“Where did you go when you left Joanne’s?”
“Back to the Moulin Rouge.”
“They close at one,” I said. “Where’d you spend the rest of the night?”
He hesitated. “Look, I got to tell you the truth — hang me with it if you want to. When the Moulin Rouge closed I bought a bottle and took it with me. I drove up the Strip clear to the foothills and parked and had a little consultation with the bottle. I don’t remember how much of it I killed but I was pretty damn drunk by the time I decided to get it over with. Whisky courage. I drove up to Aiello’s house again.”
He let it hang in the air, watching me while I watched him. Finally he closed his lids down and said, “Crane, you’ve got to believe me. It was about four this morning. There was a car coming out of Aiello’s drive just before I turned in. I didn’t get much of a look at it — a Cadillac, I think; all I’m sure of is it was pink. My headlights picked it up and it was pink. I didn’t pay any attention to it just then because why was I supposed to suspect anything? I drove on in and got out of the car and the front door was wide open, the lights were on. I went inside. The place was a mess. Aiello wasn’t there, the safe was open, all that cabbage was gone, even the lockboxes — the safe was absolutely empty. I smelled sulfur, like powder-smoke after a gun goes off, you know? Man, I didn’t stick around — I went back to the station wagon and got the hell out of there. I went to Ed Baker’s place — he’s got a little house over by the university. Tony Senna and a couple others were there, playing cards — they’d been at it for hours. I grabbed a sandwich but I was too drunk and too bushed and too scared to sit down and play cards, so I went in the back room and went to sleep.
“When I woke up Senna and Baker were crawling all over my station wagon, tearing the damn thing apart. I guess they didn’t find anything — you got to figure there’d be bloodstains in the car if I’d carried Aiello’s corpse out to that roadbed and buried it. Of course I didn’t know what they were looking for at first, but then later I heard the radio news about the body and I knew that’s what they’d been looking for in the station wagon. All right, they didn’t find any stains, and that slowed them down. But the way Senna looked at me I knew I was a long way from being off the hook. I went in the john and I could hear them out in the kitchen. There was a phone call, probably DeAngelo, and after Senna hung up he told Baker to get his gun because they were going out to your place to pump you and Joanne and see if you had the money. So they went, and as soon as they were gone I got in the station wagon and came over here. I had to think.”
“Why here?”
“It used to be a drop. I’d pick up satchels here once in a while. I think a long time ago they used the place to pass dope from dealers to pushers.”
His voice ran down. He sat sweating in a dark pool of shadow. I said, “Three million dollars is a lot of cash. What was it doing in Aiello’s safe in the first place?”
“They used the vault for a collection point for everything this side of El Paso and Salt Lake.”
“They wouldn’t just let all that cash lie idle in the safe. What was supposed to happen to it?”
He looked at me; he was deciding whether to answer. He said, “Jesus, why not? Look, the way they worked it, Aiello would hold the stuff they collected from various enterprises all over the district. They kept it in cash because they didn’t want any records for the tax boys to dig in. This was the raw take, you understand. All sizes of bills, unmarked. The mob’s got its own legit banks back east, Long Island and New Jersey, but out here they don’t, so it was handy to have that big old bank vault in Aiello’s house. They’d let the cash pile up until there was enough for a shipment — maybe four million. Then they’d satchel it into a small van with two or three torpedoes and armor plate and more locks and electric guard systems than you ever saw, and Aiello and DeAngelo would ride with it over to Los Angeles. Over there they’d work through a dozen banks, change the money into cashiers’ checks and bank letters under phony names. They’d take a week, ten days to get it done, all in small batches so they wouldn’t attract attention. Then somebody flies it over to Switzerland — they’ve got dozens of numbered bank accounts in Zurich. It used to be Madonna who called the turns but he never touched the stuff with his own hands. Usually Aiello and DeAngelo would fly over to Switzerland.”
“And the safe was almost full last night?” I asked.
“Close. Like I said.”
“It all belonged to the mob?”
“Mostly. A lot of people had pieces of it. And Aiello used to keep money in the safe for people who didn’t want to report it for taxes — private money.”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know names. Outsiders, but I don’t know which ones.”
He got up and wobbled toward the door to get air. I stayed close with the gun. He said, “God, I feel like I just got out of the hospital after six months and fell down in the lobby on my way out and broke both legs. Only this time there’s no cure. Jesus H. Christ. I belong to the running dead, you know that?”
All this had been preamble; suddenly he wheeled to face me. He said in a sharper tone of voice, “Crane, I’ve leveled with you. When I heard Senna and Baker talking this morning, I knew the mob was trying to decide whether it was me that took the money, or you and Joanne. Or maybe all three of us. They want to play marbles with our eyeballs. Okay, listen, I played straight with those guys, I said I was sorry, but I’m not going to die for it and I’m not about to write it a hundred times on the blackboard. I want out. If you’ve got any brains, you do too.”
“Go on — spell it out, Mike.”
He nodded. “I talk a lot, I know. Reflex habit. But I’ve been sizing you up. I’m not as dumb as I look. You’re one of the mob’s prime suspects. I know that because I heard the boys talking this morning. This morning you went up to Madonna’s. What for? I asked myself. The answer was easy. You went up there for the same reason I did. When you drove in, I was parked up the road trying to work up the guts to go in and talk to Madonna, beg on my knees if I had to, just persuade them I didn’t do it. I didn’t have the nerve, but you did. Now, if you’d taken the loot you’d have been long gone by now, I figure. Besides, you’re tied up with Jo, and I know her well enough to know she’d never do a thing like this. So let’s lay it on the line. You didn’t do it and I didn’t do it and Joanne didn’t do it. What else is there? Madonna himself? I doubt it. Soldiers been drifting in and out of Madonna’s place all day, there’s a big flap, and I just don’t think it’s a mob operation. Some independent party is out there someplace with all that loot. But the mob doesn’t look at it that way — not yet, anyway. Too many coincidences for them. They know Joanne had keys to Aiello’s house and the alarm system — that was why Senna and Baker made a beeline for your place this morning. They know I just got out of the pen and went directly to Aiello’s last night and saw what was in the safe. Probably they figure all three of us were in it together, we pulled the caper, right? Just think about that, Crane.”