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.”