“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.”
He got out of the booth. She started to ask him a question, but he shook his head and began writing in the little notebook. He wrote: “Maurie Lublin.” Under that he wrote: “George White and Eddie Mizell.” On the next line he wrote: “Corelli owed money.” Then: “No Investigation.”
The drugstore was too crowded to talk in. He took her arm, put the notebook back in his breast pocket, and led her out of the store. There was a Cobb’s Corner across the street. They waited for the light to change, crossed Sixth Avenue and went into the restaurant. It was past nine already. Most of the breakfast crowd had gone to work and the place was near empty. They took a table for two in the rear and ordered orange juice and toast and coffee. He gave her the whole conversation by the time the waitress brought the food.
“You’d make a good reporter,” she said.
“And you’d make a good telephone operator. I kept waiting for him to catch on and start wondering who the hell I was and why I was bothering him, but he believed it all the way. We learned a lot.”
“Yes.”
“A hell of a lot. George White and Eddie Mizell — I don’t know what we can do with those names. But there is a Lublin. And he’s a crook, and he’s in New York somewhere. Maurie Lublin. Maurice, I guess that would be.”
“Or Morris.”
“One or the other. And everything still holds together the way we figured it. That Joe Corelli owed money, I mean. And that was why he was running.”
She nodded and sipped her coffee. He lit a cigarette and set it down in an oval glass ashtray.
“The big thing is that there’s no investigation. Not in New York and not in Hicksville. Isn’t that a hell of a name for a town?”
“Probably a description.”
“Probably. But the cops there won’t bother with the murder. They may close a file on Corelli but that’s all. That means we go out there.”
“To Hicksville?”
“That’s right.”
“Is that safe?”
“It’s safe. There won’t be any police there, not at his place and not at his office either. The New York police aren’t interested in Corelli any more. And Lublin’s men won’t be there, either.”
“How do you know?”
“They had about three months to search Corelli’s room and office. Maybe that was how they found out where he was, how they got the idea. That lodge was out of the way. They must have had some information or they never would have dug him up. They’ve probably sifted through his papers and everything else a dozen times already. Now he’s out of the way. They won’t be interested any more.”
She looked thoughtful. He said, “Maybe you should stay at the hotel, baby. I’ll run out there myself.”
“No.”
“It won’t take long. And—”
“No. Whither thou goest and all that. That’s not it. I was just wondering what we could find there. If they already searched—”
“They were looking for different things. They wanted, to find out where Corelli was hiding, and we want to find out why he was hiding, and from whom. It’s worth a try.”
“And I’m going with you, Dave.” He argued some more and got nowhere with it. He let it go. It seemed safe enough, and perhaps she’d be better off with him than alone with her thoughts at the hotel.
The doorman at the Royalton got the car for them. He told them how to find the Queens-Midtown tunnel and what to do when they were through it. The sky was clouded over and the air was thick with the promise of rain. They drove through the tunnel and cut east across Queens on an expressway. The road was confusing. They missed the turnoff for Hicksville, went five miles out of their way and cut back. At an Atlantic station they filled the gas tank and found out where Bayview Road was. They hit Bayview Road in the 2300 block and drove past numbered streets until they found the address listed in the newspaper story. Hicksville was monolithic, block after block of semidetached two-story brick houses with treeless front yards and a transient air, a general impression that all the inhabitants were merely living there until they could afford to move again, either further out on the Island or closer to the city.
Corelli’s building, 4113, was another faceless brick building jammed between 4111 and 4115. There were wash lines in the back. According to the mailboxes, someone named Haas lived upstairs and someone named Penner lived on the ground floor. Dave stepped back into the street to check the address, then dug the newspaper clipping from his wallet to make sure he had read it correctly the first time around: “Corelli, a bachelor, lived alone at 4113 Bayview Road in Hicksville...”
Jill told him to try the downstairs buzzer. “Probably the landlord,” she said. “They buy the house and live downstairs and rent out the upstairs. The income covers the mortgage payments.”
He rang the downstairs bell and waited. There were sounds inside the house but nothing happened. He rang again, and a muffled voice called, “All right, I’m coming, take it easy.”
He waited. The door opened inward and a woman peered suspiciously at him through the screen door. Her face said she thought he was a salesman and she wasn’t interested. Then she caught sight of Jill and decided that he wasn’t a salesman and her face softened slightly. She still wasn’t thrilled to see him, her face said, but at least he wasn’t selling anything, and that was a break.
He said, “Mrs. Penner?”
She nodded. He searched for the right phrasing, something that would fit whether or not she knew Corelli was dead. “My name is Peter Miller,” he said. “Does a Mr. Joseph Corelli live in the upstairs apartment?”
“Why?”
“Just business,” he said, smiling.
“He used to live here. I rented the place after he skipped on me. He lives here for three years, he pays his rent every time the first of the month, and then he skips. Just one day he’s gone.” She shook her head. “Just disappears. Didn’t take his things, that’s his furniture and he left it, everything. I figured he would be back. Leaving everything, you would think he’d be back, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded. She didn’t know Corelli was dead, he thought. Maybe that was good.
“But he never shows,” she said, shifting conveniently into present tense again. “He never shows, and I hold the place a month, waiting for him. That’s seventy dollars I’m out plus another week before I could rent it. I don’t rent to colored and it took a full week before they moved in, Mr. and Mrs. Haas. Eighty-five dollars he cost me, Corelli.”
“Do you have his things? His furniture and all?”
“I rented the place furnished,” Mrs. Penner said. She was defensive now. “Mrs. Haas, she didn’t have any furniture. They just got married. No kids, you know?” She shook her head again. “There’ll be kids, though. A young couple, they’ll have kids soon enough, you bet on it. One thing about Corelli, he was quiet up there. What about his things? He send you or something?”