The Deep (23 page)

The liquor and the light had blurred his sense and his eyes. He must have thought it was me on the bed and supposed the other guy was in a chair asleep. He stood in the doorway chuckling.

“You've had it, Deep. You know why I let you live this long? Because I wanted to let you know what happened to Helen. You know where Peddle took her? To the old K.O. building. You know why? Because she knows that someplace in there is the stuff and Peddle is going to make her come across with it. Only Peddle won't live long enough to use it and neither will the broad.”

He had my gun in his hand now and thumbed the hammer back.

I wanted to tell him before I moved that Helen didn't know anything. She took Peddle there because he had already squeezed something out of her. She remembered the last thing I had said ... that it was all tied up in that damn K.O. Club.

She had a small choice... if I had said it then I had meant it. There was a remote possibility that I might show up there in time.

Time.

The gun went off into the ceiling when Lenny's broken trigger finger pulled against it, then his shoulder joint dislodged and the scream he started choked off into a total faint and there was no trouble at all in doing the same thing to him I did to the one on the bed. I immobilized him with the other strand of rope, picked up my gun, reloaded the one chamber and stuck it in the holster.

Feet sounded in the corridor outside and the door swung open. When Tony saw me crouched in the doorway with the .38 leveled right at his nose he shrugged resignedly and said, “I told Holiday he shoulda bumped ya.”

“Drop your piece, Tony. Carefully.”

He didn't argue. His gun hit the floor, he kicked it aside without being asked and stood there. “You bump the others?” When I didn't answer he added sourly, “Well, I guess that's that. Do it like quick, huh?”

“They're inside,” I said.

Tony grinned. “Thanks, pal,” he said. It was one pro talking to another. He turned around and waited and when I hit him, folded up neatly. I used his belt and some of the TV antenna wire to keep him put.

 

The truck was behind the building where it had been backed in from the street. The keys were in it and it started easily. I checked the time on my watch and knew it could be a fast run if I caught the lights most of the way. At that hour traffic was at its lowest ebb and speed could be had, not with the throttle pedal, but by staying in time with the stop lights where neither cops nor cross-town cabs were likely to nail you.

I let the clutch out and eased down the narrow drive-way, the headlights like twin fingers leading the way. I switched them to dim. It started to rain and I fumbled for the wipers until I found them and they swept methodically in front of my face.

Time? How much of it was left?

 

I turned down
The Street.

The Street.

That's what we always called it. We still did.

In the middle of The Street was
The Club.

For so many, like a womb. The mother. They came from it, they went back to it. I remembered the key word that had evaded me even though it had been spoken so often by so many people.

I drove slowly so those watching would see the truck. I couldn't see them, but I knew they were there.

How often I live in the shadows myself, I thought. How many times in all those years I have buried myself in the night shrouds of a building, waiting, fingering the butt of a gun to make sure it was ready. In the early days I used to want to vomit but couldn't, so spat out cotton wads and sweated, but that was when the gun was new in my hand and still had that cop's imprint on it.

Sentimentality. It was part of me too. I had kept that gun for twenty-six years. In its own way it was a symbol, a reminder. The cop who had worn it got shot down trying to stop a heist artist about a year later and I never had to worry after that about him trying to run me down and take his piece back. It was my first piece of iron and the only one I ever had or needed. That .38 had been around the track and back again and had pulled me out of plenty of tight spots so that we were close friends now. I could feel it next to me, warm with body heat. The action smooth. Ready again.

As I passed the building I peered through the rain at the front. No light showed at all in any of the windows, but that was no indication of what went on inside. I reached the end of the block, turned the corner and parked. I cut the engine, sat a minute and waited, and saw the guy dart across the street like a wraith and sidle up to the cab of the truck.

He wrenched open the door, shaking the water from his head and said without looking up, “Them two gunnies of his went in there about ten minutes ago. You want to ...” He stopped, sudden shock on his face when he saw me.

That was all he had time for. I smashed the butt of the .38 across his temple, dragged him in the cab and let him lie there. It would be hours before he'd wake up. Six, Lenny had said. Now there'd be five. They'd think I had him stay with me and they would start moving in.

This part I liked. I felt myself grinning when nothing was funny at all.

 

Henny had done his job well. The back door was nailed permanently shut in the face of fire regulations, convenience and common sense, but it did the job. There wasn't time to force it and if I tried each nail would have sounded a separate alarm.

But there was another way. When the old man used to lock us out for not coming up with the three dollars rent in the days before we were big enough to climb his frame, we used the coal chute window. It was bigger than the others and always unlocked.

And times hadn't changed since.

I slid in feet first on top of a fresh pile of coal, closed the window and got out of the pile with as little noise as possible. My fingers reached for the latch on the bin door, lifted it and I stepped out. It was absolutely pitch dark but I knew every inch of the way.

