“Johnny Speed. How many times have you used him?”
“I don’t know. Too many, I guess. He’s got a lot of miles on the clock but I guess he’s good for another go-round.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Couple of weeks.”
“Be careful.”
He looked at her. “Oh, come on,” he said. “The violence never touches me, baby. You know that.”
“Oh, but it does.”
“Come off it.”
“It’s a dangerous business.”
“Dangerous business,” he said, tasting the phrase. “I kind of like that.”
“Well, it is.”
“I like the phrase,” he said. “I don’t know that it fits my life—”
“I think it does.”
“—but it certainly fits the current project. Dangerous Business. A Dangerous Business. Which do you prefer?”
“I don’t know. The Dangerous Business?”
“You know, that’s best of all. The Dangerous Business. I think I’m going to use it.”
“Don’t you have to make sure nobody’s used it already?”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s no such thing as copyright on titles. I thought you knew that.”
“I must have forgotten.”
“The Dangerous Business. A Johnny Speed Mystery. Yes, by God, I’m going to use it. It has a nice ring to it and it fits the plot I’ve got in mind.”
“It fits, all right,” she said. But he was caught up in the book he’d start that morning and didn’t even notice the tone of her voice.
Death Wish
The cop saw the car stop on the bridge but didn’t pay any particular attention to it. People were apt to pull over to the side in the middle of the span, especially late at night when the traffic was thin and they could stop for a moment without somebody’s horn stabbing them in the back. The bridge was a graceful steel parabola over the deep channel of river that cut the city neatly in two, and the center of the bridge provided the best view of the city, with the old downtown buildings clustered together on the right, the flour mills downriver on the left, the gentle skyline, the gulls maneuvering over the river. The bridge was the best place to see it all. It wasn’t private enough for the teenagers, who were given to long-term parking and preferred drive-in movie theaters or stretches of road along the north bank of the river, but sightseers stopped often, took in the view for a few moments, and then continued across.
Suicides liked the bridge, too. The cop didn’t think of that at first, not until he saw the man emerge from the car, and walk slowly to the footpath at the edge, and place a hand tentatively upon the rail. There was something in his stance, something in the pose of the solitary figure upon the empty bridge in the after-midnight gloom, something about the grayness of the night, the way the fog was coming off the river. The cop looked at him and cursed and wondered if he could get to him in time.
He walked toward the man, headed over the bridge on the footpath. He didn’t want to shout or blow his whistle at him because he knew what shock or surprise could do to a potential jumper. Once he saw the man’s hands tense on the rail, his feet lifting up on the toes. At that moment he almost cried out, almost broke into a run, but then the man’s feet came back into position, his hands loosened their grip, and he took out a cigarette and lit it. Then the cop knew he had time. They always smoked that last cigarette all the way down before they went over the edge.
When the cop was within ten yards of him the man turned, started slightly, then nodded in resignation. He appeared to be somewhere in his middle thirties, tall, with a long narrow face and deep-set eyes topped with thick black eyebrows.
“Nice night,” the cop said.
“Yes.”
“Having a look at the sights?”
“That’s right.”
“Saw you out here, thought I’d come out and have a talk with you. It can get lonely this hour at night.” The cop patted his pockets, passed over his cigarettes. “Say, you don’t happen to have a spare cigarette on you, do you? I must have run out.”
The man gave him a cigarette. It was a filter, and the cop normally smoked nothing but regulars, but he wasn’t about to complain. He thanked the man, accepted a light, thanked him again, and stood beside him, hands on the rail, leaning out over the water and looking at the city and the river.
“Looks pretty from here,” he said.
“Does it?”
“Sure, I’d say so. Makes a man feel at peace with himself.”
“It hasn’t had that effect on me,” the man said. “I was thinking about, oh, the ways a man could find peace for himself.”
“I guess the best way is just to go on plugging away at life,” the cop said. “Things generally have a way of straightening themselves out, sooner or later. Some of the time they take awhile, and I guess they don’t look too good, but they work out.”
“You really believe that?”
“Sure.”
“With the things you see in your job?”
“Even with all of it,” the cop said. “It’s a tough world, but that’s nothing new. It’s the best we’ve got, the way I figure it. You’re sure not going to find a better one at the bottom of a river.”
The man said nothing for a long time, then he pitched his cigarette over the rail. He and the cop stood watching it as it shed sparks on the way down, then heard the tiny hiss as it met the water.
“It didn’t make much of a splash,” the man said.
“No.”
“Few of us do,” the man said. He paused for a moment, then turned to face the cop. “My name’s Edward Wright,” he added. The cop gave his own name. “I don’t think I would have done it,” the man went on. “Not tonight.”
“No sense taking chances, is there?”
“I guess not.”
“You’re taking a chance yourself, aren’t you? Coming out here, standing at the edge, thinking it over. Anyone who does that long enough, sooner or later gets a little too nervous and goes over the edge. He doesn’t really want to and he’s sorry long before he hits the water, but it’s too late; he took too many chances and it’s over for him. Tempt fate too much and fate gets you.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Something in particular bothering you?”
“Not... anything special, no.”
“Have you been seeing a doctor?”
“Off and on.”
“That can help, you know.”
“So they say.”
“Want to go grab a cup of coffee?”
The man opened his mouth, started to say something, then changed his mind. He lit another cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke, watching the way the wind dispersed it. “I’ll be all right now,” he said.
“Sure?”
“I’ll go home, get some sleep. I haven’t been sleeping so well, not since my wife—”
“Oh,” the cop said.
“She died. She was all I had and, well, she died.”
The cop put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll get over it, Mr. Wright. You just have to hold on, that’s all. Hold on, and sooner or later you’ll get over it. Maybe you think you can’t live through it, nothing will be the same, but—”
“I know.”
“You sure you don’t want a cup of coffee?”
“No, I’d better get home,” the man said. “I’m sorry to cause trouble. I’ll try to relax, I’ll be all right.”
The cop watched him drive away and wondered whether he should have taken him in. No point, he decided. You went crazy enough hauling in every attempted suicide, and this one hadn’t actually attempted anything, he had merely thought about it. Too, if you started picking up everyone who contemplated suicide you’d have your hands full.