A packed northbound bus hissed to a stop, blocking Cor
bin and Gwen Leamas from Lesko's sight. When it passed,
the two had vanished. Shit! Where’d you go, Corbin? You didn’t slip into that bus, did you? No. not without a shoehorn and a pot of grease, you didn’t.
Down that subway, then. Ah, yes. The subway.
Lesko did not follow. Instead he pulled his notebook
from an inside pocket and, sheltering its pages with his body, peeled back to the penciled address of Gwen Lea-
mas—145 East 77th Street. He nodded. Yes. That would explain the BMT subway. A short ride to the East Side and
then a switch to the Lexington Avenue line would have
them at her address in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Lesko
stepped into the roadway at Fifty-fifth Street and waded
through the eastbound crawl until he reached the first of those taxis whose Off Duty signs flick on at the first sign
of inclement weather. Lesko slammed a fist down on its
hood and, having won the driver's attention, waved a gold
shield and ID card in front of the wipers.
“
What, you can't read, pal?” The driver rapped his knuckles against the roof. “That light out there says I'm
off duty.”
Lesko showed his teeth. “We should all be so lucky. Open it.”
' .
The driver angrily slapped at a lever that popped up the door locks and Lesko climbed in, pocketing his ID before
the driver could ask for a closer look at it.
“
You're on this big case, right?'' the driver snorted.
“Cops are always on this big case when they don't feel
like taking the subway.”
Lesko glanced at the hack license on the dashboard. Mar
vin Posey. A wimpish name, Lesko thought, for such a
surly little bastard.
“
Marvin,” he said, ”I must get quickly to Seventy-
seventh Street between Lexington and Third. I would like
you to fly there on the wings of your civic duty.”
“
What?” The driver's expression dulled.
“
Get this fucking thing moving.”
Lesko soon realized that, surly or not, Marvin Posey
knew his job. He pushed through a red light and a line of
pedestrians onto Sixth Avenue, bullied and honked his way
to Central Park, ran another light at the Seventy-second
Street exit, and was turning north on Third Avenue in ten
minutes flat.
As the cab crunched into the unplowed snow of East
Seventy-seventh Street, Lesko leaned forward to choose a
spot from which he could watch both number 145 on his
right and the Lexington Avenue subway exit straight ahead.
“
Pull in right here.” He pointed.
“
That's a hydrant. Good citizens don't block hydrants.”
“
Behave yourself, Marvin.” Lesko had counted at least
six moving violations since he climbed into the cab. Which
was fine. Anything to help Marvin find inner peace. The cab stopped and Lesko stepped partially out of it just in
time to see Jonathan Corbin emerging from the subway
steps a quarter block ahead of him.
It was a changed Jonathan Corbin, Lesko noted with in
terest. Now it was Corbin who was standing up straight and
strong and assisting the Leamas girl instead of the other
way around. The sleet was smacking him in the face just
as hard but he didn't look like it bothered him. What hap
pened? Could the Lexington Avenue subway have curative
powers? Or, Lesko wondered, was it the calming attentions
of Miss Leamas? Or do Corbin’s devils only hang out down
in the high-rent district?
Lesko watched closely as Corbin and Gwen Leamas
crossed Seventy-seventh Street and waded along the un
cleared sidewalk toward number 145. He could see Cor
bin’s face clearly. The expression he saw was not the look
of a man who had just spent four hours biting his drapes.
The guy's suddenly happy, thought Lesko. Not relieved,
not recovered. Happy. Like everything's been just fine all along. You could ask what's not to be happy about being snowbound for a weekend with his tasty English squeeze.
But you could also ask why midtown snow scares him shit
less and uptown snow doesn't. For that matter, you could
also ask why Raymond Lesko is getting top dollar to bird-
dog some stiff whose worst enemy seems to be himself.
Ask that question and you already have a
big part of the
answer. Jonathan Corbin's worst enemy is not Jonathan Corbin after all.
It was during me underground crosstown ride to the Lex
ington Avenue subway, where they transferred to the north
bound IRT local, that Gwen Leamas began to notice a
subtle change in Jonathan Corbin.
The most welcome change was that he'd begun to relax.
On that first short jog to the BMT station at Fifty-fifth
Street, Jonathan had almost bolted. It was more than panic.
She'd seen him look upward, not so much at the snow or
sky but at the air space above Sixth Avenue, as if some
great beast had begun materializing there. She could tell
that by his eyes. They were focused, she felt, not on the
buildings at the end of his line of sight but on some mid
point where there was nothing at all. What is it? she'd
shouted into his ear. What do you see? His answering look
was almost one of accusation. Of betrayal. See? It's hap
pening. Even with you here, it's happening. She dragged
him forward.
The sanctuary of the subway entrance, however, made
all the difference. He'd seized the stairway handrail as if it
was a lifeline, and his body sagged in relief as he staggered
down below the street. There was a long backward glance
at whatever floating thing had frightened him, but the fear was now replaced by ... she wasn't sure. Recognition, per
haps. The beginnings of recognition. There would be time
to ask him later.
