“Gwen, dear. What is it?”
“This Huntington Beckwith. He's dead, isn't he?”
“For at least twenty years, I think. Why do you ask?”
“We were being followed today. Jonathan knew it too.”
“By whom?” Sturdevant frowned. “Did you see him?”
“There was a man in a black hat and coat. I think I might have seen him several times during the afternoon without it really registering. Then back on Fifty-eighth Street Jonathan suddenly turned, quite furious, as if he knew this man was there. That's when I knew it as well. But we didn't see anybody.”
“Who did Jonathan think it was? Did he say?”
“No.” Another long pause, her lips moving tentatively. “There is this man, who's always been after Jonathan, in his mind.”
“Gwen”—Harry Sturdevant looked directly into his niece's eyes—“who do you think was following you?”
”I know I'm wrong.”
“Who, Gwen?”
”I think ... I feel that it was Huntington Beckwith.”
“Even though you know he's dead.”
“His ghost, then.”
“Or his hatred.”
It was useless, Lesko knew, to go to bed like normal. For one thing, he had heartburn. He wasn't sure whether it was from the duck sauce he poured all over his ribs or from listening to the jarring ring of the phone while he was trying to eat his Chinese and watch the Islanders blow three power plays in a row all at the same time. Eighteen rings he counted last time. Since then it's been quiet. Too quiet. Like they say in the war movies just before the Japs charge but you already know they've been creeping up in the dark through the jungle. Lesko swallowed the last chalky quarter inch from a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, then followed it with
a single Tums he found in a raincoat pocket.
How long has it been since the phone stopped? Lesko looked at his watch. A little over an hour. But now what? Would Dancer really say the hell with it and wait until morning? No, he won't. Too uptight. His choices are going to be to come over or to send someone else. If he comes over it'll be to try to make a deal that will get him the notebook before Lesko can stash it and to buy himself enough time to cover his tracks one way or the other. The best way to do that is to have no more Lesko because Dancer has got to figure old Raymond sees an annuity in here someplace. Which means he's got to send somebody over anyway so he might as well skip the first step. At least that's the way to bet. But if that happens, and Lesko is just sitting here waiting for them and if someone ends up getting shot, even assuming it's them, he's still going to have the cops and the reporters crawling all over him for the next few days. Maybe it's better I wait down in the street, Lesko decided. Maybe it's better I go sit in Mr. Makowski's car which he leaves unlocked so the junkies can see there's nothing inside worth smashing a window for.
It took Lesko thirty minutes to reach the street. The first five were gun-in-hand as he checked the stairway in the hall outside before going back and locking his door. Next he slowly climbed four flights to his roof, where he relaxed on seeing no fresh footprints in the snow. From the roof's edge he spent another ten minutes adjusting his eyes to the darkness and surveying the street below. Checking cars was easy, since only two on the entire block had clear windshields. The one alley most suitable for a potential shooter to watch and wait in was directly across the street and it was clean. Up toward Queens Boulevard, Lesko saw a single pedestrian come into view on the far sidewalk—a big man, heavy set like himself. That looks like what's-his-name, he thought, the bus driver who lives down next to Mrs. Hannigan. But in the dark he could have been Lesko to anyone down there who was looking for Lesko. The ex-cop held his service revolver in both hands and with it tracked the bus driver's progress down the street. No one, nothing, stirred. No one stepped out of a doorway for a closer look or pointed a finger. Lesko waited until the man was safely inside his front door, then crossed over to the adjoining building and made his way down to the street. At the end of thirty minutes he was cursing Mr. Makowski, who had locked his car after all. At the end of an hour, now on numbing feet in the alley across from his building, it began to dawn on Lesko that this was a very stupid idea. No one, he realized, was coming after him. He wasn't the problem. In Dancer's mind, he knew, Raymond Lesko was an annoyance and a potential expense, but he was not really the priority problem. The priority was Corbin.
Lesko half ran toward the subway on Queens Boulevard.
Nine
Twin beds.
“Twin beds are the latest thing.”
Corbin had never liked them much. Now he hated them. The beds had made no particular impression on him when he entered Harry Sturdevant's guest room and when Cora Starling, who now seemed to be watching him closely, turned them down at one corner and fluffed the pillows. If anything, he appreciated that twin beds would probably make Gwen's uncle more comfortable about their sharing a room together in his house.
“Everyone is talking about twin beds and I intend to be among the first to have them.”
All the other furnishings, Corbin noted dimly, had a turn-of-the-century look. Not Victorian, really, like the Homestead, but almost as old and probably more valuable. Had Gwen told her uncle about the Homestead, he wondered, and about some of the peculiar thoughts and memories it stirred up? He didn't know. Maybe Dr. Sturdevant got the idea all by himself of putting them together into a room whose furnishings could help to send him back in time or to bring someone else forward. Corbin didn't know that, either. But it wasn't going to work. He was just too beat. He waited patiently until Mrs. Starling finished her fussing with the towels and washcloths, and when she closed the door he kicked off his shoes and settled back against the cool pillow.
