Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  The square jaw reddened at its jowls but the hard blue eyes went slack. What kind of dingo is this, Lesko could see him wondering. That was good. Lesko stuck out his tongue, showing the key again, then tucked it back between his teeth. “Except, whatever you got, don't shoot me with it.” He felt for the left door lock behind him and snapped it down. “You shoot me, then first you have to come over here and smash this window to get the door open, then you have to pry the key out of my mouth so you can move the car, but by then I'll probably have swallowed the damned thing. First thing you know we'll both have parking tickets.”

  Tom Burke's eyes darted up and down the street. Lesko saw angry frustration in them rather than any hope of aid from a third party. But on Burke's last glance to his right, Lesko saw his eyes widen slightly. That was the direction of Sturdevant's front door. Lesko shot a look of his own, no longer than the click of a camera shutter, but enough to know that more than one person had appeared on the sidewalk and that they'd started to move more or less in his direction.

  “Look what's in my hand, Tom.” Lesko brought his right hand into view and tapped the barrel of his .38 against

  the doorpost. “See? I'm showing you my weapon. Now you have to show me yours.”

  Burke showed no sign of fear, only calculation and controlled fury. His chances, he knew, were next to none in terms of advantage. The best he could hope for was a standoff. He could simply sit still. This Lesko character would not shoot. Not with witnesses on the street.

  Suddenly Lesko screamed. It was a gagging, rasping scream that made Tom Burke jump. It came again, high- pitched this time. Lesko's face was purple, his eyes bulged. Burke saw the face and then the gun hand thrusting across the narrow space between their cars, and he felt Lesko's gun stab painfully into his armpit. “Gimme it,” Lesko choked, saliva dripping from his mouth. “Gimme the gun.” Burke froze. It was a face and voice from an exorcist movie. His chest tightened and his mouth went dry. Lesko was going to kill him. The armpit was to muffle the shot. This fucking loony was going to kill him.

  “Okay,” Burke piped. “Easy. Just take it easy.” Slowly, carefully, he lifted the wooden pistol grip of a cut-down shotgun into Lesko's view. Lesko snatched it with his left hand and pulled it into his car, where he dropped it into the floor well. His hand came back into the other man's face, snapping its fingers and showing an empty palm.

  “Your piece, your holdout,” he hissed. “Let's have it.”

  Carefully, as before, Tom Burke produced a gleaming Beretta automatic. For a moment he held it beyond Lesko's reach. “Take the clip,” he begged. “It's enough you just take the clip.” Lesko's eyes bulged again and he took the breath for another scream. Burke slapped the gun into his palm. He winced as Lesko threw it clattering against the other. Lesko leaned back into his car. With his own gun held out of sight but ready, he looked over his right shoulder. Corbin, Gwen Leamas, and Harry Sturdevant had reached the parking garage down toward Madison and were pausing at its entrance ramp. He saw the Leamas woman looking around, upward, as if for the source of the peculiar shout she'd heard. She seemed more curious than alarmed. But not Sturdevant. Sturdevant looked nervous. He touched her arm, and all three disappeared down the ramp.

  That coat!” Lesko pointed to a folded trench coat on Tom Burke's passenger seat. ‘Take out your wallet, put it in the coat pocket. Do it now.” Burke obeyed. “Now your keys.” Burke freed a large ring from the steering column and moved to disconnect his ignition key. “All of ‘em. In the pocket. Now. Then gimme the coat.” White with silent rage, Burke did so. He thought of arguing for all the keys Lesko had no business having, all the new locks that would be needed on so many Beckwith properties, of the punishment he'd face for surrendering them, but he looked at Lesko's insane face and at Lesko's fingers, which were pressed hard against his temple as if in an effort to control a building madness, and he handed the weighted coat through the window. Lesko threw it.on the floor.

  Lesko listened. From behind his car he heard the whine of another engine climbing a ramp in low gear. Once more he glanced over his right shoulder to see Sturdevant's Mercedes pause at the curb cut, its turn signal flashing. Two heads, Corbin's and Leamas's, were visible in the back seat.

