Corbin nodded. ”I don't feel like I know much about him. Or that he was involved in the rest of it.”
“You cover George up with some regret,” Sturdevant continued, “and press on until you see the woman. At this point she tries to reach a building on the north side of the street. Today, with Gwen, I gather you spotted a hotel and said you thought it was the building. You called it the Spanish Flats?”
“Yes.”
“Were you looking at the Navarro Hotel?”
”I didn't notice a sign.”
“It was probably the Navarro. Once there was a huge complex of apartments called the Navarro Flats, also known as the Spanish Flats, running from Central Park South to Fifty-eighth Street and from Seventh Avenue halfway down toward Sixth. The Navarro Hotel is much more recent. It simply kept the name. In any case, you frustrate the woman's attempt to reach this address and you fling her hat toward one of its entrances, a gesture which I assume has significance. Lord and Taylor did have a Broadway store, by the way, I think at Twenty-third Street.”
“The woman stumbled on, passing under the northern terminus of the Sixth Avenue Elevated, which you've already identified. It says here you were struck by the irony of this woman seeking sanctuary in the elevated because she'd somehow used it to betray you and some other ‘good people.’ Any further light on that?”
Corbin shook his head.
“Failing to find help there, and failing to attract the attention of two policemen, she pushed on toward Fifth Avenue until she reached a high iron fence which opened onto a very large home with a huge porte cochere. That would have been the home of Cornelius Vanderbilt the second, which was right across the street, where Bergdorf's is now. Cornelius, by the way, was the same Vanderbilt who built the Breakers in Newport. The woman turned away from the possible sanctuary of the Vanderbilt house, which suggests to me that she had considerable social ambition, which she was loath to damage by turning up in a state of dishabille, blizzard or no. Your notes also mention that she had blood on her mouth. It turned out to be a fatal vanity. She turned and ran across the street to a construction site, which sounds like it might have been this hotel. Is that correct, Jonathan?”
“Maybe. It doesn't seem right, though.”
“It wasn't. This Plaza Hotel was erected in 1909. There was another, shorter-lived Plaza Hotel on this site before that. On our way out I'll ask when that one was built. I suspect, however, that the answer will be 1888. Everything else seems to fit the massive blizzard that hit the northeast during mid-March of that year. Including the great tangle of wires which you say were down all over the street. After that experience, the city quickly caused them all to be laid underground.
Having settled on a probable date, and having at least partially identified two of that storm's fatalities, we should have no trouble researching their full names and therefore your own. Although it may be a bit more difficult, we can probably also find out whether a man named Ansel Carling ever lived at the Navarro Flats. You pummeled him a day or so later, I understand.”
“You keep saying I did it. I'm not entirely comfortable with that. It wasn't me.”
“Bear with me. You thrashed this man in the bar of the Hoffman House?”
“Yes.”
“Where is the Hoffman House?”
”I don't know. Downtown someplace.”
“Guess, Jonathan. Where do you think it is?”
“Near Madison Square Garden. Wait. That can't be.”
“Yes, it can. It was off Madison Square. Twenty-sixth Street and Broadway. Near the original Madison Square Garden.”
Corbin moved his head hopelessly.
“You're resisting, Jonathan.” Sturdevant lowered the notebook. ”I want you to try to see through this man's eyes.”
“I'll try.”
“Describe the Hoffman House bar.”
”I... I can't. I only had that one dream last night.”
“Then it's fresh in your mind,” Sturdevant insisted. ''Gwen's notes mention a large painting with prancing nudes.”
“And a cigar stand,” Gwen added. “You put your coat and cane on the cigar stand as you approached Carling. And there were two other men you knew at the bar. One had long hair.”
“Actors,” Corbin whispered.
“Who?”
“The two at the bar. One was with a Wild West show. I almost want to say it was Buffalo Bill.”
“It could well have been Colonel Cody.” Sturdevant scribbled a few more notes of his own.
“The other one was a stage actor. A smaller man. There's something about the Osborne with him too. Could he have lived there?”
“You tell me. Do you have a name?”
“No. Sometimes I almost do, but no.”
“Describe him.”
“Dark red hair. Not very big. Slender.”
“What about facial hair?”
Corbin closed his eyes for a moment. ”I don't think he had any. Now that you ask, it seems that he was the only one in the room without a beard or mustache.”
“That's very good, Jonathan. A stage actor would normally be clean shaven. Give me a name.”
”I can't.”
“The fight was finally ended by a manager or maître d'hôtel named Oscar. What is his last name?”
“Just Oscar. He was just called Oscar.”
“It was not at all common, Jonathan, to address a man by his first name in 1888, no matter what his station.”
“Oscar of the Waldorf,” Corbin blurted. “Later they called him Oscar of the Waldorf. The Waldorf-Astoria hired him away.”