“I will not be denied this, Tilden. I've made quite enough sacrifices as a good little wife and I've seen far too little consideration in return,”`
Corbin jerked his head off the pillow and brought his hand to his eyes. Get up, he told himself. Do a few pushups or splash cold water on your face. He knew what was happening to him. Half-dreams, he called them. The kind that come when you're not fully asleep and you're not fully awake. The trouble is you can never get yourself to wake up all the way. Four in the morning is when these usually come. What time is it now? It can't even be nine o'clock.
”To think that I gave up Philadelphia, where I would probably be the wife of a Drexel by now, for the excitement and glamour of New York society only to find I've wed a man who prefers a baseball game to a cotillion and who has no greater goal in life than to see to the construction of an appallingly ugly railroad for the convenience of a lot of smelly factory workers.”
He did warn me, Corbin thought. He did say we might have different views concerning what constitutes worthwhile achievement and, for that matter, who constitutes a worthwhile acquaintance. Wait a minute. Who warned me? Teddy. Teddy Roosevelt? That can't be right.
“But thank you. I'm grateful for a friend's concern. However, she's actually quite excited about the elevated project and the development of the West Side. And she loves to hear me talk about athletics. And as for my acquaintances, the most appealing thing of all about New York to Miss Ella is its social democracy. You know the saying. In Boston they ask how much you know, in New York they ask how much you have, and in Philadelphia they ask who your grandfather was. She is more than eager to meet new and vital people who've made their own mark, people who would never be received in Philadelphia. Men like Cyrus Field and Jim Brady. Even pariahs like Gould and Russell Sage.”
‘These men are all rich and powerful, Tilden. Not all of your friends are either. Even you and I have had to learn to look for a man's worth in his heart and in the honesty of his gaze. Ella will not easily overcome a lifetime of Philadelphia insularity and a congenital contempt for any man whose hand is not soft and any woman who owns less than a dozen gowns from Paris.”
”I think that you do not know her, Teddy.”
“And I think that I've probably said
too much.”
“She's quite beautiful.”
“She is that. Yes.”
“And she has a lot of fire. I know that there have been whispers about her. I am aware that there are some who consider her to be headstrong and willful and selfish. I know also that she has a worrying habit of running about unchaperoned and yet no real misconduct has ever been linked with her name. These are youthful high spirits, Teddy. If she were other than high-spirited she would have remained entombed on Philadelphia's Main Line forever. Good Lord, if only you could have seen some of the wispy, swooning dullards my father has dragooned me into meeting, I believe you'd look a good deal more favorably upon my choice of Ella Huntington.”
“Hah!” Roosevelt flashed a grin so huge it seemed there were more teeth than face. ”I believe I would, my friend. By George, I believe I would.”
“You'll stand up with me then.”
“Saint Thomas's on the eighth. Depend on it, sir.” Teddy Roosevelt offered his hand. “Depend on it.”
“Ella, you didn`t actually believe that babies were born in cabbage patches, did you?”
“No. Not actually. But this? This simply can't be how it's done.”
“‘Adam and Eve were the first. Married couples have deviated very little since then.''
“‘Do not mock me, sir.''
“‘Have you never seen a servant throw water upon two dogs, one dog seeming to climb upon the back of the other?`'
“Yes. It was because they were being filthy.”
“They were mating, Ella. It is how little puppies come into being. Is it possible that no one has ever explained such things to you?”
“I do not know about New York, but it is hardly a fit subject in Philadelphia ”
“I believe that. Sad to say, I believe that.''
Several nights and one visit from a doctor passed before Ella became persuaded that Tilden's disgusting suggestion might have some legitimacy. She yielded, rigidly at first, biting hard as if she were being flogged and trying not to breathe or make a sound. Soon, however, she became tolerant, almost willing. The martyred protests decreased in length if not in frequency and her expressions of disgust subtly shifted from the act itself to Tilden's apparent incapacity to control his animal urges. Ella, though it would never do to let Tilden know, not Tilden or anyone, was beginning to like it. She was discovering that for all her revulsion toward the messy physical act, it sometimes produced a most remarkable inner thrill. She kept this secret strictly to herself, quite sure that no other woman could possibly experience such a sensation.
Tilden, for his part, was thoroughly confused by her behavior. The same woman who began as a block of stone had progressed to being critical of the way he deported himself in the bedchamber. After dismissing him to his own twin bed, which he minded less and less, she would make the most maddeningly obscure references to the quality of the act that had just taken place between them. Tilden had no idea what she was talking about, nor would she express herself plainly on so delicate a subject. She would simply and aggravatingly point out that it was not the business of a woman to instruct a man on the business of being manly. As for Tilden, it was only a matter of months before marital congress with Ella became an altogether unpleasurable experience.
