The Deep (12 page)

The sap across the back of my head made it his and when I kissed the cold stone floor of the room with the flat of my face there was a wild sound of noise in my ears. I was still face down when I came to and Hurd was sitting in the chair he had had me in with a doctor taking stitches in his face. Over by the door Wilson Batten was sounding like a lawyer, waving a paper around while the uniformed cop tried to talk him quiet.

I got up slowly, grinned at Hurd and turned it off when I looked at Batten. I said, “It damn well took you long enough to get here.”

Hurd swore softly. I wiped the dirt off my face and walked over to him. “I called Batten before I called you, friend. I figured somebody would make a try for my skin.”

“Shut up and get out of here.”

“The other three go with me.”

Batten said, “They're all right, Deep. They can leave. I'll have a paper on them in ten minutes otherwise.”

The doctor finished with Hurd's mouth, gave him a prescription to fill that he crumpled up and tossed on the floor and picked up his tools. I let out a nasty laugh and said, “I told you not to play it tough, Hurd. Somebody has to take you.”

“Out, punk. There'll be other times.”

“Sure.” I wiped my clothes off, found my hat on a chair by the door and nodded for Batten. He let me go ahead of him out to the desk and behind me Hurd stayed close.

Cat's eyes went wide when he saw Hurd's face. Augie, as usual, was impassive. But it was Helen who seemed to catch the whole thing in one swift glance. Intuitively, she knew what had happened and her emotions played hell with her promise. She was all the way on my side. Big, beautiful Irish Helen had proud eyes for me and a funny little grin that said,
Damn, man, let's
go
.

Wilson Batten waited until we were on the sidewalk outside the Green House before he gave me a light-lipped, “You're absolutely nuts, Deep.”

“Not me, Wilse.”

“You don't tear into anybody like Hurd.”

“You don't play tough with me, either. Somebody had to tell him.”

“All right, but if he wanted to make something stick tonight he could damn well have done it. Instead he played it smart and let you run so he'd have more fun putting the heat on. Listen, Deep, Hurd isn't any beat cop. He's got his own special brand of hatred for guys like you and now you're on his list. That's almost like being dead.”

“You were lucky, Deep,” Cat said.

Augie broke into a smile for the first time. “Not him ... us. We would have had our turn next.” “See what I saved you, Helen?”

Her hand touched my arm. “Thanks.” Her eyes shadowed somewhat. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not me, kid.”

“Hell,” Cat said, “when this gets noised around about him bracing Hurd there won't be a punk in the neighborhood who'll step loud around us.”

I felt Helen squeezing my arm again, a nervous, impatient motion. Her voice was soft when she said, “Deep ... does it have to be like ... this?”

“I can't think of any other way, kitten. Can you?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “I guess not.”

“It's an easy way of seeing me knocked off, if you remember.”

“I think I'd rather forget.”

Batten stepped out in the gutter and waved toward the far end of the street trying to flag a taxi. “Then you'd better start forgetting by getting out of here.”

Automatically, I felt my back pocket, then patted my coat. I said, “I left my wallet back there.”

Batten stepped back on the curb. “I'll go get it.”

I stopped him right there. “My pleasure,” I said. “They don't bother me at all in there. Let me have my fun.”

The desk sergeant frowned when I told him where my wallet probably was and sent a uniformed cop to go look for it. I half followed him down the hall and while he went the rest of the way I knocked on Hurd's door, opened it and stepped inside. He threw a couple aspirins down his throat, washed them down with a glass of water and sat back as if he had never seen me before and waited to see what I had to say. I walked to his desk, took the pen from its holder, wrote a number down on his desk pad and said, “Buddy, I don't want anybody on my back at all. In this town there are connections to be had and these I got, so do us both a big favor and call that number. But in case you're feeling salty about that rap in the teeth, I'll let you get that off your chest anytime.”

His eyes went to the pad, went colder still and when they looked back at me were even a paler blue than before, a light, deadly blue that was almost hypnotic with hate.

“You're really trying for big time, aren't you?”

“Never start at the bottom. There's nothing like the catbird's seat.”

“I'll remember,” he said, his face blank.

I said, “How far are you going after Irish?”

Hurd scowled and stared at me.

“Helen Tate,” I told him.

He leaned forward on the desk, his arms bulging under his shirt. He still hadn't relaxed and I could almost smell the anticipation he had of getting me alone. “You like her, Deep?”

“She's an okay broad as far as I know. She's not involved with anything.”

Hurd's grin came back again, slow and mean. “Anybody fooling around with Lenny Sobel or Bennett is involved with everything.”

“So they were kids together.”

“They were more than that together. They were real clubby, big man. Bennett angeled a show for her twice.”

“He got his loot back. They made plenty, I hear.”

“How was he repaid ... in cash? Now there's the rub. It might even be something to think about. Maybe all this time you've carried the big torch for that fluff and when you came back you had to knock your old buddy off to pick up the pieces with her. Interesting.”

I nodded. “But unoriginal. You get no needle in me with ideas like that.”

“At least it's a starting point.” His grin showed the edges of his teeth. “Come back again and we'll talk some more,” he told me. “In fact, I may get out an invitation anytime. I'm making you my pet project, Deep.”

“You do that.”

“I will,” he agreed.

“Don't forget to call,” I said, pointing to his notepad.

“I don't forget,” he told me.

I left, picked up my wallet from the cop, said thanks and went back to where Wilse had whistled down a cab. We dropped him off first, left Cat and Augie at my new apartment and then I gave Tally Lee's address.

Helen tightened when I said it, her head swiveling around to look at me. “Why there?”

“To pick up my gun. I left it under a pile of garbage,” I told her.

