The Deep (14 page)

“When I came in the club it was you and Benny up there. He was reaching for the catbird seat. Where did you come in?”

The tension was too much for him. He took a deep breath, shuddered and flopped back on the couch. “I was backin' him,” he said.

“He need it?”

“Benny don't take chances.”

“So you and the shiv go along. It was like with you and Bennett.”

“Why not?”

“How come Benny-from-Brooklyn wanted to manage?”

“He never told me nothin' and I didn't ask. With me it's for loot and nothin' else.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Cat?”

Cat shook his head. “That's the way I got it too, Deep.”

“Benny ever say anything to you?”

Cat's grin was small and crooked. “Who's gonna tell me anything? I only went in to get outa the rain. If it wasn't that I carried the old brand the new bunch wouldn't let me in the cellar.”

I stood up and grinned down at Dixie. His eyes watched me closely, his hopped-up mind trying to pin all the angles down. I said, “One more thing. I shot up a couple of the boys in Bimmy's. They went to a Doc. Who?”

Dixie didn't worry it out any. “Halpern. John Halpern. Got a drugstore on Amsterdam. He got run outa the union five years ago.”

Cat said, “I know him. He handles all the hot stuff for the boys.”

“Okay, Dixie, play it cool. Keep your mouth shut and if you get any big ideas I want to be the first to know.”

“Who thinks?”

“You better start. I want to know who killed Bennett.”

He moved his eyes again, swiped at his mouth and watched us blankly as we went out.

Downstairs Helen spoke for the first time, tiny lines of curiosity tugging at the comers of her eyes. “You ask funny questions, Deep.”

“It's a funny business, Helen.”

Cat said, “What now? It's almost twelve.”

“Nothing we can do now,” I told him. “Let's drop Helen off and hit it. You want to go uptown, Irish?”

“I'll take a cab.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“In the morning I'll have to make arrangements to see that ... Tally's taken care of.” I felt her fingers tighten on my arm. Her face pressed against my shoulder suddenly. “The bastards. Oh, the dirty bastards!” she said softly.

“Don't sweat it, Helen. I'll find out who did it.”

She shook the hair away from her face and looked at me. Her eyes were wet, her lower lip between her teeth. “Not you, Deep. Please don't find anybody.”

Then her mouth was a hot thing again, crying unintelligibly against my lips, her hands cradling my face with a wild urgency. I held her a moment, then forced her away gently. “Go home,” I said. “There's always tomorrow.”

She smiled, nodded and said, “Tomorrow.” She picked a folded letter from her pocketbook, jotted down a number on the comer of it, tore it off and handed it to me. “Call me,” she said, her voice husky.

I whistled a cab over, opened the door for her and waved her off.

On the curb Cat chuckled, “You got yourself a big one, Deep. She's all gone over you.”

I liked the idea.

“It gets more like the old days every minute, don't it?

For a second I remembered some of those old days and shook my head. “I hope not. Come on, let's go down the comer and find another cab.”

 

You get a feeling sometimes that things aren't just right. It's like little things crawling up your back and across your scalp. It happens when you get to be a real pro in the game and can read all the signs and smell all the smells. It's a little thing that seeps across space and barely touches you, if it does at all, but that peculiar sense you've developed from running the back alleys and rooftops and living past the slugs and razor-edged blades ... it tells you that something is out of joint and you only have a small time to find out what it is.

Cat knew it too. He knew it the second he got out of the cab and I saw him go up on his toes and make both ends of the street with an unobtrusive glance. I paid the cabbie off, tipped him and when I put my change back I did it neatly so that when my hand came away it had the .38 in it.

We didn't need any signals at all. Long ago it had been a well practiced maneuver with Cat and me and the motions came naturally. He laid back and to the left, planning every move the second something broke, keeping a split between us so we couldn't be taken out by any one person. He knew I had the rod in my fist and didn't object when I went ahead.

I opened the door, walked in normally and knew on the first step inside what was coming. I yelled, “Watch it, Cat!” and dove for the floor as a red wink flashed from the door to the side and with a quiet snap a bullet slammed into the wall over my head.

The .38 in my hand bucked twice before the other silenced rod went off again. This time it went off into the floor and with a harsh choking sob a body followed it down.

It took a few seconds for the echoes of the gun to diminish. As the waves of sound receded I heard feet hammering inside, a window smashing open, and I yelled, “The back, Cat ... there's one going for the back!”

I was taking a chance but I figured there wouldn't be more than two. I hopped over the body on the floor, crouched and ran inside and felt my way through the rooms, trying to recall the layout of furniture. I made it to the back and saw the gray opening of the window pale against the black of the night beyond it.

There was no way for Cat to cover the exit except by going all the way around the comer and if he ran his lungs probably wouldn't hold up. I got through the window, jumped the eight feet to the pavement and waited until I had the layout straight. Someplace not too far off somebody kicked a can and rattled it across the concrete.

I didn't wait then. I jumped the fence in back, landed in another yard spotted with crates and strange garbage forms, picked my way around it and reached the seven-foot fence at the other end. If the yards hadn't changed any there was an alley between Glover's and Constantino's only now it was Mort's Dry Cleaning and Alverez the Grocer. That opening to the street was where the other one was going and if he made it he had it all the way.

Damn.

I didn't know the details of the route any more. Garbage piles change in twenty-five years. People nailed up the boards we had deliberately loosened and rearranged the backyard puzzle until it was almost a maddening maze. But if the other guy didn't know it either the edge was the same. I went up and over three more, felt my clothes tear twice and the second time a nail ripped a gouge along my calf.

Then there was the last one and I saw the guy up ahead.

He wasn't running now. He was down in a squat, moving crablike but fast. His hand was out ahead of him, the gun like an elongated finger, pointing.

