Deadly Honeymoon

by Lawrence Block

  She was waiting in the room at the Royalton. He told her where he had gone and what he had done. She didn’t say anything.

  He said, “Right now there’s nothing to do but wait There should be a story in one of the morning papers, and then there should be a longer story in the Scranton papers when we get them. Maybe we should have stayed around the lodge for a day or two, maybe we would have found out something.”

  “I couldn’t stay there.”

  “No, neither could I.”

  “We could go to Scranton, if you want. And save a day.”

  He shook his head. “That’s going around Robin Hood’s barn. We wait. We’re here, and we’ll stay here. Once we find out who Carroll is, or was, then we can think of what to do.”

  “You think he was a gangster?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I liked him,” she said.

  Around six-thirty they went across the street and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The food was fair. They went back to the hotel and sat in the room but it was too small, they felt too confined. There was a television set in the room. She turned it on and started watching a panel show. He got up, went over to the set, and turned it off. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here, let’s go to a movie.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  They went to the Criterion on Broadway and saw a sexy comedy with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. He bought loge tickets and they shared cigarettes and watched the movie. They got there about ten minutes after the picture started, left about fifteen minutes before it ended. On the way back to the hotel they stopped at a newsstand, and he tried to buy the morning papers. The early edition of the Daily News was the only one available. He bought the News and they went back to their room.

  He divided the paper in half and they went through it. There was nothing about the murder in either section. He picked up both halves and threw them out. She asked what time it was.

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “This takes forever,” she said. “Do you want to try getting the Times again?”

  “Not yet.”

  She got up and walked to the window, turned, walked to the bed, turned again and faced him. “I think I’m going crazy,” she said.

  He got up, walked to her. She turned from him. She said, “Like a lion in a cage.”

  “Easy, baby.”

  “Let’s get drunk, Dave. Can we do that?”

  Her face was calm, unreally so. Her hands, at her sides, were knotted into tight little fists with her long fingernails digging into her palms. She saw him looking at her fists, and she opened her hands. There were red marks on the palms of her hands—she had very nearly broken the skin.

  He picked up the phone and got the bell captain. He ordered a bottle of V.O., ice, club soda, and two glasses. When the lad brought their order he met him at the door, took the tray from him, signed the tab, and gave the kid a dollar.

  “My husband is a big tipper,” she said. “How much money do we have left?”

  “A couple of hundred. Enough.”

  He started making the drinks. She said, “How much is the hotel room?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “We could go to a cheaper hotel. We’ll be here a while and we don’t want to run out of money.”

  “They’ll take a check.”

  “They will?”

  “Any hotel will,” he said. “Any halfway decent hotel.”

  She took her drink and held it awkwardly while he finished making one for himself. He raised his glass toward her and she lowered her eyes and drank part of her drink. When their glasses were empty he took them over to the dresser and added more whiskey and a little more soda.

  “I’m going to get drunk tonight,” she said. “I’ve never been really stoned in front of you, have I?”

  “The hell you haven’t.”

  “I don’t mean parties. Everybody gets drunk at parties. I mean plain drinking where you’re just trying to get stoned, like now. We used to at college. My roommate and I, my junior year. My roommate was a girl from Virginia named Mary Beth George. You never met her.”

  “No.”

  “We would get stoned together and tell each other all our little problems. She used to cry when she got drunk. I didn’t. We swore that we would be each other’s maid of honor. Or matron, whoever got married first. I didn’t even invite her to the wedding. I never even thought to. Isn’t that terrible?”

  “Is she married?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did she invite you to her wedding?”

  “No. We lost track of each other. Isn’t that the worst thing you ever heard of? We drank vodka and water. Did you ever have that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It didn’t have any taste at all. It tasted like water with too much chlorine in it, the way it gets in the winter sometimes. You know how I mean, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a little provocation I think I could maybe become an alcoholic. Will you make me another of these, please?”

  He fixed her another drink. He made it strong, and he added a little of the V.O. to his own glass. She took several small quick sips from her drink.

  She said, “I didn’t even know you then. Both in Binghamton and we never even met. We went to two different schools together. That’s a stupid line, isn’t it? There was a comedian who used to say that, but I can’t remember who. Can you?”

  “No.”

  “There are some other lines like that. Would you rather go to New York or by train?’ Silly. ‘Do you walk to school or take your lunch?’ I think that’s my favorite. I didn’t fall in love with you the first time I saw you. I didn’t even like you. What dreadful things I’m telling you! But when you asked me out I felt very excited. I didn’t know why. I thought here I don’t like him, but I’m excited he asked me out. I can’t stop talking. I’m just babbling like an idiot, I can’t stop talking.”

  She drank almost all of her drink in one swallow and took a step toward him, just one step, and then stopped. There was a moment when he thought she was going to fall down and he started for her to catch her but she stayed on her feet. She had a worried look on her face.

