I had to walk past the Cadillac to get to the back door of the place, but I was interrupted by the sight of the man slumped in the driver’s seat of the big car. I stopped, lifted the Beretta, and gingerly reached inside to shake him. It was Dr. Fred Brawley, but what the hell was he doing asleep in the Cadillac?
He wasn’t asleep. He was dead. When I touched him he pitched over on his right shoulder and didn’t move. I opened the door and examined him by the light of the dash and map lights. He had been shot in the back of the head by a bullet of sufficiently small caliber and low velocity to lodge in the skull; it had made no exit wound in front.
I felt sinking disgust and a coiling tension in my groin, the acid sense of failure. Somebody had beat me to him. Somebody else had found him out, killed him and taken the loot. I was right back where I’d started.
The corpse was still warm; he hadn’t been dead more than a few minutes. Maybe there was still a chance. I withdrew from the car, glancing into the back seat—a suitcase and an overcoat. I opened the suitcase: just clothes. Brawley had been traveling light.
The quadrangular medical office building had been locked up for the night, I supposed, but when I glanced up at the corner picture-window ten feet above my head I saw the wink of a small light traveling across the glass in reflection. Someone was inside Brawley’s office with a pencil flashlight. Blood pumping, I walked around the Cadillac to the back door of the building.
The metal door had been jimmied open; it stood slightly ajar. I pushed softly inside, taking the Beretta off safety and holding it at ready. As I climbed the stairs toward the upper floor—that was the ground floor if you entered from the front; the pitch of the hill made the difference—my nostrils detected the lingering firecracker scent of cordite sulfur.
The stairwell was dark. I went up on tiptoes. At the head of the stairs the door stood wide open, giving out into the long corridor. At the end of the hall I could see the faint reflections of the moving flashlight around the corner in the office. I went forward along the soundless carpet, gripping the Beretta, taut with the knowledge that if the man was still searching for it then he hadn’t found it.
I eased up to the open office door and slowly put my head around the jamb, and saw him.
He had his back to me. He was trying to get the safe open. He had tools; the pencil light was in his teeth and he was using both hands on the tools. The little electric drill was whining with the particular whine of a diamond bit. I had a drill like that; I use it on rocks.
There was a click as the drill plunged through, and as he withdrew the bit and set the drill down on the chair beside him, I heard him grunt—a breathy, falsetto sort of grunt caused by the old injury to his larynx.
I said, “Stand still, Pete. Freeze.”
DeAngelo wheeled. In the flickering strange light of the tumbling flashlight I had a glimpse of his grin, a spasm of clenched teeth and drawn lips. His hand, as quick as a diamondback’s strike, was spinning a silencer-weighted pistol toward me.
He wasn’t allowing any argument. I pulled the trigger, too much in haste, and saw vividly the jump and puff of his shirtsleeve as the flesh received the bullet. It stung him but he was still moving, diving toward the desk. The automatic in his fist made a little puff of sound and I heard the solid whack of the bullet driving into the wall above my head. I wheeled back, flattening against the outside of the doorjamb; slid down to the floor and went into the room on my belly, gun out in front. But he took me by surprise: he launched a chair through the picture window, and in the crashing confusion went out through the jagged opening.
He had a ten-foot drop to the ground. I got my feet under me and crossed the room fast. The leg of a chair, unseen in the dark, tripped me; I sprawled, cursed, got up and peered down through the shattered window.
I had a glimpse of him, running with a limp past the neon drugstore sign, his face a twisted ugly mask of fury. He stopped and fired at me, just once; I ducked, put my head out again and watched him disappear at a shambling run. The only explanation I could think of was that he must have been running out of ammunition.
He would probably summon help from the nearest phone. I didn’t have much time. I went to the wall safe.
Luck, this time in my favor. He had broken the lock with his drill just before I had surprised him. The door swung open. I picked up his pencil light from the floor and played it around the inside of the safe.
There was only one thing inside that hadn’t been there when I’d looked inside this morning. The addition was a gun—a Walther 9 mm automatic.
