“That she was a whore, sir. A tart. A doxy. That the equally noble and blameless and beloved columnist known as Charlotte Corbin is in fact a prostitute named Margaret who was once driven from Greenwich, Connecticut, by fear of exposure.”
Huntington's head seemed to be floating in space. The desk, the office, the young woman in the chair, and the nervous young man who stood by the fireplace had faded into a dark gray vapor.
”A prostitute ... Margaret... you will see her reputation go up in smoke just like—”
“Father, shut up.”
“Just like her house ... and all she had ... except for the things we've saved to use as evidence if you do not—”
“Shut up, Father.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tilden saw Nat Goodwin's elbow nudge the ribs of Colonel Cody, but his attention snapped back to the sneering face that floated near the base of the large painting of nudes on the wall. The face was leaner, darker, younger. It was Carling's face, and it was Huntington's daughter, and the cowardly, mewling face of Huntington's son. And the expression was turning as Carling's had turned from contempt, to disbelief, to fear.
Jab, lad. Jab once with the left, then again . ..
The face rocked backward.
Now the left to the ribs, lad... then cross with the right as his arms come down... Put yer back into it, lad.
The face sprayed blood and fell away across the desk.
He heard movement behind him and half turned toward the cane, Albert Hacker's cane, that he knew was being raised to strike him. Tilden was not alarmed. He knew that the cane would not fall. It would be stopped in its descent by the strong arm of the man wearing long hair and a Western hat. Yet he felt a blow across his temple. What was it? Where is Colonel Cody? Nat? Nat? He tried to find their faces within the white light that was blinding him. But the face that came through was Ella's face—the dead Ella, and her teeth were bare and snarling her hatred, just as they were that night. Her arms were pinned behind her in the snow, but somehow she got one of them free and with a great heave she swung it in a wide arc toward his head. Now it was he who was on his back. Or was he still standing? He couldn't tell because now they were both floating in a great cold darkness among a million snowflakes and she was hissing at him, saying, Twice the man you are, Tilden, He is twice and more. The last face he saw was Margaret's. Young Margaret's. She was running to him, reaching for him, her face twisted in anguish. But he was falling too quickly.
The funeral was five days later. Ella Beckwith delivered the eulogy. Tilden II led the first hymn. Huntington Beckwith, sending word that he admired his father as he did no man living, was too distraught to attend. He was under a doctor's care for painful injuries as well as grief, having fainted full on his face when he learned the news that his beloved father had apparently suffered an accidental fall in his office.
No Corbins were there. They were, of course, not notified. Nor did the news of Tilden's death appear in the Chicago newspapers. It was during the following week that Margaret, concerned because she had heard nothing from him, called his office. She came to New York with Jonathan the following day. Whitney, in England, was denied leave for the death of a nonrelative. Jonathan took his mother to the cemetery on Long Island, where they laid flowers on Tilden's grave. He left her alone with him for an hour.
He drove her from there to Greenwich, where she visited an ailing Laura Hemmings. They spent another solitary hour in each other's arms. She tried the next morning to visit Huntington, but he would not see her. She wrote to him upon returning to Chicago. He did not answer. She tried calling, but he would not come to the phone. She wrote again without reply. Most of February passed. Margaret wrote him one more time, expressing the hope that she would not be forced to involve an attorney in family business of a delicate nature.
Within a month of posting that letter, Margaret was dead. Perhaps of natural causes, perhaps asphyxiated by a defective heater in her rented apartment. There were no signs of forced entry, no reason to suspect foul play. Just another old woman living alone. Two days later, Jonathan Corbin, perhaps distracted by his grief, stepped into the path of a speeding car as he crossed Evanston's main street on his way to a consultation with a local lawyer. The driver sped off, a hit-and-run. George Bigelow drove the car to Chicago's South Side, where he abandoned it to the first passerby who noticed that the key was in the ignition.
