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.
“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.