The Hit

Chapter Six

The Venetian blinds were drawn; I couldn’t case the motel room. I stood outside the door and listened. The voices were muffled but I could distinguish Joanne’s husky tone and a man’s deep round one.

I closed one eye entirely and slitted the other, and stood silent for several minutes, letting the pupils dilate so I wouldn’t be sun-blinded when I went in. There didn’t seem any alternative. I didn’t have a gun and hadn’t wanted to take the time to find one. Of course I had one advantage — the knowledge that the man was an amateur. If he’d been a pro he wouldn’t have let Joanne do all that talking on the phone. He’d have grabbed it from her and told me to come on in or he’d shoot Joanne.

It was only a surmise, based on experience, but if I’d had any lingering doubts they were dispelled when I stood close against the door and knocked, and he answered by opening the door himself. A professional would have brought Joanne to the door, held his gun in her back and had her open it.

He had a round, soft florid face like a baby’s buttocks. He smelled of expensive after-shave. Handmade cordovan shoes, tailored slacks, linen shirt and a bow tie. He had one gun in his waistband — mine, the .38 I’d left with Joanne — and another in his fist, a lightweight .25 Beretta. When he opened the door he stepped back one pace and pointed the toy in my direction.

“Come in, Mr. Crane. Shut the door behind you.” If I was supposed to look startled I disappointed him. I just nodded and stepped across the threshold and made a wisecrack:

“What’s a big boy like you doing playing with loaded guns?”

“I’m glad you’ve assumed it’s loaded,” he said. “It is.” He had stepped back against the side wall so he could watch both me and Joanne. I gave her a quick glance. She sat in a low armchair, not mussed; she looked all right and she gave me a nod. She looked tense but not terrified.

I pushed the door shut behind me with my heel, and with my foot still braced against the door that way, I launched myself at him. He was a bit too far away for me to try the same trick I’d pulled on Mike Farrell, so I didn’t go for the wrist. I counted on his amateur status; an amateur with a gun in his hand can be depended on not to shoot when he ought to; trigger-pulling is not one of the amateur’s learned reflexes. When I made my dive, he reacted instinctively by throwing both arms up in front of him to protect his body, forgetting all about the gun.

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.

He threw up his hands. “Suit yourself. We can stand here all day and argue like this, to no point. I’ve said what I came to say. I blundered clumsily, using a gun, I admit that, but there wouldn’t be much profit in continuing this, would there? May I go?”

“As soon as you tell us who sent you here.”

He considered me; by now he was disregarding the gun, assuming I wasn’t going to use it on him unless he got violent. Finally he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll answer that question if you’ll give me a straight answer to a question of mine.”

I remembered something Madonna had said to me a few hours ago and I used it on him, only sorry that he couldn’t appreciate the irony of it. I said, “Why should I bargain with you when I’ve got a corner on the market?”

For some reason that made him smile. Then he caught himself, straightened his face and said, “All right, I don’t suppose it matters that much. The man who spotted Mrs. Farrell in the lobby this morning was indebted to me for various favors — I had treated his wife, brought her through a serious illness, and not charged the man because I knew there would be a time when I would want him to do me a favor. Those who are ignorant of medical procedures tend to be excessively grateful to a physician who, from his own point of view, was only doing a competent job of what he’d been trained to do. This man—”

“What’s his name?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? If you want him, his name is Behrenman.”

I looked at Joanne; she nodded slightly, confirming it.

Brawley continued: “Behrenman knew I had money in Aiello’s safe, knew I had a vital interest in finding the contents of it, and felt duty-bound to me as the man who had saved his wife’s life. He telephoned me at my office and told me that Madonna felt you were the most likely person to know what had happened to the contents of the safe. Behrenman didn’t know why Madonna felt that way, but he did know that Madonna was sufficiently convinced of it to order elaborate surveillance on Mrs. Farrell to make sure the two of you didn’t seize the money and make a run for it. I assume Madonna is hanging back in the hope that you’ll lead him to the money, whereupon he’ll pounce on you. That’s none of my concern. All I want is my money. It’s a rather small proportion of the total cash contents of the safe. Frankly I hoped I could force you at gunpoint to reveal the location of the money, or at least force you to go get my share and bring it back here to me while I held Mrs. Farrell hostage. As you see, it didn’t work. I’m not very adept at that sort of thing, obviously. Another mistake to chalk up. But now I’ve told you what you wanted to know. You could return my frankness by at least telling me whether you do in fact have the money.”

I shook my head at him. Either he was a fool or he just liked to hear himself talk. I said. “Go on, Doc, get out of here.”

His face fell a bit. “What about my gun?”

“You won’t need it,” I said. “Chalk that up, too.”

I pointed the .38 at him and pointed the other hand toward the door.

He gave up. Composing himself, he walked out stiffly. He closed the door behind him softly, ceremonially, like a mortician.