Sturdevant arched one eyebrow. “You remember that or did you read it?”
”I remember seeing him there. He was older but not old.”
Sturdevant made more notes. He seemed troubled by the mention of the Waldorf. “Back to the Hoffman House,” he said. “Was the cigar stand on the right or left as you entered?”
“Left.”
“The bar?”
“On the right, further on.”
“And the nude painting?”
“Left.”
“Describe the bar.”
”I don't know. A bar. Carved wood. Brass rail. The top wasn't wood. Maybe marble. What good is this?”
“Trust me. Was there a mirror behind the bar?”
“No.”
”A bar without a mirror?”
“There was a painting, I think.”
“Are you remembering or are you seeing? Try to see it.”
“The painting's the same—wait a minute. It's a mirror. But it's high. You look up and you see those big nudes on the wall behind you.”
“Excellent.” Sturdevant leaned closer. “Now, Jonathan, I want you to hold it right there. Put both palms flat on the bar. What do you feel?”
”I told you. Marble.”
“Keep your hands there but move them sideways until they slide off either end.”
”I can't.”
“Why can't you?”
“There's something big at each corner. A big lamp. With fur. A lamp with a stuffed animal holding on to it.”
“What kind of animal?”
”I don't know. A dog?”
“Could it be a bear?”
“Yes. A small bear.”
“What is the actor's name?”
”I don't...” The words faded on Corbin's lips.
Gwen reached for his arm. “Are you all right, Jonathan?”
“Yes.”
“Jonathan? You are Jonathan, aren't you?”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm okay.”
“Did something just happen? Did you get his name?’'
“Ella.”
“Who's Ella?”
“Her. The woman in the snow. Her name is Ella.”
“For Pete's sake, where did that come from?”
“The actor. Ella doesn't like him. He's been divorced. More than once. Ella doesn't think the Osborne should have let him in. But she doesn't like the Osborne either. Too far from
everything. Too close to the Negroes. I think I'd like a drink now.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Raymond Lesko whispered, adjusting the lens of his Nikon. Tilden Beckwith I. No middle name.
No initial. He took several close-ups of the face, then one each of Huntington Beckwith and Tilden II.
Wait a second, he thought. Where does Corbin’s twin get off calling himself Tilden the first? Only kings and popes do that, mostly after they're dead. This guy doesn't look like the kind of jerk who'd king himself. He probably didn't. The brass plate came later. Put there by someone who wanted to make a point of the relationship. Which couldn't have been easy. Because Tilden the second who got on the elevator before doesn't look a goddamned bit like Tilden the first. Old Huntington comes a touch closer but still no cigar. And what tiny resemblance there is has a funny look to it, like—Lesko stepped back. That was it. That's what looked odd to him before. The artist had painted a portrait, and then sometime later it was touched up. Cheekbones were softened and other features were subtly altered in order to give Huntington’s face at least some hint of a family resemblance to the guy who looks like Corbin. Jonathan T Corbin. No period. What does the T stand for, Corbin? Do you even know? Ask me, one will get you five it stands for Tilden.
The last portrait of the series, working backward, was that of Stanton Orestes Beckwith. Founder. First president of Beckwith & Company. There, thought Lesko, was that resemblance again. A little harder to see because of this guy's big muttonchop whiskers and a fleshier face but it was there. A lot more, at least, than with those two characters on the end. Also a middle name, the last Beckwith to use one. What did this family have against middle names all of a sudden?
A sudden flash of memory hammered that thought from his mind. Lesko quickly sidestepped back to the portrait of Tilden I and touched his finger to the brass plate—1944 again. Corbin’s twin is born in 1860 and dies in 1944. Same year as half the Corbins in Chicago. What'll you bet, he asked, it was the same month, give or take? And then, also 1944, old snake-eyes Huntington Beckwith moves into the corner office.
Lesko backed away and stared up into the cadaverous face of Huntington Beckwith. It was you, you old bastard. Wasn't it? You and your jerk son over here. You knocked them all off. But you missed the one that was still in the oven.
Far to his right, Lesko heard the swish of the hotel's revolving doors. He would have paid no attention except that, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a pair of hotel employees snap to attention as they had when the old man entered. Once again, the hairs pricked at the back of his neck. He heard rapid footsteps brushing across the carpet behind him, but was careful to keep his face to the wall until they'd passed. Lesko turned. He watched as a small man, also in a black coat, strode distractedly into the elevator used twenty minutes earlier by Tilden the second. If Lesko had been less tired, less preoccupied with the faces on the wall, he might have realized that the man would stop and abruptly turn on entering the elevator. But more than tired, Lesko was stunned. There was no question in his mind that a massacre of some proportion had occurred in March of 1944. He had not, he was sure, found the last of the bodies, either. You don't do a job like that without finding the need to tidy up a little around the edges as well. It was as that thought percolated in Lesko's mind that the small man spun around, snapped his fingers at the elevator operator, and waited impatiently for the doors to slide shut. He stiffened as they did. Because for a full second the eyes of Mr. Dancer locked onto those of Raymond Lesko.
