Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “Corbin. You're Corbin.”

  The face turned away in the direction of the steering wheel. “If we could start this motor in some way, you could warm yourself.”

  “Give me a hand. Get me into the front seat.”

  Lesko had to be dragged. Corbin was strong, he realized, stronger even than he looked. He pulled Lesko free of the backseat and held him erect with one arm while his other hand fumbled at the recessed handle of the front door, as if its workings were unfamiliar to him. Lesko moaned as blood began swelling his feet. The door finally opened.

  “Wait,” Lesko gasped as he was lowered behind the wheel. “Wait. We don't have time for this.”

  “You have time,” was the calm reply. He was studying the dashboard. “There are wires to the starter button which one crosses to start a car. Do you know which ones they are?”

  Lesko reached under the steering column. Starter button? He joined his middle and index fingers together, using them as hooks to tear loose the wires running to and from the starter switch. These he touched while pressing on the accelerator with his screaming foot. The engine coughed and caught.

  “I'm going now,” Lesko heard him say. “When you can walk or use these pedals, go down the street to Laura Hemming’s house. There is a doctor there.”

  “Laura. Hemmings's house? You talking about that Charles Addams house you bought?”

  “It's a white house. Number one ten.”

  “Yeah, well, let me tell you something. There's also a shooter named Tom Burke and a little pansy named Ballanchine down around there someplace.”

  “The doctor will clean your head.” He touched his fingertips to the thick mat of clotted blood and hair above Lesko's left ear. “Your friend is right.” He dropped his left hand to the nearest heating vent. Warm air was beginning to come. “Goodbye,” he said, and turned up Maple Avenue in a direction away from the Hemmings house.

  “What friend?” Lesko called after him. “Right about what?”

  ”... head... tire,” was all Lesko could hear in the wind..

  “Wait a minute. What?”

  He saw Corbin half turn as he walked. “He said the Poles have heads like truck tires.” Then the storm swallowed him.

  Lesko didn't wait. His hands were good enough to turn a wheel, and his feet had enough touch to stamp on a pedal. He was not about to sit there getting toasty warm just on Corbin's word and all of a sudden feel Burke's Beretta stuck in his ear. He cut the steering wheel left and put Mr. Makowski's car in gear, taking out one of Burke's taillights as he swung onto the hill of Maple Avenue. He left his own lights off.

  Lesko rounded the bend and stiffened as Corbin's house came into view. One porch light. Drapes over the windows. No sign of Burke or Ballanchine. No sign of anyone. He coasted by, his foot ready on the accelerator. Two houses past Corbin's, he switched on his headlights. They lit up a small red Datsun parked on the road, its hood only beginning to accumulate snow, as if it had recently been driven a substantial distance. Corbin's car, he was sure. The one he uses to putz around town and get to the station. He's got a car, why's he walking? Lesko continued on almost to the Post Road. Putnam Avenue. And the statue of General Israel Putnam on his horse, escaping from the British who almost captured him because they heard he was in town shacking up with one of the townies. So everything around here is Putnam. Putnam Travel, Putnam Trust, even Putnam Liquors.

  Fucking Greenwich.

  Wouldn't you know they'd pick a patron saint who the one damned thing he was best known for was not getting caught.

  Lesko swung into a U-turn back up Maple Avenue. Driving was easier. His feet were working well enough that he remembered there was no shoe on one of them. Pull in behind Corbin's car, he decided. If I have to dig back into that trunk, better do it down the hill here.

  Lesko found the shoe among the oil cans. But he was sweating when he scrambled back out because he remembered how near he'd been to being dead there. He wondered how long it would be before he could enjoy riding in someone's trunk again.

  Right.

  What other things can we think about that will let us stall going up to that front door without at least a flack jacket and a riot gun? We can kill a little more time wondering why Corbin was acting so weird, but what else is new? We can always—wait, wait a second. Poles—Polacks—have heads like truck tires? That's what Dave Katz said. Dave Katz's ghost said that to the Tilden guy when I was on queer street on old lady Beckwith's floor.

