Invitation to Violence (11 page)

    "I know, I know," Slaughter interrupted her hurriedly. "Of course you don't know. Who the hell does? But I mean, what did you tell them? You know. They must have asked you other things. Like who he hangs around with, who he knows. Things like that."

    "Yes, of course," Sue said. "They asked. And I told them everything I knew. I told them that he knew Dominick Petri and Jake Riddle. What else could I tell them?"

    Slaughter looked angry and Sue vaguely sensed his mood and was puzzled. Why should he be angry?

    "About the cafeteria," he said. "And me. Did they ask about me?"

    Sue looked at him, perplexed.

    "Why should they?" Sue said. "Why should they ask about you? It wasn't me that they were investigating…"

    "Listen," he said, "they know the kid worked here for a time. They know I took an interest in him."

    "Did you?" Sue asked.

    "Of course I did," Slaughter said, suddenly dropping his voice back to normal. "Remember? I said I'd square things with the parole board when he got fired so that they wouldn't know about it. Remember. Certainly I took an interest."

    Sue slowly nodded in agreement. She couldn't help but wonder why he was taking such an interest now. It was impossible that he could think any trouble Vince was in could hurt him in any way.

    "Listen Sue," Slaughter said, standing up and walking around the desk and looking down at her. "Listen, Vince is a good kid. Don't you worry yourself about Vince. But we got to find him. See? We gotta find out where he is."

    Sue looked up at him and slowly shook her head.

    "He isn't a good kid, Mr. Slaughter," she said. "No, Vincent isn't a good kid at all."

    "Don't talk like that," Slaughter said. "He's just a boy. Maybe a little wild, but just a kid. Don't forget, he's your own brother. Twin brother, isn't it?"

    Sue nodded and dropped her eyes.

    "Yes," she said, "twin brother."

    "Well, listen, we just got to find him. You gotta help me. We gotta get hold of Vince."

    Sue pushed back the chair and reached her feet.

    "And then what?" she asked, slowly.

    "Then, why then we get hold of the…"

    Suddenly he stopped talking and stared at her. He moved and crossed the room and stood with his back to her, staring out of the window.

    "We get hold of a mouthpiece and if the kid's in any kinda jam, we go to work for him," he said, lamely.

    Sue stood watching him with wide eyes. She stood dead still, almost as though she were hypnotized. As though she might be looking at a poisonous reptile.

    She knew what he had been about to say when he'd so suddenly interrupted himself. She knew it as well as though he had spoken the words themselves. He'd been going to say, "Why then we get hold of the jewels."

    He swung back from the window, reaching into his side pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

    "Yeah," he said, "yeah. We have to help the kid. So the second you hear from him, you get hold of me. Right off. Call me at my place-here, I'll give you the number."

    He took a pad and pencil from the table and scribbled down two or three lines.

    "My apartment number, the phone over in the bar, and the phone here. I'll be one spot or the other. Just don't forget. Call me at once. No one else. Definitely not the police. The cops would grab him and then he wouldn't have a chance. No, you hear from Vince, you get me pronto. We'll take care of him, see that he's protected."

    Returning to the cashier's cage a few minutes later, Sue thought: Yes, you'll take care of him all right. There's no doubt about that.

    Her face was a sickly dead white and she felt as if she could hardly stand.

    She was sure. Very sure. She knew now who had been in back of Vince and Dommie and Jake. Knew for a certainty.

    Could Slaughter himself have been the fourth man on the job? No, it didn't seem likely. The fourth man would know what happened to Vince and where he was. Slaughter must have been the mastermind; the brains behind the thing.

    As the thought hit her, she experienced a blinding, insane hatred for the man. She turned toward the telephone booth at the side of the cafeteria. She had almost reached the instrument before she slowly stopped and then once more turned toward the front.

    The phone? The police? What good would that do? She'd tell them about Slaughter and maybe they'd listen to her and maybe they wouldn't. But what possible good could come of it? She had no proof, no proof at all. Nothing but her own intuition. Her own sure knowledge.

    No, what she must do was find Vince. Find Vince and get the truth from him.

    As Sue Dunne once more returned to the front of the restaurant and took her place behind the cash register, the small portable radio underneath the counter was just beginning to give the early Sunday evening news broadcast which interrupted the usual all-music programs each hour on the hour.

    

    

    Little Shirley Conzoni walked over and stood in front of the deck chair on which her father sprawled, the Sunday paper fallen across his large lap and his eyes closed as the sun beat down on his dark, leathery face.

    "He's still there, Daddy," Shirley said.

    Anthony Conzoni grunted.

    "Go 'way and play, honey," he said.

    "Shirley's talking to you, Tony." Mrs. Conzoni spoke up, taking her eyes from her sewing. "Answer her."

    Mr. Conzoni grunted again and opened one eye.

    Shirley, quick to follow up this brief victory, spoke quickly.

    "I said he's still there, Daddy."

    "Who's still there, honey?" her father asked.

    "Why the dead man," Shirley said.

    Anthony Conzoni opened both eyes.

    "Now honey," he said, "you shouldn't speak like that. There's no…"

    "There is so!"

    Shirley looked at her father furiously. "There is too a dead man. The one I told you about before. He's still there. Nobody's come for him and he's still there in the bushes."

    "An imagination!" Mrs. Conzoni said proudly. "What an imagination the baby's got, Tony. A real…"

    "There's no dead man!" Anthony Conzoni didn't approve of his daughter having so vivid an imagination.

    Shirley stepped back a pace and lifted her doubled fists and quickly swung at her father's large stomach.

    "There is so a dead man," she screamed, striking him several quick blows. "There is so. See! See this?"

    Shirley held out the small square of white handkerchief she had folded in her hand. It was stained a reddish brown.

