Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 by Levine (v1.1) Page A

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. "Well 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 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