Invitation to Violence (12 page)

    "It's nothing dear," he said. "Just that I wasn't feeling well, and… well, I just…" his voice trailed off.

    "Gerald Hanna," she said, "Gerald Hanna, you tell me this minute exactly…"

    And then, once again just as it had on Saturday morning, it came over him again. He felt that peculiar feeling of cold aloofness. A sensation of almost utter distaste.

    "I'm all right, I tell you." His voice was frozen and tight. "Sorry I bothered-just wanted to tell you that everything is fine. I'll see you next week end as usual. Good-by."

    He hung up without waiting for an answer.

    Leaving the phone, he quickly crossed the room and snapped on the radio. And then he went to the kitchen and got the bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink.

    It was almost like magic. Suddenly he felt fine. Felt just as he had been feeling Saturday night. What in the hell had gotten into him anyway? What had he been stewing around about and worrying for? Everything was going just as he had planned it. Everything was fine.

    All it had taken was that phone call to Maryjane to straighten him out. He'd been a fool to sit around and worry.

    He downed the drink and replaced the bottle and then returned to the living room and sunk down in the big upholstered chair, He took a cigarette from a box on the table at his side and then reached over and played around with the dials on the radio set until he found a band playing calypso.

    At nine o'clock the program was interrupted for five minutes of spot news. It was then that Gerald learned that police had found and identified Vince Dunne's body.

    

    

    Maryjane Swiftwater was not among the several hundred thousand persons who heard that newscast. In the first place, Maryjane never listened to either the radio or television, considering both mediums vulgar and boring. And in the second place, at the moment the announcer was telling the world about the discovery of Dunne's body, Maryjane herself was having a completely baffling conversation over the telephone with a man who had described himself as Detective Lieutenant Hopper of the Nassau County Police Department.

    The lieutenant, from what she could gather, was for some absolutely bizarre reason, interested in her engagement to Gerald Hanna, He refused to say why he was interested and his questions completely confused her.

    It never occurred to Maryjane to ask if Gerald were in some sort of trouble. Gerald wasn't the sort of person ever to be in trouble. And it couldn't be that he had had an accident. Why she'd been talking to him herself less than half an hour or so ago. And so she was utterly bewildered.

    The man wanted to know how long they'd known each other, how long they'd been engaged. He even wanted to know why Gerald had failed to keep his week-end appointment with her, although to save her life she couldn't understand how he even knew about the appointment.

    Five minutes after she had talked with the man, Maryjane made her decision.

    There was just no doubt about it any longer. There was something very, very wrong. Something that she didn't know about and couldn't possibly understand. And so there was only one thing to do. There would be no point in calling Gerald back on the telephone. No point at all. The last two calls had been sufficiently unsatisfactory to establish that.

    She would go down to New York the next day. on Monday, and see Gerald and have it out with him. If she left her job an hour early, she would have plenty of time to make the two-ten into town and it would get her to New York in time to take a cab to Penn Station from Grand Central and get out to Roslyn by the time Gerald himself returned from his office.

    It would be best to see Gerald at the apartment; she didn't want to risk having a scene in his office or in some public restaurant.

    

    

    Steinberg was watching a television show at the time and so missed the news broadcast. The oversight, however, was not important; he received the word from one of his ambulance chasers within five minutes of the time the announcer signed off. Within another two minutes he had Slaughter on the phone. He knew at once that Slaughter himself was unaware of the news and he had to be very careful how he broke it to him. Steinberg worried about tapped telephone lines.

    It took several minutes and a little double talk, but Slaughter was fast on the pickup and got it almost at once. He told Steinberg to hold the wire a moment and then rushed out into the restaurant.

    Sue Dunne had already left. The only thing the manager knew was that she had suddenly gotten sick and said she had to go home.

    Slaughter went back into his office and told Steinberg to meet him at the New York apartment as soon as possible. They both arrived within forty-five minutes and took the same elevator up to the floor on which Slaughter maintained his apartment.

    "All right, Leo," Slaughter said, the moment they were in the apartment, "let's have it."

    "There isn't much," the attorney said. "Maxie said the cops are playing it cagey. But this he does know. Dunne turned up out on the Island, north of Roslyn. Some kid found the body lying in the bushes. Shot. Maxie got there only a minute or two after the cops showed up. Vince didn't have the stuff on him."

    Slaughter cursed.

    "How does he know?" he asked. "Maybe the law…"

    Steinberg raised a protesting hand.

    "Maxie knows," he said. "Hell, they didn't even know it was Vince at first. Maxie was there when the identification was made and he got a verification from a pal at headquarters. No-there were no jewels. Nothing. Looked like the kid got shot and tossed out of a car. At least that rounds that up. We know what happened to him."

    "We don't know," Slaughter said. "We don't know nothing. All we know is about Vince and Jake and Dommie. There has to be someone else; someone we don't know nothing about. And there has to be the stuff. We know they got the stuff outta the jewelry store all right."

    Steinberg stood up and stretched.

    "Listen Fred," he said, "maybe you better forget about that part of it. The boys are taken care of-they're dead. The jewels are missing. Right now, they are about the hottest things this side of hell. Don't forget, two cops died during that rhubarb. Maybe it would be better to just write the whole caper off and stay in the clear while you're still clean."

    Slaughter looked hard at the little lawyer and then slowly shook his head.

    "No," he said. "No. Not by a damned sight. Some lousy rat hijacked those gems and I mean to do something about it. For two reasons. I don't like anyone chiseling in on my jobs. But even more important, I've already made the deal to unload the stuff. And I can't miss out on it. I have to have the dough. Have to have it."

    "But just where do you start…"

    "Well, to begin with," Slaughter said. "There's the girl. We gotta start somewhere and so we might just as well start with her."

