Stephen King - The Ledge.pdf - Stephen King - margozap

THE LEDGE

'Go on,' Cressner said again. 'Look in the bag.'

We were in his penthouse apartment, forty-three stories up. The carpet was deep-cut pile, burnt orange. In the

middle, between the Basque sling chair where Cressner sat and the genuine leather couch where no one at all sat,

there was a brown shopping bag.

'If it's a payoff, forget it,' I said. 'I love her.'

'It's money, but it's not a payoff. Go on. Look.' Re was smoking a Turkish cigarette in an onyx holder. The air-

circulation system allowed me just a dry whiff of the tobacco and then whipped it away. He was wearing a silk

dressing gown on which a dragon was embroidered. His eyes were calm and intelligent behind his glasses. He

looked just like what he was: an A-number-one, 500 carat, dyed-in-the-wool son of a bitch. I loved his wife, and

she loved me. I had expected him to make trouble, and I knew this was it, but I just wasn't sure what brand it was.

I went to the shopping bag and tipped it over. Banded bundles of currency tumbled out on the rug. All twenties. I

picked one of the bundles up and counted. Ten bills to a bundle. There were a lot of bundles.

'Twenty thousand dollars,' he said, and puffed on his cigarette.

I stood up. 'Okay.'

'It's for you.'

'I don't want it.'

'My wife comes with it.'

I didn't say anything. Marcia had warned me how, it would be. He's like a cat, she had said. An old tom full of

meanness. He'll try to make you a mouse.

'So you're a tennis pro,' he said. 'I don't believe I've ever actually seen one before.'

'You mean your detectives didn't get any pictures?'

'Oh, yes.' He waved the cigarette holder negligently. 'Even a motion picture of the two of you in that Bayside

Motel. A camera was behind the mirror. But pictures are hardly the same, are they?'

'If you say so.'

He'll keep changing tacks, Marcia had said. It's the way he puts people on the defensive. Pretty soon he'll have

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THE LEDGE

you hitting out at where you think he's going to be, and he'll get you someplace else. Say as little as possible,

Stan. And remember that I love you.

'I invited you up because I thought we should have a little man-to-man chat, Mr Norris. Just a pleasant

conversation between two civilized human beings, one of whom has made off with the other's wife.'

I started to answer but decided not to.

'Did you enjoy San Quentin?' Cressner said, puffing lazily.

'Not particularly.'

'I believe you passed three years there. A charge of breaking and entering, if I'm correct.'

'Marcia knows about it,' I said, and immediately wished I hadn't. I was playing his game, just what Marcia had

warned against. Hitting soft lobs for him to smash back.

'I've taken the liberty of having your car moved,' he said, glancing out the window at the far end of the room. It

really wasn't a window at all: the whole wall was glass. In the middle was a sliding-glass door. Beyond it, a

balcony the size of a postage stamp. Beyond that, a very long drop. There was something strange about the door.

I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

'This is a very pleasant building,' Cressner said. 'Good security. Closed-circuit TV and all that. When I knew you

were in the lobby, I made a telephone call. An employee then hot-wired the ignition of your car and moved it

from the parking area here to a public lot several blocks away.' He glanced up at the modernistic sunburst clock

above the couch. It was 8.05. 'At 8.20 the same employee will call the police from a public phone booth

concerning your car. By 8.30, at the latest, the minions of the law will have discovered over six ounces of heroin

hidden in the spare tyre of your trunk. You will be eagerly sought after, Mr Norris.'

He had set me up. I had tried to cover myself as well as I could, but in the end I had been child's play for him.

'These things will happen unless I call my employee and tell him to forget the phone call.'

'And all I have to do is tell you where Marcia is,' I said. 'No deal, Cressner, I don't know. We set it up this way

just for you.'

'My men had her followed.'

'I don't think so I think we lost them at the airport.'

Cressner sighed, removed the smouldering cigarette holder, and dropped it into a chromium ashtray with a sliding

lid. No fuss, no muss. The used cigarette and Stan Norris had been taken care of with equal ease.

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THE LEDGE

'Actually,' he said, 'you're right. The old ladies-room vanishing act. My operatives were extremely vexed to have

been taken in by such an ancient ruse. I think it was so old they never expected it.'

I said nothing. After Marcia had ditched Cressner's operatives at the airport, she had taken the bus shuttle back to

the city and then to the bus station; that had been the plan. She had two hundred dollars, all the money that had

been in ~ny savings account. Two hundred dollars and a Greyhound bus could take you anyplace in the country.

'Are you always to uncommunicative?' Cressner asked, and he sounded genuinely interested.

'Marcia advised it.'

A little more sharply, he said: 'Then I imagine you'll stand on your rights when the police take you in. And the

next time you see my wife could be when she's a little old grandmother in a rocker. Have you gotten that through

your head? I understand that possession of six ounces of heroin could get you forty years.'

'That won't get you Marcia back.'

He smiled thinly. 'And that's the nub of it, isn't it? Shall I review where we are? You and my wife have fallen in

love. You have had an affair. . . if you want to call a series of one-nighters in cheap motels an affair. My wife has

left me. However, I have you. And you are in what is called a bind. Does that summarize it adequately?'

'I can understand why she got tired of you,' I said.

