When I made no reply, she said, “There’s just one more thing, because I think you’ve got to know the good part too, if that’s what you can call it. It’s about Aiello and me. Aiello didn’t really like me much—in bed, I mean. We got along all right in the office, but I was too young for him, too inexperienced. He wanted hot stuff—girls who really knew what to do. I imagine Madonna had some influence there, since—since he liked to watch it, on TV, and Aiello liked to be watched.”
I thought of Judy Dodson and the way Mike had described her—a hot-pillow girl.
Joanne said, “The next day, the day after it happened with Aiello, I walked out of the house feeling as if I needed to spend twenty-four hours scrubbing myself with Lava soap. I was trying to get the car started and Aiello came out and leaned his big hairy arm on the window and said some nasty things about the night before, so I pretended to be getting a cigarette out and I punched the dashboard lighter. When it was good and red hot I pulled it out of the dash and jabbed it against his arm. He still has—had—the scar. But when I did that he just laughed at me and stepped back and waved me off. Said I was third-rate in bed anyway and I could forget any ideas I might have about giving him a repeat performance. He meant it, too. It was stupid, ignorant luck, I know that, but he never came near me after that. I think I—amused him. He must have thought I was a funny, audacious little girl, still clumsy and wet behind the ears, branding his arm with a cigarette lighter. I could imagine him later, roaring with laughter, telling all the boys how he’d hung big tough men out to dry for less provocation than that. I’m only guessing at that part, of course.”
She had been talking too fast, trying to salvage some small absolution. Finally she stopped talking and slowly, fearfully, turned to look at me.
I was giving her a silly grin. Her face changed. She said, in a different and somewhat bitter voice, “Don’t pretend it doesn’t matter to you, Simon. I don’t want sympathy. I only wish you hadn’t forced me to tell you, because no matter how you rationalize it, it’s sordid and it has to spoil something. It has to.” She added, more quietly, “Don’t forget, you haven’t seen that film yet.”
“I don’t intend to look at it, even if I get a chance,” I said. “I’d only get jealous.”
“Don’t make jokes.”
“It has never failed to amaze me,” I announced, “the crazy things some people are sensitive to. Push the right button with almost anybody and you’ll get instant panic. Joanne, let me make it as loud and clear as I possibly can: I don’t give a good goddamn how you and Aiello amused each other back in the dark ages.”
“I don’t believe it,” she snapped.
“Believe what you want,” I answered, just as flatly. But when I kept staring at her she lifted her head; our eyes locked, and then, slowly, her mouth became soft and lost its bitter downturn, her eyes widened and then became drowsily heavy, and she whispered: “Oh, Simon.”
Chapter Seven
I held her in my arms until she stopped honking and trembling. When it seemed safe enough, I lowered her into the armchair. I said, “Okay, you sit still a minute and collect yourself.”
I picked up the phone and gave the operator a long distance number at the state capital. After the usual confusions between the switchboard at my end and the switchboard at the other, I finally made connection with Jerry Sprague, a former cop-colleague of mine who now held down the city desk on the Sun-Telegraph. He was happy to hear from me. After dispensing with amenities I said, “I’m trying to pin something down, Jerry. Can you give me a fast tracer on the movements of Stanley Raiford and Frank Colclough over the past thirty-six hours? I understand they’re up in your bailiwick.”
I heard his chuckle. “Minute-by-minute, you mean? How come you always want the hard ones?”
“Do I?”
“I don’t know if we’ve had legmen on them straight through. You may be asking for the impossible.”
“With parsley,” I agreed. “But it’s important. Mainly what I want to know is if either one of them had an opportunity to leave the city last night sometime around midnight, by plane, and return before dawn.”
There was an underlayer of excitement in his voice when he shot back: “You’re sitting on something, Simon, I can smell it.”
“When it’s available for publication I’ll let you have it first. If it gets there. It’s probably nothing—I’m just trying to rule things out.”
