait and see.”

On his side of the car, Levine had leaned his head out the window, was looking up, studying the man on the ledge.

It was an office building, eight stories high. Not a very tall building, particularly for New York, but plenty tall enough for the purposes of the man standing on the ledge that girdled the building at the sixth floor level. The first floor of the building was mainly a bank and partially a luncheonette. The second floor, according to the lettering strung along the front windows, was entirely given over to a loan company, and Levine could understand the advantage of the location. A man had his loan request turned down by the bank, all he had to do was go up one flight of stairs — or one flight in the elevator, more likely — and there was the loan company.

And if the loan company failed him too, there was a nice ledge on the sixth floor.

Levine wondered if this particular ease had anything to do with money. Almost everything had something to do with money. Things that he became aware of because he was a cop, almost all of them had something to do with money. The psychoanalysts are wrong, he thought. It isn’t sex that’s at the center of all the pain in the world, it’s money. Even when a cop answers a call from neighbors complaining about a couple screaming and fighting and throwing things at one another, nine times out of ten it’s the same old thing they’re arguing about. Money.

Levine’s eyes traveled up the facade of the building, beyond the loan company’s windows. None of the windows higher up bore the lettering of firm names. On the sixth floor, most of the windows were open, heads were sticking out into the air. And in the middle of it all, just out of reach of the windows on either side of him, was the man on the ledge.

Levine squinted, trying to see the man better against the brightness of the day. He wore a suit — it looked gray, but might be black — and white shirt and a dark tie, and the open suit coat and the tie were both whipping in the breeze up there. The man was standing as though crucified, back flat against the wall of the building, legs spread maybe two feet apart, arms out straight to either side of him, hands pressed palm-in against the stone surface of the wall.

The man was terrified. Levine was much too far away to see his face or read the expression there, but he didn’t need any more than the posture of the body on the ledge. Taut, pasted to the wall, wide-spread. The man was terrified.

Crawley was right, of course. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the man on the ledge is a phony. He doesn’t really expect to have to kill himself, though he will do it if pressed too hard. But he’s out there on the ledge for one purpose and one purpose only: to be seen. He wants to be seen, he wants to be noticed. Whatever his unfulfilled demands on life, whatever his frustrations or problems, he wants other people to be forced to be aware of them, and to agree to help him overcome them.

If he gets satisfaction, he will allow himself, after a decent interval, to be brought back in. If he gets the raise, or the girl, or forgiveness from the boss for his embezzling, or forgiveness from his wife for his philandering, or whatever his one urgent demand is, once the demand is met, he will come in from the ledge.

But there is one danger he doesn’t stop to think about, not until it’s too late and he’s already out there on the ledge, and the drama has already begun. The police know of this danger, and they know it is by far the greatest danger of the man on the ledge, much greater than any danger of deliberate self-destruction.

He can fall.

This one had learned that danger by now, as every inch of his straining taut body testified. He had learned it, and he was frightened out of his wits.

Levine grimaced. The man on the ledge didn’t know — or if he knew, the knowledge was useless to him — that a terrified man can have an accident much more readily and much more quickly than a calm man. And so the man on the ledge always compounded his danger.

Crawley braked the Chevvy to a stop at the curb, two doors beyond the address. The rest of the curb space was already used by official vehicles. An ambulance, white and gleaming. A smallish fire engine, red and full-packed with hose and ladders. A prowl car, most likely the one on this beat. The Crash & Rescue truck, dark blue, a first-aid station on wheels.

As he was getting out of the car, Levine noticed the firemen, standing around, leaning against the plate glass windows of the bank, an eight foot net lying closed on the sidewalk near them. Levine took the scene in, and knew what had happened. The firemen had started to open the net. The man on the ledge had threatened to jump at once if they didn’t take the net away. He could always jump to one side, miss the net. A net was no good unless the person to be caught wanted to be caught. So the firemen had closed up their net again, and now they were waiting, leaning against the bank windows, far enough away to the right.

Other men stood here and there on the sidewalk, some uniformed and some in plainclothes, most of them looking up at the man on the ledge. None of them stood inside a large white circle drawn in chalk on the pavement. It was a wide sidewalk here, in front of the bank, and the circle was almost the full width of it.

