Ella hesitated, but she took two steps nearer.
”I mean”—Lesko showed her the pained expression on his face—“if this guy is the best you got, don't you get a little embarrassed sometimes?”
Ella blinked. Her eyes still glistened with malice, but Lesko's patient self-possession seemed to slow her heartbeat.
“Counting letting your shit-faced brother drive off, that's at least three times today old Tom out there fucked up, excuse the expression.”
The door slammed once more.
“Look at this.” He gestured toward it with the blue automatic. “The guy thinks maybe I didn't notice the first kick. Right now he's ducked back away from the door because he also thinks bullets don't go through plaster.” Lesko dropped his sights to the right of the door, about where he judged Burke's buttocks to be, and fired twice. Dancer shrieked and flailed like a puppet at muzzle blasts that sounded like thunderclaps in the confined room. Beyond the fist-sized holes that appeared in the wall, Lesko heard a frantic tattoo of feet but no sound of a falling body. He'd missed, he knew, but not by much. Burke might be picking lath and plaster out of his ass for the rest of the afternoon.
“Ah, Mr. Lesko”—he heard Ella's voiee behind him— “you do know how to drive home a point.”
“Yeah.” He scowled. “Well, Dancer and me are going to take a walk down to my car now. Sorry we can't do business.”
“Truth be told, Mr. Lesko, so am I,” Ella said wearily. “Indeed, sir, so am I.”
Lesko heard her inflection changing on the last three words she spoke. Their sound was strained in the manner of a person lifting a heavy weight as he spoke. Or swinging an ax. Or a cane. It is amazing, he'd often thought, how much faster the brain works than the body. He knew that it was a cane. And that it was whistling toward his head. He had time to curse himself for being stupid, for leaving her behind him, for playing games. But his body had no time to even wince. The room exploded into light. Then more light, then darkness. And through the darkness there were smaller silent flashes of light coming from where his right hand should be. He heard shrieks and screams, but they were more distant. Then the flashes from his right hand stopped as his body fell upon it, dousing them.
Fifteene
Harry Sturdevant checked his watch at the strike of Corbin's mantel clock; Half past two. Jonathan had been gone for nearly an hour. Sturdevant didn't like this at all. Not a bit of it.
He couldn't have missed Jonathan by much more than ten minutes. And at that, he should have passed him on the Post Road, unless Jonathan crossed it and took the back streets down to the railway station. If Cora was right, if they were being followed by that wrestler type who was so helpful in the library, Jonathan could be very easy pickings walking alone through a heavy snow that darkened the day into twilight.
Nor was Sturdevant entirely pleased that Jonathan's fear of the snow seemed to have left him. It did not necessarily mean, as Gwen seemed to think, that his snowstorm hallucinations would leave him as well. It might mean only that he was becoming comfortable with them. Worse yet, that he was beginning to accept them as his reality. All this business he'd told Gwen about being a child here, and playing ball with Laura Hemmings, a name, by the way, that he should not have known, and his anger at Gwen when he seemed to think she was threatening some sort of fairyland existence, and new memories, conscious this time, of a continuing friendship with Teddy Roosevelt, and a mysterious but obviously related enmity toward a man named Bigelow—these hardly add up to a man who should have been allowed to walk off into a snowstorm by himself.
“How do I look?” He heard his niece's voice on the stairway behind him. Sturdevant turned from the window where he'd been waiting.
He watched, one eyebrow raised, as she paused at the foot of the stairs to smooth the heavy velvet skirt she'd been holding during her descent. It was a full-length white dress with braided trim across the bodice and at her wrists. Its high collar made her neck look twice its length and all the more graceful. Her honey blond hair was piled high and held in place with black and yellow tortoiseshell combs.
“Where on earth did you get that?” he asked.
“Upstairs in Jonathan's bedroom closet,” she answered offhandedly. “It doesn't really fit right without a corset. And Jonathan doesn't have any underthings up there.”
“Thank heaven for small favors.” Sturdevant didn't like this, either. “Why do we suppose Jonathan is stocking his closets with nineteenth-century women's clothing?”
“It's not that at all.” She smiled. ”I went to an auction with him last November, and these came as part of a lot he was bidding on. Jonathan didn't even want them, but I said it would be a crime to throw them out.”
Sturdevant softened only a shade. “Does he ask you to dress up like this when you spend time with him here?”
“Will you please relax?” She crossed to him and reached to kiss his cheek, then turned her back to him. ”I can't get those buttons.”
“Does he, Gwen?” He started awkwardly at the lowest one, wishing he had one of those hooks his mother had used.
“Nope.” She shook her head. “He bought me one gown last Christmas because it was beautiful and I loved it. Stop looking for new ways for Jonathan to be crazy, Uncle Harry.”
