The Edge of Doom

by Amanda Cross

  At home, Kate greeted Clara. Clara did not mention the maid’s room, and before their usual exchange could get underway, the telephone rang. Kate answered; it was Leslie.

  “I was just thinking of you,” Kate said.

  “Really? And why was that?”

  “I was thinking of Paulina in The Winter’s Tale.”

  “I’m an artist, Kate, not a literary type. Paulina is, I’m to gather, a good friend.”

  “Yes. Like Rosalind and Celia. All right, never mind. It’s been a frantic few days. I shall tell you about it soon. Meanwhile, I’m neither here nor there.”

  “Still brooding about the effects of your new discovery about your father?”

  “I haven’t had much time to brood. I’m hoping you’ll be able to give me many hours to talk about all this, and to figure out what I feel about it all. I, who always know what I feel, haven’t a clue.”

  “That means the clue is so obvious you’ve overlooked it. I’ll clear the decks for you anytime you’re ready. Am I to meet the proud new father?”

  “Perhaps. Somehow I doubt it.”

  “Why? Am I insufficiently presentable?”

  “I doubt he’ll be around to be presented. But one day, who knows?”

  And Kate went on to ask about Leslie’s life and work; these were always fraught with tension and the stuff of spellbinding narration. When Kate had said goodbye to Leslie and hung up, she went in search of Clara, who was just beginning one of her thorough jobs on the bedroom. Having greeted Clara, Kate decided to risk a soft knock on the maid’s room door.

  But even as she approached the door, Reed emerged through it. “Is Clara in the bedroom?” he asked.

  Kate nodded.

  “Good,” Reed said. And he walked out to the entrance hall, opened and noisily shut their front door and shouted: “I got away unexpectedly early. Is Clara here? I’ll try not to get in her way. I’m just going to say hello to Clara.” And he vanished toward the bedroom.

  Kate went back into the kitchen to make more coffee. These early mornings are getting to me, she thought, and no amount of caffeine can make up for too-early risings. Reed joined her in a few minutes. Once the coffee was ready, they repaired to the living room, always the last room Clara cleaned on her weekly visits.

  “I take it it all went well,” Reed said.

  “Very well. I didn’t even have to go far enough into the police station to explain Banny. Now will you please tell me your next move—that is, if you have any idea what it is.”

  “At least Jay is safe for now and out of here; do give me credit for that.”

  “Consider yourself credited. How long will the police keep him?”

  At that moment the house phone sounded. Puzzled, for one hardly expects visitors in the middle of the morning, and unanticipated visitors were hardly likely to appear at any time, Reed went to answer it.

  “It’s your brother Laurence,” he said, returning to the living room.

  “Laurence!” Kate exclaimed, as though Reed had announced a camel driver with beast in tow. “Laurence has never been here, I don’t think.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been here,” Laurence said, echoing her, when Reed had opened the door to him. “I’ve never set foot in this place.”

  “It’s not that you weren’t welcome at any time,” Kate said. “But we don’t give parties, you and I don’t meet that often, and when we do it’s usually under your auspices.”

  “I see,” Laurence said. He evidently had more immediate issues on his mind. “I’ve been pushing contacts, calling in chips, making demands, you know, on behalf of your . . . finding out about Jay. And I’ll tell you what I have decided; I don’t believe he was ever in the Witness Protection Program.”

  Kate stared at her brother. “What do you mean? Do you think he’s lied about the whole thing?”

  “Not exactly. I think he did go into hiding; he did change his name to whatever it is—Smith or something. He did marry a woman under that name. Maybe he was hiding out, but not under the Witness Protection Program. I knew the guy was a phony the minute I laid eyes on him.”

  This was hardly true, but Kate decided not to make a point of it. She turned toward Reed, who was nodding.

  “What are you nodding about?” she asked him. For reasons she could not have explained, she felt suddenly irritable and annoyed with both men.

  “I’m not exactly surprised you think that,” Reed said. “But I suspect it’s because not even your influence could penetrate the secrets of the Witness Protection Program. Please don’t take it personally,” he added as Laurence looked offended. He gestured toward Laurence, trying to calm him. “I’ve been working on the other end, trying to discover if he ever stole a painting, or helped to steal one, and if he ever testified against someone who was convicted of murder.”

  Kate rose to her feet about to explode with anger.

  “I didn’t mention it,” he said to Kate, “because I couldn’t learn anything conclusive, and I didn’t want you to have to confront suspicions that were without foundations. I thought it was enough discovering your father at this time of life.”

  “I see,” Kate said, scarcely containing her anger. “Since I was coping with this familial shock, I couldn’t be allowed to face up to anything else?”

  “That’s not exactly right.”

  “I see. And are we to be honored with a clear explanation, or have you undertaken this investigation purely as a solo performance?”

  Laurence looked from one of them to the other as though he had suddenly found himself in a different place than he had supposed. “Kate, my dear,” he began, but Reed held out a silencing hand.

