Deadly Honeymoon (14 page)

Finally she said, “I don’t understand it.”

“What?”

“Lublin didn’t know who the killers were. That’s what he said, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then he must have been lying. Lee and the other man were in the car. They were driving around looking for us. Is there anyone besides Lublin who knows about us?”

“No. Unless someone recognized you at Lublin’s last night.”

“Who? No one could have. So Lublin had to tell them. That meant that he hired them in the first place, and that the whole business about Washburn was a lot of nonsense, and that—”

“He wasn’t lying.”

“He must have been. He—”

“No. Wait a minute.” He picked up the glass of beer and took a long drink. The beer was very cold and went down easily. He made rings on the top of the table with the cold glass.

He said, “Lublin was telling the truth. I think I see it now. After we left, there were two things he had to do. He had to keep us from getting to Washburn, first of all. But he also had to let Lee and the other one know about us, that we were coming. They were the logical people to set after us. They were the ones we were after, first of all, and that would give them a personal stake in nailing us. It would save his hiring men to run us down, too. All he had to do was tell the two of them that a man and a woman were in town looking for Corelli’s killers, and then the two of them would handle the rest. If they got to us and killed us, Lublin was in the clear. And if we got to them first, and killed them, he was still in the clear. Because we would pack up and move out without Washburn hearing about the whole deal.”

“Is he really that scared of Washburn?”

“Washburn killed Corelli—had him killed, that is—just because Corelli tried to swindle him. Didn’t succeed, just tried. Lublin did worse than that. He informed on Washburn. I guess Lublin has a right to be scared.”

She was shaking her head. “It still doesn’t add up,” she said. “Last night, Lublin didn’t know who the killers were. If he had known he would have told us, wouldn’t he? I mean, assuming that he was telling us the truth. So how would he know who to call today? How would he know to set them after us?”

“That’s easy.”

She looked at him.

“All he had to do was ask Washburn,” he said. “Jesus, I’m so stupid it’s pathetic. He called Washburn and asked him who the men were, and Washburn told him without knowing what it was all about, and then he got in touch with them, with Lee and the other one. We went around playing detective, staking out his apartment, everything. All around Robin’s Hood’s barn, for God’s sake. We missed the shortcut”

“Where are you going?”

“To call Washburn.”

He made the call from the telephone booth right there in the bar. At first he tried to find Washburn’s number in the phone book, but there was no listing. Then he remembered and dug out his notebook. He had copied the number, along with the address, from Lublin’s address book. He dropped a dime and dialed the number, and a soft-voiced woman picked up the phone almost immediately and said, “Mr. Washburn’s residence.”

He made his voice very New York. He asked if he could speak to Mr. Washburn, please. She wanted to know who was calling. Jerry Manna, he said. She asked if he would hold the line, please, and he said that he would.

Then a man’s voice said, “Washburn here. Who’s this?”

“Uh, I’m Jerry Manna, Mr. Washburn. I—”

“Who?”

“Jerry Manna, Mr. Washburn. Mr. Lublin said that I should call you. He said that—”

“Maurie?”

“Yes,” Dave said. “I—”

“Hold it,” Washburn said. He had a very deep voice and spoke quickly, impatiently. “I don’t like this phone. Give me your number, I’ll get back to you. What’s the number there?”

Could Washburn trace the call? He didn’t think so. Quickly, he read off the telephone number. Washburn said, “Right, I’ll get back to you,” and broke the connection.

He sat in the phone booth, the door closed, and he wiped perspiration from his forehead. The palms of his hands were damp with sweat. Right now, he thought, Washburn could be calling Lublin. Lublin would tell him he never heard of a Jerry Manna. And then—

But why should Washburn be suspicious? Unless Lublin had told him everything after all. But Lublin wouldn’t do that, because it didn’t make any sense, that was the one thing Lublin had to avoid. And it took a long time to take a number and find out who it belonged to, where the phone was. The police could do it. Otherwise the phone company wouldn’t give out the information. But Washburn was an important criminal, the kind who would have connections in the police department. One of them could get the information for him. Then he would stall on the phone, and a couple of goons would head for the bar.

They couldn’t stay in the bar too long. If Washburn called back right away, they might be all right. But if he took too long it could be a trap.

Jill stood at the door of the phone booth, her eyebrows raised in question. He shook his head and waved her away. She went back to the table and poured beer into her glass, tilting the glass a few degrees and pouring the beer against the side of it. She raised the glass and sipped the beer.

The phone rang.

He reached for the receiver, fumbled it, knocked it off the hook. He grabbed it up and said, “Hello, Manna speaking.”

Washburn said, “All right, I can talk now. What’s the story?”

“Mr. Lublin said I should call you, Mr. Washburn.”

“You said that already. What’s it about?”

‘It’s about a builder from Hicksville,” he said carefully. “A man named Joe. Maurie said—”

“What, again?”

He took a quick breath. What, again?

“You want to know the two boys on that, is that right?”

“That’s right, Mr. Washburn. I—”

“Dammit, Maurie called me already today on that. When did you talk to him?”

“Last night.”

“Well, he called here this morning. Early. He woke me up, dammit. I gave him all of that right then. Didn’t you talk to him?”

“I can’t reach him, Mr. Washburn. I tried him a couple of times. He maybe tried to get me, but I’ve been out and he couldn’t call me where I’ve been. I thought I could take a chance and call you direct, Mr. Washburn, after I couldn’t get hold of Maurie.”