Two months after that, a burglar strangled an aged black woman, another widow named Lucy Stone Tuttle. Captain Whitney Corbin missed that funeral as well, although he'd been flown home for those of his father and grandmother. Before the snows came again, he, too, was dead. The only surviving Corbin, the only surviving Beckwith, was growing, unsuspected, in the womb of the former Agnes Ann Haywood of Wilmette, Illinois.
Nineteen
There is a bend on Maple Avenue that one must pass before the former Laura Hemmings's house comes into view. Tom Burke spotted the old man's car there. He had parked it out of sight from the house. Burke rolled down his window and signaled to Dancer that he was stopping. Dancer pulled in behind him. Burke stepped from his BMW and made a throat-cutting motion toward Dancer, who then shut off the ignition of Mr. Makowski's dented blue car. It dieseled loudly, then died.
Burke walked toward the bend and stopped there. He motioned Dancer forward, telling him with hand gestures to move carefully and to stay concealed. Dancer reached his side. He held a fur cap firmly on his head with one hand and peered through the wind and the gathering darkness. In the golden light of a doorway he saw a slender woman in an old-fashioned gown. Still within the doorway's light, she stepped to the edge of the porch and, picking up her skirts, walked toward two shadows at the foot of the driveway. The larger of the two shadows moved toward her, into her path, before half turning. He seemed to be shielding her with his body. The second shadow moved. Burke and Dancer could see the rifle now. Ella's brother was either forcing them or following them inside.
“Go get ‘em, Mr. Beckwith,” Tom Burke muttered. “Way to go.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe he'll save us all a lot of trouble. He shoots them
all, he gets put in a funny farm. Scratch four problems.”
”I saw no sign of Corbin.”
“He's either inside or he'll be along. How's Lesko?”
“No sound or movement.”
“We might have to thaw him to get him back out of that trunk.” Tom Burke chuckled as a memory came to him. “In Korea, sometimes they had to break a guy's arms to get a body bag around him.”
Dancer closed his eyes. He could feel a migraine coming on. “Listen, Burke,” he said quietly, “you're not taking what Miss Beckwith said literally, are you?”
”I don't get you.”
“She seemed to be saying she wanted all these people killed tonight.”
“It's what she said.” He shrugged. “Especially if her brother gets to them, and he did.”
”I keep trying to persuade you that massacres attract attention, Mr. Burke. In any case, she also said you're to do nothing without my expressed approval.”
“Well, make up your mind then, Mr. Ballanchine. It's almost dark, you got all this snow and wind, you're not ever going to have a better chance.”
Dancer wished he'd taken a Valium. The thought of several murders was not what unnerved him. Burke, in his limited way, had made a point. Lesko could be disposed of across the state line and, in all likelihood, no connection with the rest of them would ever be made. As for Corbin and those other two, it might very easily be made to look like a double murder and suicide. No one who looked into his recent behavior would be terribly surprised. The antique costume that girl is wearing might even help make it seem like some sort of ritual killing. But Ella's brother would not fit into that scenario at all. Worse, he'd be an immediate link back to Ella, and neither she nor her bullet-riddled house was in a state to receive visitors for the next day or so. He and Burke would, after all, have to spend th
e rest of the night plastering and painting. Then it would probably fall on him to dispose of Mr. Burke. All this with his leg throbbing so badly. But then it would be over and he would be rich. The new chairman of Beckwith Enterprises. Perhaps even Ella's heir. None of this, however, might happen if they just stood here in the snow while Tillie was down there botching it.
“Two things are essential,” he said to Tom Burke. “We get Tillie out of there and keep him quiet even if we have to fill up another trunk. The second is that it must appear as if Corbin killed the other two and then himself. Do you understand that, Mr. Burke?”
“You got it,” Burke replied.'' I need that scarf and hat you're wearing.”
Dancer did not quite understand but he surrendered them. Burke placed the thick fur cap loosely over the muzzle of his Beretta and tied it in place with a dozen wraps of the wool scarf.
“Neat, huh?” Burke smiled. “It'll make it a little quieter.”