I took it out, checked its loads, and put it in my pocket.
I tested the safe for false walls or bottom, but it seemed sturdy, and there was no money in it. I looked around quickly, going through drawers and the brown filing cabinet. The loot wasn’t in the office. I spent only five minutes going through the rest of the examining rooms and closets; what I sought was bulky and I didn’t waste time on small enclosures. There was no money, and as far as I could tell there was no evidence lying around that could, in Sylvia Brawley’s words, blow the Mafia sky-high.
It had to be somewhere. Brawley had had it; DeAngelo hadn’t found it.
I went back outside, very scared now, but remembering what Joanne had told me—the loot might have fitted into the trunk of a car. I got Brawley’s keys from the ignition and went back and opened the trunk, all the while keeping my senses alert for sign of DeAngelo’s return or the arrival of reinforcements.
It was all there, stuffed into the trunk of the pink Cadillac, crammed tight into every inch of space.
From the linen closet of Brawley’s office I took a stack of folded bedsheets, the kind that nurses used to cover the examination tables. They weren’t too large but they had to do. I opened the sheets one at a time and made laundry bundles of the money from the Cadillac trunk, tying the sheets up by their corners. I put them all in the bed of the Jeep and put the metal lockboxes, seven of them, on top to weight the sheets down; I slammed the Cadillac trunk, tossed the keys on the seat beside the dead man, and went around the Cadillac wiping fingerprints. I did a fast job and headed for the Jeep with a gun in my hand—I had spent far too much time here.
Then a sound rocked my head back: the wail of a siren’s idiot laughter, somewhere close by.
I backed the Jeep down the service road to a wide spot, turned around, and headed up toward the shopping center plaza, which was the only way out.
I came out from between two buildings in second gear, pushing the gas, but the police car slithered across my path and squealed to a halt. The door slammed open and the driver leaped out—Joe Cutter, lifting his .357 Magnum.
DeAngelo must have called him in. I ducked my head, spun the wheel and braked the Jeep. Cutter’s gun boomed. My windshield took another bullet hole, the second for the day; by then I was out, diving flat, hitting the asphalt painfully on one shoulder and rolling. I rolled past the Jeep in time to see him shift his aim toward me; he had the Jeep’s headlights in his eyes and he was squinting with a ferocious scowl crouching down on one knee to aim. I used Brawley’s Walther pistol. My steady, firm pressure on the trigger made it go off. It caught me almost by surprise, as it should. Magically, as if by stop-motion photography, a dark disc appeared on the side of Cutter’s heavy face. Blood burst from his cheeks; his head snapped to one side under the bullet’s impact.
He pitched to the pavement, full in the cone of the headlights.
I sprinted across the fifty feet that separated us. The hole in his cheekbone was rimmed by droplets of crimson froth. His expressionless eyes blinked twice and stayed open, focused on my knees.
There didn’t seem to be anyone about. I turned a circle on my heels to make sure. As I completed the turn, my eyes fell on Cutter’s heavy .357 revolver. Of all the people I’d known, Cutter had been most likely to die by the sword. Sometimes I had thought he was just batting around seeking a place to die. He had found it.
I picked him up and put him in the squa
d car, put the Magnum in his hand and drove the squad car through the alley; I parked it behind the Cadillac and left Cutter dead behind the wheel. Then I walked over to the pink Cadillac and pressed the Walther pistol into Brawley’s dead hand. Paraffin tests would prove Brawley hadn’t shot him, but a superficial investigation would suggest he had. And I had no doubt the Walther was the same gun that had killed Aiello. It had been in Brawley’s safe and I presumed it was registered to Brawley. Let the cops figure it out. There was nothing to tie me in, except DeAngelo, and he wasn’t likely to finger me for the cops.
I had things in mind for DeAngelo. I walked back out to the Jeep and drove away; in the bed behind me, wind rattled the bedsheet bundles of money.
Chapter Eleven
I eased Joanne’s beige convertible to the curb by a roadside phone booth and switched off the ignition. The morning sun whacked the boulevard, traffic swishing by. Joanne said, “Are you sure we have to do it this way?”
