Edge of Panic Read online

  Henry Kane

  Edge of Panic

  One

  BLOOD ON HIS HANDS

  SKY TINTED THE WINDOWS, morning pale. Gray-green put focus to a bedroom. Light grew in the triple mirrors of a vanity—image stalked image in absurd reflection: night tables, shaded lamps, folded pants, a chiffonier, careful nylons, a massive bed, a man, and a woman. Alice Martin turned, smiled, snored shortly, turned, hugged the pillow, silent. Harry Martin clung to sleep, bunched rigid against the screaming clamor of the siren. A hint of sun brought a glow to the creeping gray of early morning. Harry came awake, jumping.

  “What the—” he began, sitting up.

  He pushed his feet off the bed, finding his slippers, sitting like that, elbows on knees, bent, drowsy, part asleep. Sound came again, shrill, wailing. Harry rubbed a hand against his chin, listening to the scrape of bristles beneath the screech-pitch of the siren. Then he sighed, tightened his mouth, shook his head, reached for a bathrobe, and went to his son’s room. “It’s a little early for a fire,” Harry said.

  “Never too early for a fire.” The siren started up.

  “Hold that.” Harry grabbed it, looked at it, clicked tongue at teeth. “Sunday visitors. What are they going to think of next to bring a kid?”

  “I love it, Dad.”

  “All right, you love it. But it’s for outside. I thought I made that clear. Not for the house.”

  “Well—” the boy said.

  “For outside.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Harry held it up. “We got a deal?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s my boy.” He gave it back to him.

  The boy took it and brought it to his toy-chest, looked at it, shook it, smiled at it, changed his mind, carried it to a special place, on the window sill. He stood there, light from behind him putting gold on his hair, a small boy in a red bathrobe too tight across his middle because of a wide saber-belt buckled over the tasseled sash of the robe. He wriggled his toes in his bedroom slippers. “I—” He kicked a foot at the floor. “I’m sorry I woke you, Dad.”

  Harry grinned. “Think nothing of it, soldier. What the heck makes you get up so early?”

  “I go to sleep early.”

  “You’ve got something there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on over here and give your old man a kiss. I want to go back to bed.”

  “No,” the boy said. “We had a talk about that, didn’t we, Dad?”

  “A hug?”

  “No.”

  Harry waved. “Well, all right. Good night. Good morning. Something.”

  “I’ll shake hands.” The boy came, arm straight. They shook hands. Harry scooped him up, one hand encircling him, kissed him once on the neck under the ear, rubbed at his hair.

  “Hey, Dad, please,” the boy said. “That’s sissy. Put me down, please.”

  Harry put him down.

  “Sissy,” the boy said.

  “Right, soldier.”

  “We—discussed it.”

  “Right, soldier.”

  “You want I should remember about that siren, for instance?”

  “Right, soldier.”

  “You’re supposed to remember, too.”

  “Right.”

  They shook hands again. Harry ambled out. He went to the bathroom and washed his teeth, tall over the bathroom sink, tall and lean, with blond hair like his son’s. He put the brush away and stared at himself in the glass, widening gray eyes, sleep-streaked, narrowing them, sticking his tongue out and regarding it and putting it back, examining the bristles of his beard, tilting his chin, running a hand across his cheek, pulling at skin of his neck. He grimaced, shrugged, and went back to the bedroom. He flung the bathrobe at a chair, got out of his slippers and into bed. He touched his wife, gently. “Hello,” Alice said.

  She had the whitest of whites. He marveled at that, always. Deep dark eyes, black almost, in the whitest of whites. Even now, just out of sleep, the whitest of whites, clear, clean, fresh, unsullied.

  “I hate to wake you, beautiful.”

  “You know me, Harry. I sleep like a bird.”

  “It’s Monday.”

  “Right clever, this husband. On Monday he knows it’s Monday.”

  “I wanted to remind you.”

  “I know, Harry.”

  “Today, I sleep like a lord.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Today, I breakfast in bed.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Well—” He looked embarrassed. “You know how it is. I want to make the most of it. I thought—well, I ought to remind you.”

