Time Out of Mind (12 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
Maybe it will give me an idea.”
Perhaps so, Mr. Lesko.” The man called Dancer rose to his feet as he slid the brown envelope toward the ex-
cop. Behind it he slid the bar check the waitress had left.
“I'll look for you one week from today, same time, in the
main hall of the New York Public Library at Forty-second
Street and Fifth Avenue. I expect that you'll have earned
that money.”
Five
remains of the fire and blew at the coals until low flames lapped at its sides. She eased herself down beside Corbin,
who was mumbling in light sleep on the thick shag rug,
and rested one hand between his shoulder blades. The small pendulum clock on her mantel showed that it was not quite
seven in the evening. It felt more like four in the morning, she thought.
tion of a hot bath and a dose of Scotch had done its work.
The fire as well. Although he couldn't spend the rest of the
winter in front of one.
dress until it found the smooth flesh of her thigh.
“
Go back to sleep.” She slapped the hand lightly.
”
Uh-uh.”
“
Behave yourself. Go to sleep.”
I don't get to lie in front of fires with beautiful naked
ladies every night,” he murmured, his eyes still closed.
“
I'm not naked. I'm wearing a very proper gown and
you are taking liberties.”
“
Shhh! You're naked. Not a stitch. And I'm your help
less prisoner and you're about to vent all your kinky pas
sions on my defenseless body.”
She leaned forward and kissed him lightly
on one cheek.
“
See?” he whispered. “You're already out of control.”
Smiling, she peeled back the collar of the white terry
wrap she'd lent him and touched her lips softly to a line
across his shoulders. Corbin shivered and shook his arms free of the robe. She peeled it back further
.
“
Oh no, you mustn't,” he groaned.
“What decent
woman will have me after this?”
“
Us lusty wenches have needs.too,” she snarled. Gwen
straddled his back once more and began tracing her fingertips over his skin until she could see goosebumps rising on
his upper arms. She unlaced her nightdress and let it slide down her own arms behind her. Now she leaned forward,
touching her breasts against his back arid moving them
from side to side before allowing her body to settle. Corbin felt her cheek nestle against his and saw her honey hair
glistening in the firelight as it dropped a delicate veil across his eyes. A new warmth rose beneath him. Corbin drowsily
shifted his body and with his left hand pulled at the folds
of terry cloth that were bunched between his legs. That
done, he allowed the hand to fall limply to his side, nearer
to the fire than before, its knuckles turned toward the ra
diating heat.
“
Gwen,” he whispered.
“
Ummm?”
“
Thank you.”
“
Shhh!”
until the effect of Corbin's day caught up with him again
and drew him unwillingly into another light sleep. As his body became increasingly weightless and he faded in and out he became dimly aware of the tiny pinpricks of heat
dancing across the nerve endings on the back of the hand
that lay near the fire. Corbin didn't mind. The pain was
good. The pain was satisfying. Those hot, throbbing knuck
les had given far better than they got.
Corbin frowned. His unopened eyelids twitched as his
semiconscious brain tried to recapture and question that last
thought. But its meaning drifted into the darkness. Off in
a distance he saw the fist. His fist. It was jabbing into the same darkness, against nothing at all at first, but then he
began to feel what seemed like flesh and bone at the other
end. Another man's face. A thin man. Yes. Oh, yes. Now
he could see the face and he remembered. Corbin' s brain
settled back and watched.
A good caning would have done the job as well, he knew.
A cane well laid against the thin man's back and thighs
would have inflicted even greater humiliation without dam
age to himself. But in this case only fists would do. Bare
knuckles were the ticket. Better even than a horsewhip.
Jab, lad,” Big John Flood had taught him. “Jab once
with the left, then again, then a third time if need be till
his arms are high. Now you hook that same left hand low
to the ribs. That brings his arms down fast, you see, and
his face tilts up like a lass waitin' for a kiss. It's then you
cross with your right and it's Throw him down, McClos
key.' Head down now, lad. Aye. That's playin' the tune.
Put your back into those belly blows but not those to the
head. Let the other man, not you, come to scratch with
busted knuckles.”
as he entered, picking him out among other tall men by the
flash of the diamond stickpin on his cravat and another on
a long, thin finger. The man's hands looked like the tools
of a pickpocket. Always had. He was leaner and younger
than the men who stood in a half circle around him but
they were all of a piece. Pirates. Plunderers. Men not re
ceived in decent homes who had to bribe their way into
clubs. Coarse and vulgar men who were strangers to breed
ing and manners. This one, they said, came from better
stock, though Corbin never believed that. He was all shine
and gloss, but there was a stink to him like a dead mackerel
washed ashore in the moonlight.
The man saw Corbin. He made a show of taking a weary breath and raised his eyes toward an enormous painting of
prancing nudes that covered most of the wall at his side.
Next he turned to his companion and whispered mocking
words, and the companion grinned and sneered.