I went to the window and opened the Venetian blinds and watched him walk up the pavement and turn out of sight into the arched passageway. He must have left his car around front.

Joanne spoke at my back: “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

“Part of it, anyway.”

“I could point out Ed Behrenman for you. I know him by sight. He’s probably around here somewhere.”

“No,” I said, turning back and looking at her. “He’d deny it anyway — he couldn’t afford to have it get back to Madonna from me. He might decide he had to kill you and me to keep us from telling Madonna.”

“Telling Madonna what?”

“That Behrenman spilled the beans to the doctor. That wouldn’t sit well with Madonna.”

“Well, then,” she said, “where does that leave us? What have you found out?”

“Not a hell of a lot. I had a long talk with Mike, but it didn’t seem—”

I stopped because she had gone rigid at the sound of Mike’s name. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

“He was fine the last I saw him. Stop shivering. Mike didn’t do it, I’m convinced of that.”

The sun was throwing long blades in through the Venetian slats. I looked at my watch — almost six o’clock. I waited for Joanne to go through a series of changes of facial expression and finally, when she seemed settled, I said, “You don’t love the guy enough to remarry him but you’re still fond of him and you’ve been scared to death I’d find out he was the culprit in this mess. Is that what you’re trying to make me believe?”

“Trying to — I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “But it isn’t good enough. Joanne, you’re letting public opinion push you around.”

“I’m what?”

I said, “I told you just now that Mike didn’t do it. You reacted. Vast relief, followed by confusion, followed by a mask. There’s only one reason I can think of why you’d be all that relieved to find out Mike wasn’t guilty. You’re relieved because it means he doesn’t have the contents of the safe. He hasn’t seen the stuff — he hasn’t seen the blackmail evidence Aiello had against you. It must be something pretty terrible to make you so anxious that Mike shouldn’t see it.”

Her only answer was a twisted smile. Behind it she looked cornered and violent. Her eyes shifted away from me and I said, “Why should you care what Mike thinks of you any more?”

“I can’t help it,” she said in a small voice. “I’m not all that self-sufficient that I don’t give a damn what people know about me.”

“Including me? Because if Mike had the stuff, I’d have found it, and I’d have known. Isn’t that it, Joanne? Answer me.”

She lowered her face slowly. Dark short hair swayed forward past her face and I couldn’t see her expression; she had turned her profile to me. She said, very soft, “Yes... yes.”

I went to her. Squatted on my heels beside her and slipped my arm in under the arm of the chair, sliding my band between her back and the back of the chair. I felt her spine beneath my fingers. I said, “You have got to trust me.”

She shook her head, still not letting me look at her face. “Not with that.”

“With all of it,” I said. “What was in the safe?”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve got to. Because you’re still holding something else out on me, and it’s connected to this. Once you’ve told me the hard part, you’ll have no more reason to hold back the rest.”

“I just can’t, Simon.”

I stood up. I still had the .38 and now I put it down beside the newspaper Brawley had left behind. I said, “Madonna gave us forty-eight hours to find the stuff and return it to him. Forty-eight hours from noon today. That leaves forty-two. I don’t have to give you chapter and verse of what happens to you and me, and Mike too I suppose, if we come up empty-handed.”

She stirred. “They wouldn’t — not all of us?”

“They would. I’m sure of it. They will. Not one of the three of us is important enough to cause much of a stir if we disappear. They’ll make sure we’re disposed of where our bodies will never be found. But before they get that far they’ll do everything they can think of to make us talk. Matchsticks under the fingernails, chop off some toes one at a time — you’ve seen enough spy movies to know the techniques and you can believe they’ve seen the same movies. Whatever you know, they’ll get it out of you, only by that time it will be too late to help us.”

She took time to digest it. The first thing she said was, “What makes you so sure I know something that will help?”

“I’m not. But if I’m to have any chance at all I need every fact there is. Everything I can learn. Maybe I can put pieces together and come up with an answer. But not if you keep closing doors on me.” Once more I went to her, took her hand in both of mine. It was ice cold.

She took a deep ragged breath, pulled her hand away and got up. She went to the farthest corner of the room and stood facing the bathroom door. When I shifted one foot she said, “Stay there.”

I backed up and sat down on the bed. The revolver rolled down the depression my butt made. I picked it up and tossed it on the newspaper.

Joanne said, “I’ll make this very short and leave out all the details — I’m sure you can fill them in from your imagination.” Her voice was low, bile-sour.

I rubbed my chin. She took time to work up courage, then spilled it all out with breathless speed.

“A lot of cables run from Aiello’s house to Madonna’s. They’re not all alarm systems. There’s a closed-circuit television hook-up. You haven’t seen Aiello’s bedroom so I’ll have to give you an idea of it — it’s right out of Playboy, a big round bed in the middle and mirrors all over the room, even on the ceiling. The first time I saw it I couldn’t help laughing out loud — I didn’t really believe anybody actually went in for that girlie-magazine satyr stuff. But it’s there. What I didn’t know at the time — didn’t find out until a long time later, when I tried to quit the organization — that bedroom is bugged from every conceivable angle by hidden television cameras. There’s one behind every mirror.”

