Time Out of Mind by John R. Maxim Read Free Book Online Page A

wrist above it, Dancer wore a gold Patek Philippe watch with a black face, blank, no numerals, which seemed an admirable fit to his personality. His hair was freshly trimmed, probably twice a week by one of those barbers who make office calls. Lesko guessed his age at thirty-eight, although he could possibly have been ten years older.
    “ Are you drinking anything?” Lesko asked, although he perfectly well knew the answer.
    ” A Perrier, please. Two slices of lime.”
    Lesko mentally rolled his eyes as he signaled the wait ress. The little twerp even drinks designer water.
    “ Your report, if you please.” Dancer moved his case to one side of the table, having propped the lid from inside so that it remained open a half inch. Lesko pretended not to notice. He opened his notebook to a paper-clipped page well short of his most recent entry.
    ” I have a pretty good fix on the subject's history. How deep do you want to hear it?”
    “ All of it,” Dancer told him. “Assume I know noth ing.”
    The ex-cop waited while the Perrier and another beer were set on the table along with a bowl of fresh peanuts.
    “ The subject's full name is Jonathan T Corbin. He was born—”
    “ What does the T stand for?”
    “ Nothing. Just an initial on his birth certificate. No pe riod after it, as in Harry S Truman. If it ever stood for anything, nobody who's alive seems to know what it was. Anyway, Jonathan T Corbin was born in Evanston, Illinois, on the twenty-fifth of December, 1944. A Christmas baby.”
    “ You're certain?” Dancer stiffened slightly.
    “ About which part?”
    “ Never mind. Please continue.”
    “ Parents,” Lesko read, turning his notebook up toward an overhead light, “were the former Agnes Ann Haywood of Wilmette, Illinois, and Captain Whitney Corbin. The father never saw him. He was an Army Air Corps pilot, re ported missing in action in Europe on November sixth, 1944. Later confirmed killed.”
    “ Positive identification?”
    “ Enough for the army. There were civilian eyewitnesses to a crash and burn just outside of Antwerp. The local Re sistance ended up with his dog tags and turned them over to American Intelligence a month or so later.” But a funny question, Lesko mused. Why should Dancer care about be ing sure the Corbin guy's father bought the farm?
    “ Do you have a marriage date for the parents?”
    And there's another one, he thought. But as a matter of fact, he did. “The parents were married by a Cook County Justice of the Peace on June thirtieth, 1944. The baby was already three months in the oven. The captain had been home between tours in March of the same year, which is obviously when Jonathan T Corbin was conceived. I don't know how the father pulled it off in time of war, maybe because he won a few medals, but he wrangled a compas sionate leave and the army sent him home long enough to get married and also to do a short war bond tour around Evanston and some other Chicago suburbs so it shouldn't be a total loss. After about ten days they shipped him back to his fighter escort base in Bury St. Edmunds. That's in England. East Anglia.”
    “ Thank you so much, Mr. Lesko.” Dancer pursed his lips in an expression meant to assure the ex-cop that he had a passing knowledge of English geography. “Kindly con tinue.”
    “ That's it for the father. He won one more medal for shooting up a troop train and another one for getting killed. The University of Notre Dame, where he went, put up a plaque in their trophy case with some of his medals and a baseball MVP he won there in the early forties. As for the mother, Agnes Haywood Corbin stayed home with her own parents, had the baby, and after about two years she got married again to a lawyer named George Satterthwaite. Satterthwaite bought a house in Winnetka and the two of them raised the kid.”
    “ As a Satterthwaite?”
    “ Funny you should ask,” Raymond Lesko answered, this time saying it out loud. “The records were a little