I came up slow, getting him between me and the yellow light from the street lamp at the end of the alley and in that sick glow I saw what had slowed him up.

Mr. Sullivan was coming up the alley at a half trot with his service gun out, his hand fumbling under his coat for his flashlight and in one second he was going to be dead.

I had time to holler, “Down, Sully!” and saw him go flat. The guy spun, snapped another silent shot at me and when I rolled, still another. That was all the time he had. Mr. Sullivan fired once from a prone position and the guy held his crouch a moment longer, then slowly sat down.

He was like that, leaning back against an empty cardboard carton when I got there, the silenced gun still in his hand as though it were a part of him, a small hole in his forehead.

Down the alley Cat was silhouetted in the light. He came up to us slowly, sucking air in great gulps, and when he saw who was down, fell on his fanny in the dirt.

I said, “Nice shooting, Mr. Sullivan.”

All around us lights were going on in the windows. Voices called back and forth and somebody yelled for somebody else to call the cops. Softly, Mr. Sullivan said, “Yeah, you do that.” Then he looked up at me. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Don't mention it.”

“I suppose you'll have a good story going for this one.”

“Real good, I was attacked. There's another one in the hallway of the building. How come you made it in the alley?”

“I saw your friend here yelling and pointing this way. I catch on fast.”

“Okay, then leave him here with Cat and let's get back to the building.” I looked at Cat and felt his face. “You feel all right?”

“I feel ... lousy, but I'll live. Go on.”

Sullivan said, “A squad car will be along. Tell them to come to the apartment.”

“Sure, sure. And Deep ...”

“What?”

“Watch it.”

“Don't worry. Let's go, Sully.”

Sullivan tried hard, but he was a harness cop long on the beat and speed had left him behind years ago. We went on a jog and turned the corner as the sirens whined up the street behind us. There were scurrying shadows that darted out ahead of us, running only because we ran or because they saw the blue and brass. Trouble was something they wanted no part of, neither see it, hear it nor feel it.

The door was still open, gaping inwards on darkness. Sullivan pushed me aside, went in with his flash in one hand and gun in the other, found the wall switch and threw it up.

Automatically, I hit for the wall as the light came on, not taking any chances.

Sullivan looked at me and I looked at him. The spot in the doorway where I had gunned down the other one was empty. There was a big splash of blood on the floor and finger streaks on the wall and more by the outside door and what happened was plain enough.

Number One had been hit too lightly. He made it out while I went after his partner.

I said, “Inside, Sullivan,” and went through the doorway. Behind us a uniformed cop and a plain clothes man came in with a rush.

When I turned the light on we all stood there looking at the body on the floor. He had taken at least three shots in the head and a few more in the chest and any one of them would have been fatal. But pros don't take chances and go for broke when they hit somebody.

Sullivan said, “That's Augie.”

From in back of him Sergeant Hurd said, “Things are looking up, aren't they?” His face had a blue bulge on one side of his mouth that gave him a partial sneer.

“Can it, Hurd,” I told him.

“Still tough?”

“Always.”

A cop came in with his arm through Cat's and brought him in the room. In the light Cat had a sickly pallor and his cheeks were sunken deep in his face, each ridge of bone sharply outlined. He looked at me, his lips pulled back over his teeth, holding back the pain in his chest, and nodded. I knew what he meant.

The M.E. didn't take long to get there. He was resigned, but pleasant about it. The fresh kills he didn't mind at all and unlike a lot of M.E.'s, wasn't afraid to give an immediate opinion. He went over Augie quickly, established the time of death definitely enough to satisfy Hurd, put it between an hour and a half and two hours ago and said he'd make it official with a p.m. in the morning.

I told Hurd to call Helen and Hugh Peddle and check the cabbie who brought us to the building. Hurd was a cop who liked to see things done right away. Before he finished talking to Peddle who he finally ran down in a midtown bistro, he had the cabbie in the foyer and got a statement from him too.

There wasn't much I could add. As far as I was concerned they were prowlers who thought maybe Bennett left some stuff around and Augie surprised them going through the place.

Hurd took it all down solemnly, told us not to leave town and let us clear out while the techs took over. Cat said we'd be at his address and headed for the doorway.

I started to follow him when Hurd said, “Deep ...”

“Yeah?” I paused, watching him.

“I made that call.”

“Good for you. I got plenty pull, hah?”

He waited a few seconds before answering, his face tight. Under his coat his shoulders twitched like he was ready to use his hands again.

“Walk softly, Deep,” he said.

I nodded, turned and got out before any of the newspaper crowd could make the scene. For Cat's sake I took it easy, but it was still too fast for him. We had to stop three different times to let him get his breath back before we reached his building. He lived downstairs in the back of a squalid hovel hardly fit for a dog, a single room partitioned off from the rest of the cellar with a single overhead bulb, a couple of rickety chairs and a faded maroon couch.

“Home,” he said, and half fell on the couch.

He tried a cigarette, hacked himself into a state of near unconsciousness, recovered and threw the butt down. “Damn things,” he muttered.

“Cat ...”

“I gotcha, Deep. The dead guy was Morrie Reeves.”

“You know what happened, don't you?”

Cat nodded, opened his eyes and looked across at me. “They thought they was hitting you. They didn't expect him to be there. Then they waited for you.” He laughed, the sound rattling deep in his throat. “You shook 'em when you went through that door. Boy, when them pros miss a hit they can't make it the second time around the same night, can they? Damn, they didn't like your kind of luck, that's why the other one ran when you got his partner.”

“I didn't get him good enough.”

Cat turned on his side so he could see me. “I was wondering about that, Deep.”

“What?”

“Nobody shook you for your rod. You walked out clean. Then that stuff with Hurd about a call.”