Time Out of Mind (17 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
For a long moment Lesko held back, wanting time to
study the stricken old man. The fear he'd seen had deep
ened into shock. Lesko saw recognition in his eyes. No
doubt of it. Whatever Jonathan Corbin was to him, what
ever compulsion forced this old man from behind the safety
of his walls, whatever need he felt to see that face up close and in person, he did know Jonathan Corbin. He saw a face
that, at least to Lesko, was a nice face. Friendly. Not like
his own. Maybe no Robert Redford, but a good face,
crooked nose and all. Yet to one man it was a face like that
of the worst devil you'd see in a bad acid trip. Is that what
you see, old man? A devil face? Or am I on the wrong
track? Maybe an avenging angel. And if you do see an avenging angel in Jonathan Corbin, could it possibly have
to do with all those dead Corbins who kept popping up in Chicago forty years ago? Of course it could. But whatever
the connection is, we won't find it by standing around
Barnes & Noble's all afternoon, will we?
at the display of historical books where Corbin and Gweni
Leamas had made their selections. He made shorthand notes
of their probable titles based on the spaces that were left, chose the one of them that would most easily fold into his
pocket, and walked to the desk bearing the Cash Only sign.
Come on, old man, he muttered inwardly. Get it in gear. Cor
bin would have no more than a half-block head start as long
as he and the woman stayed on foot. If the old man would get
moving, Lesko could keep them all in sight. Not that it mat
tered much now. Catch Corbin or lose him, it was all the
same, because Lesko knew where he lived and would find
him again tomorrow. Today, he would stick with Corbin
only as long as the old man plodded along in the same di
rection. Lesko would go on letting him think he was invis
ible as long as that belief gave him peace. But before this
day was finished, Lesko intended to know the location of the walls that protected this old man from the ghosts of
Corbins past. He would know the name of the man who
was willing to pay fifteen thousand dollars to be sure that this latest Corbin joined them. He would be a large step
closer to knowing why. And he would be a giant step closer
to knowing how many more thousands the corpse of Jon
athan Corbin might be worth.
As Lesko had hoped, and although not wholly by choice, Corbin and Gwen Leamas were still on foot. Even by mid-
afternoon there were few cabs to be seen on
Fifth Avenue.
Plows had cleared the major midtown arteries, but many of the crosstown streets remained blocked to vehicular traffic.
Corbin didn't mind walking. The sun had broken through
and the city never looked so clean as it did under a bright sky that follows a snowfall, its grime and sorrows hidden, its hard edges softened.
It's really quite glorious, isn't it.” Gwen entwined her
free arm into Corbin’s. In her other hand she insisted on carrying the single heavy shopping bag that held their ac
cumulated purchases. This would leave Corbin's right hand
free to swing his walking stick-umbrella.
“
Quite,” he agreed.
She was watching him, he realized, for any sign of re
newed discomfort or disorientation as they crunched northward toward Rockefeller Center. But there was nothing. If
anything, he felt refreshed. Whether it was Gwen's com
pany, the bright sky, the high atmospheric pressure that
cleared it, or the memory of similar walks in Chicago, Cor
bin felt the way a man should while taking a healthy walk
with a woman who loved him. The umbrella flicked forward.
kept sneaking glances in their direction. Not that it was
unusual for men, even men that age, to stare at Gwen when
he was with her. But Corbin didn't think admiration was
what he saw under the brim of that homburg. He wasn't
sure what it was. The crazy thing was that Corbin had felt
an absurd impulse to walk over and knock that old man flat
on his ass. There it was. The old man had presented no
threat, no real offense of any kind, nor did he evoke any
association in Corbin’s mind that might explain the curious
sense of loathing he felt. Corbin simply didn't like the son
of a bitch. He tightened his grip on his walking stick.
Gwen tugged at his arm and steered him into a left turn
at Fifty-second Street. Corbin shook the old man from his mind and, resisting an urge to look behind him, returned to
enjoying the look of the city.
“
Well?” she asked. “What do you feel?”
They'd stood for several minutes on the raised plaza of
the Burlington Building between two frozen fountains that
were shaped like dandelions.
“
Not a thing.” He shrugged. “Everything's really
pretty.” Some of the buildings, especially the older ones
up toward the park, had begun to look like birthday cakes
dripping with frosting. The tops of street lamps were like the necks of swans.
“
What about the elevated railway?”
“
Beg pardon?”
“
The Sixth Avenue Elevated.” She had a picture book
open in her hands. “It did exist and it was right here. You
said you saw it taking shape yesterday when we were run
ning for the subway. And the terminus you passed under while you were chasing your... that woman began just up
there at Fifty-eighth Street.”
Corbin's lips moved involuntarily. Forming a word. A
name. Damn! More names, each blurring the other, and a
sudden whirlwind of memories and emotions whipped
through his mind.
“
Say it out loud, Jonathan. Did you feel something?”
