Time Out of Mind (23 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
Then all those names that kept popping into his head.”
names. “Tony Pastor's, Tammany Hall, a pugilist named
John Flood, Ansel Carling, Jay Gould, the Hoffman
House—”
“
Which is where he had that brawl.”
''A woman, his wife, with a name that sounds like Emma,
a man named Johnson who electrifies houses, the Spanish
Flats, for heaven's sake, another frozen corpse named
George, an illegitimate child, two of them, and a man named
Tilden? Jonathan thinks his ghost's name is Tilden?”
“
You look like that rings a bell.”
Almost all of it does, but
Tilden.”
Sturdevant chewed
on the name, a faraway look passing over his eyes. He
shook it off. “It'll come to me.”
Gwen reached to turn a page. “We've
also narrowed
down the time when all this must have happened. It had to
be between—”
Sturdevant held up a hand.
“
Gwen, dear,” he asked slowly, “do you think there
could be any chance at all that Jonathan researched all this?
That it's all an elaborate piece of acting?”
“
What could he possibly have to gain?”
I don't know. For some reason the thought of a very
considerable gain passed through my mind. Although I
can't think why he'd bother to try to fool me. And I can't
imagine that he could fool you.”
Jonathan couldn't fool anybody,” Gwen answered.
“There's no artifice to him at all. Playing bridge with him
as your partner is maddening because his face gives away his hand all the time. I've also never known him to tell a
deliberate lie.”
“
And yet…”
“
What?”
“
Doesn't it strike you as odd that so much has happened,
so much has been revealed to him, and to you, in less than a single day's time? The answer to that question might be
all the various stimuli to which you exposed him. But con
sidering that you've told me what an emotional wreck he's
been these past months and especially yesterday afternoon,
don't you find it striking that he's taking all these revela
tions and even possessions with such equanimity?”
“
He's doped to the gills.”
”
I beg your pardon.”
”
I put two of those magic trancs you gave me into his
coffee this morning.”
“
Correction.” Sturdevant frowned. “If you're referring
to the propranolol capsules, I did not
give
them to you. I
prescribed
them for you with full knowledge of your med
ical history. Further, propranolol is not a tranquilizer. It is
a medication used in treating cardiac conditions which has
also been found useful in relieving the discomforts of stage
fright without affecting performance. I prescribed them for
you to help you overcome your nervousness during that
series of presentations in London last fall, not to dispense
willy-nilly to your friends.”
“
If you don't stop scowling, I'm going to climb onto
your lap.”
“
Listen, you nasty child—”
”
0h, Uncle Harry”—Gwen reached for his hand—
“they did help him. If only you'd seen the difference be
tween Jonathan yesterday and Jonathan today. I don't think
he'd have lasted half an hour without them. And look at all we've learned.”
“
At considerable risk to his health.”
”
I did dilute them in coffee,” she offered innocently.
“
That, Gwen dear, is the single least intelligent thing
I've ever heard you say. How many capsules do you have
left?”
·
“
You gave me six. I only used one myself, two for Jon
athan; that leaves three.”
”
I would like all three returned in the morning.”
”
I love you, Uncle Harry.”
“
Yes, but did you hear me?”
“
Three capsules in the morning. Scout's honor.”
“
Then I love you too, but perhaps not as much as that
young man fidgeting over there behind the pastry cart.”
“
I’ll
call him back.”
“
No, dear. Go get him. While you're gone I'll look over
these notes of yours.”
Raymond Lesko cursed himself as he bulled his way back
toward the exit leading to Fifty-eighth Street. Sixty seconds,
he thought bitterly. Sixty seconds he'd let his attention get
sloppy and the old guy was gone.
It was almost dark outside. Black Homburg, he knew, would be much tougher to spot and even harder to tail. As
he reached the sidewalk, Lesko had about made up his mind
to forget about looking for him and get as quickly as he could up to that silver car, probably a Mercedes, the old
man left up on Lexington Avenue that morning. Worse
came to worst, at least he'd have the license number. Then,
in a couple of hours, one way or another, Lesko would
know who he was.
was less than a hundred yards away, hunched over, and mov
ing in the direction of Bergdorf's and Fifth Avenue. Thank
God for the homburg, Lesko thought, whose outline showed
clearly in the twilight glow of the street lamps. Staggering or
not, the old man was moving fast, for him anyway. Lesko
had a sense that retrieving the Mercedes was not the biggest
thing on his mind. The guy ignored a couple of taxis he could
have grabbed and anyway, from the tilt of his shoulders,
Lesko had an idea he was heading south. The old man made
his way across Fifth Avenue and continued down Fifty-
eighth Street to Madison where, sure enough, he turned south for several more blocks. Approaching Fifty-third
Street, he crossed Madison Avenue without even looking up, like a man on automatic pilot or guided by a homing instinct.