  “Sleep, lord. Leave everything to Mamma.”

  He shifted, pulling at the cover. He yawned, shuddered. “That siren disturb you?”

  “What siren?”

  “What siren?” He grumbled, turning, rustling the pillow. “Sleeps like a bird. Some bird. Night, bird.”

  “Night, my love.” She adjusted the cover, drawing it up over his hunched shoulder. She touched her lips to his cheek. She lay back stretching, supine. Small sounds of barked commands and marching soldiers came from the boy’s room.

  He awoke to sharp sun and the smell of coffee. He owned the bed, spreading, legs taut, hands balled into fists, stretching. For a moment it was Sunday, then it wasn’t; there was no boy in bed, wrestling, there was no boy in the room, asking for boxing lessons, there were no sounds throughout the apartment, boy-sounds, fixing, tinkering, banging, singing, marching, drumming, in the full freedom of Sunday. It was silent: only the smell of the coffee, and the jagged diagram of sun on the wall. He yawned widely, saw Alice in the doorway. “Gorgeous,” he said. “What you call a sexy negligee. Where’d you get it?”

  “My husband gave it to me.”

  “Good taste, that husband.”

  She preened at the mirror, modeled the negligee, came and sat on the bed. Her husband seized her. “Harry—”

  “Kiss,” he insisted.

  “Harry—”

  “My boy won’t kiss me because he says it’s sissy. That’s my boy. This is my wife—” He released her. “Where is he?”

  “Bundled up and trundled off. Picked up by the old green bus. He’s at school.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Twelve noon.”

  “Kiss,” he resumed.

  “At twelve o’clock noon?”

  “You know a better time?”

  “No.”

  Then he shaved, showered, and dressed all the way up to a crisp white shirt, collar open, and he came to the sun-swathed breakfast room, and Alice said, “What happened to breakfast in bed?”

  “Breakfast in bed, bah.”

  “I know. But you left strict orders.”

  “Breakfast in bed, it only sounds good. Much rather breakfast sitting opposite you. Much rather. Only, leisurely, please.”

  “Leisurely, my lord says. Sit, lord.”

  He sat, looking out on the shining Hudson, comfortable in repose, watching the boats, his eyes seeming grayer. “Boats,” he said. “I like boats. Boats are a sort of—refuge.”

  “You’ve never been on a boat.”

  “Now, haven’t I, madame?”

  “Twice. Excuse me. Once going, once coming. Did it feel like refuge?”

  “That was war. This is different.”

  “But you’ve never been—”

  “But I’d like to be. Some day I’m going to buy a boat.”

  “You ought to buy a secretary, first.”

  “Secretary means desk?”

  “Secretary means girl.”

  “Secretary.” He snorted. “Look, I’ve got a telephone-answering service, and there’s a public stenographer down the hall. That’s enough. Plus a modest office. And I�
�m doing good, and I’m proud of it.”

  “And I’m proud of you.”

  He talked, eating. “You cut a couple of corners, and look what it means. A secretary is fifty bucks a week. That’s two hundred a month. A grandiose office setup, that’s another two hundred a month. You cut those corners, and look what you’ve got. You’ve got a five-room apartment high up on Riverside Drive overlooking the boats, you’ve got a private school for the kid, and you’ve got—well, you’ve got Dora.”

  “A part-time maid, and he’s boasting.”

  “Full time, soon enough. I’m doing good. Agent. You know, as a kid I’d have hated that. Insurance agent. Un-glamorous. Even when I first broke into the business, I wanted something sharp, you know, like one of those flip investigators, or a gimlet-eyed claim adjuster. Instead, I wind up an agent. And a free-lance agent, at that.”

  “You like it, brother. Don’t kid the missus.”

  “Sure I like it. I’m my own boss. I’ve made a lot of friends. I stay with my job. I become priest, lawyer, and doctor to a lot of good people. I go out of my way to do them favors, like I’m doing here today for Mrs. Polgar—and I’ve gotten to like that too. I’m growing all the time, but so far, I need a secretary like I need a hole in the head. Sure, I can put on the dog—but a stenographer down the hall and a telephone-answering service—” He pushed aside the plate that had had the bacon and eggs and he looked at his wife very seriously. “When you have a telephone-answering service, you’re supposed to call it.”