No one stood inside that circle because it marked the probable area where the man would land, if and when he fell or jumped from the ledge. And no one wanted to be underneath.

Crawley came around the Chevvy, patting the fenders with a large calloused hand. He stopped next to Levine and looked up. “The phony,” he growled, and Levine heard outrage in the tone. Crawley was an honest man, in simple terms of black and white. He hated dishonesty, in all its forms, from grand larceny to raucous television commercials. And a faked suicide attempt was dishonesty.

The two of them walked toward the building entrance. Crawley walked disdainfully through the precise center of the large chalked circle, not even bothering to look up. Levine walked around the outer edge.

Then the two of them went inside and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

The letters on the frosted-glass door read: “Anderson & Cartwright, Industrial Research Associates, Inc.”

Crawley tapped on the glass. “Which one do you bet?” he asked. “Anderson or Cartwright?”

“It might be an employee.”

Crawley shook his head. “Odds are against it. I take Anderson.”

“Go in,” said Levine gently. “Go on in.”

Crawley pushed the door open and strode in, Levine behind him. It was the receptionist’s office, cream-green walls and carpet, modernistic metal desk, modernistic metal and leather sofa and armchairs, modernistic saucer-shaped light fixtures hanging from bronzed chains attached to the ceiling.

Three women sat nervously, wide-eyed, off to the right, on the metal and leather armchairs. Above their heads were framed photographs of factory buildings, most of them in color, a few in black and white.

A uniformed patrolman was leaning against the receptionist’s desk, arms folded across his chest, a relaxed expression on his face. He straightened up immediately when he saw Crawley and Levine. Levine recognized him as McCann, a patrolman working out of the same precinct.

“Am I glad to see you guys,” said McCann. “Gundy’s in talking to the guy now.”

“Which one is it,” Crawley asked, “Anderson or Cartwright?”

“Cartwright. Jason Cartwright. He’s one of the bosses here.”

Crawley turned a sour grin on Levine. “You win,” he said, and led the way across the receptionist’s office to the door marked: “Jason Cartwright PRIVATE.”

There were two men in the room. One was sitting on the window ledge, looking out and to his left, talking in a soft voice. The other, standing a pace or two away from the window, was the patrolman, Gundy. He and McCann would be the two from the prowl car, the first ones on the scene.

At their entrance, Gundy looked around and then came over to talk with them. He and McCann were cut from the same mold. Both young, tall, slender, thin-cheeked, ready to grin at a second’s notice. The older a man gets, Levine thought, the longer it takes him to get a grin organized.

Gundy wasn’t grinning now. He looked very solemn, and a little scared. Levine realized with shock that this might be Gundy’s first brush with death. He didn’t look as though he could have been out of the Academy very long.

I have news for you, Gundy, he thought. You don’t get used to it.

Crawley said, “What’s the story?”

“I’m not sure,” said Gundy. “He went out there about twenty minutes ago. That’s his son talking to him. Son’s a lawyer, got an office right in this building.”

“What’s the guy out there want?”

Gundy shook his head. “He won’t say. He just stands out there. He won’t say a word, except to shout that he’s going to jump whenever anybody tries to get too close to him.”

“A coy one,” said Crawley, disgusted.

The phone shrilled, and Gundy stepped quickly over to the desk, picking up the receiver before the second ring. He spoke softly into the instrument, then looked over at the man by the window. “Your mother again,” he said.

The man at the window spoke a few more words to the man on the ledge, then came over and took the phone from Gundy. Gundy immediately took his place at the window, and Levine could hear his first words plainly. “Just take it easy, now. Relax. But maybe you shouldn’t close your eyes.”

Levine looked at the son, now talking on the phone. A young man, not more than twenty-five or six. Blond crewcut, hornrim glasses, good mouth, strong jawline. Dressed in Madison Avenue conservative. Just barely out of law school, from the look of him.

Levine studied the office. It was a large room, eighteen to twenty feet square, as traditional as the outer office was contemporary. The desk was a massive piece of furniture, a dark warm wood, the legs and drawer faces carefully and intricately carved. Glass-faced bookshelves lined one complete wall. The carpet was a neutral gray, wall-to-wall. There were two sofas, brown leather, long and deep and comfortable-looking. Bronze ashtray stands. More framed photographs of plant buildings.