Both men
held cigars between bared teeth.
placing these and his cane upon the tobacco stand in passing. At the bar, to Corbin's right and opposite the paìnting,
a man with shoulder-length hair and wearing a Western-
style hat touched the arm of the man next to him. The other
man, an actor, Corbin knew, smiled his approval and
clapped his hands in anticipation. “Good show!” Corbin
heard him shout. Two dozen heads in the long, narrow
room turned toward Corbin. Some faces showed surprise
or shock, some showed excitement, even glee, and some,
like the man and his companions whom Corbin approached,
showed contempt. Their cigars puffed and glowed beneath
hooded eyes as he closed upon them. With no words spo
ken, Corbin planted his feet and struck. His left fist, the
jab, snaked straight at the hot tip of the taller man's cigar,
splaying it across his mouth and raining glowing ash upon
his chest. The man's head snapped back and his eyes
blinked cockeyed wide and his hat spun a half turn upon his head. Corbin heard a cheer from the bar. He jabbed
again, with a twist this time, mashing the man's lips before
they could spit free the tobacco that clung to them. Then
came the third blow—
Put your back into it, lad
—that
crunched into the thin man's rib cage and pumped a surge of bile to his throat. Corbin held back the final blow until his man could straighten. Straighten or run, Corbin cared
not which. But the man did neither. Doubled over, his face enflamed, he fell sideways and collapsed across the marble top of a small round table. He held on to its edges, sucking shallow gulps of air until he found one that his lungs could
retain. Then, with a cough that loosed a spray of swallowed
blood, he turned one eye up at Corbin. Corbin saw on that face, even more than pain, a humiliation that was all but
unendurable. He also saw evil. And he saw hatred.
”
I will ruin you,” the man rasped through thickening
lips. ”I will destroy you and then I will mark your whore's
face so she's not even fit for a cellar crib. I will have
you—’'
Corbin seized him by the hair before he could finish. He
tore the man's face from the table and forced his head back
until it was braced upon the lower frame of the huge canvas
of nudes. For a long moment, Corbin held the man there,
suspended. He wanted the man to look into his own eyes
and see a hatred greater than his own, and he wanted the
man to see the right fist that Corbin held cocked at his ear.
The thin man tried to snarl or curse at Corbin, but the sound
turned into the whelp of a frightened dog as he saw the fist
creeping slowly back and then uncoiling, smashing flat
against his nose. Blinded now, and shrieking, the man in
black felt his eyes being hammered shut by the chopping
blows that followed.
moaning mass slide to the floor. A tickle of hairs at the
back of his neck caused him to sidestep and whirl in an upright boxer's stance. He was too late. A cane whipped
downward, glancing off his temple and crashing against his collarbone. His left arm went numb. A second cane hooked
over his right arm as the cane of the first man rose up to
strike again. But it did not fall. It paused, quivering at the
top of its arc. Its owner, his face suddenly afraid, moved
his lips foolishly, first toward Corbin, then toward the man
in the shoulder-length hair whose hand was clamped pow
erfully over his wrist.
Now that, you see, sir,” said the man who'd been watching from the bar, “is a foul.” He placed his other
hand over the forearm that held the cane and, with a sudden
wrench, dislocated the shoulder of the man who had struck Corbin and sent him reeling, howling, across the semicon
scious form of his companion. The smaller man from the
bar, the actor, now stepped past the one in the Western hat
and, with his thumb and forefinger, seized the nose of the
one who'd hooked Corbin’s arm.
And that, sir, was another.” He tweaked the nose until
it bled, then underscored the point with a backhand slap
across the face.
“
That will do, gentlemen.” A large man, bigger and
more imposing than the others and dressed in formal attire,
entered the bar from what looked like a dining room. He
looked at Corbin with what seemed to be a mixture of ap
proval and rebuke.
”
A fair fight, Oscar,” said the long-haired man. ”A
thrashing well deserved.”
“
Be that as it may, Colonel, it cannot be permitted here.
Shall we call it a day?”
up a brandy, which he handed to Corbin, who was using
his teeth to wrap a napkin around his knuckles.
With my compliments, sir,” he said. “After this settles your blood, it might be well if Nat and I watch your back
until you are safely in a cab.”
Jonathan Corbin loosed his fingers from their grip of
Gwen's shag rug and drew the hot left hand farther back
from the fire. Eyes still closed, he felt his hand brush
against a soft bare calf that was almost equally warm. He
stroked it tenderly and murmured with pleasure at the touch
of her cheek against his and at the fragrance of her hair.
One eye opened just a little. Enough to notice, to his mild
surprise, that her hair seemed almost golden in the firelight.
Once more he felt himself begin to swell and stiffen. He raised his body slightly to ease the pressure of her weight.
Gwen felt the movement and understood the reason for
it. Easing herself off his body, she knelt at his side and
turned him, unresisting, onto his back. He was nearly nude,
uncovered except for the terry sleeves that now bound his
lower arms loosely to his sides. He smiled as he felt her cool hands tracing over his bare chest. His body quivered
at the touch of her hair, which he knew meant her lips
would soon follow. Slowly, so lightly, they caressed the skin of his chest and then began their exploration of his
body. Her fingers found the part that had stiffened and their
touch made it leap. Corbin shuddered as her lips worked
lower. His back arched in a spasm of anticipation and his
wrists strained against the robe that held them. A part of
him delighted in what she was about to do, yet another part could not believe that such a thing was happening. She was
touching him. Kissing him: Kissing him
there.
He felt the
brushing of her lips and the warm moist touch of her tongue
as they moved slowly along its underside. He felt the lips part. What was she doing? He felt the hot wetness of her
mouth as it closed over. “What... what are you doing to
me?”