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 Madonna had things in that safe—Aiello wouldn’t have the guts to steal a ten-cent stamp from Madonna.”

I recalled the front-page stories of automobile death traps wired with bombs. The rubouts and hits, attributed to the Madonna mob but, of course, never proved. Madonna was the head of the local Family: the don vin done. Salvatore Aiello was his caporegime—one of his field commanders in the Cosa Nostra pseudo-military setup. I had heard rumors about rumors—that there was bad blood between them, for no known reason other than the fact that Madonna was Sicilian while Aiello was Neapolitan. But she was probably right: no hood like Aiello would risk the wrath of the entire international organization by absconding with his boss’s money. But what the devil could I do about it? Joanne couldn’t hide from them any more than Aiello could. What chance did we have?

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 Madonna’s modernized mob gave enthusiastic support to the Anti-Defamation Committee when it insisted there was no such thing as “Organized Crime”; if the town had any crooks with Sicilian names that was just coincidence.

Maintaining good public relations and a peaceful surface of quiet was particularly vital to the mob right now: through his political mouthpieces, Madonna was exerting pressure to introduce legalized gambling into the state. It was sensitive; he couldn’t afford untoward publicity. Sal Aiello’s disappearance would be bad enough; the mob wouldn’t want to have to explain Joanne’s disappearance—and mine—along with it. So I didn’t really expect them to use too much muscle—unless they knew things I didn’t know. I glanced at Joanne in the shadows by the screen door; she was holding out on me, I knew that. I didn’t have time to press it out of her.

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 Senna. Baker was a bookie and numbers runner, not long on brains; he was driving the car but I knew he would let Tony Senna do the talking—Senna, who must have been a carney barker in some prior incarnation, was one of the mob’s running dogs, an enforcer with a glib tongue and a cruel sense of humor.

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 Senna walked around the car with both hands in his pockets and glanced at Joanne before he formed a smile with his teeth and said to me, “Hello, flatfoot. Hot enough for you? I hear the burglars are only breaking into air-conditioned houses.” It elicited a bark of laughter from Ed Baker, a big-nosed brute with shoulders like a Percheron, who looked as if he belonged behind a butcher’s counter. Baker, a onetime prelim fighter, was a grade-B Hollywood gangster with the personality of a closed door.

Senna, sizing me up through his accidental smile, was another breed—a small, thin hood full of conspiratorial mannerisms; a sharpie. He had waxy Latin skin but you got the feeling you could have lit a match on his jaw.

He said casually, “How’re they hangin’, Crane?” and shot a shrewd glance past me at Joanne. “Pete thought we might find her here. Pete’s pretty smart sometimes.” He meant Pete DeAngelo, Madonna’s consigliore, the number two man in the Family.

Senna smiled again. “You ain’t talking much.”

“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.”

Senna chuckled. “See how long it took him to spot that, Crane? I swear, Baker’s the dumbest guy I’ve ever met. He can’t even remember what comes after Walla.” He chuckled and drew a circle in the sand with his toe, and looked up abruptly, as if trying to catch me off guard.

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, Senna spoke over his shoulder to Baker: “Look around, Ed.”

Baker went toward the house. I stood back and kept an eye on him while he went past Joanne. She was stiff but composed; she met his glance without flinching. Baker went into the house.

Senna was smiling again: “I’m glad you didn’t argue, Crane.”

“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 funny?”

He whipped his small-eyed glance toward Joanne and said, “Dolly, you take some pretty dumb chances. It wasn’t smart for you to come here.”

“All right,” Joanne said coolly, “I’m not smart. Is that a crime?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Senna said. “I ain’t read up on the law.” He was, obviously, just talking to pass the time—he would make up his mind what to do with us after Baker finished his search. He probably had his orders from DeAngelo, and whatever they were, nothing we could say would change his mind; I intended to save my arguments for the higher-ups, if it got to that stage. But I backed up three paces to stand where I could watch both Senna and the front of the house; I didn’t want Ed Baker coming around behind us.