  “Shhhh!” he whispered across to the BMW. “Shut your eyes real tight so they won't see you. Shut them now.” Burke' s eyes glazed at the lunacy of Lesko's order, but he shut them. “I'll count ten,” Lesko told him. “When I say ten you can peek. If you cheat, though, that's very bad.”

  Lesko began counting as the Mercedes hummed past his back. At five he spat the key from his mouth and started his engine. He was at eight when Sturdevant reached the corner traffic light and disappeared left onto Fifth Avenue. At ten, Lesko squealed away, leaving the Beckwith security chief blinking in helpless disbelief.

  “You putz!” Lesko muttered as he caught a last glimpse of Tom Burke through his rearview mirror. But he was smiling, pleased with himself for guessing right. Some people you can out tough, some you can't. Some people, like old Crew Cut back there, there's just no way you're going to scare them or bluff them except for one thing. You make them think you're out of your fucking mind. It also helps if they're a little stupid. He saw Sturdevant’s car. It was signaling left again, about to turn east on Sixty-fourth Street. Lesko crept closer so the light would not hang him up.

  Burke might be a putz, but he's a dangerous putz. A guy like that has probably punched out more people than most other people have even had bad thoughts about. And no doubt he's dusted a few, too. And that shotgun there says he was about to notch three more unless it happens to be fucking quail season in Central Park.

  Lesko reached for the trench coat, which he'd taken solely to cover the gun collection on Mr. Makowski's floor, and groped for the wallet in its pocket. He found it and flipped it open. Burke. Yeah. Chief of Security, Beckwith Hotels. That was another good guess. When he had time to look through the wallet more carefully, Lesko was betting he'd find out the guy was maybe ex-military police or shore patrol, or maybe one of those psycho’d-out Feds which the CIA turns loose and leaves alone as long as they don't write books. For sure, he was no ex-cop.

  The thing was, though, that all those guys always worked with a partner or a back-up. Burke was alone. One man, one car. Lesko looked up at his rearview mirror. Nothing. No one behind him all the way back to Central Park. Which might explain, he realized, why the company he expected this morning never showed up. I mean, Beckwith Enterprises is a big company and all that, but it's not like the Mafia, which has whole clam houses full of killers they can call when they need them. With Ed Garvey on the disabled list, and Coletti probably still on queer street, maybe old Tom Burke is all they got left until they can run an ad.

  A block ahead, Harry Sturdevant's Mercedes signaled left onto Second Avenue. Lesko followed, staying well behind until Sturdevant signaled again at Seventy-seventh Street. The English girl's place, he knew. Let's hope they're not going to hang around there too long. A BMW's a bitch to hot-wire, but Burke could have a spare key stashed. Let's also hope Ed Garvey didn't leave a mess so we don't have a call to the cops slowing down the action here.

  He waited as Corbin and Gwen Leamas left Sturdevant with the double-parked car and climbed over a snow mound toward her door. As on Sixty-ninth Street, there were no parking spots except where curb cuts had been cleared. A half dozen other cars were double-parked. Lesko pulled in behind a station wagon. Sturdevant, who'd seemed a bit uneasy when he left his house, showed no sign that he was concerned about being followed. But he was drumming his fingers on the dash. Probably a little antsy about those two calls this morning. Lesko leaned over and lifted a corner of Tom Burke's raincoat. The shotgun, he recognized, was a Remington 1100, a five-shot automatic. At least a foot and a half of barrel, as well as most of the stock from the pistol grip on back, had been cut away. He whistled. If he'd been five minutes later, just a few more cars on the road or the Midtown Tunnel Tolls down to one lane, he would have arri
ved just in time to see the three of them splattered all over Sixty-ninth Street.

  Someone isn't fooling around. Someone also has to be a little crazy to order a slaughter like that. Sturdevant’ s a prominent guy. And that part of town is all money. The mayor and the police commissioner would be there even before the TV cameras. Lesko leaned over for a closer look at Burke's Beretta. “Oh, Mama,” he said aloud. A model 92. Fifteen shots if it doesn't jam, which this gun won't do very often. Also six hundred bucks retail. Thank you, Tommy Burke. I don't blame you for trying to hold on to it. Lesko sat back and patted Dancer's fifteen thousand dollars, which he still carried in his inside pocket. The rich get richer.