  She said, “I might be sick.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I want you to make love to me, you know that, don’t you? You know I want that, don’t you?”

  He held her and her face was pressed against his chest. She put her hands on his upper arms and pushed him away a little and looked up into his eyes. Her own eyes were a deeper green than ever, the color of fine jade.

  She said, “I want to but I can’t. I love you, I love you more than I ever did, but I just can’t do anything. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Don’t talk about it.”

  “This afternoon I thought I would wait for you and when you came back I would get you to make love to me, and everything would be all right. You haven’t tried to make love to me. I think if you’d tried, before, I would have gone crazy. I don’t know. But I sat here in this room and I planned it out, all of it, and just what I would do and just how I would feel, and I was all alone in the room, and all of a sudden I started to shake. I couldn’t do it. Oh, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Will I be all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I know.”

  “I think you’re right. I think everything’s just stopped, just shut up in a box, until we do what we have to do. Those men. I can shut my eyes and see their faces perfectly. If I knew how to draw I could draw them, every detail. I’ll be all right afterward, I think.”

  A few minutes later she said, “This is some honeymoon, isn’t it? I’m sorry, darling.” Then he took her into the bathroom and held her while she threw up. She was very sick and he held her and told her it was all right, everything was all right. He helped her wash up and he undressed her an
d put her to bed. She did not cry at all through any of this. He put her to bed and covered her with the sheet and the blanket and she looked up at him and said that she loved him, and he kissed her. She was asleep almost at once.

  He had one more drink, no soda and no ice. He capped the bottle and put it in the dresser with his shirts. In the morning, he thought, he would have to take a bundle to the laundry, the two shirts he had worn and a pair of slacks. And he would have to buy some things if he got the chance. He had packed mostly sportswear for the stay at the lodge and he would need dress shirts in New York.

  The liquor helped him sleep. He woke up very suddenly and looked at his watch and it was seven o’clock, he had slept eight hours. He got dressed and went downstairs and outside. Jill was still sleeping. He bought the morning newspapers and went back to the room, and one of them had the story.

  CHAPTER 5

  Pennsylvania Shooting Victim Identified As Hicksville Builder

  Scranton, Pa.—State police today identified the victim of a vicious gangland-style slaying as Joseph P. Corelli, a Long Island building contractor residing in Hicksville.

  Corelli was shot to death late Sunday in an as yet unsolved attack outside his cabin at Pomquit Lodge on nearby Lake Wallenpaupack. “It has all the earmarks of a professional murder,” stated Sheriff Roy Fairland of Pomquit. “Corelli was shot five times in the head and two different guns were used.”

  The dead man had resided at Pomquit Lodge for almost three months prior to the murder. He was registered at the Lodge as Joseph Carroll and carried false identification in that name. Proper identification of Corelli was facilitated through fingerprint records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Corelli was arrested three times in the past five years, twice on charges of extortion and once for possession of betting slips. He was released each time without being brought to trial, according to New York Police Sgt. James Gregg. “He [Corelli] had definite underworld connections,” Sgt. Gregg asserted. “He had several criminal contacts that we know of, and it’s a good bet he was operating outside the law.”

  Nassau County police officials denied knowledge of any recent criminal activity on Corelli’s part. “We were aware of his record and kept an eye on him,” one officer stated, “but if he was involved in anything shady, it was going on outside of our jurisdiction.”

  Corelli, a bachelor, lived alone at 4113 Bayview Road in Hicksville and maintained an office in the Bascom Building, also in Hicksville. His sole survivor is a sister, Mrs. Raymond Romagno of Boston.

  When he opened the door of the hotel room she sat up in the bed and blinked at him. Her face was pale and drawn. He asked her if she was all right.

  “I’m a little rocky,” she said. “I drank too much, I got all sloppy. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it. It’s in the paper.”

  “Carroll?”

  “Corelli,” he said. He folded the paper open to the story and handed it to her. She couldn’t find it at first and he sat next to her and pointed it out to her. He watched her face while she worked her way through the article. Halfway through she motioned for a cigarette and he lit one for her. She coughed on it but went on reading to the end of the article. Then she set the paper on the bed beside her. She finished the cigarette and put it out in the ashtray on top of the bedside table. She started to say something, then realized for the first time that she didn’t have any clothes on. She looked at herself and jumped up and ran into the bathroom.

  When she came out she looked reborn. Her face was fresh and clean, the pallor gone from it now. She had lipstick on. He smoked a cigarette while she put on a dress and shoes.

  She said, “Corelli. I didn’t think he looked Italian.”

  “He could have been almost anything, as far as I could tell. He didn’t look Irish, either.”

  “Carroll isn’t always Irish.”

  “I guess not.”