The son was saying, “Yes, mother. I’ve been talking to him, mother. I don’t know, mother.”

Levine walked over, said to the son, “May I speak to her for a minute, please?”

“Of course. Mother, there’s a policeman here who wants to talk to you.”

Levine accepted the phone, said, “Mrs. Cartwright?”

The voice that answered was high-pitched, and Levine could readily imagine it becoming shrill. The voice said, “Why is he out there? Why is he doing that?”

“We don’t know yet,” Levine told her. “We were hoping you might be able to—”

“Me?” The voice was suddenly a bit closer to being shrill. “I still can’t really believe this. I don’t know why he’d — I have no idea. What does he say?”

“He hasn’t told us why yet,” said Levine. “Where are you now, Mrs. Cartwright?”

“At home, of course.”

“That’s where?”

“New Brunswick.”

“Do you have a car there? Could you drive here now?”

“There? To New York?”

“It might help, Mrs. Cartwright, if he could see you, if you could talk to him.”

“But — it would take hours to get there! Surely, it would be — that is, before I got there, you’d have him safe already, wouldn’t you?”

She hopes he jumps, thought Levine, with sudden certainty. By God, she hopes he jumps!

“Well, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said wearily. “I suppose you’re right. Here’s your son again.”

He extended the receiver to the son, who took it, cupped the mouthpiece with one hand, said worriedly, “Don’t misunderstand her. Please, she isn’t as cold as she might sound. She loves my father, she really does.”

“All right,” said Levine. He turned away from the pleading in the son’s eyes, said to Crawley, “Let’s talk with him a bit.”

“Right,” said Crawley.

There were two windows in the office, about ten feet apart, and Jason Cartwright was standing directly between them on the ledge. Crawley went to the left-hand window and Levine to the right-hand window, where the patrolman Gundy was still trying to chat with the man on the ledge, trying to keep him distracted from the height and his desire to jump. “We’ll take over,” Levine said softly, and Gundy nodded gratefully and backed away from the window.

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.”

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 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 felt 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 says much, rarely uh, 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.”

“Would he have any business worries at all?” Crawley undoubtedly realized by now this was a blind alley, but he would go through the normal questions anyway. You never could tell.

Anderson, as was to be expected, said, “No, none. We’ve — well, we’ve been doing very well. The last five years, we’ve been expanding steadily, we’ve even added to our staff, just six months ago.”

Levine now spoke for the first time. “What about Mrs. Cartwright?” he asked.

Anderson looked blank, as he turned to face Levine. “Mrs. Cartwright? I–I don’t understand what you mean.”

Crawley immediately picked up the new ball, took over the questioning again. “Do you know her well, Mister Anderson? What kind of woman would you say she was?”

Anderson turned back to Crawley, once again opening his flank to Levine. “She’s, well, actually I haven’t seen very much of her the last few years. Jason moved out of Manhattan five six years ago, over to Jersey, and I live out on the Island, so we don’t, uh, we don’t socialize very much, as much as we used to. As you get older—” he turned to face Levine, as though instinctively understanding that Levine would more readily know what he meant “—you don’t go out so much any more, in the evening. You don’t, uh, keep up friendships as much as you used to.”

“You must know something about Mrs. Cartwright,” said Crawley.

Anderson gave his attention to Crawley again. “She’s, well, I suppose the best way to describe her is determined. I know for a fact she was the one who talked Jason into coming into partnership with me, twenty-one years ago. A forceful woman. Not a nag, mind you, I don’t mean that at all. A very pleasant woman, really. A good hostess. A good mother, from the look of Allan. But forceful.”

The wife, thought Levine. She’s the root of it. She knows, too, what drove him out there.

And she wants him to jump.

Back in Cartwright’s office, the son Allan was once again at the phone. The patrolman Gundy was at the left-hand window, and a new man, in clerical garb, at the right-hand window.

Gundy noticed Levine and Crawley come in, and immediately left the window. “A priest,” he said softly. “Anderson said he was Catholic, so we got in touch with St. Marks, over on Willoughby.”

