His face fell a bit. “What about my gun?”
“You won’t need it,” I said. “Chalk that up, too.”
I pointed the .38 at him and pointed the other hand toward the door.
He gave up. Composing himself, he walked out stiffly. He closed the door behind him softly, ceremonially, like a mortician.
I went to the window and opened the Venetian blinds and watched him walk up the pavement and turn out of sight into the arched passageway. He must have left his car around front.
Joanne spoke at my back: “Do you think he was telling the truth?”
“Part of it, anyway.”
“I could point out Ed Behrenman for you. I know him by sight. He’s probably around here somewhere.”
“No,” I said, turning back and looking at her. “He’d deny it anyway—he couldn’t afford to have it get back to Madonna from me. He might decide he had to kill you and me to keep us from telling Madonna.”
“Telling Madonna what?”
“That Behrenman spilled the beans to the doctor. That wouldn’t sit well with Madonna.”
“Well, then,” she said, “where does that leave us? What have you found out?”
“Not a hell of a lot. I had a long talk with Mike, but it didn’t seem—”
I stopped because she had gone rigid at the sound of Mike’s name. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
“He was fine the last I saw him. Stop shivering. Mike didn’t do it, I’m convinced of that.”
The sun was throwing long blades in through the Venetian slats. I looked at my watch—almost six o’clock. I waited for Joanne to go through a series of changes of facial expression and finally, when she seemed settled, I said, “You don’t love the guy enough to remarry him but you’re still fond of him and you’ve been scared to death I’d find out he was the culprit in this mess. Is that what you’re trying to make me believe?”
“Trying to—I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “But it isn’t good enough. Joanne, you’re letting public opinion push you around.”
“I’m what?”
I said, “I told you just now that Mike didn’t do it. You reacted. Vast relief, followed by confusion, followed by a mask. There’s only one reason I can think of why you’d be all that relieved to find out Mike wasn’t guilty. You’re relieved because it means he doesn’t have the contents of the safe. He hasn’t seen the stuff—he hasn’t seen the blackmail evidence Aiello had against you. It must be something pretty terrible to make you so anxious that Mike shouldn’t see it.”
Her only answer was a twisted smile. Behind it she looked cornered and violent. Her eyes shifted away from me and I said, “Why should you care what Mike thinks of you any more?”
“I can’t help it,” she said in a small voice. “I’m not all that self-sufficient that I don’t give a damn what people know about me.”
“Including me? Because if Mike had the stuff, I’d have found it, and I’d have known. Isn’t that it, Joanne? Answer me.”
She lowered her face slowly. Dark short hair swayed forward past her face and I couldn’t see her expression; she had turned her profile to me. She said, very soft, “Yes … yes.”
I went to her. Squatted on my heels beside her and slipped my arm in under the arm of the chair, sliding my band between her back and the back of the chair. I felt her spine beneath my fingers. I said, “You have got to trust me.”
She shook her head, still not letting me look at her face. “Not with that.”
“With all of it,” I said. “What was in the safe?”
“I can’t.”
“You’ve got to. Because you’re still holding something else out on me, and it’s connected to this. Once you’ve told me the hard part, you’ll have no more reason to hold back the rest.”
“I just can’t, Simon.”
I stood up. I still had the .38 and now I put it down beside the newspaper Brawley had left behind. I said, “Madonna gave us forty-eight hours to find the stuff and return it to him. Forty-eight hours from noon today. That leaves forty-two. I don’t have to give you chapter and verse of what happens to you and me, and Mike too I suppose, if we come up empty-handed.”
She stirred. “They wouldn’t—not all of us?”
“They would. I’m sure of it. They will. Not one of the three of us is important enough to cause much of a stir if we disappear. They’ll make sure we’re disposed of where our bodies will never be found. But before they get that far they’ll do everything they can think of to make us talk. Matchsticks under the fingernails, chop off some toes one at a time—you’ve seen enough spy movies to know the techniques and you can believe they’ve seen the same movies. Whatever you know, they’ll get it out of you, only by that time it will be too late to help us.”
She took time to digest it. The first thing she said was, “What makes you so sure I know something that will help?”
“I’m not. But if I’m to have any chance at all I need every fact there is. Everything I can learn. Maybe I can put pieces together and come up with an answer. But not if you keep closing doors on me.” Once more I went to her, took her hand in both of mine. It was ice cold.
She took a deep ragged breath, pulled her hand away and got up. She went to the farthest corner of the room and stood facing the bathroom door. When I shifted one foot she said, “Stay there.”
I backed up and sat down on the bed. The revolver rolled down the depression my butt made. I picked it up and tossed it on the newspaper.
Joanne said, “I’ll make this very short and leave out all the details—I’m sure you can fill them in from your imagination.” Her voice was low, bile-sour.
I rubbed my chin. She took time to work up courage, then spilled it all out with breathless speed.
“A lot of cables run from Aiello’s house to Madonna’s. They’re not all alarm systems. There’s a closed-circuit television hook-up. You haven’t seen Aiello’s bedroom so I’ll have to give you an idea of it—it’s right out of Playboy, a big round bed in the middle and mirrors all over the room, even on the ceiling. The first time I saw it I couldn’t help laughing out loud—I didn’t really believe anybody actually went in for that girlie-magazine satyr stuff. But it’s there. What I didn’t know at the time—didn’t find out until a long time later, when I tried to quit the organization—that bedroom is bugged from every conceivable angle by hidden television cameras. There’s one behind every mirror.”
I knew what was coming but I didn’t speak. She had to say it, get it out. I waited, with a catch in my breath. She said, “Private dirty movies. Not for Aiello’s entertainment, but for Vincent Madonna’s.”
She spat the name out as if it were venom.
She said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Madonna but it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t get his kicks the way most people do. At first, when I found out about the television, I thought the idea was to have Aiello act as Madonna’s flunky by testing girls in bed before passing them on to Madonna. But Madonna never went near me. It was just that one night, so damned long ago, and even though I’d been married a while I wasn’t experienced enough to suit Aiello. He taught me things I’d never even heard of. I was drunk but I don’t suppose that’s any excuse at all. Mostly I was trying to prove what a brassy broad I was—trying to get revenge on poor dumb Milquetoast Mike. Hell, never mind—I did things, that’s all. I did things.”
Her voice trailed off but then she stiffened her spine and went rushing on:
“As long as it was private, just me and Aiello, I could live with it. But then Mike went to prison, and a couple of years later I divorced him. I was sick of the organization and I thought they wouldn’t mind my leaving, since Mike and I were divorced and they couldn’t reasonably use me as a hold over Mike any longer. But they didn’t see it that way. Nobody ever quits the organization. I turned in my resignation, Aiello argued, I got stubborn and argued right back, and when they saw they weren’t going to talk me into changing my mind, they trotted out the films and gave me a nice little private screening up at Madonna’s house. I don’t have to tell you what was on the film, do I? It was Technicolor and it had sound. It was a very professional job and it didn’t leave anything out.”