Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “How could you have known?” he asked. ”I mean, how did it happen that you came to her rescue in the nick of time? Speaking of melodramas.”

  “The reporter, whom I pay to keep his eyes open, recommended her as a prospect.”

  ”A pimp.”

  ”A talent scout, Tilden.”

  “And you seduced her.”

  ”I befriended her, Tilden.” A flash of her eyes showed that she was controlling her temper. ”Margaret was and is free to leave at any time. I pay her a small salary to do my typewriting and to keep my books. My hope is that the money she can earn here as one of my girls will encourage her to embrace this life just long enough to accumulate the means to begin a new life elsewhere.”

  “I'm sorry, Georgiana.” He turned away. ”I still think this is terrible.”

  “Twenty thousand girls, Tilden. Most with a choice between starving virtue and a few years of selling those same bodies which men take and discard so freely. I was not, I'll tell you, the first of my calling to approach Margaret. I would not have been the last. She is so beautiful, you see, and so alone. And the fact that you think it terrible, Tilden, is one of the most endearing things about you. Most men would leap at the chance without a care in the world for her. And as for me, remembering, Tilden, that she is alone and friendless and easy prey to those who would take advantage of her, tell me in whose hands you would rather have found Margaret. I will bank her money for her, invest it safely, and when I send her off at the age of twenty-five, she need never depend on anyone else again.”

  “If she does indeed retire. And if you do indeed send her off.”

  “Do not insult me, Tilden.”

  “What guarantee do you offer that she will not simply move on to another such house?”

  “If she does, she forfeits her money and she signs a paper to that effect at the start. No girl of mine, Tilden, has ever ended up in some Irish or German crib on Sixth Avenue. No girl of mine will ever walk the streets. Least of all a girl like Margaret.”

  “Assuming she accepts your proposition.”

  “Assuming that, yes.”

  “How do you know I won't try to dissuade her?”

  “You are free to try.” Georgiana smiled.

  But you won't try, Tilden, she thought. Not very hard. There is scarcely a young man alive who would be content to maintain Margaret Barrie's virtue at its present imperfect level when the alternative is a night of pleasure with that wonderfully firm body and gentle face.

  ”I must consider this,Georgiana,'' Tilden said slowly. “It is not an arrangement one is offered every day.”

  “Not overlong, Tilden. I have been offered a thousand dollars for the first night with her. And by quite an important man, though older and rougher than you.”

  Now Tilden smiled, albeit uncertainly. ”I have read in the newspaper that the Brooklyn Bridge has been sold more than once by a persuasive bunco steerer. I think it might have been you.”

  ”I don't know what you mean, sir,” she said innocently. ”I do not lie about the thousand dollars. There are some who would pay ten.”

  “Still older and still rougher, I presume.”

  “Richer, Tilden.”

  “Very well,” he said. “What, by the way, is my price to be?”

  “With my compliments.” Georgiana leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “Plus whatever generous gift you choose to have me invest for her. Through your firm, of course.”

  “Of course.” Tilden grinned helplessly. ”I will consider it, Georgiana. May I pay you a call tomorrow at this hour?”

  “You are always welcome here, Tilden.”

  He walked north along Fifth Avenue more slowly than before. Many feelings had to be sorted out. The first of these, the one that kept the smile upon his face all the way past the towering fortress like walls of the Croton Reservoir and on across Forty-second Street, was the fantasy vision of knowing the sweet body of that marvelous woman who played so beautifully and who had eyes like a wounded bird. The next, as the scaffolded and skeletal spires of Saint Patrick's came into view, was the sickening thought that that same body was being bid upon by fat and balding old men with cigar-stained teeth. Tilden dashed away that image. There it was. His conscience could hardly bear his being the one to take her, yet he could not stand the thought of her body being pressed against some other. Georgiana, the witch, well knew that he would be thus confused. A thousand dollars, someone had bid. Another might bid ten. Was this an invention, one of Georgiana’ s celebrated wiles, or was it true? In Tilden's heart he knew it was. Or must be. He would pay that much himself to relieve the ache his heart felt for her.

  He walked on. Approaching Forty-seventh Street his eye drifted to the northeast corner where stood the four-story brownstone of Jay Gould. Tilden frowned. There was a man who could buy and sell Margaret a thousand times over. Georgiana's entire house, for that matter. But of course he would not. Gould was a money-getter, not a woman-getter. A destroyer of men and their dreams. The destroyer of that good man Cyrus Field. Tilden looked at the sidewalk outside Gould's house where, it was well known, the consumptive little insomniac would pace away the night, alone with his thoughts except for armed guards who stood watchfully along his path. It was a wonder, armed guards or no, that someone did not manage to put a ball through his black heart one night. If someone did there would doubtless be a monument proposed to honor the deed. Tilden would be among the first to reach deep into his pockets for its subscription.