  “I’ve heard tell.”

  “Will you have coffee with me?”

  “A pleasure.”

  “Right back.”

  He pushed out of his chair and went to the telephone in the living-room. He checked in, listened to three messages: “Mr. Aaronson called, didn’t receive his policy. Mrs. Polgar called, call her back. Mrs. Joyce Anderson called, will call back.”

  “Thanks. Anybody wants me—figure me in for four o’clock.”

  He called Aaronson and reassured him about his policy. He called Mrs. Polgar and told her yes, it was definite, yes, he would have the cash for her, yes, she could come at nine o’clock tonight, yes, of course, bring her two sons.

  Then he went back and chatted with his wife, smoking over coffee.

  Dora came, effusive and adamant. “Out. Out of my kitchen. My goodness.”

  “It’s a breakfast room,” Alice said.

  “Breakfast room to you. Kitchen to me. What are you doing home, Mr. Martin? Sick?”

  “I’m waiting for a man, Dora, supposed to show up about one o’clock. A man with money.”

  “Worth waiting for, money. Wait, won’t you, huh, in the living-room? Huh?”

  Harry waited in the living-room. Dora pothered in the kitchen. Alice disappeared and came back dressed and used the phone and talked to the butcher and disappeared again. Harry got a tie, tied it, untied it, tied it again, put on his jacket, looked at himself in a mirror, sat, crossed his legs, got up, walked, looked at boats on the river and the green of Jersey across the way. Alice came back.

  “You know,” Harry said. “It ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

  “What ain’t?”

  “This being home on a working-day. A guy goes a little batty around the house. At least on Sundays there’s the kid—and drums in my head.”

  “Drums in the head, is it?”

  “But drums in the head.”

  “What do you expect from a five-year-old? A virtuoso performance on a Stradivarius?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A fiddle.”

  “My son? I’ll take the drums.”

  “Take the air, too. Dora’s coming to do the living-room.”

  “Where’s my vitamins?”

  “Where they always are. In the medicine chest.”

  He gobbled vitamins in the bathroom, drank water, came out and listened to Dora’s vacuum, went to the study. Once it had been a study. Now it had tracks on the floor, and trains that sometimes ran, and Alice’s books, and Alice’s writing-desk, and calendars from everywhere, and boy’s drawings tacked on the walls, and displaced items from all of the rooms, hodgepodge in a semblance of array. He took off his shoes and lay on a leather couch. He raised his hand behind him, fingers clutching, drawing down a thin volume of poetry with crayon marks on its cover. He read out loud, enunciating carefully, singing in the manner of a prose man reading poetry. He dropped it and reached back again and now he had a thick volume with a yellow jacket, all bosom. He smiled at it, leafed through bedroom scenes and knights of old and ladies bold and beautiful slaves and mad sea-captains and spent young men. He dropped that beside the poetry and curled over for sleep. “Sleep. Who the hell can sleep?” He was asleep at once. Alice came, wearing her coat: “I’m going—Oh.” She tiptoed out.

  At two-fifteen, Dora nudged him. “Men here.”

  “Men?”

  “Two of them.”

  He put his shoes on and washed his face. He fixed his tie and went to the living-room.

  “Hi,” he said. “Hi, gentlemen.”

  Quigley said, “Hi. This is Frank Halsey.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  Dora took their hats and coats. Quigley had veins in his nose and veins in his eyes and a fat round face red with blood near the skin. Quigley was bowlegged and always wore a black suit. Quigley smelled of cigars and his smile was brown. “Well,” Quigley said. “We brung it.”

  “A little late.”

  “Got tied up.”

  “Produce.”

  “This young guy,” Quigley said, gesturing with a thumb. “I brung him too. Bodyguard.”

  The young man smiled, side-mouthed.

  “Frank Halsey,” Quigley said. “Or did I tell you? Breaking him in on investigation.” James Quigley was vice-president of Alliance Mutual.