Levine nodded. He was listening to the son. “I don’t know, mother. Of course, mother, we’re doing everything we can. No, mother, no reporters up here, maybe it won’t have to be in the papers at all.”

Levine went over to the window Gundy had vacated, took up a position where he could see Cartwright, carefully refrained from looking down at the ground. The priest was saying, “God has his time for you, Mister Cartwright. This is God’s prerogative, to choose the time and the means of your death.”

Cartwright shook his head, not looking at the priest, glaring instead directly across Flatbush Avenue at the building across the way. “There is no God,” he said.

“I don’t believe you mean that, Mister Cartwright,” said the priest. “I believe you’ve lost faith in yourself, but I don’t believe you’ve lost faith in God.”

“Take that away!” screamed

Cartwright all at once. “Take that away, or I jump right now!”

He was staring down toward the street, and Levine followed the direction of his gaze. Poles had been extended from windows on the floor below, and a safety net, similar to that used by circus per formers, was being unrolled along them.

“Take that away!” screamed Cartwright again. He was leaning precariously forward, his face mottled red with fury and terror.

“Roll that back in!” shouted Levine. “Get it out of there, he can jump over it! Roll it back in!”

A face jutted out of one of the fifth-floor windows, turning inquiringly upward, saying, “Who are you?”

“Levine. Precinct. Get that thing away from there.”

“Right you are,” said the face, making it clear he accepted no responsibility either way. And the net and poles were withdrawn.

The priest, on the other side, was saying, “It’s all right. Relax, Mr. Cartwright; it’s all right. These people only want to help you; it’s all right.” The priest’s voice was shaky. Like Gundy, he was a rookie at this. He’d never been asked to talk in a suicide before.

Levine twisted around, looking up. Two stories up, and the roof. More men were up there, with another safety net. If this were the top floor, they would probably take a chance with that net, try flipping it over him and pasting him like a butterfly to the wall. But not here, three stories down.

Cartwright had turned his face away from the still-talking priest, was studying Levine intently. Levine returned his gaze, and Cartwright said, “Where’s Laura? She should be here by now, shouldn’t she? Where is she?”

“Laura? You mean your wife?”

“Of course,” he said. He stared at Levine, trying to read something to Levine’s face. “Where is she?”

Tell him the truth? No. Tell him his wife wasn’t coming, and he would jump right away. “She’s on the way,” he said. “She should be here pretty soon.”

Cartwright turned his face forward again, stared off across the street. The priest was still talking, softly, insistently.

Levine came back into the office. To Crawley, he said, “It’s the wife He’s waiting for her.”

“They’ve always got a wife,” said Crawley sourly. “And there’s always just the one person they’ll tell it to. Well, how long before she gets here?”

“She isn’t coming.”

“What?”

“She’s at home, over in Jersey. She said she wouldn’t come.” Levine shrugged and added, “I’ll try her again.”

The son was still on the phone, but he handed it over as soon as Levine spoke to him. Levine said, “This is Detective Levine again, Mrs. Cartwright. We’d like you to come down here after all, please. Your husband asked to talk to you.”

There was hesitation from the woman for a few seconds, and then she burst out, “Why can’t you bring him in? Can’t you even stop him?”

“He’s out of reach, Mrs. Cartwright. If we tried to get him, I’m afraid he’d jump.”

“This is ridiculous! No, no, definitely not, I’m not going to be a party to it. I’m not going to talk to him until he comes in from there. You tell him that.”

“Mrs. Cartwright—”

“I’m not going to have any more to do with it!”

The click was loud in Levine’s car as she slammed the receiver onto the hook. Crawley was looking at him, and now said, “Well?”

“She hung up.”

“She isn’t coming?” It was plain that Crawley was having trouble believing it.

Levine glanced at the son, who could hear every word he was saying, and then shrugged. “She wants him to jump,” he said.

The son’s reaction was much smaller than Levine had expected. He simply shook his head definitely and said, “No.”

Levine waited, looking at him.

The son shook his head again. “That isn’t true,” he said. “She just doesn’t understand — she doesn’t really think he means it.”