Unlike the ladies at the fancy houses he'd sometimes visited as an unmarried blade, though with considerable trepidation because he'd heard stories of diseases that led to insanity, Ella showed no interest at all in pleasing him. The ladies at Georgiana Hastings' house at least pretended to be pleased by him. And interested in his conversation. Which was another thing. Ella's interest in any of Tilden's activities, any at all, seemed to have evaporated the moment the wedding vows were spoken. She now considered many of his recreational activities to be loutish. His business activities were dull and tedious, to say the least. His reluctance to ingratiate himself within the correct social circles, circles in which his family was already well established, was both selfish and stupid. She was quick to notice other men who knew how to seize opportunity and wring full advantage from it. Some of Gould's associates, for example, to say nothing of Gould himself. Imagine a man being denied a box at the Academy of Music, then determining to destroy the Academy of Music by organizing and building the new Metropolitan Opera House in competition with it. Imagine a man being denied membership in the New York Yacht Club, then promptly founding the American Yacht Club up in Westchester. There was a man. A powerful man. Gould himself had neither the time nor the eye for ladies, more's the pity, but there was no shortage of men in his circle who did. Strong, daring men. Buccaneer types like the heroes of Robert Louis Stevenson. Polished men like Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and dangerous men like his Mr. Hyde. Men like Ansel Carling. What was Tilden to a man like Ansel Carling?
Although Ella now found room for improvement in every aspect of Tilden's being, she resented most of all his decision to choose as their residence that ridiculous apartment. An apartment, heaven save us! Not a home oh Fifth Avenue, not even a home off Fifth Avenue, but an apartment. An apartment on the West Side in the bargain. So far to the west she might as well have stayed in Philadelphia. A scant two blocks from the Ninth Avenue nigger-town, so close one must either close one's windows when the breeze came from the west or endure the scent of musk all day.
It wasn't, after all, as if Tilden could not afford a proper home. He and his father owned several excellent properties in and out of the city and Tilden has earned enough on his New York Elevated stock alone to buy a house at least as grand as the one that silly cowboy Roosevelt has down the way, practically right on Fifth Avenue. But instead, mouthing some nonsense about the air being cleaner this close to the park and the two of us having more time together if we kept some distance between ourselves and the ''social straitjacket” as he so coarsely refers to the communion of everyone worth knowing, he entombs us in this stone warren filled to its seams with nobodies. There is even an actor in residence on the fourth floor, that Nat Goodwin man who compounds his disreputability by being divorced every second or third year and Tilden actually speaks to him in that steam elevator which, by the way, is certain to blow us all into eternity at any moment. As if the actor were not enough, Tilden had the temerity to invite a prize-ring ruffian, an Irishman no less, into our parlor and sit him down with a brandy in my fine crystal until I made it clear that he might be more comfortable in other surroundings. And on the subject of other surroundings, if it is my penance to live, however temporarily, in an apartment, the apartment building chosen might at least have been one with a modicum of cachet such as the Navarro Flats, where Ansel Carling keeps his suite of bachelor rooms. Speaking, not least, of power. It radiates from him. I see it in his eyes when he looks at me and I feel it on my cheeks and I feel it here, deep inside me.
At about this time, Ella had begun to come upon Ansel Carling while abroad shopping or on calling day, which was Tuesday in her part of the city. Calling day was another social ritual that Tilden, in his ignorance, considered an absurd waste of time. One day each week, several hours were set aside during which a household would receive callers, mostly women and children, the men being occupied in business or bastioned at their clubs. A call would last fifteen minutes, little more and little less and regulated by some inner clock since it was considered unmannerly to glance at a timepiece. Mrs. Sherwood's book of etiquette also prescribed those topics of conversation which were acceptable, ruling out all that might possibly give offense, and effectively leaving only the weather. During the first months of their marriage, Tilden gamely made these rounds in order to help establish Ella but, like most men, found it exhausting to mouth expressions of appreciation of the charms of each season at one stiff parlor after another and was glad when he could consider his duty done.
“It is not done,” Ella told him. “If one is to remain en evidence, one must call. If one is to appear on the better guest lists, one must be known at the better homes.”
“But I am known, Ella,” Tilden pointed out. “W
e have not gone a single week in the past year without at least two stultifying dinner parties at which everyone expresses restrained enthusiasm for the wines and the sauces and inquires about my day while having not the slightest interest in my reply.”
“That is another thing. At the Whiteheads' the other night, your five-minute account of having your shoes polished was not at all amusing.”
“You complain, madam, when I speak of business and when I speak of athletics. If I am to be boring, I might as well try to make an art of it.”
“You are quite hopeless, sir.”
“What has happened to you, Ella?” he asked quietly. “You were once so gay. Could two years in New York have taken the joy out of you or is the love of life something you put on and take off with the rest of your wardrobe as it suits your purpose?”
”I have no idea what you mean, sir.”
“No, I don't suppose you have.”
“It is late, Tilden.” Ella allowed her face to soften. ”I suppose you'll be wanting to share my bed tonight.”
“No, Ella,” he answered, “as a matter of fact, I will not.”
I dare say Ansel Carling would, she thought, angrily at first, and then quivering inwardly at the daring of that notion. There is also a man who understands the need to call and to cultivate. It may be true, as they say, that Mr. Carling has received more than his share of cards sealed in envelopes. But these are from weaklings. Anyone who uses the language of calling cards to discontinue a relationship with a man like Mr. Carling is simply less of a person than he. They fear his strength. They fear those eyes. Those marvelous jungle-cat eyes.
Time Out of Mind Page 20