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“Right then we were working the Moulin Rouge, which was the only room left on the Strip that wasn’t using rock. I could see it wouldn’t last—I learned about squeeze plays the first time I got jumped in an alley by five kids bigger than me. Man, I figured here I was making only a hundred a week but next month I could be starving to death.” He uttered a B-flat grunt of sour laughter and threw up his arms, gesturing. His arms fell to his sides and he said gloomily, “So one night Sal Aiello, he owns the Moulin Rouge, he comes to my door selling Mafia cookies.”
He looked at me to see what effect that had. “I’m not dense,” he said defiantly. “Look, Aiello offered me a chance to write my own ticket, and if I turned it down where was I supposed to go? I wasn’t about to go back to the bottom—I been there, it’s too crowded. So I gave my boys their closing notice. That’s one thing you learn in that business—how to get off.”
I said, “So then Aiello gave you a job. Doing what?”
“Bagman,” he said without hesitation. “I was clean, no criminal record. I was ideal—the cops wouldn’t shake down a guy like me at embarrassing times like when I’m carrying a satchel full of payoff money for the monthly sheet of potbelly politicians.”
“Who’d the money go to?”
He looked at me from under his thin eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s included in the price of your ticket.”
“All right,” I said, saving it for later. “Go ahead.”
“Okay, I’m on the payroll and then something happens that gets me sore at Aiello.” He squinted at me as if to divine how much I knew about that.
I decided it would help to tell him. “I know about Aiello and Joa
“Christ. Everybody alive and his idiot half-brother seems to know about that. Hell, I guess I should have kept it to myself, but she was my wife. The bastard didn’t think I’d lift a finger. He thought I was too scared. He was right. Christ, that crazy Jo goes and shacks up with him just for kicks I guess because she didn’t know any better, and what do I do about it? Nothing. Oh, I belted Jo a few good ones, but I didn’t go near Aiello. If I had, I’d have ended up part of the pavement on a road-construction job. Like he did. But the trouble with me is, I didn’t know enough to keep my mouth shut. I got pissed off—hell, who wouldn’t?—and I loaded up with too much to drink one night and I started beefing in a bar about that bastard Aiello. I didn’t spell anything out, just called him some names, but Pete DeAngelo hears the tail end of it. That’s my luck. So Pete hears me beefing and he walks me outside and taps me around a little. Maybe I had that coming. It taught me my lesson. But right after that I find a couple cops waiting at my house with a warrant and a half a kilo of uncut heroin they claim they found taped inside my toilet tank. It was a railroad—you never saw anything that raw. I was clean, man, I never in my life messed with narcotics.”
“Who planted it? The cops?”
“No. Aiello or DeAngelo, one of them had it done. Then they phoned in an anonymous tip to the cops. They made sure Joa
He turned palms up and looked at me. “And you ask me why I think they’re after me. I can’t pretend I didn’t have a beef against Aiello—it gives me a nice neat motive to go after him the minute I get out of jail, right? Good old Aiello. When I got arrested he was as nice and fatherly as you could ask. Comes to the visiting room and tells me it’s all for my own good, the organization likes to keep the hired help in line and once in a while it calls for teaching a little lesson. I’m the student. He gets me an organization mouthpiece and the guy pleads me guilty, which I was in no position to argue. I walk into Superior Court and the judge hands me seven to ten years, and then Aiello tells me the boys don’t hold any hard feelings, it’s just this is the way things get handled when you step out of line. He promises me there’ll be a good job waiting for me when I get out, and he gives me his word on his mother’s grave nobody’s going to touch Joa
Maybe he thought he detected ironic disbelief in my face; he said angrily, “Hell, what else could I do?”
“You tell me.”
“If I’d turned state’s evidence they might have gone for Joa
He was lying back now, sprawling, staring at the high sepulchral ceiling. “Five years is a long time when you break it up into hours, Crane. The only thing that keeps you going is knowing you’re going to get out. But I’m out twenty-four hours and already they’re writing up a contract on me. Look, I don’t want to go out in a blaze of glory—I don’t want to go out at all. That’s why I had to talk to you.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re talking. Where does it get us?”
“I ain’t finished,” he said. “I got us up to yesterday so let’s finish it.”
I nodded patiently.
“A guy owes me some bucks, see? Sal Aiello. He promised me a job and some bucks to get started again when I got out, and like I told you, I believed him. Why should he lie to me? So I been a good boy, I got my parole and I took the bus back here and I cruised around downtown yesterday afternoon looking for somebody that could give me a ride out to Aiello’s house. They don’t use buses in his neighborhood.
“Okay, I ran into Tony Se
“And?”
“I chased around with Tony, said hello to some of the guys, and finally he finished his rounds and DeAngelo picks us up in his Mercedes. Every time DeAngelo whispers at me I get the feeling he’s trying to sell me a used car, but I needed the ride out to Aiello’s and that was where they were headed. There was some small talk like how did I like stir and who’d I get to know up there. DeAngelo’s put on a little weight and wearing a fancy Sy Devore-type suit looking like a goddamn movie star and I could see everybody was doing fine while I was away. There’s a lot of talk about getting ready to legalize gambling. Finally we get out to Aiello’s place—big house, pool, panoramic vista, the works. About a mile north of Mado
He paused to marshal his memories, probably wondering how much I really knew about Aiello and Joa