“That's wonderful, Mr. Burke,” Dancer said dryly.
“Let's go have a look.”
“You're her, aren't you?” Ella's brother had not taken his eyes off Gwen Leamas. He followed them across the porch and through Corbin's front door, which he closed behind him and pressed his back tight up against it. ”I saw you with him yesterday.” His voice quaked badly. “You were showing him the way the city is changed. You were showing him the things that were still the same.”
“Just.. .just one moment.” Harry Sturdevant stepped between them again, both hands upraised and open. “We'd better start with some introductions.” He looked at Gwen, gesturing back to the man with the rifle, who seemed older than he even though he was fifteen years Sturdevant’s junior. “This is Tilden Beckwith the second. He is the ... nominal grandson of the Tilden you know, and he is very upset at the moment. Tillie”—he turned—“this young lady is—”
”I am Margaret,” Gwen Leamas said calmly.
Sturdevant moaned aloud. He spread his hands further as if separating the two people. “Don't do that, dear. You don't know what you're into here.”
”I can see that Mr. Beckwith is frightened and there's no need. May I offer you some tea, Mr. Beckwith?”
“How ... how ... how come there's no need?” His eyes blinked rapidly.
Sturdevant could see no way out. “What he's asking, dear, is how come you're not upset with him if you know he was there when Tilden was murdered”—he stared hard at her, giving her a moment to absorb that part—“and that his family also arranged for the murders of every living Corbin. This gentleman assures me, however, that none of it was his fault. I believe him, and I know that Jonathan ... that Tilden ... will believe him too when he gets here.”
Gwen never batted an eye. But inside she felt like throwing up. One knee began to quiver beneath her long white dress. ”I do wish you'd put down that rifle and have some tea, Mr. Beckwith.”
His features twitched indecisively. Then, his face lighting up, he patted his coat pocket and pulled free the quarter bottle of Glenlivet.
“That's your Tilden's brand, you will recall,” Harry Sturdevant told her. 'Tillie here intends to have a friendly drink with him.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That's a very nice idea.” She crossed to him and held out her hand for the bottle. He tensed as the outstretched hand came within reach, then suddenly cradled the bottle against his chest and shook off the glove that had been holding it.
“May I touch you?” he asked.
Gwen did not know what to do. She moved her hand closer, suspended. Ella's brother touched the back of it lightly, then her fingertips, then snatched his own hand away.
“Your skin is cold,” he whispered, wide-eyed. “It's very cold.”
Gwen blinked. She knew exactly what he meant, but she had no idea where to go with it. She was not about to point out that her extremities, which were cold to the touch at the best of times, had just been outside in a blizzard. On the other hand, she wasn't sure what letting him believe she was a walking corpse would do to his already tenuous state of mind.
“That rifle,” she said, pointing. “It really won't do you much good, you know.”
“Yes it can. It can help you. I'll be on your side when they come.”
“When who comes, Tillie?” Sturdevant asked.
“If I'm on your side, will he let me keep my position?”
“Your position,” Sturdevant repeated blankly. “You mean as chairman of Beckwith Enterprises?”
”I work hard. I go to all the meetings. I don't always just do what Ella says.”
“We'll work something out, Tillie.” Sturdevant glanced toward the undraped windows. “Did you say someone's coming here? Are we in danger?”
“They're the ones who are in danger.” Ella's brother patted his Weatherby. “Anyway, trying to kill you never works. They tried this morning in the city and Lesko stopped them. They tried last night and he stopped them then, too.”
“Wait a minute, Tillie.” Sturdevant made a timeout sign with his hands. “Who is Lesko, exactly?”
“He's like Bigelow.”
Sturdevant made another hand signal, as if to put him on hold. “Bigelow”—he turned to Gwen—“is apparently the hired killer who killed ... um, you ... and the others. But then Tilden came back”—Sturdevant cocked an eye at Ella's brother for confirmation—“but he came back much younger, and he killed this man, Bigelow.”