    "You mean young Dunne's sister?" Steinberg asked. "But why…"

    "I pay you to do my thinking for me," Slaughter said. "Don't make me do all of it. Vince Dunne lived with his sister, didn't he. And she was off work on Friday night. Maybe she got suspicious when he left the house and followed him. I don't say that she did, but just maybe. She could have been worried about him, known something was up. She just possibly could have followed him.

    "Someone picked him up, that we know. It seems to me it had to be someone he knew, not someone who just happened to drive by. It could have been arranged in advance, or, in the case of the sister, she could have been there, waiting to see what he was up to. It's a cinch he was picked up and it's a cinch that whoever picked him up, dumped the body when they found he was either dying or dead, and hung on to the loot."

    "But the girl, his own sister…"

    "Listen," Slaughter said. "It could have happened. Who the hell else did he know. Who else was close to him? Nobody. If he'd been playing around with someone from another mob, I would have known about it. Sure, it may be farfetched, but we gotta start someplace. Someone has that stuff and I mean to get it. Another thing, I talked with the girl tonight. She acted damned funny, very damned funny, when I asked her about the cops and what they'd asked when they took her in."

    "All right," Steinberg said. "So, let's see the girl."

    "Tomorrow will be time enough," Slaughter said. "Plenty of time. Right now she's probably waiting down at the morgue to identify her brother. The cops will keep her busy for the rest of the night. But tomorrow-well, we'll see. I'll take care of that end of it. You check with your guy again and make absolutely sure about the stuff. Sure that no one got their hands on it when they picked up Vince."

    

    

    Leaving the house early Monday morning, Gerald departed by the front door and looked into the mailbox as he went down to the garage. It was empty, but he expected as much. The mail wouldn't be delivered until sometime in the forenoon and it would bring the envelope he'd mailed himself on Saturday. He would let it stay in the box when it came until he was ready to use it contents. The box would be the safest place. The police might be back; might possibly search him and the apartment. The one spot they would never think of would be the mailbox itself.

    He drove the Chevvie, leaving it at the railway station parking lot in Manhasset as he usually did on weekdays, and took the train into Penn Station. He arrived at the office at his usual time.

    He wanted very much to see either Baxter or one of the other men who had been at the Friday night poker session, but he made an effort to control any temptation to seek them out. The opportunity came, as he expected it would, during the midmorning coffee break. He was at the counter in the drugstore in the lobby of the building, when Bill Baxter entered and spotted him. Baxter moved onto the stool next to his immediately.

    "Hi, boy," he said. He laid a heavy hand on Gerald's shoulder. "Say, what were you up to after you left Friday night, anyway?"

    "Up to?"

    "Yeah," Baxter said. "Don't try and kid me now. What did you do, get picked up for drunken driving or something?" Bill looked at him and laughed but there was a curious expression on his bland face. "The police called me Saturday afternoon-wanted to know all about the poker game and especially wanted to know all about you. Funny thing, the guy who phoned me said he was a detective connected with the Homicide Bureau. Who'd you murder, kid?"

    Gerald forced a laugh.

    "Oh, that," he said. He shook his head, ruefully. "Damnedest thing you can imagine, Bill," he said. "Seems on my way home I passed the scene of a robbery and shooting. Maybe you read about it. Out in Manhasset. Couple of cops and some gunmen had it out after the gunmen were found robbing a jewelry store."

    "Jees," Bill said, "don't tell me you were in on that one!"

    "Well, I must have just missed it. Anyway, it seems someone spotted a Chevvie with a license number somewhat similar to mine and so the cops came around and checked up on me."

    "Did you see anything; were you there when…"

    "Hell, I missed it," Gerald said. "It was just that I happened to be in the neighborhood at the time or near abouts. I understand the gang got away with a quarter of a million in jewelry."

    Bill Baxter whistled.

    "You sure you haven't got the loot stashed away, kid? Boy, a quarter of a million."

    "I wish I had," Gerald laughed. "By the way," he said, "that stuff was insured according to the papers. It must have been for plenty. I wonder who…"

    "They can afford it," Baxter said.

    "Who can afford it?"

    "Well, without doubt it would be Great Eastern Surety. Used to work for them. They handle all of those big jewelry accounts. And they have more damned money than they know what to do with."

    "Eastern, eh?"

    "Yeah, a real tight outfit. Incidentally, a pal of mine, Jack Rogers, is probably the man on the account. He takes care of most of the stuff around town here. Know him?"

    Gerald shook his head.

    "I'm sort of interested in the thing," he said. "You know, what with the cops being by and questioning me and everything."

    "Jack can probably give you the low-down. He works pretty close with the police on these things." Baxter hesitated a second. "Tell you what," he said, "I'm tied up this noon, got an appointment at the Downtown Athletic Club. But if you'd like, and really want the story about it, I'll give Jack a buzz and if he's free, I'll set up a lunch date for you."

    "Say Bill, that would be great," Gerald said. "You know, with the cops talking to me and everything…"

    "I'll give him a buzz," Bill said. "You be in your office all morning?"

    "All morning."

    Hanna picked Jack Rogers up at the latter's office at twelve-fifteen. He took him to lunch in a Schrafft's restaurant in the neighborhood after a rather embarrassed introduction.

    Rogers, a heavy-set, middle-aged man with a perpetually worried look, ordered a cold salad and a glass of iced tea and then turned to Gerald as the waitress left.

    "Bill said you were interested in the Frost job, out in Manhasset," he said. "Said the police had been around asking you about it or something?" He looked at Gerald with mild curiosity.

    Gerald nodded.

    "They sure did," he said. "Damnedest thing, I was at a poker session at Bill's Friday night. I left sometime after midnight and drove out to the Island. I live out in Roslyn. Anyway, "i must have passed that jewelry store in Manhasset either just before or just after the thing took place."