  “I can’t hope to convince you of my motives,” Reed said to Kate, “but I can at least explain them. I could not be certain, I simply could not be certain that my reasons for these investigations were more than irrational fears, petty resentments, and a rather terrifying sense of being out of control. I don’t know whether I was more fearful of upsetting you for no reason, or worse, for my own shameful reasons, or having all my suspicions disproved and looking a fool and nasty into the bargain. I don’t think my decision not to tell you what I was up to was a wise or defensible one, and I was going to tell you all about it just when Laurence arrived.”

  A sarcastic remark, doubting this, rose to Kate’s lips, but she repressed it; she had never felt this violently angry with Reed before, and some sense of caution came to her aid.

  “I’ve behaved like an idiot,” Reed said. “And the worst part of it is I don’t really know why. But it wasn’t to betray you or go behind your back, however it looks.”

  Laurence waited out a short silence, and then asked if they might get back to talking about Jay. “He’s obviously a liar; he could have lied about most of his story. Were you able to find out anything?” he asked Reed.

  “Only negatively. My investigator couldn’t find evidence of a minor robbery in a small museum in San Francisco nearly fifty years ago. That doesn’t prove much. I did discover that the number of paintings that have been done on Shakespearean subjects is vast; vaster than vast. The chance of finding if a particular subject had been painted, and when, and by whom, is negligible, at least for anyone provided with less than a year off and a small fortune.”

  “And the murder and the witness and all that?” Laurence asked before Kate could say anything, not that she appeared ready to speak.

  “Negative again. The guys I know at the FBI, now or before, are willing to tell me a certain amount. But when it comes to paroled killers, there are, I regret to say, far too many of them to sort through; parole boards work in waves, and there are other influences on the question of pardons. In short, I have nothing substantive to report.”

  “How about less-than-substantive?” Kate asked, knowing her man, at least in this regard, and the exactness of his words.

  Reed nodded at her. “Right you are,” he said. “I’ve talked to him a good bit in the last few days . . .”


  At this Laurence started to rise to his feet, ready to demand an explanation.

  “We’ll explain it later,” Kate said. “He was here; he’s not here any longer; he not here now,” she repeated since Laurence seemed about to have a fit. “Go on,” she said to Reed. Laurence subsided, his mouth still open.

  “Conversing with Jay,” Reed went on, “getting a sense of him, I came to the conclusion that whatever the truth of his stories, two assertions of his were undeniable: that he had loved Kate’s mother—and yours, of course, Laurence—and that he would not willingly have put Kate in danger. That does not mean that he may not have put her in danger without intending to, but I am certain he would not intentionally expose her to peril or risk her life. Therefore, he was either pretending to hide out in order to be near her, or he had got himself and her into an unforeseeable trap. What I did manage to do was to get him out of here without danger to himself if he was in danger, and thus without danger to Kate. Actually, I had come to believe that his stories were fabricated, that he wasn’t in danger, but that I couldn’t, yet, confront him with this. I needed proof.”

  Reed told Laurence of the plans he had made for Jay, and that these plans had been successfully carried out.

  “You seem to have a certain amount of influence yourself,” Laurence said, his tone a mixture of admiration and disbelief.

  “Only in my world of crime. Big money goes further. I mean no offense,” he added.

  “None taken,” Laurence said. “Money had better go far; it’s what keeps the wheels turning.”

  It was evidence of Kate’s unhappiness—guilt toward Reed, and worry about Jay—that she didn’t answer Laurence even with a quip.

  “The damn thing is,” Laurence said, “and I came here intending to tell you this although I didn’t know you had actually been harboring that man, that I was responsible for some men trying to get in here to see if you were, in fact, harboring him. They couldn’t get in but they became convinced you weren’t. If they were mistaken, I’d like to know.”

  “They weren’t mistaken,” Reed said. “He wasn’t here then.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to hear that,” Laurence said. “I’ll be off then. Will you let me know if you discover anything else about Kate’s, er, father?”

  “Yes,” Reed said. “And may we expect the same from you?”

  “Did you in fact come here because you expected to find him here?” Kate asked Laurence as he prepared to depart.

  “I have my reports,” he said, rather hastily. “Glad to know I was wrongly informed.”

  “At least you got to see where I live,” Kate said, not graciously.

  “Rather shabby,” Laurence said. “Just what I expected. I know you could afford to hire a good decorator. Why not ask Janice to recommend one?”

  Vastly to Kate’s credit, she did not answer him; his manners seemed to her beyond sarcasm, as she later explained to Reed.

  They had, of course, a great deal to explain to one another, and happily Laurence went and left them to it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was . . . an excellent play, well digested

  in the scenes, set down with as

  much modesty as cunning.

  The following afternoon Reed called Ringley at the police precinct to check on Jay’s arrival at the upstate prison facility.

  “He’s not there, of course,” Ringley said. “We handed him over to your men; they took him away.”

  “What do you mean, my men?”

  “They had a note from you, and identification as agents with the Witness Protection Program. They looked official as hell. And your man didn’t make any fuss about going with them. They got in a car and drove off.”

  “I don’t suppose they said where they were going?” Reed asked, controlling his anger and frustration.

  “They said they’d be in touch with you when they got there. They said: ‘tell Amhearst we’ll let him know as soon as we arrive.’ ”

  “Arrive where?”