  Ohhhh, shit.

  Lesko laced his shoe. All this, he thought. All this and I bet I come up empty. Not another dime out of it. He took a long breath, then reached for the tire iron he'd left in the well behind him.

  On the left-hand edge of Corbin's property there is a long high privet hedge that separates it from the lot of his nearest neighbor. Corbin's driveway is along the right-hand edge, its entrance softly lit after dark by a street lamp just up and across the road. If you were sneaking up on the house, Lesko knew, you would pick the hedge side and stay in its shadow. He looked for tracks. There were two sets. One continued on toward the backyard, where he could see an oddly shaped tree through the snow. The other crossed the lawn on a bias. This second set headed up the front steps but crossed older tracks already there and then seemed to angle off along the porch. Lesko stayed with the hedge.

  He was abreast of the house, cut off even from the dim light of the distant street lamp, and deciding whether to try a window or to first circle the house as Burke and Dancer must have done. His coat snagged on a broken branch of the hedge. His foot came down on another. Several more were on top of the snow, and a portion of the hedge was bent inward as if someone had crashed through it. The snow was trampled. He saw a small, dark lump that might have been a dead animal. Lesko squatted and picked it up. A fur hat. The Russian kind with flaps on four sides. He could tell by feel it was made for a small head. Dancer's hat? But

  what happened here? Maybe he slipped in the snow and grabbed the hedge to break his fall. Lesko moved on.

  He almost didn't look at the tree he'd noticed. As he reached the rear of the house, his intention was to follow its perimeter. But the shape became more peculiar as he passed it. Its upper trunk seemed to be separating. Lesko dropped into a crouch. He held that position until his mind could confirm what his senses chose to doubt. There was a man in that tree. And he was part of it. Lesko stepped closer, his tire iron held ready. The legs were the first part he saw clearly. They were swaying toward him, pushed by each gust of wind, their shoe tips barely brushing over the surface of the snow. Then he saw arms hanging limp. Lesko patted his pockets for the pen-light he carried. It was worth the risk. He found the light and aimed it, before switching it on, at the shape of a head that seemed welded to a branch at a height not much taller than himself. He thumbed the switch.

  Burke.

  Burke's swollen face stared back at him.

  He had been lifted bodily, Lesko saw, and jammed into a crook between one stout bough and a smaller branch, the smaller one across his throat. A wool scarf, wound once around his neck and then cleated through the branches, held him there. Lesko saw a Brooks Brothers label on the scarf's loose end. He raised the beam once more to the face. It was turning black. One side, the right, was strangely shaped, as if the cheekbones had been moved. Lesko flicked off his light. In deeper darkness than before he ran his hands over Tom Burke's body, searching for his weapon. There was none. He retraced his steps back along the hedge toward where he'd found the cap, once more using his pen-light. There he found an L-shaped depression near the spot where Tom Burke must have begun to die. Lesko reached down and pulled the Beretta free.

  “Jesus.” He shook his head. Old Tom Burke, he said to himself, could fuck up a two-car funeral. He could also fìnd more ways to get killed than any two men Lesko had ever met. The Beretta's safety was on and locked.

  Lesko turned back past Tom Burke's dangling body and continued on his path around Corbin's house. He walked more confidently
now. It wasn't just the gun. He was walking in tracks made by another man who, he knew, had to be Jonathan Corbin or whoever Jonathan Corbin turned into when it snowed. He also knew pretty much what he'd find on the other side of the house. Besides, his feet were getting numb again. And he would kill for a handful of aspirin and a very large belt of Seagram's.

