Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “Mr. Lesko.” Dancer tapped a gold pen, which he'd been nervously fingering, against the side of his glass.

  As Lesko lowered his notebook to the table, he watched Dancer's eyes. He watched them fall to the page he'd been reading, the page with the dates. Then Lesko slowly peeled the pages forward to those covering the activities of the living. The relief he saw in Dancer's tight little face was unmistakable.

  ‘The subject,” he began reading, “was transferred last September from station WLAD-TV in Chicago to network headquarters in New York. Before that he'd been living for eight years in an apartment at 1500 North State Street. For at least two of those years he played house with a female street reporter from the same station. Her name is Gwendolyn Fiona Leamas. Gwen Leamas for short. English girl. She preceded the subject to New York by about six months. Her own transfer may or may not have affected Corbin's ‘decision to move east. I'm inclined to think it didn't because except for a short-term live-in at her place when he first got here and an occasional night out since then, the word is that they‘re. pretty much drifting apart.”

  “Why, then, did he come here? Any information on that?”

  “Bigger job.” Lesko shrugged. “Headquarters. It happens.”

  “No pattern of nonbusiness visits to New York? No evidence of sudden interest?”

  “Nope,” Lesko answered. But he would remember the intensity behind those questions. “The job opened up when the guy who had it before got sick. The Leamas girl recommended Corbin but he was probably in line for the spot anyway.”

  “The Leamas woman's address?”

  “One forty-five East Seventy-seventh Street. Second-floor apartment facing front. Corbin's there now, probably for the weekend.”

  “You said they'd drifted apart.”

  Lesko shrugged again. “They're on and off.”

  “Continue, please.” Dancer wet his lips. “I'm interested in Corbin's personal activities since he arrived.”

  Lesko told of Corbin's finding an expensive apartment in the East Sixties, putting down a large deposit, and then forfeiting it because he decided instead to buy some old dump in Greenwich.

  “The broker up there gave me some real estate bullshit about the place being a handyman's dream, but I could tell even she thought he was a little bit crazy. And Corbin, as far as I know, never nailed two boards together in his whole life. But there he is, happy as a pig in shit to spend every night and weekend up there cutting back trees, painting, and prowling through junk shops to make it look like it did a hundred years ago. You talk to the neighbors, they don't know whether he's a weirdo or a fag, no offense, so they try to pretend he isn't there.”

  “Conclusion?”

  ”I don't have one.

  “You see evidence of unstable behavior and you don't conclude instability?”

  Raymond Lesko sipped his beer. “What instability?” he asked. “The guy found something he likes doing. Other people up there spend all their time putzing around in sailboats or collecting fake ducks.”

  “But Corbin, you said, had no history of an interest in restoring old homes. Such a consuming hobby, to the extent of researching authentic paints and wallpapers, usually develops over time.”

  ”I said, as far as I know. It's possible he was into it before.”

  “But you don't think so.”

  “No, I don't.” Lesko didn't recall saying anything about Corbin researching wallpaper. Someone else must be watching the guy's progress on that house.

  “You did, however, mention a history of instability going back to his college years.”

  ”I didn't say that either. I said he had some counseling. One time.”

  ”A history of confusion then.”

  The ex-cop shrugged again. Confusion. It was as good a word as any for people who go to a shrink to help them sort out their worries. As for Corbin, the counseling episode in college could have been anything. Maybe the pressure of living up to his jock, war-hero father got to him. Maybe he got whacked out over some girl. On the other hand, maybe he didn't like snow in South Bend, either. Which, Raymond Lesko thought, brings us to this afternoon.

  “The guy doesn't like snow.”

  ”I beg your pardon?”

  “The subject, Jonathan Corbin, hates snow. If you're looking for emotional problems, there's at least one with handles on it. When it snows he won't even step out of his door if he can help it. I heard this a couple of weeks ago from a guy he works with. A lot of them hang out in the Warwick Bar after work and I made out like I knew Corbin from Chicago. I bought the guy a couple of drinks and he tells me that everyone likes Corbin just fine but they're starting to worry about the way he freaks out over snowflakes. If it snows even an inch, they don't see him for two days. Over a winter it adds up.”

  Dancer blinked, his expression still uncomprehending. Lesko was disappointed.

  “Anyway, when the radio said we might get snow today, I got a room at the Warwick where I could watch Corbin through his window. It turns out it was true. The guy goes off the wall and tries to hide from it. He'd still be there now if the Leamas girl didn't drag him home with her.”