”
I think I almost had her name. I'm not sure.”
“
What did it sound like? Your impressions, Jonathan.
Trust your impressions.”
”
A short name. A vowel sound. Like Anna. Emma.
Something like that.”
”
Ava?Ula?”
“
It's gone, sweetheart.”
“
You clenched your fists just then. Does she make you
angry even thinking about her?”
Corbin squinted, trying to recall and sort out all the tiny
glimpses that had buzzed past him. There was the woman,
certainly. And thoughts of the man in the bar came back
and they were entwined together like lovers. That notion
seemed right to Corbin. That they were lovers. He must have been an avenging husband when he beat the man as
he did, but that realization didn't seem to evoke any par
ticular rage. There was something else, much greater in
scope, behind his fury that evening and, if he trusted his impressions as Gwen suggested, he'd find himself believing that it had something to do with the Sixth Avenue Elevated
Railroad. Not just the part that ran past here but the whole
thing, and that was a trail he couldn't begin to know how to follow. Corbin shook his head.
“
Let it alone then,” Gwen suggested. “Perhaps it will f
loat back when you're not trying.” She closed the book
of photographs and slid it into the shopping bag at her feet. Then she fished out her book of maps and scribbled a few
more items. “Now,” she said finally, “this is where it
could get exciting. You said that in these snowstorm visions
you were following the woman in the direction of Fifth
Avenue. You also said that you passed under the darkened
terminus. At that point, therefore, you were clearly headed
in an easterly direction across—Did you see any open sky
above you? Or just tracks and terminal?”
“
No tracks. The whole structure ended there.”
“
Then you were eastbound on Fifty-eighth Street
crossing Sixth Avenue. But you also recalled crossing an earlier thoroughfare. The one on which you found her hat.
And then when you crossed that street you stumbled on the
body of a man named George.”
“
Seventh Avenue.”
“
What else do we know?” She held up the map for him
to see. “Working further backward, you said you had
turned left onto the sidewalk where you found a hat—a
toque, you called it—with a Lord and Taylor label. An
impressive bit of detail, by the way. You were sure she'd
gone in that direction because you seemed to know that she
was trying to reach a particular address. In any case, you
knew that she could not have gone in the opposite direction because even you were having difficulty walking into this
tremendous gale that was funneling up Seventh Avenue from the south. With the wind behind you, you followed
her one block north before turning east. This means that
when your dream began, you had to have been standing on the northwest corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh
Avenue.”
Corbin glanced at the intersection on the grid where
Gwen Leamas was pointing and then looked away. He saw the corner in his mind. And he felt the wind from that night chilling him, draining away all the warmth that had been
building within him since he woke up that morning with
Gwen at his side.
“‘
What good is this?’' he asked quietly.
“
Come on, Jonathan.” She took his arm. “Let's go find
out.”
could not recall ever passing the intersection of Fifty-
seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. He had not avoided it.
It was simply that it stood on the fringe of the midtown
area and offered nothing in itself that would have attracted him in that direction. The shops and department stores he used, the expense-account restaurants, the other offices he
might visit, and even Grand Central, were all in the core
of midtown Manhattan. On Fifty-seventh Street itself, Sixth
Avenue was a dividing line between two quite different worlds. East of Sixth Avenue, toward Fifth, was a cross-town boulevard that reminded some visitors of Paris' Rue de la Paix. It preened with some of the most exclusive
shopping in the world. There were furriers offering Russian
sable coats at six-figure prices, designer-original dress
shops, a cluster of art galleries, and dealers in antiques and exotic home furnishings where the cost of the average pur
chase would feed a Third World village for a year. But in
the other direction, toward Seventh Avenue, one saw a con
trast that seemed almost deliberate. There, no shops were
selling costly indulgences or investments in social standing,
no oriflammes of financial achievement. Instead there was
a sort of haute monde hippiedom. Most of the shops catered
to serious practitioners of the arts. Music and dance in par
ticular. There were stores selling instruments and sheet mu
sic, second-floor ballet studios, and lean, lithe, and ascetic
women who wore their unpampered hair in tight buns. That
street marked the bohemian end of a cultural axis that con
tinued up past Carnegie Hall and curved toward its apogee
at Lincoln Center in the West Sixties.
As Corbin walked with Gwen Leamas up the slight incline of Fifty-seventh Street toward Seventh Avenue a se
ries of odd notions began to pick at him. The first was a
certain self-consciousness, as if he were in a place where
he conspicuously did not belong. The feeling made no
sense to him. He might have understood it if he'd been
walking through Harlem, but there was hardly the same
ethnic exclusivity to the sidewalk of West Fifty-seventh
Street. And although no passerby looked at him with either
curiosity or suspicion, the sensation of being an outsider
persisted. Even that was not quite right. There were people who
thought
he did not belong there. That was it. But who those people might be, he had no idea. It seemed as if they were behind him. East of Sixth Avenue. The ones with the
money.