  Gwen Leamas, carrying a small canvas tote, emerged ten minutes later. Corbin was close behind. Lesko lowered himself in his seat. Looking at the woman, he saw no sign that she was agitated by anything she might have seen upstairs, but Corbin was a different story. He was looking around. Sniffing the air. He had that same funny look, Lesko saw, that he'd had the day before when he suddenly seemed to realize the old guy was following him. When Corbin all of a sudden looked taller. When just for a few seconds the thought hit Lesko that Corbin was somebody else. Lesko wanted to shake it away. But this was twice. What the hell. He shrugged. With all the other weirdness going on around here, I should decide what's too crazy? Lesko gave the Mercedes a block's head start.

  At the Greenwich Public Library, Lesko picked up a large book entitled Mainstreams of Modern Art, a subject that bore no risk of absorbing his attention, and chose a chair that gave him a partially obstructed view of Corbin's group. He'd suspected Greenwich as their destination from the start, especially when he saw Gwen Leamas's tote bag, although the detour up the West Side Drive had temporarily confused him.

  They'd gone directly to the microfilm section. Lesko made a mental note of the file tray from which they'd chosen a reel. He would check it later, but he had little doubt its dates would correspond to the books Corbin bought at Barnes & Noble's and to a time when the Osborne Apartments were not so old. Lesko wished he'd thought to bring a pocket recorder. If he had one, he could just wander along those nearby bookshelves until he found a place to leave it running, then go back and sit with his art book until they were through.

  What would he hear? Lesko asked himself. Ghosts? Raymond Lesko does not believe in ghosts.

  That's fine, Raymond. Then tell me what you think is going on over there. Do you think it's just three reasonable people doing some just-the-facts kind of research in old newspaper files?

  No. What you got is Jonathan Corbin, who sees things no one else sees, who is a ringer for a guy who died the same year he was born, and who keeps looking like he's changing into somebody else. You saw it on Fifty-eighth Street, and coming out of the subway, and when he came back out of the girl's apartment looking like he picked up Ed Garvey's scent, and you're seeing it now. And if he is changing into someone else, who is it? Tilden Beckwith, right? I know you don't want to believe that. But stay with it anyway because what you got, at the very least, is what those people over there already believe.

  Lesko thought of the time when the cops on Staten Island brought in this psychic to help them find some missing little girls. They gave the psychic, this Dutchman, clothes that belonged to one of the kids and right away the psychic tells them where to search for the body and about a guy who made these girls write compositions before he killed them. Turned out to be a substitute teacher who later hung himself in his cell although the cops probably gave him a hand. Why is this weirder than that? Lesko shrugged. If a psychic can get into the head of a murdered little girl just by touching her things, why can't Corbin get into the head of the original Tilden, someone who's already in his blood, by seeing the same things Tilden saw?

  Lesko ducked his head. Corbin was leaving. He was putting on his coat, and so was Gwen Leamas, but Harry Sturdevant looked like he was staying with the microfilms. From where Lesko sat it did not seem that Sturdevant wanted them to leave. Neither did Lesko. These people were enough trouble when they were all in one place. Now Sturdevant was trying to hand his car keys to Corbin, suggesting in a voice loud enough for Lesko to hear that they'd be better off driving. He'd follow them on foot later; Maple Avenue was not that far. But Corbin refused the car, saying it was only a ten-minute walk for them, too. They'd put the coffee on and whenever Sturdevant got there they'd eat some of Mrs. Starling's lunch. Whoever that is.