“All right,” said Levine. He turned away from the son, trying to think. The wife, the marriage— A man in his late forties, married young, son grown and set up in his own vocation. A quiet man, who doesn’t force his personality on others, and a forceful wife. A practical wife, who pushed him into a successful business.

Levine made his decision. He nodded, and went back through the receptionist’s office, where the other patrolman, McCann, was chatting with the three woman employees. Levine went into Anderson’s office, said, “Excuse me. Could I have the use of your office for a little while?”

“Certainly.” Anderson got up from his desk, came around, saying, “Anything at all, anything at all.”

“Thank you.”

Levine followed Anderson back to the receptionist’s office, looked over the three women sitting against the left hand wall. Two were fortyish, plumpish, wearing wedding bands. The third looked to be in her early thirties, was tall and slender, good-looking in a solid level-eyed way, not glamorous. She wore no rings at all.

Levine went over to the third woman, said, “Could I speak to you for a minute, please?”

She looked up, startled, a bit frightened. “What? Oh. Oh, yes, of course.”

She followed him back into Anderson’s office. He motioned her to the chair facing Anderson’s desk, himself sat behind the desk. “My name is Levine,” he said. “Detective Abraham Levine. And you are—?”

“Janice Shapleigh,” she said. Her voice was low, pleasantly melodious. She was wearing normal office clothing, a gray plain skirt and white plain blouse.

“You’ve worked here how long?”

“Three years.” She was answering readily enough, with no hesitations, but deep in her eyes he could see she was frightened, and wary.

“Mister Cartwright won’t tell us why he wants to kill himself,” he began. “He’s asked to speak to his wife, but she refuses to leave home—” He detected a tightening of her lips when he said that. Disapproval of Mrs. Cartwright? He went on. “—which we haven’t told him yet. He doesn’t really want to jump, Miss Shapleigh. He’s a frustrated, thwarted man. There’s something he wants or needs that he can’t get, and he’s chosen this way to try to force the issue.” He paused, studying her face, said, “Would that something be you?”

Color started in her cheeks, and she opened her mouth for what he knew would be an immediate denial. But the denial didn’t come. Instead, Janice Shapleigh sagged in the chair, defeated and miserable, not meeting Levine’s eyes. In.a small, voice, barely audible, she said, “I didn’t think he’d do anything like this. I never thought he’d do anything like this.”

“He wants to marry you, is that it? And he can’t get a divorce.”

The girl nodded, and all at once she began to cry. She wept with one closed hand pressed to her mouth, muffling the sound, her head bowed as though she were ashamed of this weakness, ashamed to be seen crying.

Levine waited, watching her with the dulled helplessness of a man whose job by its very nature kept him exposed to the misery and frustrations of others. He would always want to help, and he would always be unable to help, to really help.

Janice Shapleigh controlled herself, slowly and painfully. When she looked up again, Levine knew she was finished weeping, no matter what happened. “What do you want me to do?” she said.

“Talk to him. His wife won’t come — she knows what he wants to say to her, I suppose — so you’re the only one.”

“What can I say to him?”

Levine felt weary, heavy. Breathing, working the heart, pushing the sluggish blood through veins and arteries, was wearing, hopeless, exhausting labor. “I don’t know,” he said. “He wants to die because of you. Tell him why he should live.”

Levine stood by the right-hand window, just out of sight of the man on the ledge. The son and the priest and Crawley and Gundy were all across the room, watching and waiting, the son looking bewildered, the priest relieved, Crawley sour, Gundy excited.

Janice Shapleigh was at the left-hand window, tense and frightened. She leaned out, looking down, and Levine saw her body go rigid, saw her hands tighten on the window-frame. She closed her eyes, swaying, inhaling, and Levine stood ready to move. If she were to faint from that position, she could fall out the window.

But she didn’t faint. She raised her head and opened her eyes, and carefully avoided looking down at the street again. She looked, instead, to her right, toward the man on the ledge. “Jay,” she said. “Jay, please.”

“Jan!” Cartwright sounded surprised. “What are you doing? Jan, go back in there, stay away from this. Go back in there.”

Levine stood by the window, listening. What would she say to him? What could she say to him?

