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lost in that huge crowd, and that it was hopeless and ridiculous. But now his arm was around her, and he remembered what they had done to her and what they had taken from her and from him. He closed his eyes and pictured both men dead.

CHAPTER 4
     
    H E MISSED THE out-of-town-newspaper stand on the first try. He passed it on the wrong side of the street and walked to Seventh Avenue and Forty-second, then got his bearings and retraced his steps. The stand was at Forty-third Street, in the island behind the Times Tower. He asked for a copy of the Scranton morning paper. The newsie ducked into his shack and came back with a folded copy of the Scranton Courier-Herald. He looked at the date. It was Saturday’s paper.
    “This the latest?”
    “What is it, Saturday? That’s the latest. No good?”
    “I need today’s.”
    The newsie said, “Can’t do it. The bigger cities, Chicago or Philly or Detroit, we get in the afternoon if it’s a morning paper or the next day if it’s a night paper. The towns, we rim about two days behind. You want Monday’s Courier-Herald, it would be Wednesday afternoon by the time I had it for you, maybe Thursday morning.”
    “I need this morning’s paper. Even if it’s late.”
    “You could use it Wednesday?”
    “Yes,” he said. “And tomorrow’s, too.”
    “Yeah. Say, we only get two or three. You want ’em, I could set ’em aside for you. If you’re sure you’ll be coming back. Any paper I’m stuck with, then I’m stuck with it. But if you want ’em, I could hold ’em for you.”
    “How much are they?”
    “Half a buck each.’
    “If I give you a dollar now, will you be sure to have a copy of each for me?”
    “You don’t have to pay me now.”
    “I’d just as soon,” Dave said. He gave the man a dollar, then had to wait while the newsie scrawled out a receipt and made a note for himself on a scrap of paper.
    Around the corner, he bought the New York afternoon papers at another newsstand. They didn’t have any of the morning papers left. But the news of Carroll’s murder wouldn’t have gotten to New York in time for the morning papers anyway. He took the papers to a cafeteria on Forty-second Street, bought a cup of coffee, and sat down at an empty table. He checked very carefully and found no mention of the shooting in any of the papers. He left them on his table and went out of the cafeteria.
    Two doors down, he stopped at an outdoor phone booth and flipped through two telephone directories, the one for Manhattan and the one for Brooklyn. There were seven Lublins listed in Manhattan and nine in Brooklyn, plus “Lublin’s Flowers” and “Lublin and Devlin—Bakers.” The other local phone books were not there, just Manhattan and Brooklyn. He went to the Walgreen’s on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Forty-second, and the store had the books for the Bronx and Queens and Staten Island. There were fourteen Lublins listed in the Bronx, six in Queens, and none in Staten Island. The Walgreen’s did not have telephone books for northern New Jersey, Long Island, or Westchester County. And Lublin might live in one of those places. There was no guarantee that he lived in the city itself.
    In the classified directory—a separate book in New York, not just a section of yellow pages at the back—he turned to “Contractors, General.” He looked first for “Lublin,” because he had grown used to looking for Lublins, but there were no contractors listed under that name. He tried looking for “Carroll, Joseph.” He found “Carroll, Jas” and “Carrel, J.” He waited until one of the phone booths was empty, and then he dropped a dime in the slot and dialed the number for Carroll, Jas in Queens. A man answered. Dave said, “Is Mr. Carroll there?”
    “Speaking.”
    He hung up quickly and tried another dime. He | called Carrel, J., also in Queens, and the line was busy. He hung up. There was a woman waiting to use the booth. He let her wait. He called again,