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 time 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.”