  “Significance?”

  Lesko sighed inwardly but said nothing. Whatever the significance was, he'd hoped for a clue in Dancer's reaction. But Dancer was a blank. He was, Lesko felt sure, not pretending. It meant little to him. The message in Dancer's eyes changed slowly from incomprehension to a minor irritation, as if this latest intelligence was only one more sign of Corbin's troublesomeness.

  Dancer straightened and rapped his knuckles. “Is there more to your report, Mr. Lesko?”

  “That's it through today. Except I finally got some decent straight-on shots of Corbin's face through that window.” Lesko placed the roll of film on the table. Dancer snatched it eagerly and slipped it into his pocket.

  “Beginning tomorrow, I'd like you to concentrate on his actions in Connecticut. I want to know what he's doing there and why. If he remains in the city with Miss Leamas, as you seem to expect, you'll have an opportunity for a thorough search of his house. Look for photographs, notebooks, anything that provides evidence of his intentions.”

  “That's called breaking and entering, Mr. Dancer.”

  “It's called investigation. I rather imagine you've done this sort of thing before.”

  “It's also called idiocy, Mr. Dancer. You're asking me to leave tracks through two feet of virgin snow while I find a window to climb through.”

  ”A bonus, perhaps,” Dancer replied, drawing two brown envelopes from his inside pocket. “An additional five hundred dollars may help you rise to the challenge. Which brings us to the matter of your fee and expenses. Have you brought the accounting I require?”

  Raymond Lesko produced a single folded sheet, which listed his out-of-pocket expenses for the preceding two weeks plus an invoice for his next two weeks' fee in advance. Receipts were attached by paper clip. These Dancer examined individually and carefully before leaning his lips closer to the attache case.

  “Expenses,” he read aloud, “less a five-hundred-dollar travel advance, total four hundred eighty dollars and seventy-four cents which I will round off to four hundred eighty. These include a hotel room which Mr. Lesko will either vacate in the morning or retain at his own expense. Other receipted items include meals in amounts that are borderline reasonable, plus the rental of a telescopic camera lens. Unreceipted items include phone calls and cab fares. We also have an invoice for the agreed-upon fee of three hundred dollars per day in advance for fourteen days. The accounting is satisfactory.”

  Dancer did not keep the receipts. He handed the sheet back to Lesko and next withdrew several bills from the first of his two envelopes. He slid the envelope and its remaining contents across the table to the ex-cop.

  “There's forty-seven hundred dollars, Mr. Lesko. Count it if you wish, but please do so under the table. You've been overpaid by almost twenty dollars, which I intend to recover at a later meeting.”

 
; “Would you like to hold my watch?” Lesko asked bioodlessly.

  Dancer dismissed the suggestion, Lesko's sarcasm being lost on him, and placed his hand over the second envelope. “This envelope, Mr. Lesko, contains the sum of fifteen thousand dollars in cash.” He paused and watched with satisfaction as the bigger man's lips parted.

  “Go on, Mr. Dancer.”

  ”I expect to employ you for the next two weeks at the most. Your maximum income potential from this assignment is the amount of money I've just handed you. Aside, that is, from the contents of this envelope.”

  “Yes?”

  “There is also the prospect of the five-hundred-dollar bonus I've already mentioned. However, you might possibly earn a much more substantial bonus if you were to bring this investigation to some dramatic conclusion.”

  “Get to the point, Mr. Dancer,” Lesko said, although he fully realized that his client had no intention of being more specific. Not while that little tape recorder was spinning in his briefcase. “How dramatic would that be?”

  “I'm sure I have no idea, Mr. Lesko. Something irrevocable, I'd imagine. Would you care to hold on to this envelope while you reflect upon the matter?”

  “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

  Gwen Leamas placed her last birch log on the glowing 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.

  Jonathan seemed at peace for the moment. Her prescription 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.

  He stirred as her fingers brushed at the hair on his neck and she felt his left hand creeping under her cotton nightdress 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 helpless prisoner and you're about to vent all your kinky passions 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 radiating heat.

  “Gwen,” he whispered.

  “Ummm?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shhh!”

  Neither spoke for several minutes, lying warm and still, 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 knuckles 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 damage 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, McCloskey.' 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.”

  Chin in. Yes. Corbin remembered. He'd spotted his man 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 received in decent homes who had to bribe their way into clubs. Coarse and vulgar men who were strangers to breeding 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.

  Corbin stripped away his hat and ulster as he walked, 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 spoken, 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—’'