then California is the Violent Ward.
1
‘There’s a woman sitting on my window ledge,’ I said quietly and calmly into the phone.
‘I can’t see you, Mr Murphy!’ said Miss Magda Huth, my secretary. Her German accent was more pronounced when she was agitated, like now, and her voice was strangled whenever she stood on tiptoe to see into my office over the frosted glass partition.
‘There’s a woman sitting on my window ledge. You can’t see me because I’m behind my desk.’
‘You must be on the floor.’
‘Yes, well, I’m trying not to frighten her,’ I said. ‘Will you please just do something about it?’
Miss Huth has no sense of urgency except when she is leaving work. ‘Your coffee is losing its froth out here,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if I brought it in to you—’
Jesus! ‘Are you listening to me?’ I said. ‘She didn’t come by for a cup of coffee and a Danish. She’s going to throw herself into the street. Any minute.’
‘There is no need to become belligerent.’ Magda Huth wasn’t young. She’d been some kind of schoolteacher in Dresden until reunification gave her a chance to leave, and at times she treats me like a backward pupil in a totalitarian kindergarten. That’s the way she was treating me now. ‘I will see if I can reach the Fire Department,’ she said primly.
‘Yes, you do that,’ I said.
Miss Huth had not been with my law partnership very long. Previously, for five years I’d had Denise, a really sensible woman and an efficient secretary. Then she went off on a package-deal skiing weekend in Big Bear – I must have been soft in the head to give her so much time off – and within eight weeks she was married to a Mexican orthodontist she met in a singles bar there. For a long time I kept hoping she’d tire of living in Ensenada and ask for her job back. But then last Christmas I had this long chatty boilerplate letter, plus a blurred snapshot of her and her husband and twin bambinos, and now I was trying to get used to Miss Huth all over again. It wasn’t easy.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Get the Fire Department, and tell them to make it snappy or they’ll be hosing her off the sidewalk.’
‘You should not talk that way,’ Miss Huth said, with a sniff, and cut me off before I could reply. I hung up so gently it didn’t make a sound.
I looked through the kneehole of the desk so that I could see the window. The woman was still there, fidgeting around, trying to look down into the street below her. This would happen today of all days. My new boss, the mighty Zachary Petrovitch – el supremo, ichi-ban, tycoon extraordinaire – was spending a few days at his Los Angeles mansion so he could be guest of honor at the ‘surprise party’ his minions had been planning for weeks. Petrovitch wanted his own little law firm here in the city, and he was bringing to this partnership something it had never had before – money. By putting one of his tame in-house lawyers behind Korea Charlie’s empty desk he’d found a legal way of getting control of a law practice. It had been decreed that I should be at his party tonight, tugging my forelock and bowing low and telling everyone how grateful I was to become a toiler ant in the Petrovitch zoo.
The phone buzzed and I snatched it up. It was Miss Huth again. ‘The people from Graham’s builders’ discount store have come out into the street; they are all staring up here, Mr Murphy.’
‘So?’
‘I thought you would wish to know.’
‘What did the Fire Department say?’
‘They’ve put me on hold,’ she said.
‘On hold?’
‘I’ve got them on the other line. They asked was it a fire, and I said no, it was not a fire.’
‘Well, that’s dandy. I’ll throw a lighted cigar butt into the shredder basket, and then maybe they’ll discuss the possibility of dropping by sometime.’
‘They are on the line now!’ she said urgently and cut me off again. I had to crouch real low to see properly. The woman outside my window was still shifting her ass about. Maybe the rubbernecks in the street thought she was getting ready to throw herself off the ledge, but I had my reasons for guessing that she was getting a cramp in the gluteus maximus and moving around to be more comfortable.
There was a tapping noise – imperious and persistent – on the frosted glass panel. It was Miss Huth, making a menacing shadow against the whitened glass with just her fringed hair and beady eyes peeping over it. She signaled to tell me that I’d put the phone down without putting it properly on the hook. I picked it up and she said, ‘They are coming. The firemen. They are coming – right away.’
‘I should hope so.’ There was the sound of a siren, but it grew fainter and went north up Western Avenue toward Hollywood. ‘Maybe I could use that cup of coffee,’ I told her. ‘If you put it on the mat inside the door, I’ll crawl over and pull it toward me.’
‘I don’t see what good you think you’re doing sitting there on the floor, Mr Murphy.’ She was peering over the frosted glass again; I could hear it in her voice.
‘I’m trying not to alarm her.’
‘The firemen will arrive and the woman will see them, won’t she? Why don’t you get up and go over and talk with her?’
‘And if she jumps, I take the blame? You come in and talk to her. Maybe you’ve got an insight into the motivation of women who jump off ledges.’
She let that one go and busied herself with placing two tall polystyrene cups on the mat, together with a Bear Claw on a paper napkin. I’d ordered one coffee and an almond croissant; the Bear Claws were too big and had brightly colored strawberry jelly inside, and I didn’t like them. The little old Vietnamese guy who had taken over Tony’s Deli employed his relatives, and some of them couldn’t understand a word of English. When Big Tony and his brother ran that place, Tonichinos – large cappuccinos to go – had froth you could cut with a knife. Now it withered and died within five minutes; I guess the Vietnamese didn’t understand the froth machine. Even so, Tony’s Deli still made the best cappuccinos in this part of town. Thank God those guys had passed on the recipe to their successor, because I was hooked on them.
Gently I pulled the mat over and grabbed the coffees. They were still warm; I savored them. Sitting there on the Persian carpet, the final sixteen payments for which had now been underwritten by our new owner, gave me a chance to reflect on the arrangements for the party that night. It had to go well. I needed the money, really needed it.
Before I’d finished the second cup of coffee I heard a siren coming along Olympic. I looked under the desk to see the window. The woman outside must have heard it too, for she was slowly and painfully getting up. First she brought one foot up onto the ledge, then she was kneeling there. Finally, moving like someone terrified of heights, she stood up and leaned back against the window, with both arms pressed flat against the glass. She was wearing an expensive light-weight tweed pants suit and a gold and blue Hermès scarf around her head, the kind of outfit a choosy woman would need to throw herself out of a Los Angeles window in springtime. I watched her cautious movements with great interest. Considering the way she’d been acting out there on the ledge, enjoying all the motions of a would-be suicide, she was certainly
