I had; I was. I said, “Go on, Mike.”
“Okay, the reason I opened up to you, I want to make a deal.”
“What kind of a deal?”
Now there was cunning in his eyes — anxious and fearful, but sly. “Together maybe we can find that loot,” he said. “If either one of us finds it and turns it over to the mob, do you think that’ll keep them from killing all three of us anyway, just to keep our mouths shut?”
“Keep going.”
“Okay. We find it, we split it down the middle, and we go our separate ways.”
I said, “What about the mob?”
He tried to smile. “Crane, forty thousand men disappear every year in this country, and a lot of them don’t ever get found unless they want to. If it helps you make up your mind, I got a good contact — not through the mob — with a plastic surgeon. You follow?” He dragged a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, glanced at it, and handed it to me. I looked at it — the name and address of a doctor in Studio City.
He said, “Keep it, I got another copy. Hell, tie it all up in nice neat ribbons — leave a suicide note if you want to and make it look like you took a Brodie off the Golden Gate Bridge.”
He was staring at me without blinking, almost holding his breath.
I said, “What about Joanne?”
“Joanne and me are quits. I won’t make waves. You cut your half with her or do it however you want.”
“I notice you didn’t offer to split it in thirds.”
“I didn’t think I had to. I thought you and Joanne were an item together. Making woo, all that crap.”
I didn’t press it; what I said was, “Suppose we look but we don’t find the money?”
“Then we get dead. I don’t know about you but I’m dead anyway. What have we got to lose?” He had a point.
I said, “You’ve leveled with me as far as I can tell. I’ll give you this much. Madonna gave me forty-eight hours to produce the money.”
“Or else what?”
“He didn’t specify. They’ll bring Joanne in and then bring me in and they’ll work us over to find out what we know.”
“And when they’re satisfied you don’t know anything, they’ll rub you out anyway because they can’t afford to let you go and blab what they did to you. A sweet pot, Crane. Look, the only chance we’ve got is to throw in together. We can’t go to the cops — they might help us find the stuff but we’d end up dead anyway, and most of the cops I know would keep the money and pretend they-never found it.”
Which was, I thought, exactly what Mike himself was proposing to do. I didn’t point out the irony of his indignation. I said, “Where do you figure to start looking?”
“Have we got a deal?”
“Let’s put it like this. We’ll work together. If and when we find the money we can decide what’s to be done with it. If it looks like we can guarantee our own safety by turning the money over to Madonna, then I’d suggest it’s better to be alive and broke than dead and rich.”
“That’d have to be a hell of a guarantee.”
“If we can work it out that way, will you go for it?”
He scowled. “If it’s the only way, hell yes. Have I got a choice?”
“All right. We’ve got a deal.”
He nodded. “Okay. Then the first thing you do is check out the Judy Dodson bird. She was still with Aiello when I left last night. Look, the reason I can’t do it myself, I got to stay out of sight. They might take a notion to haul me in any time. You’ve at least got forty-eight hours and they’ll probably keep their hands off you that long, just to see if you can come up with something.”
“Any other ideas if the girl doesn’t pan out?”
“One or two,” he said. “For instance, Frank Colclough and Stanley Raiford.”
I looked at him. He had uttered two prominent political names. Frank Colclough, the county supervisor, was a political kingmaker who bossed the county machine. Stanley Raiford, the ex-governor, had been in the news lately, making hard-knuckled speeches that sounded very much like the noises made by a man running for office. It was rumored he was about to throw his hat in the ring and run for the Senate against the aging incumbent.
Mike said, “There were money packages in the safe with their names on them.”
“Packages for what?”
“You’d have to find that out yourself. I don’t know. The money wasn’t payoffs, I know that much. The bag money doesn’t get listed like that in the safe. So it was something else, not bribe cash. But it had Colclough’s and Raiford’s names on it. Private money, probably, that Aiello was keeping as a favor to them. There were some others, but those are the only two names I remember.”
I scowled. They were leads but they didn’t sound very good. But at least it was a place to start.
Mike said, “I’m going to have to stay under cover. If it wasn’t for Jo I wouldn’t trust you, but I figure she’ll look out for my rights if you get any fancy ideas.”
It was a strange thing for him to say. I had no way of disproving the idea that he and Joanne had set the whole thing up, using me as their patsy; no way except the knowledge that it didn’t fit with Joanne’s character for a minute.
“All right,” I said. “You sit tight.” I turned to go.
He stopped me. “How about my gun?”
I studied him, then handed the gun to him. He stuck it in his waistband. He said, “I may not stay here, but I’ll get in touch.”
I said, “If I need to find you, where do I look?”
“Here. Then the Mariache Bar on South Tenth. An old buddy of mine owns it, he’s not in the mob. I’ll leave word for you with him if I have to move. His name’s Maldonado.”
I nodded and went.
Chapter Five
Mike Farrell, I thought as I drove away, was a vexing character. If I’d still been a cop, and if I’d had time and facilities, I’d have taken him downtown, booked him as a material witness and sweated him a while to find out how much of his story was true.
I took back streets to get out of Las Palmas, found a phone booth in a shopping center and called the Executive Lodge. I asked for Mrs. Chittenden and when I heard Joanne’s voice I said, “Me. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but I think our secret is out. Just after you left, I went to get some newspapers and a paperback, and a man saw me in the lobby.”
So that was how Madonna had found her — pure blind luck, and all of it bad. I said, “You recognized him?”
“I think so. What’s more important, I think he recognized me.”
“Is he hanging around?”
“He may be. If he is, he’s being discreet — I haven’t been pestered since I came back to the room.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got my gun, you may as well just stay put a little while.”
“Simon, how is—”
“It going? We’re in trouble up to the hairline. Sit tight and I’ll see you in a little while. Have room service send you a sandwich.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then get loaded,” I said. “Keep the door locked and keep the gun handy, right?”
She said dismally, “All right, Simon,” and I hung up with a vivid tactile image of the rich warm tone of her flesh, the flash of her eyes.
Either way, I had to take a risk. If I tried to spirit her away and hide her someplace else, I’d probably have to ditch a tail and that would make Madonna angry. This way, leaving her where she was, he might get the idea we weren’t ducking out on him. It might persuade him to keep his word and give me free rein at least for a little while.
I looked up Dodson, Judy, in the phone book, found a number listed under Dodson, Judith, and let it ring eleven times. No answer. After a minute’s thought I looked up the Atomic Bar and when the bartender answered I said, “Is Phoebe there?”