Read Online Deadly Honeymoon by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online

them, and she looked down at it and said, “Guns scare me.”
    “Pick it up.”
    “Why?”
    “Pick it up.” She did. He showed her how to hold it and made her curl her index finger around the trigger. “Aim at the doorknob,” he said.
    She aimed. He sighted along the barrel and showed her how her aim was off, and taught her how to line up a target. He took the gun from her and spilled out the shells, clearing all five chambers. Then he made her aim at the doorknob and squeeze the trigger to get the feel of the gun. After she practiced for a few minutes he took the gun from her and loaded it again.
    He said, “There’s only one way. We could try to dig up Corelli’s life history if we wanted. We could call up each of the girls he knew and find out what they all knew about him. We could look him up in the New York Times file, and we could look up all the people in his address book, and we could find out everything there is to know about Joe Corelli.”
    “Is that what you want to do?”
    “No.” He took out two cigarettes, lit one for himself and offered the other to her. She shook her head and he put the cigarette back in the pack. “No,” he said again. “Corelli doesn’t matter any more. We’re not trying to find Corelli. He’s dead, and we don’t need him. We’re not writing his biography. We’re looking for the two other men.”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “Lublin hired those men,” he said. “We have Lublin’s name and we have his phone number. We can find out where he lives. We’ll see him, and he’ll tell us who the men were who killed Corelli.”
    “Why will he tell us?”
    “We’ll make him tell us.”
    Her eyes darted to the gun, then away. She said, “Now?”
    “Now.” He stood up, gun in hand. “We’ll check the drugstore phone books. We’ll find the Lublin who matches the number in Corelli’s book, and then we’ll go see him.”
    Dave tried the gun in each of his jacket pockets. In the inside pockets, it made a revealing bulge. In the outside pockets it hung loose and awkward. He jammed it under his belt but it didn’t feel right there, either.
    Jill said, “Give it to me.” He gave her the gun and she put it in her purse. The purse was a flat one, black calf, and the gun did not fit well. She got another purse from the dresser, a larger one, and she put the gun and her other things into it. There was no bulge this time.
    It was raining now, raining steadily, with a wind whipping the rain into their faces as they walked to the drugstore. Cars streaked by on wet asphalt. She held his arm with one hand and the purse with the other. In the drugstore, he started to look through all the phone books. She saved time by calling Information and asking the operator which borough Lublin’s exchange would be in. The exchange was Ulster 9, and the operator told her that would be in Brooklyn.
    They found him in the Brooklyn phone book: “Lublin, Maurice 4412 Nwkrk . . . ULster 9-2459.” He looked at the listing and couldn’t figure out what the street was supposed to be. There was a New York street directory on the magazine rack, and he thumbed back to the index and checked the Brooklyn streets in alphabetical order. There was a Newkirk Avenue listed; it was the only street that fit.
    He tried Lublin’s number, and no one answered. He called again and got no answer, then checked the phone book again to see if there was an office listed. There wasn’t.
    “He’s not home,” he told her.
    “Then let’s have dinner. I’m starving.”
    He was, too. They hadn’t eaten at all since morning, and it was almost six already. But he hadn’t noticed his hunger until she mentioned it. He interpreted this as a sign of their progress. They were moving now, growing involved in the mechanics of pursuit, and he had been hungry without even realizing it.
    They went to an Italian restaurant down the block and ate lasagne and drank bottles of beer. In the middle of the meal he left the table