“Jay,” she said, slowly, hesitantly, “Jay, please. It isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth — dying for.”

“Where’s Laura?”

Levine waited, unbreathing, and at last the girl spoke the lie he had placed in her mouth. “She’s on the way. She’ll be here soon. But what does it matter, Jay? She still won’t agree, you know that. She won’t believe you.”

“I’ll wait for Laura,” he said.

The son was suddenly striding across the room, shouting, “What is this? What’s going on here?”

Levine spun around, motioning angrily for the boy to be quiet.

“Who is that woman?” demanded the son. “What’s she doing here?”

Levine intercepted him before he could get to Janice Shapleigh, pressed both palms flat against the boy’s shirt-front. “Get back over there,” he whispered fiercely. “Get back over there.”

“Get away from me! Who is she? What’s going on here?”

“Allan?” It was Cartwright’s voice, shouting the question. “Allan?”

Crawley now had the boy’s arms from behind, and he and Levine propelled him toward the door. “Let me go!” cried the boy. “I’ve got a right to—”

Crawley’s large hand clamped across his mouth, and the three of them barreled through to the receptionist’s office. As the door closed behind them, Levine heard Janice Shapleigh repeating, “Jay? Listen to me, Jay, please. Please, Jay.”

The door safely shut behind them, the two detectives let the boy go. He turned immediately, trying to push past them and get back inside, crying, “You can’t do this! Let me go! What do you think you are? Who is that woman?”

“Shut up,” said Levine. He spoke softly, but the boy quieted at once. In his voice had been all his own miseries, all his own frustrations, and his utter weariness with the misery and frustration of others.

“I’ll tell you who that woman is,” Levine said. “She’s the woman your father wants to marry. He wants to divorce your mother and marry her.”

“No,” said the boy, as sure and positive as he had been earlier in denying that his mother would want to see his father dead.

“Don’t say no,” said Levine coldly. “I’m telling you facts. That’s what sent him out there on that ledge. Your mother won’t agree to the divorce.”

“My mother—”

“Your mother,” Levine pushed coldly on, “planned your father’s life. Now, all at once, he’s reached the age where he should have accomplished whatever he set out to do. His son is grown, he’s making good money, now’s the time for him to look around and say, ‘This is the world I made for myself, and it’s a good one.’ But he can’t. Because he doesn’t like his life, it isn’t his life, it’s the life your mother planned for him.”

“You’re wrong,” said the boy. “You’re wrong.”

“So he went looking.” said Levine, ignoring the boy’s interruptions, “and he found Janice Shapleigh. She wouldn’t push him, she wouldn’t plan for him, she’d let him be the strong one.”

The boy just stood here, shaking his head, repeating over and over, “You’re wrong. You’re wrong.”

Levine grimaced, in irritation and defeat. You never break through, he thought. You never break through. Aloud he said, “In twenty years you’ll believe me.” He looked over at the patrolman, McCann. “Keep this young man out here with you,” he said.

“Right,” said McCann.

“Why?” cried the son. “He’s my father! Why can’t I go in there?”

“Shame,” Levine told him. “If he saw his son and this woman at the same time, he’d jump.”

The boy’s eyes widened. He started to shake his head, then just stood there, staring.

Levine and Crawley went back into the other room.

Janice Shapleigh was coming away from the window, her face ashen. “Somebody down on the sidewalk started taking pictures,” she said. “Jay shouted at them to stop. He told me to get in out of sight, or he’d jump right now.”

“Respectability,” said Levine, as though the word were obscene. “We’re all fools.”

Crawley said, “Think we ought to send someone for the wife?”

“No. She’d only make it worse. She’d say no, and he’d go over.”

“Oh God!” Janice Shapleigh swayed suddenly and Crawley grabbed her arm, led her across to one of the leather sofas.

Levine went back to the right-hand window. He looked out. A block away, on the other side of the street, there was a large clock in front of a bank building. It was almost eleven-thirty. They’d been here almost an hour and a half.

Three o’clock, he thought suddenly. This thing had to be over before three o’clock, that was the time of his appointment with the doctor.