  He quickened his pace for a half block or so. Gentler vistas ahead were more suited to reveries of young Margaret Barrie. There were green trees here and there, sprung to life in the time he was away. There were the wonderful new homes of the Vanderbilt sons and their ambitious wives, homes as fine as any chateau in Europe. There were the twin Italianate palazzos directly across from Saint Patrick's, built by William Henry Vanderbilt for himself and his daughters, the most elegant in New York until they were outdone by the turreted fancy commissioned by William Kissam Vanderbilt. Actually by Alva, his wife. Decent enough sort, that Willie K. Spends most of his time aboard his yacht these days to avoid the tedious entertainments given by Alva, to which Ella would give her soul to be invited more often.

  Ella. God, that there can be an Ella and there can be a Margaret. That an Ella can have had every advantage and be so mean of spirit and so impoverished of accomplishment and that a Margaret, who must be the most gentle girl in the world, could have suffered such pain as Georgiana described.

  A building on his right, across from Alva's house, drew his eye. It was taller than most, all of six stories, and fairly new. Tilden' s glance fell not so much upon that building as upon the ghost of the dwelling it had replaced by popular demand just a few years before. Madame Restell had lived on that site. Madame Restell, the abortionist, who had built her fortune on the blood of a thousand unwanted babies and who would proudly and defiantly go coaching along Fifth Avenue and through the park, indifferent to taunts and protected by those whose secrets she knew until that lunatic vice crusader, Anthony Comstock, entrapped her at last and drove her to cut her throat rather than suffer her remaining years in a cell on Riker's Island. But how did it all begin? How, in heaven's name, does one enter such an atrocious life? Was she not once a charming young girl who ran and played games and sat in her mother's lap? And if such a girl could become such a monster by degrees, could not such a fate be in Margaret's stars as well? No. Tilden shook his head. It is impossible. Madame Restell was never a charming little girl. She was a grasping little sneak who probably tortured frogs with burning sticks and then cried her innocence when accused. She was probably not unlike Ella must have been. Ella surely did not blossom in her adulthood into the petulant, selfish, and fundamentally useless creature she is now. She must always have been so except she would have had the guile to conceal her true character lest the discovery of it interfere with her designs.

  But I will not think upon that, he decided. One cannot condemn Ella without damning o
neself for marrying so foolishly. And that done, there is nothing left but to make the best of it. I will think upon Margaret. But that is all that I will do. If I could put aside my conscience and be the first to have her, the first since the swine who ruined her, what then? Could I walk away and leave her to an endless line of panting old men? Could I return to her knowing how many sweating bellies have been pressed down upon hers since the time I first knew her sweetness? Could I watch her become hard?

  Tilden had made up his mind. He turned the comer at Fifty-seventh Street, passing the home of dear Teddy Roosevelt at number

  6, and continued on toward the looming mass of the Osborne two blocks in the distance past the signal tower of the elevated

  Dear Teddy. My small joys and sorrows have been nothing to his, have they? There could have been no finer wife than Alice

  when he married her, no more blissful life together for the four short years until her unhappy death. What is it? Three years ago

  now. And since then a year of desperate distraction at his ranch in the Dakotas; a return to New York, a defeat in his effort to

  become mayor, a new marriage to his lovely Edith, and the publishing of another book which, by the way, I must have him

  inscribe for me. An eventful enough life for a man of fifty but a remarkable one for a man not yet twenty-nine.

  Dear Teddy. I used to be younger than you and now I feel ten years older. Or ten years more tired. But it's my own stupid doing, and you did try to warn me. Here I'm going home to a woman who will barely raise her head when I enter my apartment and who will soon retire, with hardly a word, to her damnable twin bed. Damn the twin beds. Damn her. And damn Margaret for stirring all this up inside me.

  “Jonathan?”

  He was standing on the far side of the bed nearer the window when Gwen entered her- uncle's guest room. His chest rose and fell as if he'd just been startled awake from a nap. But the turned-down bed he was staring at had not been disturbed. Corbin blinked at the sound of his name.

  “Jonathan? Are you all right?”

  His head lifted in her direction, and his eyes flitted over her features, her form, and the clothing she wore for the briefest moment until recognition came to them.

  He rubbed them. “I'm fine, sweetheart,” he said. “Just tired.”

  She gestured with the tray she carried. “Do you want your sandwich?”

  “No. No, thank you.” He looked at the soup, now cold, and the sandwiches. For some reason he expected cheese and sherry but he didn't want that either. It was odd. He could actually taste the sherry. Had he had some? Oh yes. Downstairs. A while ago in the study. Listening to piano music? No. Just talking. About Bridey Murphy and some things.

  “You look exhausted,” she told him. “Why don't you get out of your things.”

  He looked at the twin beds.

  “Jonathan?”

  He blinked again. “Do you mind if we move these up against each other?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course I don't.”

  Raymond Lesko's mood was not improving.

