by Lionel White
This was no juvenile prank, no simple matter of a stolen car used for a joy ride. It wasn’t even a matter of a mere robbery. This was murder. They made it quite clear to her; it didn’t matter whether Vince himself had pulled the trigger of the gun which had killed a policeman. He would be equally guilty in any case.
Vince Dunne, nineteen years old, was a murderer. Police throughout the country had been alerted and it would be just a case of time. Sooner or later they would get him and when they did, he would go to the electric chair. They didn’t have to draw a diagram for Sue. She knew what happened to cop killers.
And so they sent her home at last in a squad car and she climbed out in front of her apartment house and slowly entered the building. Her feet felt like lead as she walked through the lobby to the self-service elevator. She wanted to cry, but she had no more tears. She’d already used them up during those long hours at the police station between the questioning sessions.
There was a broad-shouldered, dour-faced man standing near the elevator and he carefully avoided looking at her as she waited for it to answer her ring. She knew that he was a detective, waiting there in case Vince should show up. By this time she’d seen enough detectives to spot one a block away. She’d seen enough detectives to last her a lifetime.
She wasn’t hungry, but she knew that she must eat something. They’d offered her food at the station house, but she’d been unable to swallow.
Once in the apartment, she listlessly prepared a pot of coffee and soft-boiled a couple of eggs. She knew that she would have to eat; knew that life would have to go on. There was nothing else, nothing now but her job and her career. She tried to blame herself, but even this she was unable to do. She’d done everything for Vince that she could do. It was no longer in her hands.
The police had been bitter about it, bitter and hard and angry. Could she blame them? No, in all fairness she couldn’t. She felt bitter and hard and angry herself. Not about Vince. Vince was nothing but a child. A rather weak child who had been too easily led astray. No, the ones Sue felt angry about were the men who had influenced him, the ones who had brought him in on the thing.
She was glad that Dommie had been killed. He was better off dead. And the other one, the man she knew as Jake. He was supposed to be dying and Sue found herself wishing that he’d live. Live so that he could go to the electric chair. She wondered what kind of man he could be. They’d told her he had a boy of his own, a boy only a few years younger than Vince.
She couldn’t understand how a family man and father could have taken boys like Dommie and Vince in on a thing like this. And there were others. The fourth man. The police seemed to feel that in back of the whole thing was an organized mob, a tough, vicious, underworld gang. These were the ones they wanted. Wanted as much as they wanted Vince.
Well, she would never be able to do anything to help them find Vince, but she’d give anything and everything to help them find those others. The men who had brought her brother in on the job and had made a thief and a killer out of him.
There was just one way to find out who they were. Sooner or later Vince would get in touch with her. Of this she was morally certain. No matter where he was or with whom he was hiding out, he was bound to try and reach her sometime or other. And once he did, she knew exactly what she would do. She would find out the names of the people in back of the thing. She wanted to see them brought to justice; wanted it more than anything else in the world. More than her career and even more than she wanted Vince to escape the justice she realized he fully deserved.
There was only one thing to do. Vince would be too smart to try and reach her at the apartment. He would know by now that the police were seeking him. No, if he tried at all, it would be while she was working at the cafeteria. That was the place, the key to the whole thing. It had been through the hangers-on at the place that Vince had met his new companions, met the men who had involved him. And it was there that he’d try and reach her.
Tired and sick as she was, she was determined to go to the place as usual that night to work. That night and every night. And sooner or later some man would come up to the counter and whisper a word or two and she would know where he was and be able to reach him. Be able to learn what she had to find out.
She had no more than climbed into the uniform she wore when the manager of the place came over and spoke to her.
“Mr. Slaughter is in his office,” the man said. “He’d like to have a few words with you. I’ll take the cash box while you’re gone.”
He watched her coldly for a moment as she turned to leave the counter.
“You could have at least called and told us you weren’t coming in last night,” he said, his voice resentful.
Sue felt a sudden sense of relief as she walked to the back of the long building where Slaughter maintained a small private office. Her first thought, when the manager had spoken to her, was that Slaughter must somehow or other have learned about Vince. That he, like the police, would start the series of incessant questions.
But no, it wasn’t that. She’d been absent Saturday night and had failed to notify the restaurant. That was what he wanted her for. He’d be sore about it and she’d have to give him some sort of story. She didn’t want to tell him the reason she hadn’t called was because she was in the police station being questioned about her brother-who was wanted for murder.
If he had paid slightly less for his clothes, and purchased them in either good department stores or from tailors on the east side of Fifth Avenue, Fred Slaughter might very easily have passed for a gentleman. As it was, the handmade shirts were just a trifle too sheer, the gray-worsted suit was cut a trifle too wide in the shoulders and the shoes, although imported and expensive, were not the type to be worn with a business suit.
His clothes were like his jewelry. The watch should have been gold rather than platinum and like the cuff links and rings which he wore on each hand, there was just too much of it. The clothes were like the man; a little too good and a little too ostentatious.
In his late forties, Slaughter had the figure of a college athlete. He took exceptionally good care of himself, visiting his barber daily for a shave and a trim as well as a manicure. His dark hair was always perfectly groomed and no matter what time of the day or night, there was always the faint trace of after-shaving powder on his lean, olive jaw.
His manners, at least in public, were polished. But the giveaway was the voice. He had a voice like gravel and even his over-precision in the choice of words and phrases merely served to emphasize the effort he made to sound like a gentleman.
Any smart cop would have spotted his background in a second. Slaughter was strictly East Side scum; a one-time mobster who’d made money fast and ostensibly turned legitimate. He didn’t actually fool anybody and certainly he didn’t fool the riffraff with whom he hung out and whom he patronized.
His sharp eyes looked up as Sue entered the office and he smiled thinly.
“Close the door, Sue,” he said. “Close the door and come on in and sit down. I want to talk with you.”
Sue took the chair next to the desk.
“If it’s about last night…” she began.
He nodded and half raised a hand to interrupt her.
“Yes,” he said, “about last night. You were off. What was it, kid? Vince? Was it about Vince?”
She felt herself go pale. How did he know? Why did he go at once to Vince. Of course he would have read about the robbery, would have learned about Jake, whom he knew. But why did he bring Vince into it?
He was quick to see the way her mind was working.
“I know all about it, kid,” he said. “You know I have connections. So the law is looking for your brother. Well, you have to expect that. I guess you know what happened. Know about Dommie and Jake Riddle. The police figure Vince was a pal of theirs and that he might have been mixed up in the thing. I guess you can’t blame them for thinking that, can you?”
She stared at him and nodded dumbly.
&nb
sp; “Where is Vince?” he said.
She dropped her eyes and slowly shook her head.
“I only wish I knew, Mr. Slaughter,” she said. “He left the house on Friday night, around ten o’clock. Said he was going to a movie. And he hasn’t been back since.”
Slaughter looked at her closely.
“And you haven’t seen him? Haven’t heard from him?”
“No.”
“Have the police been around?”
Sue nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “They’ve been around. That’s where I was last night. All night. They questioned me until…”
“What did you tell them?”
She looked up at him, startled by the suddenness of the question and the hard, cold note in his voice.
“Tell them?”
“Yeah. That’s what I said. What did you tell them. Come on…”
“Why I didn’t tell them anything,” Sue said. “What could I tell them? He didn’t come home; I don’t know where he is and…”
“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 t
o 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.”