Time Out of Mind (63 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
this Carling affair. They'd have him in the laughing stock.
A few would start getting bold ideas. They'd start trotting
a little closer to him like one of those coyote-dogs Teddy
wrote about in
The Hunting Trail
who amble alongside a
sick buffalo for a while, taking its measure and then testing it with a nip at its hindquarters to see whether it could run
and did it have a fighting heart.
The Hunting Trail?
Don't stop. Don't ask. It's Teddy's book. It came out the
year it snowed and you know that so don't worry about
how. And there was a party at Delmonico's to celebrate its publication and you should have gone but you didn't be
cause you knew he would have heard these whispers about
your “soiled dove” and you didn't know what you'd say
to this good and moral man if he asked you outright about Margaret and God forbid that he, not knowing the depth of
your feelings for her, would characterize her with words that could not be forgiven.
Have him read the inscription.
yond the smoked glass of Tilden's office door.
Have him read it aloud.
friend, Tilden,' but let him know that it is a singularly in
sincere sentiment motivated solely by past affections and
that I can no longer regard him as such because of his shocking abandonment of me.”
The door opened following a timid knock. Tilden's head
clerk, a Mr. Levi Scoggins, stepped through it bearing a
volume held open in his hands.
“
Sir, I'm afraid it is
...I
mean, I am to tell you ...”
“
It's all right, Mr. Scoggins.” Tilden smiled. ”I heard.”
This is terribly embarrassing, sir. I had no notion that
he'd begin carrying on so.”
from Levi Scoggins.
Ask Mr. Roosevelt, please, if I dare ask him into my
office without first calling the riot police to stand by.”
“
Lord, where have you been?” Sturdevant heard Cora
Starling's agitated voice through the pay telephone at the
Greenwich Library. “You said you'd call in regular.”
Harry Sturdevant checked his watch. It was barely past
noon, not as if he'd been out all night. “Sorry,” he said.
”I lost track of the hour. I'm doing some research in the
library up here.”
Well listen, Dr. S, I don't think the three of you is all
there is up there. I think you been followed.”
Sturdevant chewed his lip. “Have there been more mys
tery phone calls?”
“
It's not the calls now. It's people. There's a man,
maybe two of them, who followed you when you drove off
out of here.”
“
You're certain, Cora?”
”
I can just tell you how it looked. You remember you
went by a beat-up car double-parked across the street?
Well, there was this white man in it and he was blockin'
in another white man in a blue car. I wasn't watching them
real close but all of a sudden the double-parked man starts
screamin' at the other like a maniac, and the man in the
blue car starts handin' stuff through his window like he
was bein' robbed and one of the first things he hands
through looked to me like a sawed-off shotgun. I been half
out of my mind not knowin' whether to call the police.”
“
It's just as well you didn't, Cora.” It's also possible
you've been watching too much television. “You said you
thought we were followed?”
“
The first man, the double-parked one, he took right off after you went by. The second man, he messed around under his dashboard for maybe five minutes, but then he took
off too, lookin' real mad.”
“
That one couldn't very well have followed us, Cora.
What did the first one look like?”
“‘
You know some of them old football players who come
over here, they're not fat exactly but they have to go side
ways through a door? The first one was like that. And mean
lookin'. ”
“
Thank you, Cora. I'll keep an eye open.” But Sturde-vant had an idea he'd already met the man with the mean
face.
“
When are you coming back, Dr. S?”
I imagine I'll have dinner here with Gwen and Jonathan
and then drive home after that. I'll call you if there's a change.”
“
You call me change or no, Dr. S,” Cora Starling in
sisted. ”I don't have a real good feelin' about today. Is Mr.
Corbin still getting 'his stirrin's?”
”
I think so, yes.”
“
Well, when he gets them, you listen. Don't go thinkin'
what I said was just granny talk.”
”
I won't, Cora.”
I promise you.
knew so much about Greenwich. The man he said would
make a good detective. The man who was probably going through his notebook while he was away from the viewing
machine.
As he walked toward his car, Sturdevant carefully noted the other automobiles parked both in the library lot and on the nearby streets. He saw nothing that resembled the double-parked car he recalled from that morning. He did notice, however, that the morning's brightness had gone. A dark gray quilt of clouds had been drawn over Greenwich; only a narrow band of blue remained far to the east. Stur
devant smelled snow in the air.