To my surprise, he threw back his head and laughed. 'You know, I rather like you, Mr Norris. You're vulgar and

you're a piker, but you seem to have heart. Marcia said you did. I rather doubted it. Her judgement of character is

lax. But you do have a certain. . . verve. Which is why I've set things up the way I have. No doubt Marcia has

told you that lam fond of wagering.'

'Yes.' Now I knew what was wrong with the door in the middle of the glass wall. It was the middle of winter, and

no one was going to want to take tea on a balcony forty-three stories up. The balcony had been cleared of

furniture. And the screen had been taken off the door. Now why would Cressner have done that?

'I don't like my wife very much,' Cressner said, fixing another cigarette carefully in the holder. 'That's no secret.

I'm sure she's told you as much. And I'm sure a man of your experience knows that contented wives do not jump

into the hay with the local tennis-club pro at the drop of a racket. In my opinion, Marcia is a prissy, whey-faced

little prude, a whiner, a weeper, a bearer of tales, a -'That's about enough,' I said.

He smiled coldly. 'I beg your pardon. I keep forgetting we are discussing our beloved. It's 8.16. Are you nervous?'

I shrugged.

'Tough to the end,' he said, and lit his cigarette. 'At any rate, you may wonder why, if I dislike Marcia so much, I

do not simply give her her freedom -'

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THE LEDGE

'No, I don't wonder at all.'

He frowned at me.

'You're a selfish, grasping, egocentric son of a bitch. That's why. No one takes what's yours. Not even if you don't

want it any more.

He went red and then laughed. 'One for you, Mr Norris. Very good.'

I shrugged again.

'I'm going to offer you a wager. If you win, you leave here with the money, the woman, and your freedom. On the

other hand, if you lose, you lose your life.'

I looked at the clock. I couldn't help it. It was 8.19.

'All right,' I said. What else? It would buy time, at least. Time for me to think of some way to beat it out of here,

with or without the money.

Cressner picked up the telephone beside him and dialled a number.

'Tony? Plan two. Yes.' He hung up.

'What's plan two?' I asked.

'I'll call Tony back in fifteen minutes, and he will remove the. . . offending substance from the trunk of your car

and drive it back here. If I don't call, he will get in touch with the police.'

'Not very trusting, are you?'

'Be sensible, Mr Norris. There is twenty thousand dollars on the carpet between us. In this city murder has been

committed for twenty cents.'

'What's the bet?'

He looked genuinely pained. 'Wager, Mr Norris, wager. Gentlemen make wagers. Vulgarians place bets.'

'Whatever you say.'

'Excellent. I've seen you looking at my balcony.'

'The screen's off the door.'

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THE LEDGE

'Yes. I had it taken off this afternoon. What I propose is this: that you walk around my building on the ledge that

juts out just below the penthouse level. If you circumnavigate the building successfully, the jackpot is yours.'

'You're crazy.'

'On the contrary. I have proposed this wager six times to six different people during my dozen years in this

apartment. Three of the six were professional athletes, like you-one of them a notorious quarterback more famous

for his TV Commercials than his passing game, one a baseball player, one a rather famous jockey who made an

extraordinary yearly salary and who was also afflicted with extraordinary alimony problems. The other three

were more ordinary citizens who had differing professions but two things in common: a need for money and a

certain degree of body grace.' He puffed his cigarette thoughtfully and then continued. 'The wager was declined

five times out of hand. On the other occasion, it was accepted. The terms were twenty thousand dollars against

six months' service to me. I collected. The fellow took one look over the edge of the balcony and nearly fainted.'

Cressner looked amused and contemptuous. 'He said everything down there looked so small. That was what

killed his nerve.'

'What makes you think -'

He cut me off with an annoyed wave of his hand. 'Don't bore me, Mr Norris. I think you will do it because you

have no choice. It's my wager on the one hand or forty years in San Quentin on the other. The money and my

wife are only added fillips, indicative of my good nature.'

'What guarantee do I have that you won't double-cross me? Maybe I'd do it and find out you'd called Tony and

told him to go ahead anyway.'

He sighed. 'You are a walking case of paranoia, Mr Norris. I don't love my wife. It is doing my storied ego no

good at all to have her around. Twenty thousand dollars is a pittance to me. I pay four times that every week to be

given to police bagmen. As for the wager, however . . .' His

I thought about it, and he left me. I suppose he knew that the real mark always convinces himself. I was a thirty-

six-year-old tennis bum, and the club had been thinking of letting me go when Marcia applied a little gentle

pressure. Tennis was the only profession I knew, and without it, even getting a job as a janitor would be tough -

especially with a record. It was kid stuff, but employers don't care.

And the funny thing was that I really loved Maria Cressner. I had fallen for her after two nine-o'clock tennis

lessons, and she had fallen for me just as hard. It was a case of Stan Norris luck, all right. After thirty-six years of

happy bachelorhood, I had fallen like a sack of mail for the wife of an Organization overlord.

The old tom sitting there and puffing his imported Turkish cigarette knew all that, of course. And something else,

as well. I had no guarantee that he wouldn't turn me in if I accepted his wager and won, but I knew damn well

that I'd be in the cooler by ten o'clock if I didn't. And the next time I'd be free would be at the turn of the century.

'I want to know one thing,' I said.

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Stephen King - The Ledge.pdf

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