“Yes. Scared?”
“Yes.”
I patted her hand, got out, and went into the phone booth. It was Freddie’s dull voice that answered my ring and I asked him to call Madonna to the phone. Madonna came on the wire growling. “Where are you?”
“Is that the only question you know how to ask?”
“Listen, Crane, I—”
“Let me do the talking. You want to know where that missing property is, don’t you?”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Sure. Look, the reason I’m calling first, I don’t want to get mown down by artillery on your doorstep. I’m coming up to your house and I’m bringing Mrs. Farrell with me.”
“Come ahead,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Not like that,” I snapped. “I know where that property is, but you’ll never find it if you don’t give me a chance to talk to you.”
“You’ll have plenty chance to talk to me, Crane. I promise you that.”
“Not under a gun,” I said. “You may recall there were certain items in that shipment of property which could make things a little uncomfortable for you if they got released to the wrong parties. Some of those items are in the care of a person who’ll release those items at midnight tonight unless I intercept that person and give instructions not to release it. And don’t think I can be pressured into giving you that person’s name, because even if the muscle boys went to work on me they wouldn’t be able to get to this person in time to keep the stuff from being released. You understand?”
The cold bass voice said, “Crane, you’re talking into a dead phone. Get the hell up here. I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say but let’s quit making threats. I don’t like threats.”
“Sure—just so we understand each other. One more thing. Don’t believe everything Pete DeAngelo tells you.”
“I don’t believe everything anybody tells me. You’ve still got till noon to close our deal. It’s ten o’clock now. When will I see you?”
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said, and hung up.
I slipped into the driver’s seat. Joanne said, “All set?”
“All set.”
“Put your arms around me, darling.”
I did. Nose to nose, we drowned in each other’s eyes. I grinned at her. I felt jumpy but alert; I had taken a speed tablet, one of Nancy Lansford’s diet pills. We had been up all night, busy.
We kissed at length, right out in what Mike would have called bare-ass daylight, and when Joanne straightened out and arranged herself on the seat she said, “I’ll probably never stop thanking you for what you did with that film.”
I turned the key and pulled out into the traffic, heading for the foothills. I had burned the movie film at my house at midnight and flushed the ashes down the toilet. It had made a terrible stink, the burning film. I hadn’t looked at it before destroying it.
It was the only part of the loot I hadn’t examined, in detail; that was what had taken all night. That, and arranging for the safekeeping and possible release of the material—my weapon against Madonna and DeAngelo.
We turned onto the Strip. Joanne said, “I’m still scared to death. I will be until it’s over.”
“It’ll work,” I said. I grinned at her. “If you can’t join ’em, lick ’em.”
“I know, but something could go wrong.”
I didn’t answer. We were underdogs against the organization, of course. But the weapon of an underdog’s survival is cunning. With a little luck we might come out all right. But she was right, there were risks. I was sure DeAngelo had spent the night trying to find a wall to nail us to. It would be a bad mistake to underestimate him.
By the time we crunched to a stop behind the beautiful old Continental in Madonna’s driveway, Freddie the Neanderthal had the door open and was standing there, leaning forward like Buster Keaton, wearing a rumpled sports jacket over his gun and glowering at us. I saw DeAngelo’s Mercedes and the blue Ford that Senna and Baker had visited us in. That was all right; the more muscle in the house, the better—if my scheme worked.
I got out carrying the briefcase, walked around and opened Joanne’s door. She turned sideways on the seat and came out legs first, moving prettily, a girl of supple grace. With my back to Freddie, I tried to reassure her with a smile. She reached for my hand and clutched it hard. We went up to the door and Freddie said in a monotone, “I got to frisk you.”
“Frisk me if you want. But the briefcase stays locked and you’ll keep your paws off the lady.”
“Now you know I can’t—”
I cut him off harshly: “You’ve got enough torpedoes inside the house to cut us to pieces before we make the first half of a false move. Hold your gun on us if you want.”
