“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.”
CHAPTER FIVE
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.”
“It wouldn’t be just after,” Rogers said. “You’d have seen the police and the ambulances and everything.”
“Just before then. Anyway, I was driving a Chevvie. And it seems that someone spotted a Chevvie at the scene-supposed to be a getaway car or something-and the last number on the license plate was the same as mine. What do you think of that for a coincidence!”
“It happens,” Rogers said morosely. “Happens more often than you would suspect.”