  He'd made one slow pass on foot down the south side of Seventy-seventh Street, enough to determine that the old man's car had either been removed from Lexington Avenue by some flunky or towed away by the city, that no lights burned in Gwen Leamas's second-floor apartment, and that a man wearing a knitted ski hat, probably the kind that pulls down over the face, was sitting low in a dark car double-parked just down the street from her door.

  For an hour now, he'd been waiting for something to happen. For Corbin and the dame to show up. For the guy in the car to make a move toward the foyer of her building. Lesko's feet were getting more numb by the minute. The time, he guessed, his eyes being too tired to focus on his watch in the dim light of the doorway he'd chosen, was about ten o'clock.

  He was sure that the guy in the ski hat had not seen him except when he made that first pass. His head never turned to see where Lesko was going, which meant, of course, that the guy probably didn't know from Lesko. It was always possible that the guy didn't know from Corbin, either, but there were not many reasons Lesko could think of why a guy would sit in an unheated car on a night that would freeze a witch's tit with his head facing number 145 and being careful to keep it no higher than the headrest of his seat.

  How about that he's not a shooter but he's just muscle out to put a scare into Corbin and maybe slap him around a while. Not likely. You never send muscle in numbers smaller than two against anyone, least of all against Corbin, who could probably do some slapping around of his own.

  Silly me, Lesko thought. There are two of them. The one who won the coin toss went and worked the lock of 145's front door and is waiting warm and cozy inside, maybe even up in the apartment.

  Lesko could not very well go in and find out, even if he were so inclined, because by the time he finished messing with the front door himself he would surely hear a tap of the horn from the car warning whoever was inside that something funny was happening. His other choice, then, was to wait until the guy inside came out. That wasn't any good because he would only come out when he decided to give up on Corbin for the night and that could be hours from now. Lesko would be too stiff by then to do anything but watch them drive away. Maybe there was a better idea. Maybe he should just leave a message and go home.

  Ed Garvey made his way through the darkened apartment to Gwen Leamas's kitchen. There, he opened her refrigerator and with a gloved hand drew out a quart of milk and took several swallows from the plastic bottle. He replaced it and retraced his steps to his position in the living room near the entrance hall. He sat there, adjusting the small steel crowbar that was tucked in his belt. He was a big man, almost Lesko's size but with several inches less girth. The ladder-back chair creaked as he moved. Garvey had already paced the floor of the hallway and part of the living room, testing it for squeaks as he put his weight on it and making a mental note of those spots to avoid when he knew that Corbin and his woman were coming up the stairs. With any luck it would be quick and quiet. He had already located Gwen Leamas' s valuables, such as they were. He would take them when it was done and make just enough of a mess so the burglary would look kosher to the cops when they found those two with their heads bashed in. Given the time, he would jimmy the door whose single lock he had already picked, thanking the woman in his heart for being a limey and for not living in New York long enough to know that four locks are better than two. Used to be everyone had just one lock. Now, with the way things are going, people are going to start laying minefields in their hallways before long. Got to get out of this town. Go out to Colorado. To Aspen, where there's lots of money and where the only thing they lock up is their skis. Or to Los Angeles, where the real big houses all have television cameras and Dobermans so Charles Manson shouldn't come back but where all the littler houses just have Lhasa apsos and Shih Tzus which you just throw into the fridge while you pick up some walking-around money.

  Three short horn blasts outside. .

  Three?

  What the hell is three supposed to mean?

  Ed Garvey listened for sounds on the hallway stairs, heard nothing, then crossed to a window facing the street and looked down without disturbing the curtains. He could see the car but nothing in it past the steamed-up windshield. Jerk! How are you supposed to see anything, you let the windshield get like that?

  Three more quick taps of the horn. And now a white handkerchief wiping a twelve-inch circle in front of the driver's face. The sound of an engine starting and a belch of white smoke from the exhaust.

  Garvey let his face show, questioningly, at the second-floor window. In answer. In answer, he saw an arm at the driver's side waving him to the street.

  Raymond Lesko rolled up the window, then eased himself into the back seat while pulling erect the unconscious body of the man in the ski hat. His name was Coletti, he'd acknowledged, along with a few other particulars. That was between the time Coletti told this clown asking directions to get lost and the
time Lesko slammed his elbow several times against Coletti’s jaw and temple. The gun muzzle Lesko stuck against his ear had also encouraged him to start his motor both for the sake of Lesko's comfort and to communicate some urgency to his friend upstairs. Lesko sat low in the seat and waited. In less than a minute, Ed Garvey's shadow appeared in the doorway of number 145. He hesitated there for a few seconds, surveying the street, before shaking his head in confused annoyance and stepping quickly to the passenger-side door of Coletti's car and opening it to slide in. Halfway he stiffened, almost levitating, as his peripheral vision took in the fist and the black metal cylinder in it that were extended toward his face.

  “Shut the door,” Lesko told him. “You grow up in a barn?”

  Garvey hesitated, weighing his chances of rolling back out to the sidewalk and out of the line of fire.