“The time period you’re asking for—that would be the time Salvatore Aiello was murdered. For Christ’s sake, you don’t think—”
“I don’t think anything, Jerry, and your guesses are your own. I didn’t mention Aiello’s name, you did. How about it?”
“I’ll see what I can dig up. It may take time—most of the legmen are home by now, we’re wrapping up the early edition now.”
“Okay. I’m not sure where I’ll be so I’d better call you back. When can I catch you in the office?”
“I’ll be here till midnight. After that—here, I’ll give you my home number.”
I took down the number on a motel notepad, tore it off and pocketed it. He asked a few more questions and I put him off without specifically denying anything; as long as I left the bait dangling and let him jump to conclusions he’d be excited enough to dig for the answers I needed. We traded a few wisecracks and I hung up and smiled at Joanne.
I had been watching her face during the conversation with Jerry. She had reacted when I’d mentioned the names. I said to her, “What about it?”
“About what?”
“Colclough and Raiford. When you heard the names, you jumped.”
“Did I?”
I shook my head. “Do I have to pry everything out of you with a can opener? Look, you and Mike and I are all in the same boat with no bait and no hooks. Forty-one hours and ten minutes to go. How much of it do I have to waste arguing with you?”
She was apologetic. “Keeping secrets gets to be such a habit I’ve learned automatically to pretend I don’t know anything. I’m sorry, Simon. You want to know about those two greasy politicians. Certainly. I’ve seen both of them, at different times, at Aiello’s house. Naturally Aiello impressed on me that I was to forget I’d ever seen them there. You know what the penalty was to be if I ever mentioned it.”
I nodded. “Good. Okay. Now let’s go back to the safe for a minute, the things in it. Do you want to change your story? You told me this morning you’d never seen the inside of that safe, but I don’t believe that.”
“You’re right, of course. But what makes you so sure I didn’t tell the truth about that?”
“One or two things I’ve picked up about Aiello’s character. He loved to show things off.”
She made a face; obviously she was thinking about the TV-bugged bedroom. I hadn’t been thinking about that; I’d been thinking about what Mike had said about the way Aiello had shown him the contents of the safe and bragged about it. If Aiello would be that expansive with Mike, it wasn’t reasonable to suppose he hadn’t displayed the wealth for Joanne.
She said, “I’ve seen the safe, when he had it open, quite a few times. Most recently two days ago. DeAngelo was there putting some money in, for Madonna, I suppose. Aiello never missed a chance to point to the little black steel box with the roll of film in it. He didn’t have to say anything because I knew what was in the box and he knew I knew. He just pointed and grinned.”
“This may disappoint you,” I stated, “but I’m not particularly interested in that. What I want to know is what else you saw in the safe.”
“Money, mostly, and half a dozen metal boxes.” Her answers were coming easier, more smoothly, all the time. There was no hesitation. She went on: “The boxes were different shapes and sizes but they were all the same kind. Black-painted steel with locks. Like safe-deposit boxes. Each one had a little cardboard label in a brass slot, like the labels on office file drawers.”
“And there was a name on each label,” I said.
She nodded. �
��I suppose you want to know whose names they were. I wish I could remember, Simon. You’ve got to understand, every time he opened that safe and dragged me up to look inside, there was only one thing that drew my eye. It was that little square box with my name on it. He always kept it right out front, on a shelf at eye level, so I couldn’t possibly miss it. The rest of the boxes were farther back inside, on different shelves, and you had to walk inside to see what was written on them, all but one or two, and one of them just said ‘S. Aiello.’ I suppose it was his personal property, and the other one had Frank Colclough’s name on it, but you already know about him.”
“How about bundles of money with people’s names on them?”
