Lawrence Block - Deadly Honeymoon

“And?”

“And Joe didn’t have the seventy-five. He could raise ten but anything more was scraping, he couldn’t make it. He came to me and offered me half the gross for sixty-five thousand. My capital and his connections. He had other people on the line, in Pittsburgh, to take the pile off his hands for a hundred and twenty-five thousand, which meant a gross profit of fifty thousand dollars with the whole play figured to take a little less than a month. My share would be twenty-five, and twenty-five less costs for Corelli.”

“You went in with him?”

Lublin half-smiled. “For thirty, not for twenty-five. That still gave Corelli twenty thousand for his ten and nobody was going to give him a better deal. Besides, he didn’t have that much time to shop around. The hijackers were in a hurry. He took my sixty-five and his ten and bought them out. That gave us half the coffee in the world, and Joe had the place to move it, to Pittsburgh.”

“What happened?”

“The rest made the papers. This was in March. Corelli hired a trucker. The trucker stopped to make time with a waitress, and the other trucks with him got ahead of him, and this one schmuck got nervous and started speeding to catch up. On the Pennsy Turnpike, in a truck, the son of a bitch is speeding. One of those long-distance trucks and they never speed, they always hold it steady.” He shook his head, still angry with the driver. “So a trooper stopped him and this driver got nervous, and the trooper got suspicious, and the driver pulls a gun and the trooper shoots his head off, like that. They opened the truck and found a load of hot coffee, and they radioed ahead and cut off the other trucks, and that was the shipment, all of it, with the drivers off to jail and the coffee back to the warehouse where it came from in the first place.”

“And you were out the money?”

“We weren’t exactly insured.”

“But why did Corelli owe you the dough?”

“Because it was his fault the deal fell in,” Lublin said. “It was his play. I was investing, and he was supposed to manage it. He was responsible for delivering the load and collecting payment. All I had going was my capital. When it fell in, he owed me my cost, which was sixty-five thousand.” He narrowed his eyes slightly. He said, “I knew he didn’t have it then, because if he had had it he would have carried the deal all by himself, he wouldn’t have cut me in. It wasn’t the kind of debt where I was going to press him for payment. He didn’t have it, and the hell, you don’t get blood from a stone. But he would get it, little by little. He would pay up, and I had no instant need for the money. When he got it he would pay me. In the meanwhile, he owed me. If I needed a favor I could go to him because he owed me. Joe was small but not so small it hurt me to have him owe me favors. That never hurts, it can always be handy.”

“Then why have him killed?”

“I didn’t. That’s the whole point, why I wouldn’t be the one to have him killed. There was nothing personal. It was his fault the deal went sour, sure, but that was nothing personal. And killing him could only cost money without getting any money back. Use your head, why would I kill him?”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you have ideas.”

“No ideas,” Lublin said.

“He was out his own ten thousand dollars and he owed you sixty-five thousand on top of it. He must have been hungry for big money, and fast. What was he doing?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Who was he involved with?”

“I don’t know.”

“He mentioned your name when they went to kill him. He said to tell you he would pay up the money, but they shot him anyway.”

“You were there?”

Maybe it was a mistake to let him know that, he thought. The same mistake as Jill’s mentioning his name. The hell with it.

“He mentioned your name,” he said again. “He thought you were the one who had him killed.”

“I don’t get it. Where do you and the broad come in?”

“We come in right here. Corelli thought you killed him. Why should I think any different?”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. Now you have to tell me something else. You have to tell me who had him killed, because that’s something you would know, it’s something you would have to know. Corelli left town three months ago, running for his life. He owed you a pile of money. If anybody owed you that kind of money and skipped town you would know why. He was either running from you or running from somebody else, and either way you would damn well know about it.”

Lublin didn’t say anything.

“You’re going to tell me. I’ve got the gun, and your man over there isn’t going to be any help to you, and I don’t care what kind of a job I have to do on you to get you to talk. I’ll take you apart if I have to. I mean that.”

“How did you get so hard?” Dave looked at him. “You talk too clean, you look too clean. You don’t come on like a hotster. But you got guts like a hotster. Who the hell are you?”

“Nobody you know. Who was Corelli running from?”

“Maybe his shadow.”

A slap this time, openhanded across the face. Lublin’s head snapped back from the blow, and he said something dirty. The back of the hand this time, again across the face, the head snapping back once again, the face flushed where the slaps had landed. Techniques in Cross-examination.

Dave said, “I don’t care who had him killed, whether it was you or somebody else. I’m not looking for the man who gave the order.”

“Then—”

“I’m looking for the two men who did the killing.”

“The guns?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. Lublin looked at him, then at Jill, then said, “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You want to know the names of the two men who took Corelli and shot him. The ones hired to hit him.”

“Yes.”

“Weil, I don’t know that.”

“You don’t?”

“If I had him killed,” Lublin said guardedly, “even then I wouldn’t know the actual names of the guns. I would call someone, a friend, and say that there was this Corelli and I wanted him found and killed, and I would pay so much dough to this friend, and that’s all I would know. He might fly a couple of boys all the way in from the West Coast, and they would do the job, make the hit, and then they would be on the next plane back to S.F. or somewhere. Or even local boys, I wouldn’t know their names or who they were.”

“Then tell me who you called.”

“I didn’t call anybody. I was just saying that even if I did I still wouldn’t know the guns.”

“Then tell me who did make the call. Who had Corelli killed?”

“I told you. I don’t know that.”

“I think you do.”

“Dammit—”

Monotonous Techniques in Cross-examination. It took a long time, a batch of questions, a stonewall of silence, a barrage of pistol-whipping and slapping, a gun butt laid across Lublin’s knee, the barrel of the gun slapped against the side of his jaw. There would be a round of beating, and a round of unanswered questions, and another round of beating.

Jill hardly seemed to be there at all. She stood silent, cigarette now and then, went away once to use the bathroom. Carl never moved and never made a sound. He lay inert on the far side of the room and nobody ever went over to look at him. There was Lublin in the chair and there was Dave with the gun, standing over him, and they went around and around that way.

Until Lublin said, “You’ll kill me. I’m not so young, I’ll have a heart attack. Jesus, you’ll kill me.”

“Then talk.”

“I swear I did not have him hit. I swear to God I did not have that man hit.”