“Let me finish my summary,” Harry Sturdevant suggested, “and if you don't mind, I'd like us to forgo anything alcoholic at least until we've had some dinner.” Sturdevant was concerned about the propranolol still in Corbin's system. Although he saw no real danger to Corbin's health, the combination could easily befog what were apparently some very tenuous perceptions.
“Jonathan had a big brunch,” Gwen Leamas reminded him.
“As a matter of fact, I'll get to that. First, however, let us get back to Tilden and Ella, assuming those names are correct. In mid-March of 1888, also an assumption, Tilden caused Ella's death in an act that was apparently less than premeditated. Ella, it seems, had a lover who was the father of her child. She tried to get to him at the Navarro and died trying. Tilden seems to have known that they were lovers—”
Corbin shook his head. ”I think he had just figured it out.”
“When? That very evening?”
“Margaret—” Corbin stopped himself and took a long breath. ”I don't know whether I'm making this up or not.”
“Tell me anyway, Jonathan.”
”I think he had no idea how long a woman carries a baby.”
“Many Victorian men and women had no idea of such things. There were one or two books on the subject, but their authors were routinely arrested for peddling smut. You mentioned Margaret. How did she come into it?”
”I think she tried to tell him. As gently as she could, she tried to drop hints that he was away, I don't know where, when the baby would have to have been conceived. I think he finally caught on and confronted Ella and that's when she told him.” Corbin paused again. It struck Sturdevant that he was becoming visibly angry.
“About Ansel Carling?”
“There was more than that. I don't know exactly. Some treachery involving his business and also involving Jay Gould.”
“Jay Gould was certainly no stranger to business treachery. But let's leave that for the moment and stick to the sequence of events. After you took your satisfaction from Ansel Carling at the Hoffman House, and after he threatened Margaret, do I gather that you became concerned for her safety and decided to move her out of harm's way?”
“And to have his baby,” Gwen added.
“Which baby?” Sturdevant asked. “You mean another one?”
“He wanted a son of his own,” she answered. “He would set Margaret up in Greenwich and give her a whole new identity if she'd bear him a child.”
“How the devil would you know that? Is that all these scribblings about the house in Greenwich and teaching boxing and baseball?”
Gwen nodded. “Jonathan told me. I tried to be Margaret as long as I could.”
“To Jonathan's Tilden.”
“Yes.”
“Jonathan,” he asked, “how much of this conversation do you remember?”
'' Almost none of it. ”
“Do you or don't you recall asking Margaret to have your child?”
“No,” he answered softly. “But I know I did.”
“‘Let me get this straight. When you're in a dream state, and you replay a recurring scene such as your pursuit of the woman Ella or apparently your brawl at the Hoffman House, you can recall it vividly afterward.”
Corbin nodded. “Even during it. I mean, when it's happening, I still feel like I'm mostly still me.”
“Exactly.” Sturdevant leaned forward. “But when this Tilden person comes out during your waking moments and fully takes over your consciousness, you're saying that you have no recollection of that.”
”I remember it for a few seconds. Then it breaks up and fades.”
“As with an ordinary dream upon waking.”
”I guess. Yes. Except that I've had Gwen to tell me what happened.”
“Over the past twenty-four hours, according to Gwen, this takeover has been complete on several occasions and partial on several others. Is that correct?”
“Partial?” Corbin glanced questioningly at Gwen. ”I don't think so.”
“As an example, Gwen mentioned the large breakfast you had this morning and the unusual, for you, dishes you tried to order.”
Corbin shook his head blankly.
“You've never had kippers before,” Gwen reminded him. “When I've ordered them you've said 'Yuck' and told me they looked like fish mummies. And you've never had much more than coffee and toast for breakfast.”
”I guess,” Corbin answered. ”I don't see how this matters. I was hungry. I wanted some c
orned beef hash and eggs.”
”A large breakfast,” Sturdevant explained, “was characteristic of a nineteenth-century man. Neither the large breakfast nor the initial choice of menu was at all characteristic of Jonathan Corbin. The same may be said of your desire for a bumper of mulled wine the night before or your appreciation of the spires of Saint Patrick's which, incidentally, were not completed until after 1888. The obvious suggestion is that this Tilden's tastes and therefore his consciousness are subtly intruding upon your own more often than you know. The odds are that it's happened a great many times when Gwen wasn't there to record it.”
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