I said, “And Aiello kept it in his safe.”
“Yes.”
“They must have threatened to do something with it if you didn’t cooperate. What was the threat?”
“Well, my mother and father for openers. They live in California now. Madonna knows how to find them. Then there was Mike, of course. And you.”
She had maintained her rigid, averted pose throughout. Telling it didn’t seem to have taken the load off her. She stood taut as ever, as if waiting for me to explode. “They made it clear,” she said, “that if I ever decided to get married, no matter who it was, he’d have a chance to see the movie if I didn’t do everything they told me to.”
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.”