“And Flack. He got even with Flack as well.”
Sturdevant shook his head to clear it. “And when did you say this happened, Tillie?”
“Twenty…It was 1964. In Chicago.”
“Chicago,” he repeated. “And a very young Tilden Beckwith killed the man who killed ... you, Margaret...”
“And Flack.”
“Yes. And Flack. Margaret, do you know anything about—I mean, has Jonathan ever mentioned—-” Sturdevant stopped. He waved his hands to erase the question. It was hardly a discussion they should be having now. But he could see by Gwen's expression that she knew what he was driving at. Rule out a ghost and it had to have been Jonathan. Or a ghost inside of Jonathan. Gwen was recalling a long-ago mugging he had told her about. A mugging that had troubled him, even shamed him, deeply.
Sturdevant stepped to the nearest window and pulled the drapes closed over jt. “Let me pour you some of that Scotch, Tillie,” he said as he moved to the next window. “While I'm doing it, you can tell me who this Lesko is.”
The backseat was loose. Lesko could feel it through a hole in the composition board that lined the trunk. He could get one hand through and he could move it.
Burke. He said the name to himself. Burke, you asshole. It would have been Burke, he knew, who searched the car for his notebook. Burke who pulled out the seats. Burke who didn't think to snap them back even after he piled Lesko in the trunk and wasn't even bright enough to tie Lesko's hands. Those right there are rules one and two. And it's about your fifth mistake. I get out of here, I guarantee this, 1’ll be the one that kills you.
If I get out.
Lesko's legs were gone. Twisting them under him in an effort to get at the jack handle had brought on such an agony of cramping that it was a relief to feel them slowly die. One of his shoes was off, he remembered. Kicked loose by the squirming. On, off it almost didn't matter. He couldn't feel either foot.
His hands weren't much better. He could no longer use them to pry at the composition board, even with the jack handle, but he could poke at it, ram it, try to break it down. Come on, you sucker. Break. Goddamned Makowski. Everything in his fucking car is falling apart except the one thing I need to be falling apart.
He heard a loud crack. Come on, baby. That's it. He ran the back of one hand along the surface until he found a curving fracture that ran almost top to bottom just off center. He pressed one side of the break. It gave. It was ripping. He could get his hand into the break, and if he could get enough leverage ... How much time? Dancer's gone what? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Where the hell are we? They had to get the
old guy. That's right. The dame said that. She said
e was going to go shoot ghosts. So we're parked around Corbin's house, right? Yeah, well, stupid, who gives a shit where we are if Burke and Twinkletoes come back and they find you with your fat head stuck in the springs of the backseat here.
The door. Oh, shit. Lesko heard the door.
The backseat fell forward into the car. It slammed forward. It wasn't Dancer who did that. Lesko gripped the jack handle as best he could with the pointed end up. Maybe one last shot at Burke. Come on, Tommy. Get nice and close and be your normal dumb. I'll ram this thing right through your face. More of the composition board tore away.
“You have no key, I suppose.”
If the voice startled him, its tone confused him. It sounded like the doctor at his last physical who said, “You haven't been exercising, I take it.”
“Do you have a key? It would be easier from the back.” The voice was calm and polite, but a bit impatient, Lesko thought, like a guy passing by who'd be happy to help as long as it didn't take all night.
”I look like I was driving this thing?” Lesko gasped. Schmuck.
Lesko saw a hand grip the loosened seat and pull it through the open left rear door. A moment later he heard a crackling thump off to his right. The man had thrown the seat across the car roof into someonelses pine trees. Now a shadow filled his field of vision. He felt strong hands gripping the shoulder padding of his coat Lesko's head reached the foot well. He felt a hand searching for his belt, finding it through his coat, and using it as a handle to pry loose the rest of his body. Lesko raised himself on one elbow. He could make out the face now. Enough of it. The bent nose and the square jaw. If there was a little more light he'd see the split eyebrow as well.
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