Invitation to Violence by Lionel White Page B

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