“Ask him,” she snapped.

“All right, let’s do it another way. You must know Joanne Farrell.”

“Sal’s secretary? Sure.”

“How long have you known her?”

Her eyebrows went up. “A couple years, I guess. Why?”

“How did Aiello feel about her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You saw them together.”

“Sure. Far as I could tell it was strictly business. She seems like a cold bitch to me, if you want to know.”

A lot she knew. I said, “Then she wasn’t there last night?”

“Last night? Look, you tell Pete he sent a pretty dumb guy to talk to me. Pete knows Mrs. Farrell never stayed at the house past business hours. She always leaves around six. I didn’t get there till seven last night. She wasn’t there. I haven’t seen her in weeks. Look, what’s this all about? Did Pete send you or not?”

“In a way he did,” I said. It looked like a dead end from here on; I stood up, dropped money on the table, and said, “Thanks for the talk. I’ll be seeing you.”

“I’d just as soon Pete came himself next time. Tell him that for me.”

I went outside and had to close my eyes against the glare. The heat was a tangible force, like walking into a foam-rubber wall, after coming out of the icy air conditioning of the Moulin Rouge.

Maybe Mike Farrell, after he’d had half a bottle of whisky, had worked himself up into a state. Maybe he had gone back to Aiello’s, persuaded Aiello to let him in, and forced Aiello at gunpoint to open the safe. Maybe. But I doubted it. With all the alarm systems around the place, it was doubtful anybody could have forced Aiello to open the safe without giving him a chance to trip an alarm somewhere—an alarm that would have alerted Vincent Madonna.

If I believed Judy Dodson, I had a few facts. Aiello had been anticipating a big deal. He had been expecting visitors late at night—otherwise why evict Judy?—and a visit at that hour suggested the visitors were people who couldn’t afford to be seen meeting Aiello in daylight. I recalled the two politicians whose names Mike had mentioned. Ex-Governor Stanley Raiford, and County Supervisor Frank Colclough.

On the way I wolfed a takeout sandwich from a drive-in. I found Raiford’s house in the old part of town, just past a mobile home park where rusty steel trailers were propped in rows on concrete building-blocks, sprouting TV antennae like weeds, baking aridly in the sun glitter. Raiford’s street had been widened until the thin ribbons of sidewalk were pinched against the old houses; fences and front yards were long gone. It was a big two-story house shaded by cottonwoods on both sides; it looked worn and comfortable.

There was nobody home. He had no office listed. Rather than chase around asking questions, which might take too much time, I headed for Colclough’s place—it wasn’t far.

Not far in space, but a thousand miles far in time. Colclough lived in a rich folks’ slum. Blooming plastic flowers had been stuck into the yard, dyed to match the swimming pool, and the lawn had been faked on the theory that the grass is greener after it has been painted. The house was big enough to have been expensive; it probably had all the modern accoutrements—tile shower with sliding glass door, electric kitchen, four bedrooms, dish and clothes washers and dryer in the utility room, electric panel heat, central air-conditioning. There wasn’t a decent-sized tree for a mile in any direction; the cretins who built these $75,000 shacks just bulldozed everything away and rolled out the houses the way you would roll out linoleum flooring with repetitive patterns. Doubtless Colclough had obtained the house cheap, or free, from some fast-buck operator friend of his who slapped houses together by the hundreds, just squeaking past the building code by bribing inspectors. Long before most of the mortgages were paid up the houses would be crumbling, warped, leaking. By that time the Colcloughs would have moved on.

There were no cars in the two-car garage, no answer to my knock at the door. But when I turned back down the cracking concrete walkway the next-door neighbor turned off his gardening hose and said amiably, “Looking for the mister or the missus?”

I went across the green, dead lawn. He was a sunburned old man with several chins and an office paunch in paisley Bermuda shorts and a loud shirt. I said, “I was looking for the county supervisor. He’s not at his office.”

He nodded “He’s out of town, you see. Asked me to look after the swimming pool. It’s a nice pool isn’t it? We often sit around after the sun goes down,-watching the bugs on the pool. Nice and quiet and peaceful. Not like the pious rat race back east, not a bit, no sir. Boy, you couldn’t get me to go back, not me. Never, not for all the money in Wall Street.”

“You’re a broker?”

“Retired customer’s man,” he said, and beamed at me, wishing with all his might he was back in the pious rat race with something to do besides watch bugs skim the surface of a rectangular swimming pool.

The senior citizen said, “If you need him in a hurry, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. He’ll be gone a couple of weeks.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

“Frank and Edith went upstate three days ago with Governor Raiford to organize the election campaign.” He was name dropping, of course, but I couldn’t complain; at least he was talkative.

“He didn’t come back to town last night by any chance? Just for a brief business appointment?”

“If he did he didn’t stop by here. My wife and I were home all night. Look, I’ll tell you what you do, you can call him at the Stone Mountain Hotel up at the capital, that’s where he’s staying. We’re forwarding the important mail. I’m assuming you want to talk to him about something important—otherwise you wouldn’t have come to his home?”

He made it a question but I didn’t let him draw me into conversation; I thanked him kindly and strode back to the Jeep. When I got to a phone booth I called Joanne to check on her.

Her voice sounded strange. “Oh—Simon.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Why, nothing, I only—”

“Is somebody there with you?”

“Yes,” she said, eager.

“With a gun?”

“Yes, exactly. Simon, can you come right away? There’s something I have to talk about and I’d rather not do it on the phone.”

“It’s a set-up—he’s waiting to trap me?”

“Yes, fine, I’ll see you in a few minutes, then?”

“Hang on, darling,” I said. “Do you think he’ll use the gun? Should I send cops?”

“No, it’s all right, I’ve already had lunch. But thank you for thinking of it. You’re sweet.”

“Is it anybody I know?”

“No, really, I promise you I’m not hungry, and besides, it would take too long to stop and pick up a sandwich for me. I’ve got to see you right away—it’s important.”

“Is this guy alone, no help outside?”

“That’s right.”

“What does he want? Just talk, not a fight?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there. It’ll take me twenty minutes.”

“Bye, darling.”

“Take care,” I murmured, and hung up. My hand was trembling on the receiver. I made it to the Jeep and pulled away from the curb and almost collided with a bus that roared by with a swish of pollutant exhaust.

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.