  Lesko didn't like this at all. He did not want Corbin waltzing unprotected up to his house, but he did want to know what other digging Harry Sturdevant planned on doing. He decided to split the difference. Lesko waited until Corbin and Gwen Leamas had reached the information desk and turned right toward the automatic doors before he moved to follow. He watched them cut through the parking lot, with no other eyes on them that Lesko could see, and onto the sidewalk of Putnam Avenue, then he walked quickly to Mr. Makowski's car and pulled out in the direction of Maple Avenue. He was there within two minutes. Corbin’s house was a few blocks up the hill past the kind of stone church that's built mostly for debutante weddings and past an equestrian statue of a Revolutionary War general named Israel Putnam. His car made the hill with difficulty although the road surface had been sanded. Lesko made a note to explain about snow tires to Mr. Makowski. He continued on past Corbin's Victorian without slowing, his immediate interest being cars, especially BMWs with New York plates, that might be parked within a few hundred feet of the house. There were no cars at all except those in driveways. Lesko turned around. He passed Corbin's house once more, this time slowing to be sure that the snow cover on the walk and driveway was not unduly disturbed. It was not. He saw only the tracks of a single dog across Corbin's front lawn and the tire marks made by Saturday's mail truck when it cut within arm's reach of Corbin's box. A ridge of lumpy snow had also been plowed across his driveway entrance. That was the good news, that no one had been here. The bad news was that now Corbin might decide to get out there with a shovel so that Harry Sturdevant could get the car in. Lesko stopped. He shifted into reverse and backed across the foot high mound, penetrating half a car length into the driveway, then cut his wheels and pulled out in the other direction. There. It would look like someone had just turned around. And it might keep Corbin off the streets. Lesko swung back down the hill onto Putnam Avenue and began looking for him.

  He spotted the pair halfway back toward the library. They seemed fine. Still no one behind them. Corbin was gesturing as he walked, telling some kind of story that the Leamas dame found fascinating, but his manner was calm enough and he appeared to be himself. Go make the coffee.

  As Lesko reentered the Greenwich Library, he saw Harry Sturdevant standing at the information desk. Lesko hesitated. Let's see how long he's going to be there, Lesko decided. Maybe I can do a quick pass at the microfilm machine and see what kind of notes he's taking.

  Two women were seated at the desk, which was more of a U-shaped counter. The older of the two, the one looking up at Sturdevant, struck Lesko as being out of place. He knew what it was. Expensive clothes, hair done just right, a single strand of real pearls. Lesko imagined her husband was a company president she only saw on weekends and her kids were moved out or away at school and her shrink told her to get a job like this to keep her out of the Stolichnaya. He noticed the way she worked. She dithered. That was the word. A lot of rich ladies who do volunteer work cultivate a certain incompetence so no one should mistake them for somebody who actually needs the job. The other girl, younger, sort of pretty, was more clearly there to make a living. She was moving crisply through a pile of paperwork and taking all telephone inquiries more complicated than what time the place closes.

  Lesko was about to pass on when a curious change in the older one's expression stopped him. A few seconds ago her face was saying to Sturdevant, How do you do, you're my kind, aren't you, just tell me what you're looking for and I'll do my best to help you. Now she looked like he asked whether the library had any good animal porn. Whatev
er he asked, it made the young girl look up from her telephone and she was trying not to smile. Lesko edged closer. He stepped past Sturdevant to a rack of oversized atlases and opened one at random to a map of Peru.

  “Are you a journalist, by chance?” he heard the rich lady ask. ”A writer?”

  “No.” Sturdevant looked slightly bemused. He'd noticed the sudden chill. “My interest is entirely personal.”

  “Well, I'm sure we have nothing like that at all.”

  “In a library this size? The Greenwich Library?”

  “Nothing. I'm sorry.”

  Lesko saw the younger woman's eyebrows arch.

  “Is there someone else I could ask?” Sturdevant persisted. ”I know you have old newspaper accounts at the very least because I've been reading them. And, this being the Greenwich Library, I'm confident that you have a section dealing with the history of Greenwich. I'd hoped that you could save me some time by telling me where there's a single source dealing with this Anthony Comstock episode.”

  The younger woman was scribbling as he spoke. She tore a sheet off a yellow pad and held it out to Sturdevant. “Aisle seven, sir. The far end, lower right-hand shelves.”

  Sturdevant glanced at the titles she listed. “Thank you,'' he said. He walked away shaking his head. Lesko decided to study Peru for another minute or so.

  ”I don't know why you did that,” the older one snapped.

  “Because this is a library, Barbara,” she answered patiently. “The man wanted library information.”