The Jeep had been packed with my rock chisels and canteen. I had acted tougher than I felt, because I couldn’t fathom my own contradictory feelings. I had climbed into the Jeep and she had walked over to me and said, “I won’t be here when you get back.” I had driven on down the hill without looking back to see if she was watching. It turned into a rotten day—I wanted to call her but wasn’t sure whether she wanted me to. Sometimes it was hard to be sure of Joanne’s meanings; she was changeable: sometimes she told you only part of the truth because she thought the whole truth would hurt.
I had seen her only once after that—a week later, an accidental meeting. She had let it slip; I never knew whether it was deliberate or an honest slip—She’d said something that had given me a foothold and I had pried the rest out of her, questioning her roughly like an interrogating cop, and finally there it was: Aiello. I was an ex-cop—an ex-honest cop—and Aiello had told her to stay away from me. She hadn’t told me before because she knew my temper; she didn’t want me to go gunning for Aiello because I wouldn’t have a chance against the organization.
I knew better than to ask her to quit working for Aiello. I had never even asked her how she’d got mixed up with the organization in the first place. Those were questions you just didn’t ask. It went without saying they had some hold over her. They always do.
I had told myself, angrily, it was her choice and I had to honor it. We had to avoid each other for however long it might take to blunt the edges of dangerous emotions. I had to acquiesce because I could not compromise her with the organization; Aiello was not an understanding or forgiving type and his organization played rough.
Now I saw the dust of her car coming up the dirt-road from the county highway. I felt ill at ease, betrayed; I had steeled myself against her absence but now she was coming back, not for the reason I would have wanted.
It was impossible to ignore my anticipation—I wanted to see her.
I waited in the shade until she drove the beige convertible into the yard and parked beside my Jeep. She had the top down; she turned and watched through her sunglasses as I walked out of the shade to open the car door. She didn’t smile. “Thanks for letting me come.”
Very gravely, I said, “Is it bad?”
“As bad as it can get.” She swung her legs out, stood and smoothed down the tight skirt—it was white poplin; she wore a green sleeveless blouse that clung to the curved undersides of her breasts and showed off her smooth brown arms. She had a dancer’s hard little body, superb legs; her face was small, heart-shaped and lovely.
The wind had roughed up her hair; there was a thread of moisture on her upper lip. She looked heat-flushed and scared. I couldn’t really make out her eyes through the big sunglasses. She looked faint. “I feel like such a fool. Nothing can happen on a beautiful day like this, can it?” Her smile was quick and nervous. She kept looking down the road, as if somebody were chasing her. “Can’t we talk inside?”
“Sure.”
She had a curious detached fortitude; I had seen it before: the world could be falling down around her and she would still have to set the stage, get everybody in position before telling them about the disaster. We walked toward the house. I was sharply aware of the quick rat-tat of her heels on the gravel and the nylon whispers of her thighs. Her head hardly came up to my shoulder; the skirt was tight, but she moved along quickly with crisp lithe strides.
I went inside after her and let the screen door slam behind me with a weatherbeaten, slapping sound. It made her jump; she smiled apologetically and slumped against the doorjamb, leaning against it with her shoulder propped up. She said, “I’m in a state of absolute utter panic,” and shoved herself toward the kitchen. She marched in and disappeared around the corner. I followed scowling, and when I reached the kitchen door she was filling the percolator.
“I don’t even know how to begin. I suppose that’s why I’m puttering around like a madwoman.” She put the sunglasses away in a pocket sewn in her skirt. Her big violet eyes were provocative, more from habit than design. She measured the coffee and put it on to boil.
I said, “Why don’t you sit down and get a grip on yourself. I’ll do that.”
“You’ve got no talent with coffee,” she said. “I’ve got to have something strong and hot or I swear I’ll collapse right here.” She shook out a cigarette and found a match by the stove. Her hands trembled violently. I took the match away from her; she clamped the cigarette in her teeth while I lighted it.
She shook her head in violent angry defiance, as if to clear it. She took a deep drag on the cigarette and let it out slowly; she gave the coffee a waspish glance, because it hadn’t already come to a boil, and when she had exhaled the lungful of smoke she said in a half-hysterical airily light way, “Aiello is gone.”
“What?”
“Gone. Just … gone. The house is empty and the safe’s wide open. Empty.”
She tipped her head far over to one side like a little girl and gave me a peculiar, savage grin. “Isn’t it lovely?”
My pulse thudded. “Great,” I agreed. “You’d better tell me about it.”
She waved a hand in an arch gesture and turned to face the stove; over her shoulder she said vaguely, “They’ll think I did it, naturally. Got rid of Aiello somehow and robbed the safe.”
“Naturally?” I echoed dryly. “Sure. Naturally they’ll pick you first—I mean, you being an expert safecracker and all—”
“Don’t make jokes,” she snapped.
I scraped a hand across my mouth. She lifted the coffee off the stove. I couldn’t see her face, but the line of her back was taut, tense, brittle, like a cornered animal.
The coffee smoked as it poured out of the pot; it was black and oil-thick. She carried the mug into my small living room.
I followed, stopping in the doorway. The roof cooler pushed a slow damp breeze across the room. I waited until she sat down on the couch and then I said, “All right. Go over it again—try to make some sense. What happened?”
She tucked her feet under her and held the coffee in both hands and blew on it. “I got to the house at seven-thirty, as usual. Aiello likes to work before ten and after four—he hates the heat, he spends the middle of the day in the indoor pool with the air conditioners blowing on his vodka collinses.”
“Only this morning he wasn’t there.”
“It isn’t that so much; he often spends the night out, but when he does, he always leaves somebody in the house on guard. This time there was nobody. And the safe, wide open and empty. Papers scattered around the office. The place has been ransacked.”
“Maybe he cleared it out himself and took the stuff somewhere else for safekeeping. Maybe he got word there was going to be a raid.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.” She looked up momentarily. “I know him—you don’t.”
“Uh. What was in the safe?”
“You’d be better off not knowing.”
I shook my head. “If it’s what you think it is, the mob will react. The kind of reaction will depend on what was inside the safe.”
She took a suicidal drag on her cigarette and stabbed it out in the ash tray. With smoke trailing from her mouth she said, “Let’s just say there was enough to make it worth their while to kill half the population of this town to get it back.”
“Cash?”
“A lot of cash. And files—the kind they couldn’t afford to see in print.”
“How much cash?”
“I never counted it,” she said, snappish. “It was a hell a lot, millions I suppose, but I don’t know. I’m supposed to be Sal Aiello’s secretary but there are a lot of things I don’t get to see.”
“Go on.”
“Look, Simon, I’m only part of the front. All the big shots try to look like legitimate businessmen, and part of the act is having a pretty secretary who doesn’t look as if she came out of a reform school typing course. Aiello has his finger in quite a few legitimate businesses, enough to keep me busy with correspondence and phone calls and filing. I know it’s all a front and he knows I know it, but it’s the kind of thing you never say out loud. I don’t get to see the books and I’ve never even been in the same room when he had the safe open. The safe isn’t in the office, you know—it’s in the library. But I’ve absorbed enough loose talk to know they keep dynamite in that safe. Aiello isn’t the only one who uses it. Vincent Madonna has things in it. So does Pete DeAngelo and any number of others. It’s like a central clearing station for all of them—it’s an old vault they bought from a California bank that went out of business.”