He looked out at Cartwright. The man was getting tired. His face was drawn with strain and emotion, and his fingertips were clutching tight to the rough face of the wall. Levine said, “Cartwright.”

The man turned his head, slowly, afraid now of rapid movement. He looked at Levine without speaking.

“Cartwright,” said Levine. “Have you thought about it now? Have you thought about death?”

“I want to talk to my wife.”

“You could fall before she got here,” Levine told him. “She has a long way to drive, and you’re getting tired. Come in, come in here. You can talk to her in here when she arrives. You’ve proved your point, man, you can come in. Do you want to get too tired, do you want to lose your balance, lose your footing, slip and fall?”

“I want to talk to my wife,” he said, doggedly.

“Cartwright, you’re alive.” Levine stared helplessly at the man, searching for the way to tell him how precious that was, the fact of being alive. “You’re breathing,” he said. “You can see and hear and smell and taste and touch. You can laugh at jokes, you can love a woman— For God’s sake, man, you’re alive!”

Cartwright’s eyes didn’t waver; his expression didn’t change. “I want to talk to my wife,” he repeated.

“Listen,” said Levine! “You’ve been out here two hours now. You’ve had time to think about death, about non-being. Cartwright, listen. Look at me, Cartwright, I’m going to the doctor at three o’clock this afternoon. He’s going to tell me about my heart, Cartwright. He’s going to tell me if my heart is getting too tired. He’s going to tell me if I’m going to stop being alive.”

Levine strained with the need to tell this fool what he was throwing away, and knew it was hopeless.

The priest was back, all at once, at the other window. “Can we help you?” he asked. “Is there anything any of us can do to help you?”

Cartwright’s head swiveled slowly. He studied the priest. “I want to talk to my wife,” he said.

Levine gripped the windowsill. There had to be a way to bring him in, there had to be a way to trick him or force him or convince him to come in. He had to be brought in, he couldn’t throw his life away, that’s the only thing a man really has.

Levine wished desperately that he had the choice.

He leaned out again suddenly, glaring at the back of Cartwright’s head. “Jump!” he shouted.

Cartwright’s head swiveled around, the face open, the eyes shocked, staring at Levine in disbelief.

“Jump!” roared Levine. “Jump, you damn fool, end it, stop being alive, die! I Jump! Throw yourself away, you imbecile, JUMP!”

Wide-eyes, Cartwright stared at Levine’s flushed face, looked out and down at the crowd, the fire truck, the ambulance, the uniformed men, the chalked circle on the pavement.

And all at once he began to cry. His hands came up to his face, he swayed, and the crowd down below sighed, like a breeze rustling. “God help me!” Cartwright screamed.

Crawley came swarming out the other window, his legs held by Gundy. He grabbed for Cartwright’s arm, growling, “All right, now, take it easy. Take it easy. This way, this way, just slide your feet along, don’t try to bring the other foot around, just slide over, easy, easy—”

And the man came stumbling in from the ledge.

“You took a chance,” said Crawley. “You took one hell of a chance.” It was two-thirty, and Crawley was driving him to the doctor’s office.

“I know,” said Levine. His hands were still shaking; he could still feel the ragged pounding of his heart within his chest.

“But you called his bluff,” said Crawley. “That kind, it’s just a bluff. They don’t really want to dive, they’re bluffing.”

“I know,” said Levine.

“But you still took a hell of a chance.”

“It—” Levine swallowed. It felt as though there were something hard caught in his throat. “It was the only way to get him in,” he said. “The wife wasn’t coming, and nothing else would bring him in. When the girlfriend failed—”

“It took guts, Abe. For a second there, I almost thought he was going to take you up on it.”

“So did I.”

Crawley pulled in at the curb in front of the doctor’s office. “I’ll pick you up around quarter to four,” he said.

“I can take a cab,” said Levine.

“Why? Why, for the love of Mike? The city’s paying for the gas.”

Levine smiled at his partner. “All right,” he said. He got out of the car, went up the walk, up the stoop, onto the front porch. He looked back, watched the Chevvy turn the corner. He whispered, “I wanted him to jump.” And he thought, “It’s crazy. How would that have kept my number from being up?”

Then he went in to find out if he was going to stay alive.