She nodded. “There were four or five of those. I don’t remember seeing that doctor’s name anywhere, what was it, Brawley? I’ve never seen him before, I’m sure. Of course I’ve heard of him. He’s very high class in the trade, the kind of surgeon all the rich, fashionable people go to. He’s on the boards of both hospitals and he’s active in charities. I suppose if you don’t read the society page you might not have heard of him, but believe me, he’s well known by all the Somebodies.”
“But you never had reason to suspect any connection between him and the mob before.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Can you remember any of the names that were on the bundles of cash?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. There’s a reason, of course. You just said Aiello liked to show things off. But obviously there were certain things he wouldn’t want to give away, and those would include the names of people who had money in his safe, wouldn’t they? Usually the bundles were turned so that the names didn’t show. Once or twice he got careless and flipped one over by mistake, but I don’t recall—no, wait. Yes I do. The other day, when DeAngelo brought the briefcase full of cash, Aiello had to make room for it, and he moved several of the bundles. He stacked them up on a front shelf down at the bottom, and three of them had the names showing. Now let me think. One was Colclough, I remember that, and another one—yes, I’m sure it was Raiford.”
“What about the third one?”
She shook her head, concentrating. I said, “Brawley?”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t.” She looked up at me and shook her head again. “I just can’t remember. Maybe if we leave it alone it will come back to me.”
“Okay. Let’s try something else. When you went to the house this morning the safe was empty. Did you mean that literally? Everything gone?”
She nodded. “Of course the shelves were still there and I didn’t get down on my hands and knees to make sure they hadn’t left something on the floor at the back, but it looked to me as if everything was gone. The works.”
“All the money and all the black lockboxes.”
“Yes.”
“All right, now think a minute. If all that stuff were stacked up in one heap, instead of spread out on shelves, how much space would it take up?”
She gave me a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, could you fit it all in the trunk of a car, or would you need something bigger?”
“Oh—I see. Well, of course I don’t really know. I’d imagine if you had a big car with a big trunk compartment, and you didn’t mind stuffing wads of cash in all the funny little nooks and corners, you might get all of it in. But it would have to be big.”
“Like, say, a Cadillac?”
“I suppose so. I don’t think I’ve ever looked inside the trunk of a Cadillac.”
“Who do you know that drives a pink Cadillac?”
“I—I’m not sure I know anybody. I don’t really pay much attention to the make of cars. I can’t tell one make from another.”
Neither could I, any more. Fifteen or twenty years ago you could, but nowadays they were all pressed out by what looked like the same cheap stamp mills. I said, “Any large pink car, then. Pink cars aren’t all that common.”
She took a while to think about it and there was no doubt she was giving it full effort, but she came up empty. I said, “It’s okay,” and went back to the phone. This time I gave the switchboard Vincent Madonna’s number.
I had to run the gauntlet of Freddie, the Neanderthal, and DeAngelo, whose hoarse whisper sounded a bit out of breath, before I got put through to the big cheese. Big, I thought, green and moldy. Madonna snapped at me without friendliness and I said, “I need a fact. It may help both of us get what we’re looking for if you can answer a question.”
“Where are you?”
I grinned at the phone. “Don’t play games. You’ve got Ed Behrenman and I don’t know how many other goons glued to this place. You know damn well where I am.”
I had to hand it to him. He actually chuckled into the phone. Then he said, “What fact?”
“Who do you know that drives a pink Cadillac?”
“What?”
I just waited, seeing no point in repeating it, and after a moment his basso profundo resumed: “Offhand, I don’t know anybody who’d be seen dead in a pink Cadillac. Are you serious?”
I recalled the classic Continental in his drive and knew I’d hit on a sore spot. If Madonna had any taste, aside from his weird preoccupations with voyeurism, it seemed concentrated in his worship of fine automobiles. I could see how a car painted pink might offend him. It also indicated he would probably have noticed it if any of his acquaintances had driven into his driveway in such an abomination.
I thanked him and got off the line after he recited the expected litany of veiled threats. Naturally he didn’t commit himself to anything actionable over the telephone but the meaning was clear to both him and me. I couldn’t help feeling more shaken than ever when I hung up, and Joanne couldn’t help but notice it.
