“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.”

I had; I was. I said, “Go on, Mike.”

“Okay, the reason I opened up to you, I want to make a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?”

Now there was cunning in his eyes—anxious and fearful, but sly. “Together maybe we can find that loot,” he said. “If either one of us finds it and turns it over to the mob, do you think that’ll keep them from killing all three of us anyway, just to keep our mouths shut?”

“Keep going.”

“Okay. We find it, we split it down the middle, and we go our separate ways.”

I said, “What about the mob?”

He tried to smile. “Crane, forty thousand men disappear every year in this country, and a lot of them don’t ever get found unless they want to. If it helps you make up your mind, I got a good contact—not through the mob—with a plastic surgeon. You follow?” He dragged a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, glanced at it, and handed it to me. I looked at it—the name and address of a doctor in Studio City.

He said, “Keep it, I got another copy. Hell, tie it all up in nice neat ribbons—leave a suicide note if you want to and make it look like you took a Brodie off the Golden Gate Bridge.”

He was staring at me without blinking, almost holding his breath.

I said, “What about Joanne?”

“Joanne and me are quits. I won’t make waves. You cut your half with her or do it however you want.”

“I notice you didn’t offer to split it in thirds.”

“I didn’t think I had to. I thought you and Joanne were an item together. Making woo, all that crap.”

I didn’t press it; what I said was, “Suppose we look but we don’t find the money?”

“Then we get dead. I don’t know about you but I’m dead anyway. What have we got to lose?” He had a point.

I said, “You’ve leveled with me as far as I can tell. I’ll give you this much. Madonna gave me forty-eight hours to produce the money.”

“Or else what?”

“He didn’t specify. They’ll bring Joanne in and then bring me in and they’ll work us over to find out what we know.”

“And when they’re satisfied you don’t know anything, they’ll rub you out anyway because they can’t afford to let you go and blab what they did to you. A sweet pot, Crane. Look, the only chance we’ve got is to throw in together. We can’t go to the cops—they might help us find the stuff but we’d end up dead anyway, and most of the cops I know would keep the money and pretend they-never found it.”

Which was, I thought, exactly what Mike himself was proposing to do. I didn’t point out the irony of his indignation. I said, “Where do you figure to start looking?”

“Have we got a deal?”

“Let’s put it like this. We’ll work together. If and when we find the money we can decide what’s to be done with it. If it looks like we can guarantee our own safety by turning the money over to Madonna, then I’d suggest it’s better to be alive and broke than dead and rich.”

“That’d have to be a hell of a guarantee.”

“If we can work it out that way, will you go for it?”

He scowled. “If it’s the only way, hell yes. Have I got a choice?”

“All right. We’ve got a deal.”

He nodded. “Okay. Then the first thing you do is check out the Judy Dodson bird. She was still with Aiello when I left last night. Look, the reason I can’t do it myself, I got to stay out of sight. They might take a notion to haul me in any time. You’ve at least got forty-eight hours and they’ll probably keep their hands off you that long, just to see if you can come up with something.”

“Any other ideas if the girl doesn’t pan out?”

“One or two,” he said. “For instance, Frank Colclough and Stanley Raiford.”

I looked at him. He had uttered two prominent political names. Frank Colclough, the county supervisor, was a political kingmaker who bossed the county machine. Stanley Raiford, the ex-governor, had been in the news lately, making hard-knuckled speeches that sounded very much like the noises made by a man running for office. It was rumored he was about to throw his hat in the ring and run for the Senate against the aging incumbent.

Mike said, “There were money packages in the safe with their names on them.”

“Packages for what?”

“You’d have to find that out yourself. I don’t know. The money wasn’t payoffs, I know that much. The bag money doesn’t get listed like that in the safe. So it was something else, not bribe cash. But it had Colclough’s and Raiford’s names on it. Private money, probably, that Aiello was keeping as a favor to them. There were some others, but those are the only two names I remember.”

I scowled. They were leads but they didn’t sound very good. But at least it was a place to start.

Mike said, “I’m going to have to stay under cover. If it wasn’t for Jo I wouldn’t trust you, but I figure she’ll look out for my rights if you get any fancy ideas.”

It was a strange thing for him to say. I had no way of disproving the idea that he and Joanne had set the whole thing up, using me as their patsy; no way except the knowledge that it didn’t fit with Joanne’s character for a minute.

“All right,” I said. “You sit tight.” I turned to go.

He stopped me. “How about my gun?”

I studied him, then handed the gun to him. He stuck it in his waistband. He said, “I may not stay here, but I’ll get in touch.”