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I stood up. “All right,” I said. “Neutral corners—I’ll keep my hands to myself. Let’s get this figured out.”
She gave me a quick grateful look, and became smaller and heavier with relief, strain flowing out. She was looking with preoccupied anger into the coffee dregs and she was arrestingly beautiful in profile. I looked away and said, “If you want me to do you any good you’ll have to lay everything out on the table. You’re holding a lot back.”
“What is there to hold back? I’ve told you what happened. You always have to make things so damned complicated.”
“There’s got to be more than you’ve told me. Nothing you’ve said so far convinces me you’re in too much trouble. If the house is empty and the safe’s open, why not assume Aiello just skipped? Took the money himself?”
“Aiello? You couldn’t get him outdoors in this heat.”
“He disappeared in the cool of the night. Maybe he’s holed up with a nice cuddly air conditioner—or on a plane to South America.”
“He’d never get all that stuff through customs,” she said. “Believe me, he didn’t do it himself. He had no reason to. He’d have been stealing from himself, and from his friends. Vincent Mado
I recalled the front-page stories of automobile death traps wired with bombs. The rubouts and hits, attributed to the Mado
I turned toward her, opening my mouth to speak, and that was when the phone jangled in the bedroom.
She shot off the couch. I froze. The phone rang a second time. I turned my face toward the bedroom.
After a minute I realized I was holding my breath. The phone had not rung again. Two rings, and silence.
I strode across the room. “It could be anybody at all,” I said, “but let’s not take a chance.”
“I’ll get out of here.”
“No. They’d see your dust.”
“Then I’ll hide.”
“Can’t hide your car,” I said. I had gone into the bedroom; I opened the footlocker. Cops have to buy their own side arms; I still had my .38 Police Special. I checked to make sure it was loaded, put it in the hip pocket of my Levi’s and went back into the living room. She was chewing her lip. I said, “We may as well face it now,” and opened the front door. “Stay behind me.”
I held the screen open for her and then walked down past the rose bushes and stood watching the dark blue Ford come snarling up the dusty grade toward us.
Chapter Two
Watching the car come up, I was counting on the mob’s need to keep things quiet. Ours was a city in which the Cosa Nostra overlords still maintained impunity, with bought-and-paid-for cops and politicians, and a degree of anonymity: the southwestern Families hadn’t hit Life magazine, local newspapers hadn’t started any crusades, and PR men for Mado
Maintaining good public relations and a peaceful surface of quiet was particularly vital to the mob right now: through his political mouthpieces, Mado
There were two of them in the car—Cosa Nostra soldiers modestly masquerading in Hawaiian sport shirts. I knew them by sight: Ed Baker and Tony Se
The Ford rolled to a genteel halt ten feet from me and both men got out, not hurrying, not showing weapons, though it could be assumed they had guns under the flapping shirttails.
Tony Se
Se
He said casually, “How’re they hangin’, Crane?” and shot a shrewd glance past me at Joa
Se
“What kind of talk did you have in mind?” I said.
Ed Baker talked without moving his lips: “He’s got some heat in his back pocket, Tony.”
Se
He said in a different voice, “You mind if we have a look around the place?”
“I mind,” I said, “but if it’ll clear things up, go ahead and search. Just put things back where you find them.”
Without turning his head, Se
Baker went toward the house. I stood back and kept an eye on him while he went past Joa
Se
“I never argue with a criminal type,” I said.
His smile disappeared instantly. “Save the cute answers,” he barked. “You wasn’t surprised to see us and you seem to know what Ed’s looking for in there, which makes it a good bet it ain’t here, and a better bet you know exactly what’s going on. Which puts you in a hard place. Now you want to say something fu
He whipped his small-eyed glance toward Joa
“All right,” Joa
“I wouldn’t know,” Se