Lesko did not have a good feeling about entering that
house. Not alone. All the time he was a New York gold
shield he always had a back-up. He'd never even been in
a house like this except for once when this Wall Street big
shot who was a closet fag killed a male prostitute who was putting the arm on him. And Lesko had blown that one, he
knew. Big shot, big house, a shitload of money, and he
hangs around with senators. You get intimidated. You get
polite. And by the time you tell yourself you got to lean
on the guy, he's got six lawyers around him. The papers
say rich guys get away with murder because they can hire
all those lawyers. That's not why. It's polite cops. How can
you expect a cop whose idea of luxury is a rinkside ticket
to the Islanders games and sneaking in a six-pack of imported beer to treat a guy whose house looks like an art
museum the same as he'd treat some pimp who sliced up
one of his whores. Polite cops, polite assistant district at
torneys. Cops shouldn't have to come to houses like this. Crimes in houses like this are for Nick and Nora Charles.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
it with his ring, motioning impatiently toward the front
door. He relaxed a bit. Politeness wasn't going to be a
problem with Dancer.
We don't have all day, Mr. Lesko.” Dancer had opened
one of the white double doors and stood waiting. Lesko,
with Tom Burke's trench coat draped over one arm,
climbed the portico steps and entered.
“
You can leave your coat on that chair”—Dancer
pointed—“and any weapons you're carrying as well.”
“
Behave yourself, Dancer.” Lesko looked past him.
“Where's your boss?”
“
Leave your weapon or get out.” Dancer folded his
arms and stepped into Lesko's path.
leaped back, sputtering. An open right hand raised to shoulder height and for a moment Lesko thought he was actually
going to get slapped.
For heaven's sake,” came the woman's voice, “bring that man in here.”
I'll keep the coat.” Lesko winked. “Thanks anyway.”
He smoothed it over his left hand and over the Beretta
model 92 he held in its folds. Lesko stepped past toward the sound of the voice.
Some sherry, Mr. Lesko?” She was seated behind a
desk, her hands in her lap. Dancer followed and remained
standing to one side, his arms folded.
“
Nothing for me, thanks.”
I'd offer you some coffee but I'm afraid there's no one
here to serve it.”
us are alone in this big house?”
She read his eyes. “My brother is here but he's quite
indisposed. He is asleep in another part of the house. There
will be no servants until late afternoon.”
Not bad, Lesko thought. She's quick. If I knew Dancer
was here, I knew who he came with. Lesko looked past
her, down the hill toward the gate and then at the area
surrounding the window for some evidence of a switch that might have opened it. There was nothing. The
question
be
came, If he was standing down at the gate looking up at
the old dame and Dancer standing in this window looking
back at him, who opened the gate?
You're full of shit, lady.” Lesko showed the Beretta.
Politeness. Politeness can kill you.
“
But
where,”
Roosevelt bellowed, “was Tilden?”
of Tilden's desk. Tilden could only sit in helpless silence.
Teddy, he fully realized, was intent upon a monologue per
formance. To offer an excuse or apology before its cres
cendo was reached would verge on rudeness.
“
There I was”—he pointed stiff-armed in the general direction of Delmonico's—“dutifully ensconced behind a
great mound of books—would that I might
sell
as many as were given away that evening—enduring the literary pre
tensions of the following.” An index finger shot up, trembling. “First there was the Tammany crowd, for whom
cuspidors were invented and who to a man have not
cracked a book since
McGuffey's Reader,
if then, and certainly not the Constitution of the United States, telling me
how breathlessly eager they are to devour my book, and
one of whom, God as my witness, actually saying that he's 'hoid of dis
Hunting Trail`
and thinks his wife has a cousin
who lives there.” A second finger joined the other. “Next
we have the fur-draped dowagers who are stunned to learn
that animals actually suffer death in the process of making
a coat and that they do not, like New York's poor, merely
pawn their pelts every spring.” A third finger snapped into
place. “Next we have my editor, a worthy who without consulting the author changed ‘leg of venison to limb of
venison, so as not to offend the sensibilities of refined lady
venison, and who hovered at my elbow suggesting appro
priate flyleaf sentiments until I stabbed him in the hand with
my pen. Which, of course, was entirely Tilden Beckwith's
fault.”
Roosevelt paused but Tilden chose not to rise to the bait.
He would only hear that he, not the editor, should have
been at Teddy's side and that he, by his absence, was re
sponsible for the editor's impalement.