Her back was bare beneath the dress. She wore no halter or foundation garment, not even the petticoats that would have given the dress its proper fullness below the hips. That bothered him. Harry would admit that he was sufficiently old-fashioned to dislike thinking of his best friend's daughter in any state approximating nudity. If that was overprotectiveness, or a reluctance to accept that Gwen was a grown-up woman, so be it. But there was also a certain vulnerability to an improperly clothed woman which, especially today, made him all the more anxious for her in view of all the hostility that seemed to be bubbling up in this supposedly idyllic community of Jonathan's. Antagonistic librarians. Thugs with guns if Cora was correct. And Jonathan himself practically threatening Gwen, even though she makes light of it and says he was merely confused about who she was, as if that explanation even began to be adequate. Sorry I shot my wife, your honor; I thought she was a girl who turned me down for a date once. Or, He didn't mean to throttle me, officer; he just thought I was another one of his ghosts. Which reminds me ...
“Gwen, dearest.'' He turned her to face him. “May I ask, by the way, why you are in this dress?” He'd allowed himself to assume that it was only some girlish puttering to pass the time.
She smiled prettily. ”I just wanted to see how it looks on me.”
“Hmmph!” She looked entirely too innocent. “Well, now that we know it's lovely, why don't you change back into your own things.”
”I will.” She patted his chest. “After I show Jonathan.”
Sturdevant raised his eyebrow again and held it there until she had to look away. He folded his arms. “All right. What do you think you're doing?”
“Nothing” she answered, wide-eyed.
“If you're toying with Jonathan ...”
“I'm hardly toying, Uncle Harry. I'm trying to help him.”
“You helped him yesterday,” he reminded her, “by giving him a drug whose effect you could not possibly predict.”
Gwen swallowed but did not otherwise react.
“And today, here you are in what was apparently Laura Hemmings's house and you are dressed, I presume, to resemble Laura Hemmings, a woman who seems to have antagonized Jonathan in some way.”
”I did help him,” she said stubbornly. “He knows those things he saw were real now. He knows he's not crazy. And he's not afraid of the snow anymore.”
Sturdevant waved that off. “You are playing a very reckless game with a man who, whether you choose to face it or not, may still be dangerously deluded.”
“He is not deluded,” she said sharply.
“Did you see his face just before you left the library?” he asked. ”I won't pretend I know why, but he looked for all the world like a man who had a f
ew scores to settle.”
“How would you feel, for Pete's sake? In less than twenty-four hours he found out that Tilden Beckwith was practically his father and that the woman who was practically his mother was badgered out of New York and eventually even out of Greenwich by people who simply would not allow them to be happy.”
“Happiness!” Sturdevant snorted. ”I have a feeling there's far more at stake than that. This is not an episode of ‘As the World Turns.’”
His niece's eyes went flat. “That was patronizing, Uncle Harry.”
Harry Sturdevant turned toward the window, staring out at nothing in particular. A plow rattled by, its blade still up. But no sign of the car Cora described or of his friend from the library.
”I think I'd better clear the driveway entrance before it gets much worse or freezes.” He picked up his coat.
“You shouldn't be shoveling snow.”
“At my age, you mean?”
“Gotcha.” She punched him.
Harry Sturdevant shook his head in surrender as he crossed to the door. He stopped there and turned.
“These old scores I mentioned,” he said gently, “If I'm right about them, and Jonathan intends to settle up with the Beckwiths, he is going to find himself in serious trouble.” He waited for a long moment before finishing his thought. “But if, God forbid, he intends to settle with people who are no longer living, I assume it's clear to you that Jonathan is in deeper trouble than either of us imagined.”
Maple Avenue, once it crossed the Post Road, became Milbank Avenue. Corbin chose that route down a long,curving hill toward the railroad station. It was the way Tilden would have gone. Milbank Avenue was a good carriage road then, kept well combed and swept because several merchants who had built new houses along it were also members of the Greenwich town council.
Corbin was pleased with himself. It was snowing hard and he was walking in it. The houses, although the newer ones seemed dimmer than the older buildings, remained solid. Cars remained cars; they did not fade into sleighs and wagons. If he looked along the street in a certain way he could still see it as it probably once was, but he felt content that these were Tilden's memories and not his own. At one point, a few blocks down, he answered a friendly wave from a man who was no longer there by the time Corbin raised his arm. He felt none of the old terror. Corbin fully understood now that the things he saw were real, or had been once to Tilden. They could not hurt him. They could not entrap him in another time. It was not altogether unlike going back to the places of his own boyhood and seeing in his mind, but almost with his eye, the events that happened then. There I am hitting a three-run homer in my first Little League game. There I am walking that high tree limb on a dare. There I am in my fistfight with Mike McConnell and him being the first to quit but both of us getting suspended for it. See? he thought. Anyone can see the past. It seemed almost natural. Even if Corbin had known about the tranquilizing drug Gwen had twice slipped into his drinks, he would not have given the drug full credit. He was in Greenwich, and he was walking in the snow without fear. Why shouldn't he feel good?
