“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 Joanne was out of town that week so it wouldn’t get pinned on her — they wanted her around here handy where they could keep pins stuck in her.”
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 Joanne while I’m away. Of course that’s to keep me from getting so unhappy I might decide to sing to the cops. Joanne’s their hostage to make sure I don’t talk right? But I figured Aiello meant what he said about treating me square when I got out — which is why I went up there last night.”
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 Joanne or they might have gone for me — they can find a way to slip a hit man into a prison cell if they want to. Either one of us could’ve ended up with our heads in a basket. Okay, so I built up a reputation for keeping my mouth shut, but what choice did I have? It didn’t mean I was happy, I admit — if I was happy I wouldn’t be here talking to you like this. But goddamn it, I’ve seen them put the fix on when they wanted to. Tony Senna got arrested a few years ago and he’s got a record as long as your arm, but they bribed the Records Division to supply the court with a clean record sheet for the trial, and he got off with a suspended sentence as a first offender. First offender my ass. Then there was a bookie they caught chiseling on the receipts a few years back, so two torpedoes beat his head in with tire irons. Some cop caught them both red-handed, but the fix goes in and when the cop gets on the stand he testifies he saw the bookie fall on his head. They could have bought me the same kind of fix, but hell, they framed me in the first place, why should they?”
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 Senna, he’s cruising the taco district picking up shylock money and numbers payoffs. Right out in bare-ass daylight — man, you know the fix is in with the cops down there.”
“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 Madonna’s place. It was dark by the time we got out there. DeAngelo goes right out to the pool and strips down and starts splashing around, striking poses for a chick Aiello’s got decorating the pool — you know Aiello, he’s always had a harem problem.”
He paused to marshal his memories, probably wondering how much I really knew about Aiello and Joanne. Aiello had been a relentless womanizer with a broken-down libido who used women and discarded them; sometimes I wondered how much satisfaction such men got from their compulsive conquests.
Mike muttered, “Aiello was kind of tilted about dames.” He sounded strangely wistful, but he didn’t follow it up.
He changed the subject harshly: “Anyhow, when I got there Aiello was as per usual, all jovial and friendly, wall-to-wall booze and this nice piece of fluff, Judy Dodson’s her name, pouring his drinks and lighting his cigars for him. A hot pillow dame with a topless neck — you know the type.”
When he looked at me, I gave him a nod.
He said, “Aiello gave me a drink and bragged about how the business has expanded since I went up. He’s built a new wing on the Moulin Rouge, where I used to work, so they can turn it into a casino soon as they buy enough legislators to push the gambling bill through the state house.
“DeAngelo and Tony Senna keep drifting in and out with phone messages. After a while it gets cool by the pool so we go inside, which is when Aiello goes over to the safe.
“It’s a great big bank vault, in the library. Covers pretty near the whole damn interior wall. Aiello signals DeAngelo and me and the Dodson chick to come look inside. Like I told you, enough cash to choke a whale. I counted the stacks, and if each stack was full of bills of the same denomination they had showing on top, then my estimate has got to be pretty close — somewhere around three million dollars, like I said. Most of it out in the open. There were a few lockboxes too, on shelves inside. I didn’t see what was in them. Aiello likes to show off stuff like that — liked, I mean, he’s dead. Anyhow he told me he knew I took a bad fall, the judge was too tough, and he says the organization wants to make it up to me now that I’ve showed how true-blue I can be. I kept my mouth shut, you see. So he takes a wad out of the sack and hands it to me.”
Mike reached into his baggy pockets and took out a thick sheaf of bills tight-bound with a rubber band. “Close to five grand in twenties and fifties,” he explained, and put it back where he got it.
“After that Aiello told me to keep my shirt on, they’d find me a good job shortly and in the meantime I should have a good time. Then DeAngelo starts to pump me — he seemed to think I’d spread all kinds of loose talk in stir. I told him I’d kept quiet — would I be that dense? DeAngelo and Aiello were like a pair of cops where one puts a cigarette in your mouth and the other slaps it out of your face. Right then I got a funny feeling down the back of my neck, you know?
“It took a while to convince them. Finally DeAngelo seemed to buy my story, and he left. Tony Senna was someplace around the house and he left with DeAngelo, in the Mercedes. Aiello takes me outside to see them off. Then he hands me the key to that station wagon and tells me I can use it as long as I like. So I get in the car and drive out. The girl was still there with Aiello. I came into town and stopped at a bar and had a few, and all the time I couldn’t get rid of the idea they were setting me up for a patsy. They don’t need me, see? I started thinking about how much sense it might make for them to kiss me off a mountain cliff one night. Maybe I was wrong but Joanne can tell you I was rattled as hell. I couldn’t think of what to do so I went to her place, but she wouldn’t let me in, I guess I don’t blame her. I made a bitch of her life.”