We covered another two blocks before she spoke again. Her voice had that strange new note once more that was hard to fathom.

“Deep ...”

“What.”

“Why don't you just leave it there?”

“Leave what?”

A frown creased her forehead. “Leave that damn gun in the garbage where it belongs.”

“You really want me to die fast, don't you?”

She held it back a moment, but that was all. Her eyes got wet and she bit into her lip, then turned her head away with a jerk. “Damn you,” she said.

“Helen ...”

She cut me off fast. “Forget I asked. Shoot somebody. Play it big like you always did. Just remember one thing, there will never be any excuse for you to shoot anybody. You kill a man and the police will kill you. If they don't a jury will.”

I didn't let her see my grin. “Your sudden concern is touching,” I said gently.

Helen sniffed, shook her head with annoyance and turned back to me. She was all beautiful again, big and beautiful with ebony hair and a rich, hungry mouth. She smiled and said, “You know now ... it isn't so sudden, Deep. It's just that it's all come back after a long time.”

I tasted her then, felt the lush warmth of her and held her so tightly she moaned quietly through the kiss, becoming hungrier, searching and saying my name over and over again.

 

Evidently the cabbie was a romantic. He waited until we realized that we were there, smiling at us in the rear view mirror. I gave him a fin and said to keep the change and he smiled again and said something in Spanish that sounded like sage advice.

We were on the opposite side of the street from Tally Lee's place and except for the single patrolman in front of the building you wouldn't have known that anything at all had happened there. New York didn't concern itself with the dead very long.

While Helen went into the drugstore a half block down, I crossed over, went through the basement of the building where Shriner Moe held Little Augie off during prohibition, climbed the fence in the back and found the garbage pail still on the dumbwaiter. I wiped the gun clean, put it back where it belonged and rerouted through the garbage to where Helen waited.

The drugstore was as good a place as any to call the apartment and when Cat answered I said, “You know where Dixie would be holed up?”

“Probably at the Merced Hotel. You want me to find out?”

“Do that, then stay on his tail. Keep Augie at the apartment and call in to him until I make contact. You got that?”

“Solid, man.”

“Okay, put Augie on.”

The phone changed hands and he said, “Go ahead, Deep.”

“Augie, did Batten give you all of Bennett's records?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Are you sure Batten handed over everything?”

Without hesitating he said, “You can never be sure of Batten, but I don't think he'd play cagey with you. Those records I gave you were pretty complete. Bennett was mighty legal and always scared to death he'd fall on an income tax charge or something, so what he had on paper couldn't be kicked around.”

“That's still not what I mean.”

“Maybe you'd better spell it out, Deep.”

“Okay. Like you know who was back there in Bimmy's place. They were out of Bennett's class but still in his crowd. Like Hugh Peddle and the others. Bennett had a long rope.”

It took a few seconds before he answered, then: “Deep, it's one of those things nobody talks about, you know?”

“Go on.”

“Never take it away from him, Bennett was foxy. Suppose he had a private file on the big ones. It wouldn't have to be much at all, just enough to tag that person and break him.”

“It could fit. It could be what they were hinting at.”

“I've often thought about it,” Augie said. “Bennett never talked though. He called and somebody jumped.”

“Did Batten?”

“Hell, Deep, Bennett never messed with the little ones. Those he could buy. What he had would be a power package.”

“It would fit behind the refrigerator?”

He grunted, remembering back. “Sure.”

“Okay. Go through the apartment. Hit every place you can and see what you come up with. The fuzz shook it down and it's possible that the killer did too, but one thing is sure ... nobody found anything or there would be a new top man calling signals. Cat and I will be calling in occasionally so stay close to the phones.”

“Right. Will you need help?”

“Not this time.”

“You bracing somebody?”

“In a manner of speaking. It won't take much.”

“All right. I don't suppose I have to remind you about Lew James and Morrie Reeves. Cat is all shook at you traveling alone even if he doesn't mention it.”

“I know the route, kid,” I reminded him.

“Sure you do. Just keep it cool.”

I told him I would and hung up.

Helen was watching me through the glass of the booth and when I pulled the door open she said, “You won't go alone, Deep.”

I leaned over and kissed her. She was so big I didn't have to lean far at all and even -with that brief touch I could feel the fire start again. “I never expected to, Irish,” I said.

Hugh Peddle wasn't hard to find. His ready availability to any and all had brought him to the top politically and it was his own personal order that he was ready to see friend or enemy anytime. This time he was in Walter Lico's Blue Pheasant Inn just off Broadway in midtown Manhattan having a late supper with Benny-from-Brooklyn. Their table was nearly in the middle of the room, surrounded by dozens of others, all filled, and as safe a place to talk business as any. If the muscle boys were around they must have had their backs to me because I saw neither.

Without being asked I pulled an empty chair out for Helen, seated her and took the other.

Their reaction was beautifully casual and unimportant, nothing showing that might draw a curious eye from another table. An almost-friendly nod, a courteous finger wave to a waiter for a menu, a simple ordering of two more coffees and then Hugh Peddle said, “Are you prepared to take me up on my offer?”

Benny looked up slowly, but I had seen that look before and knew he wasn't in on the deal Hugh had offered me.

I said, “If I took it, it would be at twice the price.”

He didn't hesitate. “Well?”

“I got something else to do first.”

Benny reached over and tapped the back of my hand. “Deep, the next thing you got to do is drop dead. You're just not big enough to set up shop around here.”

“You got a short memory, kid. You forgot already what happened in Bimmy's.”

Benny's face turned wooden.

“I could do it right now all over again and if you don't think so, just keep talking like that.”