If he allowed himself to dwell on them, there were indeed thoughts of scores that should have been settled. But again, these were Tilden's thoughts. And they were old scores. Too old to matter now. Corbin pushed them far back in his mind. Some were already more distant than others. The hated Ansel Carling was barely a shadow, far away. Except that the effect of Carling's seedy little seduction seemed to go on no end, the man himself no longer mattered.Anyway, Corbin had an idea that he'd come to some terrible end down in Texas. He wasn't sure what. Tilden probably knew, but Corbin was not inclined to start anything by asking. Carling was done with and that was enough. So was Colonel Mann, at least in terms of any future mischief he might have done. Thanks to Billy O'Gorman. And to Tilden's friends.
As he neared the bottom of Milbank Avenue, Corbin found himself thinking how lucky Tilden was to have such friends. Corbin really didn't have any, at least at the moment. There was Gwen, of course. But that was different. Gwen was as good a friend as anyone could have, and very much more, but that wasn't the same as having buddies like John Flood and Nat Goodwin, and especially Teddy Roosevelt, and even Georgiana Hastíngs, who would stand up with you no matter how the breaks were going. Yeah. But wait a minute. The fact is you have just as many friends. Good ones. Come to think of it, several are athletes like Flood, one is an actor, and another one ran for Congress last year. Offhand, there isn't anyone who runs a brothel, but three out of four isn't bad. The real difference between you and Tilden is that Tilden wouldn't have gone the past five or six months as you have, not returning calls, not even Christmas cards, and burying yourself in your office all week and out here every weekend. And being so sullen and distant all the time. You're getting like Gould.
Anger.
Corbin felt the surge.
Tilden's anger.
He tried to push it away.
Then he saw Margaret's face, her eyes shining with held-back tears, and he saw little Laura Hemmings reaching up to dab them with a handkerchief and telling her to smile and not let Tilden see her this way.
Corbin stopped. He bent to pick up a handful of snow and rubbed it across his face. “What good is this?” he asked aloud.
Now Laura Hemmings was gone and there was Margaret, holding a little boy's hand, an embroidered carpetbag at her feet, and they both looked so terribly sad, and as the picture was receding, Margaret was mouthing the words / love you.
“I'm sorry, Tilden,” Corbin said softly. ”I care about you both and I feel almost as bad about that as you do. I don't know what you think I can do about it.”
A woman, walking a police dog on a leash, rounded the corner of Railroad Avenue onto Milbank. She blinked at Gorbin, then quickly changed direction and tugged the dog toward the other side of the street.
Corbin watched her, first embarrassed and then alarmed because she was not watching where she was going and was about to collide with a large, whiskered man who was coming in the other direction. The man was not watching, either. He was busily winding what looked like a small box camera and Corbin noticed that he was not wearing winter clothing.
The two passed through each other.
Corbin felt another surge of anger, but this time he raised a patient hand as if to stop it. “That's Comstock, right?” He nodded with resignation. “Is that Anthony Comstock?”
No answer came. Corbin didn't need one. He knew.
“Look,” he dropped his voice, ”I don't even understand this part.” He watched as the fat man passed him and continued down Railroad Avenue toward the depot area. There he saw a wagon piled high with vegetables. And another whose sign said Walker & Sons Fresh Fish and it had a striped awning that shaded several wooden tubs of mussels and lobsters. Corbin suddenly realized that the snow was gone. The trees were the dark green of late summer. He saw two women coming his way. Both wore dresses that swept the ground and carried fishnet shopping bags. One held a black parasol against the sun. The fat man spotted them and scurried to intercept them on the wooden sidewalk. The older of the two women spoke sharply to him, but he ignored her. He was looking down, searching for her in the view-finder of his camera. The woman took one step and swung her parasol at his head. He ducked, then tipped his hat, then took another blow across his arms. He circled round them, having spied still another woman farther down.
“Comstock is the vice crusader, right?”
Right. Corbin knew that as well.
“Gwen and I talked about this,” Corbin said. “We don't know why Margaret should have been worried.”
He listened for his own feelings. He would have been furious if he had lived here then. Just on general principles. Here's a man taking pictures of every halfway-decent-looking female he meets and you know he's going to show them around someplace to try to nail any who might once have been prostitutes. Corbin would have walked down and kicked his fat ass. Tilden would have, too. Unless Tilden was afraid to call at
tention to himself and therefore to Margaret.
“Then why didn't you just get her out of town? A vacation. Sail up to Newport or go back down to the Claremont Inn for a week or so. See a couple of ball games.”
“You cannot.” Laura Hemmings took Margaret's hands in hers. “You will stay here, you will smile sweetly, and you will go about your blameless life as if that idiot does not even exist.”
“Oh, Annie.”
“My name is Laura. And your name is Charlotte. Even when we're by ourselves, Comstock or no.”
“He arrested Carrie Todd this morning,” Margaret said miserably, “and he claims to have his eye on three others.”
“You are not one of them, dear. I promise you that.”
“And it's not just Anthony Comstock.” Margaret twisted a lace napkin in her fingers. “Inspector Williams bought a house in Cos Cob. Everyone's talking about the grand new dock he's adding to it and all the fine English furniture he's bringing in. It appears that he's planning to live here, Laura.”
“Clubber Williams must spend his graft someplace,” Laura Hemmings said, shrugging. “In any case, what is that to you? He's never seen you, has he?”
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