There was another hotel on the far corner. The Beckwith Re
gency. Lesko saw the old man's pace quicken further as he neared the gleaming green enamel and brass of its front en
trance. The doorman snapped to attention on seeing him ap
proach and threw a salute, which the old man did not
acknowledge. Lesko, ignored by the same doorman, fol
lowed him through the revolving doors.
seemed to be at attention, each person following the old
man's progress with smiles at the ready in case they should happen to catch his eye. Whoever the hell he was, thought
Lesko, there won't be any shortage of people to ask. The
man in the black homburg pressed on, still not looking up, and did not stop until a pair of elevator doors were closed
behind him by an erect and smartly uniformed operator.
did he know so far? He knew that the Corbin guy was hung
up on something that had to have happened long before he
was born. Probably even before the black homburg was born, judging by the books Corbin bought. Whatever it was,
Lesko knew where it happened, or at least where Corbin
and the English dame thought it happened. Both Corbin and
the old guy were almost equally spooked by the Osborne
and by a whole two-block stretch of Fifty-eighth Street. The money Dancer was paying him, including the fifteen-grand
killing money, started out almost for sure in that old man's
pocket, although given those two calls Dancer made, the old man wasn't the only horse in this race. And speaking
of new entries, now we have the Olympics guy, Sturdevant,
who has a few bucks of his own and probably a lot of clout and who was very likely recognized by Black Homburg.
Finally, any time he wanted to, Lesko knew he could ask
the name of the scared, skinny old man with the fat checkbook who walked through here like he owned the place. A
good day.
Also a hungry day. He hadn't eaten, he realized, since
munching a package of oatmeal cookies from that Te-Amo
cigar store this morning. You'd think thirty years as a de
tective would teach you to carry a peanut butter sandwich
on a surveillance. And maybe a pair of dry socks. And
maybe a goddamned tube of Ben-Gay. This is not a body
that's built for long hikes. Lesko picked out a lobby chair
where he could rest a while and make some notes, and leaf
through
New York Then and Now,
the picture book he'd
picked up at Barnes & Noble's, for what it was worth, and
then reward himself with a nice expensive dinner on the
fag, Dancer. He sat back, unwrapped his first cigar of the
day, a mild but reeking panatela, and soon felt the tightness
draining from his shoulder muscles as he gazed contempla
tively into a haze of exhaled smoke.
As the small cloud thinned and dissipated, he idly no
ticed a row of gilt-framed portraits on the far wall across
the lobby. Founder pictures, he knew. Boardroom pictures.
There were collections just like this one in half the city's
banks, corporate headquarters, and any other old-line busi
nesses that had a real person's name on the door. They always looked the same. The portrait on the left, the first
in the series, would usually be a guy with a beard, white
hair, and a stiff collar. And a glare. They always glared. It was like they knew they were going to get hung up in the
next president's office or in the boardroom and they wanted
that look to be a permanent no to any stupid decision. Next
in line would be the guy's son, who would be pushing sixty before the guy who started the place finally keeled over and
made room. This second guy would look a little smug, as in, Now that we got rid of that old fart at last we're going to do some modernizing and growing around here.
Either the second guy always fucked everything up or else
his kids turned out to be drunks or jerks who'd be out on
the street if their old man didn't send them money to stay
the hell away. The third-picture guy—they were always all
guys—would have a Depression-era look about him. Like
Herbert Hoover. A high collar and clean shaven. That guy
would try to look kind and a little sad so you’d know
was really sorry about having to fire
half the employees
and put the rest on half salary. He would have told them
how he cut his own salary, too, and you couldn't convince
him that taking home half of a hundred grand a year and a
whole bunch of perks was not the same as taking home half
of thirty bucks a week to feed four kids.
Then would come the picture of the first one to wear a
modern suit. The portrait would have a light background
and brighter colors like they started using in the early forties. He'd be the first one who got painted smiling, partly
because it was the war and everyone was working, and
because that was when all the big executives tried to get
photographed with their sleeves rolled up and their ads kept
explaining how buying their products would help kill lots
of Japs. But at least he was smiling. Not like the one over
there. Exceptions prove the rule. The last guy over on the
wall looks like he had a sharp stick up his ass—Lesko
lurched to his feet.