On the first of the two trains they took, she could almost feel Jonathan's pulse returning to its normal rate. The veins
at his temples were quiet. His hands, although restless, were
no longer knotted into fists. He'd stopped trying to scan
every face in the car and now sat back reading, with an
odd sort of thoroughness, the chain of advertisements that
lined the inside crown. Gwen had a sense that the ads
served as proof to Jonathan of where he was. About half
the ads were in Spanish, reflecting the mix of riders. Gwen looked around. Half Spanish, most of the other half black, leaving only a minority of middle-class white types in their
car. More than usual, actually. Today there were even a
few affluent-looking WASPs who would normally have avoided subways but who must have despaired of finding
rides on the surface.
A single such woman appeared, working her way
through the car. She chanced to stop near Corbin’s seat
when she saw no use in searching further for one of her
own. She was in her mid-thirties, Gwen Leamas guessed,
and expensively dressed. Her long, hooded coat, trimmed
in fur, had a Bergdorf Goodman look about it. At her throat
she wore a choker whose centerpiece was a large amethyst
in an antique setting. Her blandly attractive face was
pinched into an expression of aggrieved martyrdom at her
own discomfort and at being forced into close association
with people who could not otherwise approach the world
she lived in. She looked as though she was trying to breathe
in as little of their exhaled air as possible and to touch her
surroundings not at all. The train rocked sharply as it passed
over a section of rutted ties, and the woman, whose name, Gwen decided, was Alicia Poindexter or some damned thing,
reached reluctantly for the support of a metal post. She
gripped it with only the fingertips of a gloved hand.
Corbin, suddenly, was on his feet. He bowed in the
woman's direction and indicated his seat with a courtly
wave of his hand. Gwen knew that the woman had stopped near them, not in hopes of being offered a seat, but because
of all those in the car she and Jonathan came closest to
being acceptable company. The woman hesitated, staring
appraisingly at Jonathan, but only for a moment. Another
woman, darker and heavier, was pushing into position for
a dash at the vacant seat in the event Bergdorf Goodman
waited so much as another heartbeat. The woman in the long coat stepped forward, turned, and lowered herself
daintily into the seat Corbin surrendered. She thanked him
with an unsmiling flicker of eye contact and a tiny nod,
thereafter keeping her eyes fixed on the Gucci purse she held securely in her lap.
Bloody hell, thought Gwen Leamas. Here's a man not
ten minutes after being scared half out of his wits and now
he's playing the subway gallant for some uptown twit
who's mortified to be in the company of people
who work
for a living.
She didn't mention it, either then or on the final leg of
their trip to her flat. Corbin was calm, even detached, and
that was all that mattered for the moment. Gwen allowed
herself to hope that she would not have to physically pry
him out of the train that was now gliding to a stop. She stood up and took his hand tightly.
But Corbin did not resist. Nor did he hesitate except to
stand back politely as other passengers shouldered past him
and onto the platform. Gwen tugged at him and he fol
lowed. His pace remained unhurried as they passed through
the turnstile and strolled toward the natural light spilling
down from the street ahead of them. She wasn't sure
whether to be relieved or troubled by this new turn in Cor
bin’ s behavior. He didn't even seem to notice the sound of
the wind, which could be heard above the receding roar of the train. Or the scattered flakes that were already being
sucked toward them well short of the ascending stairs. Keep
it up, Jonathan, she prayed, electing to count her blessings.
Wherever your mind has wandered to, by all means leave
it there until we've dragged ourselves through the last few
yards of this mess.
The storm, though Gwen had not thought it possible, had worsened. The stairs were covered, their risers obscured by
drifting snow except for a path stamped into the center.
Looking up, it was she who gasped at the swirling arctic
mass that awaited them. It looked, she thought, like a great maniacal swarm of white bees. Living things. Christ—she
caught herself—now he's got me doing it.
“
Let's go, Corbin.” Gwen Leamas squeezed his hand
and began climbing, one untrustworthy stair at a time, into
a storm that seemed to turn, snapping and growling at them
as they rose to confront it.
“
Good God,” she muttered as she half stumbled onto
the Seventy-seventh Street surface. A jet of sleet slapped
color into her cheeks and lashed at her legs as she tried to
grind her heels into a glaze of wind-polished ice.
“
Permit me,” she heard Corbin say.
Permit me? She blinked at him through eyelashes already
weighted with bits of clinging ice.
“
If I may,” he added, as one strong hand took her arm
and the other circled her waist. It was this serenely decorous Jonathan Corbin who steadied her, guided her, across Seventy-seventh Street and on toward the steps of the
brownstone that waited some hundred paces into the storm.
She'd sort all this out later, Gwen Leamas thought as she squeezed off her boots inside the door of her second-floor
flat. Her encrusted coat was already melting on the carpet
runner where she had dropped it. She turned toward Corbin,
who had not moved since entering, and, with fingers still
numb and tingling, began working the buttons of his trench
coat. His eyes now had a vague confusion about them, in
contrast to the assured calm she'd seen only minutes earlier.
She stepped behind him and peeled the coat down over his arms, shook it, and draped it on the floor next to her own.
Gwen then took his suit jacket and hung it on a closet knob.