  “What are you doing, Harry?” Ella's brother called from his chair, a drink in one hand and the Weatherby lying carelessly across his lap. He'd been crying. The tears came when he asked Gwen Leamas whether it hurt to die, and she answered that it hurts most, she thought, to leave those you love. She'd answered with feeling. Gwen didn't know whether she could stay with Jonathan, and whether anything could ever be sane, simple, and happy between them again. But as the liquor further loosened this sad old man's tongue, she also found herself wondering, with a deep thumping dread, whether she would even see him again. Oh, let him be alive. Let him, please God, show up at that door. Then we'll see. We'll see.

  “Harry? What are you doing out there?”

  Sturdevant had been in the kitchen, standing with one hand on the earpiece of a reproduction antique wall phone. At last he lifted it from its hook.

  “I'm getting us some reinforcements, Tillie. I'm calling the police.”

  “That's a good idea, Harry.” He nodded stupidly. “Have them bring some bullets.”

  “Bullets, Tillie?”

  ”I forgot to take some.”

  “Good grief,” Sturdevant muttered.

  He gave his name and the address of Corbin's house to the sergeant who answered and told him he had reason to think that there were prowlers outside. Harry, in fact, had heard a sound while he was on the phone. But it came from in the house, not outside. He dismissed it and completed the call. The receiver back in place, he felt a coldness on his neck. Whether it was a chill or a draft he was not sure. His eyes fell on a block of carving knives. His hand moved toward it.

  “Easy.” He heard the voice behind him. “The porch door wasn't locked.''

  Harry Sturdevant turned slowly. He saw a thickset man whose legs wore a crust of snow up to the knees. A second, smaller set of legs draped down from his shoulder. Several lines of dried blood crossed the rough-looking face he'd first seen at the Greenwich Library.

  “You would be Mr. Lesko, I take it.”

  “Uncle Harry?” Gwen Leamas came rushing down the short hall from the living room. Ella's brother, rifle in hand, reeled behind her. Sturdevant, who now saw the automatic in Lesko's free hand, neatly plucked the rifle from Tillie's hands as he came within reach and laid it atop the refrigerator.

  “I'm Lesko.” One eyebrow raised at the sight of Gwen's long dress and the other at the appearance of the batty old man, Black Homburg, he'd followed most of Saturday. “This here”—he cocked his head toward the pair of legs— “is Lawrence Ballanchine. He's been looking to kill all of you.” Lesko hitched his shoulder and let Dancer slide to the kitchen floor. Sturdevant could see at a glance that his jaw was shattered and his nose cartilage crushed. From the bubbly sound of his breathing, he guessed that his throat was damaged as well.

  “If you're still in the mood,” Lesko said wearily, “he could use a doctor. Tell you the truth, I'm not feelin' so hot myself.”

  “Tilden,” Ella's brother whispered, staring at Dancer's face.

  Lesko looked at him.

  “You did this?” Sturdevant asked,

  “Tilden did it,” the old man answered for him.

  Now Gwen Leamas looked at him, her head slowly shaking as if trying to deny the thought that was forming in it. “Do you. know Jonathan Corbin?” she asked Lesko. “Have you seen him?”

  ”I seen him.”

  “He didn't... he didn't do this.” She shook her head.

  Lesko didn't answer. If you like this, wait till you see what's hanging from your tree outside.

  ”I have to go.” He picked up the Glenlivet bottle from the kitchen counter and took a long swallow. ”I got one more stop. Tell the cops I'll be back.”

  'Tilden did it.” Ella's brother's head was nodding.

  “Where is Jonathan now?” Gwen's voice had fear in it. “You said you saw him. Is Jonathan where you're going?”

  Lesko jammed the Beretta into his belt and stepped past her to Sturdevant. “This guy's gun is out on your porch with his prints on it. Also tell the cops to take a walk around the back yard.”

  “Was it Jonathan?” Sturdevant asked quietly.

  “Ask me”—Lesko walked through toward the front door—“the old guy called it right.”

  “I'm going with you.” Gwen ran after him.

  The telephone on the kitchen wall rang.

