He was lying back now, sprawling, staring at the high sepulchral ceiling. “Five years is a long time when you break it up into hours, Crane. The only thing that keeps you going is knowing you’re going to get out. But I’m out twenty-four hours and already they’re writing up a contract on me. Look, I don’t want to go out in a blaze of glory—I don’t want to go out at all. That’s why I had to talk to you.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re talking. Where does it get us?”
“I ain’t finished,” he said. “I got us up to yesterday so let’s finish it.”
I nodded patiently.
“A guy owes me some bucks, see? Sal Aiello. He promised me a job and some bucks to get started again when I got out, and like I told you, I believed him. Why should he lie to me? So I been a good boy, I got my parole and I took the bus back here and I cruised around downtown yesterday afternoon looking for somebody that could give me a ride out to Aiello’s house. They don’t use buses in his neighborhood.
“Okay, I ran into Tony Senna, he’s cruising the taco district picking up shylock money and numbers payoffs. Right out in bare-ass daylight—man, you know the fix is in with the cops down there.”
“And?”
“I chased around with Tony, said hello to some of the guys, and finally he finished his rounds and DeAngelo picks us up in his Mercedes. Every time DeAngelo whispers at me I get the feeling he’s trying to sell me a used car, but I needed the ride out to Aiello’s and that was where they were headed. There was some small talk like how did I like stir and who’d I get to know up there. DeAngelo’s put on a little weight and wearing a fancy Sy Devore-type suit looking like a goddamn movie star and I could see everybody was doing fine while I was away. There’s a lot of talk about getting ready to legalize gambling. Finally we get out to Aiello’s place—big house, pool, panoramic vista, the works. About a mile north of Madonna’s place. It was dark by the time we got out there. DeAngelo goes right out to the pool and strips down and starts splashing around, striking poses for a chick Aiello’s got decorating the pool—you know Aiello, he’s always had a harem problem.”
He paused to marshal his memories, probably wondering how much I really knew about Aiello and Joanne. Aiello had been a relentless womanizer with a broken-down libido who used women and discarded them; sometimes I wondered how much satisfaction such men got from their compulsive conquests.
Mike muttered, “Aiello was kind of tilted about dames.” He sounded strangely wistful, but he didn’t follow it up.
He changed the subject harshly: “Anyhow, when I got there Aiello was as per usual, all jovial and friendly, wall-to-wall booze and this nice piece of fluff, Judy Dodson’s her name, pouring his drinks and lighting his cigars for him. A hot pillow dame with a topless neck—you know the type.”
When he looked at me, I gave him a nod.
He said, “Aiello gave me a drink and bragged about how the business has expanded since I went up. He’s built a new wing on the Moulin Rouge, where I used to work, so they can turn it into a casino soon as they buy enough legislators to push the gambling bill through the state house.
“DeAngelo and Tony Senna keep drifting in and out with phone messages. After a while it gets cool by the pool so we go inside, which is when Aiello goes over to the safe.
“It’s a great big bank vault, in the library. Covers pretty near the whole damn interior wall. Aiello signals DeAngelo and me and the Dodson chick to come look inside. Like I told you, enough cash to choke a whale. I counted the stacks, and if each stack was full of bills of the same denomination they had showing on top, then my estimate has got to be pretty close—somewhere around three million dollars, like I said. Most of it out in the open. There were a few lockboxes too, on shelves inside. I didn’t see what was in them. Aiello likes to show off stuff like that—liked, I mean, he’s dead. Anyhow he told me he knew I took a bad fall, the judge was too tough, and he says the organization wants to make it up to me now that I’ve showed how true-blue I can be. I kept my mouth shut, you see. So he takes a wad out of the sack and hands it to me.”
Mike reached into his baggy pockets and took out a thick sheaf of bills tight-bound with a rubber band. “Close to five grand in twenties and fifties,” he explained, and put it back where he got it.
“After that Aiello told me to keep my shirt on, they’d find me a good job shortly and in the meantime I should have a good time. Then DeAngelo starts to pump me—he seemed to think I’d spread all kinds of loose talk in stir. I told him I’d kept quiet—would I be that dense? DeAngelo and Aiello were like a pair of cops where one puts a cigarette in your mouth and the other slaps it out of your face. Right then I got a funny feeling down the back of my neck, you know?
“It took a while to convince them. Finally DeAngelo seemed to buy my story, and he left. Tony Senna was someplace around the house and he left with DeAngelo, in the Mercedes. Aiello takes me outside to see them off. Then he hands me the key to that station wagon and tells me I can use it as long as I like. So I get in the car and drive out. The girl was still there with Aiello. I came into town and stopped at a bar and had a few, and all the time I couldn’t get rid of the idea they were setting me up for a patsy. They don’t need me, see? I started thinking about how much sense it might make for them to kiss me off a mountain cliff one night. Maybe I was wrong but Joanne can tell you I was rattled as hell. I couldn’t think of what to do so I went to her place, but she wouldn’t let me in, I guess I don’t blame her. I made a bitch of her life.”
“Where did you go when you left Joanne’s?”
“Back to the Moulin Rouge.”
“They close at one,” I said. “Where’d you spend the rest of the night?”
He hesitated. “Look, I got to tell you the truth—hang me with it if you want to. When the Moulin Rouge closed I bought a bottle and took it with me. I drove up the Strip clear to the foothills and parked and had a little consultation with the bottle. I don’t remember how much of it I killed but I was pretty damn drunk by the time I decided to get it over with. Whisky courage. I drove up to Aiello’s house again.”
He let it hang in the air, watching me while I watched him. Finally he closed his lids down and said, “Crane, you’ve got to believe me. It was about four this morning. There was a car coming out of Aiello’s drive just before I turned in. I didn’t get much of a look at it—a Cadillac, I think; all I’m sure of is it was pink. My headlights picked it up and it was pink. I didn’t pay any attention to it just then because why was I supposed to suspect anything? I drove on in and got out of the car and the front door was wide open, the lights were on. I went inside. The place was a mess. Aiello wasn’t there, the safe was open, all that cabbage was gone, even the lockboxes—the safe was absolutely empty. I smelled sulfur, like powder-smoke after a gun goes off, you know? Man, I didn’t stick around—I went back to the station wagon and got the hell out of there. I went to Ed Baker’s place—he’s got a little house over by the university. Tony Senna and a couple others were there, playing cards—they’d been at it for hours. I grabbed a sandwich but I was too drunk and too bushed and too scared to sit down and play cards, so I went in the back room and went to sleep.