He looked us up and down. Pointing to the briefcase he said, “What’s in there?”
“Papers. For the Don’s eyes only.”
The husky rasp of Pete DeAngelo’s ruined voice shot forward from the room behind Freddie: “Okay, Freddie, never mind. Let them in and keep both eyes on them.”
Freddie stepped aside. We walked into the house. I felt the cold clutch of Joanne’s tensing hand in mind.
There were deep vertical lines between DeAngelo’s eyebrows. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and his arm was thickened by a bandage where I’d shot him last night. Cold, ruthless, hard and direct, DeAngelo gritted his neat white teeth in a satanic grin. He pointed to the antique Seth Thomas clock above the marble mantel and said, “The race is just about over, Crane, and you’re about to finish out of the money.”
So he had decided to bluff it through. That was all right by me.
Two men walked in from one of the house wings and posted themselves, without comment, on either side of the door through which they had just come. Ed Baker and Tony Senna. They both wore guns in unconcealed shoulder holsters. Senna looked into the doorway and nodded his head, and only then did Vincent Madonna make his entrance.
Madonna looked tired. His wrinkled suit jacket was undone and, as before, he wore no tie; his open collar revealed a tangled mat of dark hair. Big-rumped, he moved to the fireplace, ten feet in front of us, and set himself in a hipshot pose with one arm on the mantel. There was no preamble; he only said, “Okay, you’ve got the floor.”
I squeezed Joanne’s hand and set the briefcase down on a chair-side table by my right hip. I said, “You want to know who made the hit on Salvatore Aiello. You want to know who robbed his safe, and where the loot is now. Okay, that’s what I’m going to give you. But I’m going to give it to you in detail, because you’ll want to be able to check my story and find out if it’s true, and you can only do that if I give you all the details. It’s going to take a little time and it’ll go faster if there are no interruptions. If you’ve got questions save them till I’m finished. Check?”
“Go ahead,” he said, expressionless.
“Some of this is guesswork but if I’m wrong you can correct me. The important facts I have. It’s the background that’s guesswork because I haven’t had ti
me to check it out. All right, here we go. Background. Aiello had an important appointment for some time after one in the morning, the night he was killed. You can check that with Judy Dodson. She doesn’t know who the appointment was with or what it was for. I’m not sure myself what it was for, but I know who it was with. Doctor Fred Brawley. Brawley went to Aiello’s house late at night because a man in his position couldn’t afford to be seen going there in broad daylight. The appointment was all set up and Brawley arrived, probably carrying some important information that Aiello wanted—blackmail, evidence against the lieutenant governor, who up to now has been opposing your attempts to get gambling legalized. I assume that’s what Brawley had because that evidence is part of the loot from the safe, but if it had been there earlier than that night you’d have used it, and the lieutenant governor would have switched his stand before now. Okay. That explains why Aiello was anxious to see Brawley, and why he let him into the house at that hour. What Aiello didn’t know was that Brawley had a beef against him. I don’t know why but I can guess. Aiello was probably screwing Brawley’s wife. Am I right about that?”
“Keep talking,” Madonna said.
“If it wasn’t that it was something else, but Brawley definitely had a beef. He went to Aiello’s and got Aiello to open the safe under the pretext of putting the blackmail evidence in and maybe getting some money out. As soon as Aiello opened the safe, Brawley shot him. I suspect that when Brawley first worked out the plan, all he wanted was to get back the abortion-malpractice dirt Aiello had in the safe. But then he got greedy. Three million dollars is an attractive lure to anybody, let alone a man saddled with a wife like Sylvia Brawley. Brawley probably figured with all that money he could disappear, go to Europe with a new identity and live like a king. So when he went to Aiello’s house he didn’t take his own car, which is a sportscar without much space in it. He took his wife’s car because it was a tremendous big Cadillac with plenty of room in the trunk. He put Aiello’s body on the floor of the back seat and filled the trunk with the loot from the safe. Then he buried Aiello out on the road project so that if the body did get found, it would look like a mob hit.”
Hit and The Marksman Page 16