  “Good luck,” Harry said.

  “Thanks,” the young man said.

  “Produce,” Harry said.

  “Coming at you.” Quigley dug thick fingers into his black jacket and, with a short bow, in the manner of a vaudeville magician, he flipped out a sheaf of bills, ends up like a packet of letters. “First you count it.” He searched in his pockets, smoothing out a sheet of paper. “Then you sign this. Then I’m through with the transaction.”

  Harry took the money and the paper. He put the paper aside, broke the holder on the stack of bills, counted one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills, laid them together, smiled, lifted his eyebrows, and wiggled his fingers for a pen.

  “Coming at you,” Quigley said.

  Harry signed and Quigley took the paper.

  “Got a safe, Harry?”

  “Sure I’ve got a safe.”

  “Like I told you?”

  “Exactly like you told me.”

  “Him,” Quigley told the young man, “I broke him in too. Well, I sort of brought him up in the business. This was a firecracker, in his day.”

  The young man said, “In his day?”

  “I’m a ripe thirty-three,” Harry said. “To a youngster like Quigley, I’m a veteran.”

  “Thirty-three?” Quigley said. “You prettying that up?”

  “Thirty-three,” Harry said. “I’m going to be thirty-three.”

  “Seems longer.”

  “That’s because you’re getting along, friend Quigley.”

  “Me? Never.” He rubbed a hand across a wild brush of crew-cut white hair. “No, sir. Quigley, the imperishable. Put it in the safe.”

  Harry said, “Excuse me.”

  The safe was in a closet in the study. When he came back, Alice was there, holding her coat over her arm, saying, “… and how is Mrs. Quigley?”

  “Swell, swell. Frank Halsey, here. Frank Halsey, Mrs. Martin.”

  “How do you do?” the young man said in rigid rapt attention.

  Harry smiled. She was very beautiful, black hair rising in the long waves of an upsweep, little ears, full red mouth, small straight nose, the wide eyes
in the luminous whites, and a figure in a green dress with a belt that had Quigley folding and re-folding the paper. “Miss me?” Alice said to Harry.

  “I was napping.”

  She put her coat away. “Like something, gentlemen?”

  “Well, uh—” Quigley said.

  “Coffee?”

  Quigley said, “Oh, no, thanks. Got to be going. Delivered a package for Harry.”

  “I know,” Alice said. “Polgar. Nice woman.”

  “Yeah, Polgar,” Quigley said.

  Harry said, “How’d you come up?”

  “Taxi.”

  “I’ll drive you down.”

  “Swell.”

  Dora came. “Coats, gents?”

  “Please,” Harry said.

  Quigley shook hands with Alice. The young man said, “’By, glad to know you.” Harry kissed his wife. “Home early?” Alice said.’

  “I hope.”

  “Steak for supper.”

  “That’s for me.”

  “’By, Mrs. Martin.”

  The car was black and new and shiny, white-walled wheels tight to the curb in front of the house.

  “Paid for?” Quigley said.

  “All paid for.”

  “I hear you’re knocking them dead.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “No parking problems up here, are there?”

  Harry winked. Quigley climbed in front alongside of him. Halsey spraddled in the rear, offering cigarettes over their shoulders. Quigley lit all of them.

  “Three on a match?” the young man said.

  “I’m too old for superstition.”

  “Me, too,” Harry said.

  He went up a ramp to the West Side Highway, stuck his hand out, turned left. Sun sparkled on the river, wide across by the upper tip of Manhattan. Wind blew in, fresh with the clean smell of the water. A new-painted tug shouldered a barge of lumber, chugging. High sky curved down in front of them, a blue arc over the town. “I love it,” Harry said. “Look at those boats.”

  “Boats. Who can see boats, the way you’re going? You’re doing better than sixty. Pull up, man.”

  “You don’t feel it, pushing alongside the river.” He eased his right foot. “I love those boats.”

  “Boats, he loves.” Quigley sighed.

  The young man said, “Ten thousand cash apples. Isn’t it unusual?”

  “First time it happened to me,” Harry said.