He made it ridiculously easy. When I rammed into him with an open-handed stiff arm, he tried to bat me across the face with the gun. I stopped his wrist with my forearm, jabbed him under the chin and used my lifted left arm to spin him flat against the wall. Then all I had to do was reach out and pluck the Beretta from his half-numb hand. He went rigid when he saw the Beretta pointed at him. I lifted the .38 out of his waistband and stepped back across half the width of the room, covering him with both guns.
Joanne was actually chuckling. I glanced at her and said, “All right, who is he?”
“He didn’t say.”
I turned my eyes to him. He was massaging his wrist, making a point of not looking at me. When he got through with his wrist he rubbed himself under the chin where I’d hit him.
I said, “You heard the question. Who are you and what’s this all about?”
He managed to meet my eyes. Glowering, he spoke without bothering to pry his lips apart. “My name is Robert Brown and I only wanted answers to a few questions.”
I looked at Joanne. “How did he get in?”
“By my stupidity.” She made a face at me. “I’m sorry, Simon, I’m not used to fending off men with guns. When he knocked, I let him in. I thought it was room service from the bar.”
Robert Brown, if that was his name, took a breath and said, “This is all a mistake. I can save us all a good deal of trouble if you’ll let me explain.”
“Do that,” I said. I clicked the safety on the Beretta and slipped it into my hip pocket, keeping the .38 pointed at him.
He directed a pudgy finger toward an early edition of the evening paper, lying open on the bed. One of the headlines, with photo, was: “AIELLO SUCCUMBS: ALLEGED RACKETEER FOUND SHOT.”
Robert Brown said, “Mr. Crane, I don’t know and don’t care what your arrangements are with Aiello’s friends, but I have to know what happened to the contents of Aiello’s safe. It’s very important to me — you could say vital.”
“Everybody in town seems to be interested in that,” I remarked. “Who told you the safe had been robbed? And why come to us to find out?”
“I won’t fence with you, Mr. Crane.” He said it coyly. He reminded me of nothing so much as an elephant trumpeting an unrequited love. “I spoke with Vincent Madonna an hour ago from my office, when I first heard of Aiello’s death. I wanted to make sure the contents of the safe hadn’t been disturbed. Madonna was quite frank with me; he told me the safe had been rifled and you were the person most likely to know where the contents were to be found. He told me where to find this lady, and wished me good luck, and asked me to forward to him any information I might obtain from you.”
If I’d had time I might have stopped to puzzle over Madonna’s reasons for telling all that to Robert Brown, but first there were more important things to cover. I said, “What’s your connection with Madonna?”
“I wish to God there weren’t any,” Robert Brown said, sounding as if he meant it. “You must understand that we all make mistakes. There are some of us who are in positions where we can’t afford to have our mistakes exposed. Unfortunately, evidence of one or two mistakes from my past found its way into Salvatore Aiello’s possession. I have reason to believe that evidence was in his safe. I want to get it back. I won’t breathe easy until I do.”
I said, “You’ve got a wallet in your hip pocket. Take it out and toss it on the bed.”
“What?”
I jiggled the gun at him. He wanted to put up an argument but he thought fast, gave it up, and did as he’d been told. He didn’t look happy about it. I picked up the wallet and went through it, keeping one eye on him. The credit and membership cards identified him as Fred V. Brawley, M.D., member of various societies of surgeons, the A.N.A., Lions, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, American Express, Diners Club, Yale University Alumni Association. The emergency ID card said he was forty-nine, allergic to penicillin, Blood Type B+, next-of-kin Mrs. Sylvia Brawley (wife) at 2744 Camino del Rodeo. There was a thick wad of cash, large-denomination bills, and two blank checks with his name and an office address at Cliff View Terrace. There were no photos of wife or children, but there was a handsome color snapshot of a cabin cruiser; it looked like about a forty-footer, with a flying bridge and marlin rigs on the open transom deck.
I put everything back in the wallet and tossed it back to the sportsman-surgeon. I said, to Joanne, “Doctor Fred Brawley. Mean anything to you?”
“I’ve heard of him,” she said. “Very exclusive — high-priced and high society.”
I said, “That right, Doc?”
He was mum, glaring not at me but at Joanne. I attracted his attention with a two-inch jiggle of the revolver and said, “Doc, I might suggest you’re in trouble up to your lumbar region. I suggest you start over. Vincent Madonna didn’t tell you where to find us. Who did?”
“Didn’t he?” He was being coy again.
I only shook my head. It wasn’t worth explaining to him. I said, “You told the truth about one part of it. Aiello had blackmail evidence against you in his safe, didn’t he?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What kind of evidence?”
He managed a tight little smile. “I’d be a bit of a fool to tell you that, wouldn’t I?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter much. Malpractice, maybe, or illegal abortions.”
From the way he stiffened I knew I had scored a hit. I didn’t press it; it didn’t seem to matter. I said, “The point is, somebody pointed you at us. I have to know who it was, I’ll get rough with you if I have to. How about it?”
He brooded at my .38 and finally said, “It’s not only the evidence, you see. Aiello was the only one who had the background information that would have made the evidence useful against me. If anyone else turns it up, it won’t be much use to them, because without knowing where to look for corroboration they won’t be able to prove anything. I’ll be honest with you, Crane. I had money in that safe. Two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in cash, wrapped up in a bundle with my name on it, in Aiello’s vault where no tax snoopers would find it. That money belongs to me and I mean to get it back. I don’t care what happens to the rest of the money from the safe but I want my own property returned to me. I admit I made a mistake with you, letting you get close enough to disarm me, but I warn you that if I find out you’ve found that money and you don’t return my share to me, I’ll make it my business to kill you if necessary to get it.”
It was pure bravado, coming from an unarmed man at gunpoint, and I had to admire it. But it also nicely masked his shift away from my question. I said, “That’s fine, Doctor. If I find the money I’ll think about it. In the meantime you haven’t told me who sent you here.”
“But I have. I can’t help it if you didn’t believe me.”
“It won’t do, Doc. If there’s two hundred and fifteen thousand of yours in that loot, maybe Madonna would be willing to see you get it back, but he’d never have admitted to you that the blackmail evidence was missing. He wants that himself.”
“I told you, it wouldn’t be any good to him. He doesn’t know the facts that Aiello knew, the facts he’d need to connect it up.”
“If that’s true, it gives you a motive to kill Aiello, doesn’t it?”
His mouth drew back in disgust. “I won’t dignify that with an answer.”
“You just threatened to kill me,” I pointed out.
“Mr. Crane, if I’d killed Aiello, I’d already have the contents of his safe in my possession, and I certainly wouldn’t have any reason to come after you.”
“Not unless you wanted me thrown off the track,” I said.