  “They didn’t say. They seemed to think you knew; I assumed you did. Is something wrong?”

  “Never mind, Ringley,” Reed said. “Thanks for all you’ve done.”

  Reed, who was in his office, phoned home; the message machine told him Kate had not yet arrived there. She was usually home by four on Wednesday afternoons unless she had told him otherwise, which she hadn’t. He left a message for her to wait for him at home; he would be right there.

  He had given the police both of his phone numbers. He presumed, however, that the agents, if they called at all, would call him at home. He rushed from the building that housed his office, stopping only to lock his office door. He sped down the stairs, out into the street, hailed a taxi—it was, thank God, the hour when taxis were heading downtown for the end of their shift—and arrived home, there to await Kate’s return.

  “You don’t suppose they were agents from the Witness Protection Program?” Kate had asked when she arrived home and learned Reed’s news.

  “Of course not. They don’t go trailing after people who have left the program, and certainly they wouldn’t have known or cared where Jay was. But it does indicate that whoever this man is who’s pursuing Jay, and whoever his accomplice is, they’re smooth, they can look federal enough to fool a police officer, and they must have faked their identification badges skillfully. This man is not your ordinary roughneck or criminal; I’d say he’s definitely middle-class and educated, or giving a damn good imitation. No, I’m not being snobbish or classist, I’m being a detective.”

  Kate had not yet thought of an answer to this when the telephone rang. Reed picked it up, saying “Amhearst” into the phone, as though he were still in his office. He never answered their home phone that way. Although he had spoken with some calmness to Kate, this was a sign of his anxiety. He did not speak again; he listened. Finally he said: “I’ll have to call you back. No, I can’t say anything before I speak to her. I won’t speak to anyone else. Give me a number where I can reach you.” Reed jotted a number down and hung up the phone.

  “What?” Kate said.

  “He wants you to meet him. You alone. They’ve got Jay. They say if you don’t meet now, as soon as you can get there, they’ll kill him. I said I had to talk to you. They gave me a number.”

  “And if you gave it to the police, could they rescue Jay?”

  “Obviously not. It must be the number of the phone where they are, and they’re going to have to tell you or me that anyway if they expect you to show up there. Probably it’s the number of a public phone box near where they are. The police would never get there in time; this guy knows what he’s doing.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “I mean he’s a clever operator. Of course you can’t go, Kate. The question is, what are we going to do?”

  “Do you think he’ll kill Jay if I don’t show up?”

  Reed would later say that her question forced him to the hardest decision of his life. If he said no, they won’t kill him, he would have lied to her; when she learned that he had lied, something between them would have been destroyed, perhaps irremediably. If he said what he believed, that they would kill Jay if Kate did not appear, she would probably insist on going; well, at least she would know the facts and be able to make her own decision. With all they had been through since this man, Jay, had entered their lives, his and Kate’s alliance, their love, their marriage, had been tested, had been stretched further than ever before. If he lied to her, he might lose her. If he didn’t lie, he might lose her anyway; she might be killed. With all that rushing through his mind, he never really doubted that the decision must be hers, and that she must decide on the basis of what he believed to be the truth.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid Jay will be killed if you do not go. That seems this man’s supreme aim in life, if we are at all to trust what Jay has told us, and to judge from the man’s voice on the phone, and from his actions, we can hardly mistrust his stated intentions.”

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nbsp; They sat in silence for a period, probably short; minutes pass slowly under such circumstances; time is not fixed. Kate, tasting the silence, thought of Faustus’s plea: go slowly, slowly, horses of the night.

  “Faustus didn’t know from slowly,” she said to Reed.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking about time. Call the man, Reed; tell him I’ll come. I have to, surely you see that. It was probably inevitable from the moment Jay entered Laurence’s office that something like this would happen. Or is that only hindsight? Call him back. And write out clear directions; I’d hate to get lost.”

  Reed did not respond at once. He waited for what seemed to Kate another longish period. He wanted to speak to Kate, to say something, that was clear enough, but in the end he didn’t speak. He dialed the number given; Kate could tell that the phone was answered immediately.

  “She’ll come,” Reed said. “Yes, she has a car. She needs directions. She’ll be alone; she won’t be followed. But listen, I know her, she’s a good driver but a lousy navigator. If she’s late, it will be because she’s lost. Don’t panic. She is coming and she will be alone. Yes, she’s leaving now. She has to get the car from the garage; it’s two blocks away. Please, don’t panic. Please be reasonably patient.”

  Kate turned west from the garage and then onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. Waiting on the street for the light to change, she had studied Reed’s directions yet again; she had read them over and over in the garage while they were bringing her car down in the elevator. She had seemed, she was, impatient, and the garage man grumbled that he hadn’t had any notice, he was getting the car as fast as he could.

  Kate was to go from the Henry Hudson Parkway on to the Sawmill River Parkway, then turn off it quite soon. She had been told to take the right-hand road at the exit, and then the first right-hand turn she came to. She would then come almost immediately to a row of abandoned, boarded-up stores. They would be in the first one she came to, the man had said to Reed. She was to drive past the stores, leave the car further up the road, and walk back to the store. She and her car would be watched; they would know if she was not alone.