She was giving me a cool stare. She said, “So you did go to see him. What kind of deal have you made with him?”
“You don’t trust anybody, do you?”
“Simon, I want to.”
Her faith was so tattered I couldn’t keep attacking her. Instead, I gave her a brief resumé of the day’s unhappy events. I condensed it but left out nothing important. At the end I said, “There’s no question I’ve been floundering. We’re still in that boat without hooks or bait. The only clue that makes any sense is that pink Cadillac Mike saw leaving Aiello’s when he went there the second time last night. If he was telling the truth, and if it was a pink Cadillac. He was a bit vague about it and it was the middle of the night. Headlights might make a car look pink even if it was orange or red or yellow. Of course, the chances are even if we do find a pink Cadillac we’ll discover it was stolen three hours before the robbery. But it’s just about the only lead we have, and we’ve only got”—I looked at my watch—“a little over forty hours to settle this.”
I got up, picked up the .38 from the newspaper on the bed, and stuffed the gun into Joanne’s handbag. It made a tight squeeze and I thought of substituting the little .25 Beretta I’d taken from Brawley, but decided against that for a variety of reasons, one of which was that if a woman unfamiliar with guns has to shoot one, she’s better off with something that makes a lot of noise; it may scare off an attacker if it doesn’t hit him. Another was that a .38 police bullet will make a man stop and think even if it just pinks him, while a pipsqueak .25 is only a bee sting if it doesn’t hit a vital spot.
So I gave her the .38 and told her to use it if she had to, trusting she’d learned from the mistake with Brawley. When I handed her the handbag she said, “Where are we going?”
“Dinner, first. Even if we find the loot we can’t carry it on an empty stomach.”
She shuddered a little. “It’s all so—callous, Simon. We keep talking about the money and never say a word about the man who was murdered.”
I said, as harshly as I could, “I don’t gave a damn about the poor unfortunate victim and I see no reason why you should. If ever a man deserved to be killed—”
“All right,” she said, snappish. “Let’s not argue abou
t it.”
“I just want it clear. We’re not a couple of hawkshaws investigating a murder mystery. The only reason it might help us to know who killed Aiello is that it might lead us to the loot. I’ve got no interest in bringing anybody to justice—if there is such a thing—all I care about is your life and mine. Understood?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes, of course. I get stupid sometimes.”
No wonder, I thought dismally. Buffeted back and forth by one shock after another. Most of the girls I knew would have ended up in a rubber room long ago, going through what Joanne had had to suffer the past few years. Yet, through it all, she remained vivacious, even wholesome to the casual eye—certainly not undone to the point of hysteria.
I put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight, walking her to the door and outside. The sun was going down behind a layer of diaphanous cirrus clouds. I made a remark about the spectacular sunset and she was not too immersed in fright to agree, even stop a moment to stare and drink it in. With sudden savage conviction I said to myself, We will make it through this.
We ate in the motel dining room. We didn’t have much to say. I was trying to work out the next moves, and Joanne drew into herself and huddled over a whisky sour until the food came. The only time she roused herself to speak was when there was motion at the bar, beyond the fake flower planter, and she nudged me with her foot and told me not to look but she knew the girl at the end of the bar—she’d seen the girl at Aiello’s several times in company with Tony Senna. I nodded and went on chewing celery. When the time seemed right I glanced over my shoulder. She was just another girl who probably spent half her time working the bars and the men in them, a brittle, black-haired borderline alcoholic. She was making a point of not watching us, staring instead at the Geriatric Five on the bandstand. But the tip-off came when she rejected a pickup. The guy shrugged and went away.
I had spotted one outside when we’d walked to the lobby from the room—a paunchy, purple-nosed man standing with his hip against the fender of his car, trying not to look interested in us.
Hit and The Marksman Page 11