There was a long pause. Then Washburn said, “All right, dammit, but I hate these goddamned calls. They are two New York boys who work out of East New York near the Queens line. Lee Ruger is one, he’s the one to talk to, and the other is Dago Krause. The price depends on the job, what they have to do. They get a good price because they do good work, they’re reliable. That what you wanted?”

“If you could give me the address, Mr. Washburn, I would—”

“Yeah. Jesus, this is all stuff I told Maurie this morning. He got me out of bed for this, and now I’ve got to go over it all. This is a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“I really appreciate it, Mr. Washburn.”

‘Yeah. Just a minute.” He waited, and Washburn came back and said, “I can’t find the damned phone number. Krause’s address I don’t have, I never had it. Ruger’s the one you want to talk to anyhow, see. That’s 723 Lorring Avenue. There’s a phone, you can probably find it. Maurie—”

“Thanks very much, Mr. Washburn.”

Washburn wasn’t through. “Maurie’s a goddamned idiot,” he said now. “He gave you my name, is that right?”

“Well, he—”

“He should damn well know better than that What’d he do, just let it drop out?”

“More or less, Mr. Washburn.”

“You tell him he should watch his mouth, you got that? Or I’ll tell him myself. What did you say your name was? Manna?”

“Manna” he said. And, after Washburn rang off, he said, “From heaven.”

CHAPTER 13

T
HE ROYALTON
was probably safe but they didn’t go back there. Jill was afraid of the place, which was reason enough. Besides, it was vaguely possible that Ruger and Krause knew their names. The half hour after the murder of Corelli had been a time when everything happened too quickly, when everything was confused; even the memory of it was bright in some parts and hazy in others, and it was possible that the killers knew their names. They had registered under their right names at the Royalton, and if they ran a check from hotel to hotel—

But they had to get some rest. They walked half a block west on Thirty-fourth Street, and Dave went into a leather-goods store and bought a cheap suitcase. There was a haberdashery two doors down; he bought socks and underwear and two shirts there and packed them in the suitcase. Further down the same block they bought underwear and stockings for Jill.

They took a cab to a third-rate hotel on West Thirty-eighth between Eighth and Ninth, a place called the Moorehead. A sallow-faced clerk rented them a double room on the second floor, five-fifty a day, cash in advance. They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Cassiday of Albany, Georgia. There was an elevator but no operator to run it. The desk clerk took them upstairs and unlocked the door for them. He didn’t wait for a tip.

The room held an old iron bedstead that had been repainted with white enamel long enough ago so that the paint had begun to flake away from the metal. The bed itself was a little smaller than a double, about three-quarter size. It sagged slightly in the middle. The bed linen was clean but old and worn. There was a dresser which had been repainted with brown enamel fairly recently. The painter had covered up the scars of neglected cigarettes without bothering to sand them down. Since then, three more burns had been added to the dresser top.

There was no rug. The floor was covered with brownish linoleum which was cracked in several places. The walls were a greenish gray, and very dirty. A fixture on the high ceiling held three unshaded light bulbs, one of which had burned out. A light cord hung down from the fixture over the center of the bed. The room had one window, which needed washing. It faced out upon a blank brick wall just a few feet away. The desk clerk had said that there was a bathroom down the hall.

He stood in the room, looking for some place to put the suitcase, finally setting it on top of the bed. She walked over to the window and opened it. “This is a dump,” he said.

“It’s all right.”

“We could get out of here and go someplace better. Will you be able to sleep here? It’s pretty bad.”

“I don’t mind. I think I could sleep anywhere, now.”

He went over to her and put his arm around her. “Poor kid. You must be dead.”

“Almost.” She yawned. “This place isn’t so bad. There’s a bed—that’s all I care about right now. What time is it?”

“Dinnertime.”

“I’m not hungry. Are you?”

“No.”

“We’ll eat when we wake up. Right now I wouldn’t know whether to order breakfast or dinner, anyway, so let’s just get to sleep. We couldn’t stay at a better hotel anyway, honey. We’re such a mess they wouldn’t take us in. Don’t unpack the suitcase.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wouldn’t want to put any clothes in that dresser. None that I ever intended to wear. What are our names, incidentally? I didn’t see what you wrote.”

He told her.

“Cassiday,” she said. “So many different names lately. Did you ever use phony names when you took other girls to motels?”

“Huh?”

“I bet you did. What names did you use?”

“Jesus,” he said.

She grinned suddenly, a quick and wicked grin. Then she stepped away from him and began to unbutton her blouse. She took it off and asked him to unhook her bra. He did this. She took the bra off and crossed the room to set it and the blouse on the room’s only chair, and he looked at her and was surprised when a sudden uncontrollable burst of desire shot through him. She began getting out of her skirt. He tried looking away from her but her body drew his eyes magnetically.

For God’s sake, he thought. He turned away, toward the door, and said that he had to go downstairs for a minute.

“What for?”

“There’s a drugstore on the corner,” he said. “A few things I wanted to pick up.”

“Just don’t pick up any girls.”

“Don’t be silly.”

She laughed happily at him. “First kiss me goodbye,” she said.

He turned again. She was wearing a slip and stockings, nothing else. Her face was drawn with exhaustion and her skin was pale but this only served to make her still more desirable. She held her arms out to him and he caught her and kissed her. She pressed herself tightly against him and held the kiss.

When he let go of her she said, “I’ll wait up for you.”

“Don’t.”

“Well—”

“I might be a while,” he said.

He wound up going to the drugstore after all. He bought a street guide there but it didn’t do him much good. It told him what streets Lorring Avenue crossed, but he had never heard of any of those streets and wasn’t even sure what borough East New York was in, or whether it was a separate suburb on Long Island. There was a West New York, he knew, and it was in New Jersey.