I knew what was coming but I didn’t speak. She had to say it, get it out. I waited, with a catch in my breath. She said, “Private dirty movies. Not for Aiello’s entertainment, but for Vincent Madonna’s.”

She spat the name out as if it were venom.

She said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Madonna but it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t get his kicks the way most people do. At first, when I found out about the television, I thought the idea was to have Aiello act as Madonna’s flunky by testing girls in bed before passing them on to Madonna. But Madonna never went near me. It was just that one night, so damned long ago, and even though I’d been married a while I wasn’t experienced enough to suit Aiello. He taught me things I’d never even heard of. I was drunk but I don’t suppose that’s any excuse at all. Mostly I was trying to prove what a brassy broad I was — trying to get revenge on poor dumb Milquetoast Mike. Hell, never mind — I did things, that’s all. I did things.”

Her voice trailed off but then she stiffened her spine and went rushing on:

“As long as it was private, just me and Aiello, I could live with it. But then Mike went to prison, and a couple of years later I divorced him. I was sick of the organization and I thought they wouldn’t mind my leaving, since Mike and I were divorced and they couldn’t reasonably use me as a hold over Mike any longer. But they didn’t see it that way. Nobody ever quits the organization. I turned in my resignation, Aiello argued, I got stubborn and argued right back, and when they saw they weren’t going to talk me into changing my mind, they trotted out the films and gave me a nice little private screening up at Madonna’s house. I don’t have to tell you what was on the film, do I? It was Technicolor and it had sound. It was a very professional job and it didn’t leave anything out.”

I said, “And Aiello kept it in his safe.”

“Yes.”

“They must have threatened to do something with it if you didn’t cooperate. What was the threat?”

“Well, my mother and father for openers. They live in California now. Madonna knows how to find them. Then there was Mike, of course. And you.”

She had maintained her rigid, averted pose throughout. Telling it didn’t seem to have taken the load off her. She stood taut as ever, as if waiting for me to explode. “They made it clear,” she said, “that if I ever decided to get married, no matter who it was, he’d have a chance to see the movie if I didn’t do everything they told me to.”

When I made no reply, she said, “There’s just one more thing, because I think you’ve got to know the good part too, if that’s what you can call it. It’s about Aiello and me. Aiello didn’t really like me much — in bed, I mean. We got along all right in the office, but I was too young for him, too inexperienced. He wanted hot stuff — girls who really knew what to do. I imagine Madonna had some influence there, since — since he liked to watch it, on TV, and Aiello liked to be watched.”

I thought of Judy Dodson and the way Mike had described her — a hot-pillow girl.

Joanne said, “The next day, the day after it happened with Aiello, I walked out of the house feeling as if I needed to spend twenty-four hours scrubbing myself with Lava soap. I was trying to get the car started and Aiello came out and leaned his big hairy arm on the window and said some nasty things about the night before, so I pretended to be getting a cigarette out and I punched the dashboard lighter. When it was good and red hot I pulled it out of the dash and jabbed it against his arm. He still has... had... the scar. But when I did that he just laughed at me and stepped back and waved me off. Said I was third-rate in bed anyway and I could forget any ideas I might have about giving him a repeat performance. He meant it, too. It was stupid, ignorant luck, I know that, but he never came near me after that. I think I... amused him. He must have thought I was a funny, audacious little girl, still clumsy and wet behind the ears, branding his arm with a cigarette lighter. I could imagine him later, roaring with laughter, telling all the boys how he’d hung big tough men out to dry for less provocation than that. I’m only guessing at that part, of course.”

She had been talking too fast, trying to salvage some small absolution. Finally she stopped talking and slowly, fearfully, turned to look at me.

I was giving her a silly grin. Her face changed. She said, in a different and somewhat bitter voice, “Don’t pretend it doesn’t matter to you, Simon. I don’t want sympathy. I only wish you hadn’t forced me to tell you, because no matter how you rationalize it, it’s sordid and it has to spoil something. It has to.” She added, more quietly, “Don’t forget, you haven’t seen that film yet.”

“I don’t intend to look at it, even if I get a chance,” I said. “I’d only get jealous.”

“Don’t make jokes.”

“It has never failed to amaze me,” I announced, “the crazy things some people are sensitive to. Push the right button with almost anybody and you’ll get instant panic. Joanne, let me make it as loud and clear as I possibly can: I don’t give a good goddamn how you and Aiello amused each other back in the dark ages.”

“I don’t believe it,” she snapped.

“Believe what you want,” I answered, just as flatly. But when I kept staring at her she lifted her head; our eyes locked, and then, slowly, her mouth became soft and lost its bitter downturn, her eyes widened and then became drowsily heavy, and she whispered: “Oh, Simon.”