  Ella Beckwith slammed down the receiver and bit at the knuckles of her fist. A mature voice had answered, almost certainly Sturdevant. She had hoped for no answer at all. Neither Lawrence nor Burke, she knew, would have picked up the phone if they were there and, if they were, or if they'd finished and gone, no one else could have, either.

  Imbeciles.

  Ella returned to her front window and stared into the full darkness. She could see nothing at all. Just the snowflakes nearest the Thermopane and the dim yellow glow from the coach lamps atop the stone gate columns at the foot of her driveway.

  Ella caught her breath. The gates. She'd forgotten them entirely. The gates were still wide open, tied that way by the detective, Lesko. She rushed back to her desk and poised a hand over her intercom, then hesitated. She could call one of the servants in’ their quarters over the garage, but she knew that whichever one walked down through a blizzard to remove a trenchcoat belt from her gate would wonder about it and remember it. Better to leave them out of it. Better to leave the gate—No, no, the gate could not be left open for anyone who pleased to come through it and—Ella closed her eyes and shivered. She was remembering the day when her heart had almost stopped. The day when she looked down on the road and saw a face that could not have been there gazing back up at her. She remembered being so badly shaken that she'd knocked over the telescope in reaching for it and then, once it was righted, she could barely hold it in focus on the old man made young again who seemed to be looking directly into the lens. A face that a part of her had been expecting for more than twenty years. Perhaps for more than forty years.

  The gate. The gate had to be closed. Ella yanked open her desk drawer and found a pair of scissors. These in one hand and her cane in the other, Ella struggled with the bolt of the door that was still whole and passed into her entrance hall. At a closet there she snatched a long, hooded coat, which she hadn't worn in almost a quarter century. There were no boots. There had been at one time but some servant had removed them over the years. They were never used. Miss Beckwith never went out in weather. Miss Beckwith hardly went out at all.

  The storm stung her cheeks. And the snow on the driveway seemed to bite at her ankles and try to crawl up her legs, and the cold went through her coat as if contemptuous of it. But she was managing. She could move quickly and without great peril of falling if she stayed to the ruts pressed into the snow by the cars and if she watched where she was stepping. She pressed on stiffly, like an awkward novice skier, her eyes locked on the ground immediately before her, daring only once to glance up and measure the distance remaining to Raymond Lesko's knotted belt. Another fifty feet. Good. Keep moving.

  Some things are seen by the eye and others by the mind. Ella's eye saw the strip of snow-covered cloth that bound her electric gate to a bush. It was all her eye sought. But as she looked down again to the snowy surface at her feet and her brain calculated the decreasing distance to it, her brain also began filling in the surrounding detail that her glance had also photographed. There was the gate itself, then the nearest column crowned by a steaming brass lamp, then the other stone column, and between them, set back several feet just at the farthest reach of their light, her brain replayed the image of a man. Standing there. Not moving.

  Ella denied this last. She would not look up again. She wo
uld take her scissors, she would cut that belt, the gate would swing shut and locked, and anything that might possibly be standing there would be shut out in any case.

  She reached the belt. Ella lowered herself on her cane and fumbled with the scissors, twice dropping them from icy fingers before their jaws at last closed on the stiff fabric and began chewing through it. The belt parted with a snap. Like a frozen snake it began unwinding. The gate creaked forward. Ella felt a joy that approached hysteria.

  “Good evening, Ella.”

  Close. Keep going. That's good. Yes.

  “It won't close, Ella. The snow will stop it.”

  Ella denied the voice as well. And what it said. The gate will close. It is a heavy gate. And the snow is not so high. It will need a little push, perhaps. But it will close.

  A shadow moved. The man who was not there stepped closer.

  “No!” Ella shrieked. But still she would not look up. With one bare hand she clawed at the blocking snow while the other held the scissors stiff-armed toward the shadow. It moved closer. It crossed the line between her columns where her locked gates should have been.