  “There was a composer named Corelli. Before Bach, I think. We were right about almost everything, weren’t we? About who he was. He was in construction, but he was also a gangster.”

  “In a small way.” He thought a minute. “There are some things that aren’t in that article.”

  “You mean about us?”

  “I mean about Carroll. Corelli. What rackets he was in, who his friends were. They talked a lot about his contacts but they didn’t say who they were. It might help to know.”

  “How do we find out?”

  “From the police,” he said.

  ‘You mean just ask them?”

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  They skipped breakfast. They left the hotel and found an empty phone booth in a drugstore on Sixth Avenue. He coached her on what to say and she practiced while he looked up the number of police headquarters in the Manhattan book. He wrote the number in his notebook and she said, “Let me try it now. How does this sound?”

  He listened while she went through her speech. Then he said, “I think that’s right. It’s hard to tell without hearing it over the phone. Let’s give it a try.”

  She went into the booth and closed the door. She dialed the number he had written down. A man answered in the middle of the first ring.

  She said, “Sergeant James Gregg, please. Long distance calling.”

  The man asked her who was calling. She said, “The Scranton Courier-Herald.”

  The man told her to hang on, he’d see if he could find Gregg. There was a pause, and some voices in the distance, and a click and silence, another click and a youngish voice saying, “Gregg here.”

  “Sergeant James Gregg?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Go ahead, please.” She opened the phone-booth door quickly, stepped outside and handed the receiver to Dave. He took it, ducked into the booth and pulled the door shut

  He said, “Sergeant Gregg? This is Pete Miller at the Courier-Herald. We’re trying to work up a background story on the Corelli murder, and I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Again? I just talked to you people an hour ago.”

  “I just came on,” he said quickly. “What we’re trying to do, Sergeant Gregg, what I’m trying to do, is to work up a human-interest piece on Corelli. Gangland killings, in this area, they’re exciting—”

  “Exciting?”

  “—and people are interested. Could you tell me a few things about Corelli?”

  “Well, I’m pretty busy now.”

  “It won’t take a minute, Sergeant. Now, first of all, I think you or somebody else mentioned that Corelli was connected with the underworld.”

  “He had connections,” Gregg said guardedly.

  “What sort of racket was he in?”

  There was a short pause. Then, “What he was in was construction. We don’t know exactly what he did on the side, the illegal side. He knew a lot of gamblers, and his last arrest was here in Manhattan, he was picked up in a gambling raid. We didn’t have a case against him and we let him go.”

  “I see.”

  “His business was all out on Long Island. That’s out of our jurisdiction, and we didn’t nose around in that connection. We know he was in touch with some people here in the city, some racket people, but we don’t know what exactly he was doing. If he was working a racket in Long Island, well, that wasn’t our business.”

  “Could you tell me some of his associates in New York?”

  “Why?”

  “It would give the story some color,” he said.

  “The names wouldn’t mean anything to you,” Gregg said. “You’re out in Scranton and Corelli’s friends, the ones we know about, are just small-time gamblers. People like George White and Eddie Mizell, just people nobody ever heard of. No one important.”

  “I see,” he said. “How about a man named Lublin?”

  “Maurie Lublin? What about him?”

  “Was he an associate of Corelli’s?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “The name came up, I don’t remember where.
Was he?”

  “I never heard about it. It might be. People like Corelli know a lot of people, it’s hard to say. Offhand I would say Maurie Lublin is too big to be interested in Corelli.”

  “Do you know why Corelli was killed?”

  “Well, it’s not our case. There’s nothing certain. Just rumors.”

  “Rumors?”

  “That’s right.”

  It was like pulling teeth, he thought. He said, “What kind of rumors?”

  “He was supposed to owe money.”

  “To anyone in particular?”

  “We don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to say anyway. Jesus, don’t you people ever get together on anything? I talked to one of your men and told him most of this just a little while ago. Can’t you get it from him?”

  “Well, you probably talked to someone on straight news, Sergeant Gregg. I’m on features.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t want to keep you, I know you’re busy. Just one thing more. Will you be in charge of the investigation in New York?”

  “Investigation?”

  “Of the Corelli murder.”

  “What investigation?” Gregg seemed almost irritated. “He was a man from Long Island who got himself killed out of state. We’re not doing anything about it. We’ll cooperate with Pennsylvania if they ask us to, but we’re not doing anything.”

  “Will there be an investigation in Hicksville?”

  “On the Island? What for? He got shot out of state, for God’s sake.”

  He thought, Pennsylvania would shelve it because Corelli was from New York, and New York would forget about it because the murder happened in Pennsylvania. He said, “Thank you very much, Sergeant. You’ve been a big help, and I didn’t mean to take too much of your time.”

  “It’s okay,” Gregg said. “We try to cooperate.”