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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 and 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