    "Blood," she said. "He had it in his hand. Sally dared me and so I took it. If there's no dead man, then where do you think I sot this? And that's blood…"

    Conzoni, with amazing speed for a fat man, reached out and grabbed his eight-year-old, pulling her to him. He took the handkerchief from her.

    "Where did you get this?" he asked.

    "Like I said, from the dead man."

    Mrs. Conzoni had gotten out of her chair and come over and was leaning down. She started to put out an inquiring finger and then suddenly drew it back and paled.

    "My God, Tony," she said, "my God…"

    Little Shirley started to scream as her father began pulling her across the lawn.

    "Come on," he said, "come on now. I want to see this here dead man. You take me to…"

    

    

    Five minutes later Detective Lieutenant Hopper was sitting in the front seat of the black police car as it screamed away from headquarters in Mineola. A uniformed policeman was driving and Finn was in the back seat, cleaning his nails with the unburnt end of a match.

    They arrived at the deserted stretch of road simultaneously with a car from State Trooper headquarters. A county patrol cruiser, empty, was pulled alongside of the road and the uniformed driver was attempting to keep the rapidly collecting crowd away from the bushes at one side, where his partner was leaning down over what appeared to be a crumpled mass of old clothes.

    Hopper made a quick search as they waited for the lab man and the photographers. He was careful not to disturb the body, but he didn't have to worry about footprints or tire markings. The crowd of curious had already very competently eliminated any possibility of identifying either.

    It took Hopper less than a minute to find the wallet in the rear trouser pocket of the dead man. The only identification was a Social Security card, but it was enough for the lieutenant, at least for the moment. That and a quick look at the corpse. There was no doubt at all in his mind. Vince Dunne had turned up.

    It took another three minutes for Hopper to reach his second conclusion.

    Vince had turned up, but the jewels had not. The jewels were still missing.

    The lieutenant waited only until after the man from the medical examiner's office showed up to make a preliminary examination. Then, wishing to duck the reporters who were beginning to appear, he took Finn by the arm and left.

    "One bullet," he said, when they were back in the car, "through the back of the neck. Doc said he might have lived for half an hour, no more. I felt a little better about Dillon and Hardy."

    "Maybe it wasn't Dillon or Hardy who got him," Finn said. "Maybe it was his own mob."

    Hopper half shook his head.

    "The bullet's still in his skull somewhere," he said. "It will tell the story. But I think it was our boys. The guy who was driving the getaway car wouldn't have shot him in the back of the neck. Anyway, that's three down and one to go."

    "One-and the jewels," Finn said.

    "I'll settle for the fourth one," Hopper said. "The jewels can be replaced but you can't replace a couple of dead policemen. The services are tomorrow," he added. "It will be a joint service and I want every available man on the force to show up. It's the least we can do."

    "By the way," Finn said, "how did that guy Hanna check out?"

    Hopper hesitated several moments before answering. "Well," he said at last, "he seems in the clear. The trouble is, he's almost too good to be true. I've been trying to get hold of that girl of his, his fiancee up in Connecticut. Probably won't mean anything, but it is a little odd that he suddenly postponed his visit up there. I understand from his friends he's been making that trip once each week religiously for the past several years. And then suddenly, he cancels out at the last minute. Seems a little strange."

    "No one's talked with her?"

    "The local men talked with her father. The girl herself has been out. But I have a call in for her and she's supposed to be back this evening."

    Hopper looked over at the clock on the dashboard.

    "Should be able to reach her by the time we get back to the station," he said.

    

    

    Sunday was probably the most miserable day Gerald Hanna had spent in his entire life.

    By now the reaction had set in. Had there been something for him to do, could he have kept busy, it might have been better. But instead, there was nothing, nothing but the idle hours in which to worry.

    For the first time he began to wonder what insane caprice of mentality had motivated him, began to wonder if he hadn't temporarily lost his mind. As the full implication of his actions came to him, he was suddenly convinced that he couldn't possibly win. The police were bound* to find him out, bound to discover his part in the thing.

    He didn't leave the house except to run down to the corner and pick up the newspapers. And then he found that he was unable to concentrate long enough to read them. He just sat there in the apartment waiting, waiting for the police to come once more, thoroughly convinced that it was merely a matter of time until they did.

    He had orange juice and coffee for breakfast and skipped lunch altogether. By six o'clock, still not hungry, he decided that he must get something into his stomach. He would have gone out, but for some reason he was afraid to leave the apartment.

    He had to be there, in case the police did come. It was a strange thing, but he was deathly afraid that they would return, and at the same time, the thought of their arriving and his not being there filled him with an even greater fear.

    At seven-thirty he decided to telephone Maryjane. By this time he was suffering a hundred regrets and nameless fears. Among them was a feeling of guilt for the way he had acted to his fiancee over the telephone. It was inexcusable. He had to admit it. He had been a boor and had behaved like a stupid idiot. No wonder she had been speechless with indignation.

    He put the call in and then, when at last she answered, he was overcome with a sudden dumbness.

    "Gerald," he said. "This is Gerald." And then, for some reason, he seemed utterly incapable of uttering another word.

    "Where are you?"

    Her voice was cold and distant.

    "Home," he said, at last. "I'm home and I just thought I would call and see if everything is all right."

    For a long moment there was no answer.

    "Gerald?" Maryjane said, at last. "Gerald? What's the matter? What's wrong? You don't sound right. Please tell me what is going on? I want to know."

    She was no longer angry, no longer bitter. She was perplexed, unable to understand what wTas happening.

    "I'm all right," Gerald said. "Yes, I'm all right I just wanted to call and apologize…"

    "There's something wrong. I just know that there's something wrong," Maryjane said. "Please tell me…"