The light overhead was sticky with dirt and it lit when you screwed it all the way in. I turned the bulb and turned back the years in one second. There was the massive, squat furnace, the asbestos outer skin hanging from it in shreds, but still serviceable. Across the small room were shelves littered with years of accumulation of junk.

Dust had laid a blanket down over everything... except in one place. It was where you could get a hand in the bank of shelves and pull them away from the wall.

They still moved easily, the castors under them retaining the age-old grease and not succumbing to rust. The hollow in the wall behind the shelves was the old arsenal of the K.O. members. A butcher knife, two pipe billies and a zip gun with a tape-wrapped frame and four boxes of .22 shorts were still there, mementoes of years past.

But you could see where there had been another gun and somebody had split open a box of shells just to get one out to fit the piece. Somebody in a hurry.

Nostalgia?

The old K.O. Club had something for everybody. Nostalgia was the word. Something always brought them back.

Like, for instance, a person in need of a gun. You just don't pick them up anywhere in New York and if you don't want anybody to know at all, there's always the old K.O. arsenal.

Somebody had remembered.

Nostalgia? The answer again. Buddy Bennett and the way he thought, only with him it was that he never quite grew up. He was still back there in the clubroom days, a man grown and important, but in one respect still a child who couldn't give up the womb. It was his life. It had been his only home. When he had the loot he still couldn't give it up and unconsciously duplicated the womb as closely as he could where he could live as he wished.

But the real thing kept dragging him back. After all, it was the only real thing he ever had, his only true
woman
, the one who birthed and nurtured him and in his mind she had birthed and nurtured me too. We were, in effect, brothers from the same mother.

It was to her that he came to place his offering in her womb where he knew only I would look since we both had the same mother.

He was wrong, but he didn't know that then.

I found the place we had used, just the two of us, to secrete our most precious things, the things we considered important then. I kept my rod there, the metal and leather oiled and wrapped so it was always nearly perfect. He had kept his things there too.

You took the cement block out. You reached down in the hollow.

And there it was.

Something like a lover's packet of letters. Some were letters. Some were pictures. Some were photostats of documents and some were the documents themselves.

Not much, but enough.

He could run an empire on them.

He had.

I put them back for the moment, then went out into the main room of the old club. Just one big room with a curtained alcove at one end spotted by a jumble of chairs and boxes with a radio in a special place because at one time it had been a status symbol.

In the comer a phone. The ultimate status symbol for a clubhouse.

Overhead the floor creaked. I paused, thinking the faint strains of a scream marked the quiet.

Easy. Don't rush it. It has to be done right.
I repeated it to myself. There can't be any chances. The odds are wrong and the cost too high to pay.

I picked the phone up, dialed Information and asked for Roscoe Tate in a whisper. She gave me the number, I dialed it and when it had rung a few times the ringing stopped.

Quietly, I said, “Roscoe?”

“Yes?”

“Deep.”

There was no smart talk now. He had seen the carnage at the rooming house and without having seen the papers I knew he had made the most of it.

“Another scoop, friend.”

“I told you I don't need any favors.”

“You'll like this one.”

“Go on.”

“It's over, little man. The gang is all busted up. In five minutes they'll be taking each other apart and the ones who are left over will be on hind tit because I have the works. I found Bennett's power package and I'm going to wrap those miserable pigs up like in the old days and watch them cry.”

“Where are you, Deep?”

“At the old clubhouse. Grab your pencil and come along. It'll be the biggest story of your life ... the one you always wanted to write. That old gang of mine. All one big obit.”

“Deep ...”

“But come easy,” I said. “They got Helen upstairs and first I got to shake her loose.” I was grinning and he knew it. “Maybe you'll get your wish, kiddo. I may not make it, but somebody had better be here to take care of Irish.”

Before he could answer I hung up.

I made one more call. I couldn't afford to buck the odds. Alone I might get part way, but that was all. Both sides wanted Helen and if there was any doubt she'd be better off dead than alive.

The operator gave me my number, the one who answered gave me another to call and I got Sergeant Hurd at home. I said, “Don't talk, just listen,” and gave him the poop.

His voice was as cold and as nasty as he could make it. “Stay alive, Deep. I want you all for myself.”

I laughed. “But just in case, hardman, I could still beat the crap out of you anytime.”

“Stay alive, Deep,” he said, “if you got the guts to.”

I put the phone back and yanked the .38 out, thumbing the hammer back. I went up the stairs into the narrow vestibule and almost tripped over Henny. He was alive, but blood flowed from a gash in his head. He still had a flashlight in his hand and I took it from him, tested it and snapped it off.

The picture was fairly clear now. Hugh Peddle had come in, sapped Henny and probably made a quick tour of the place with Helen. When she couldn't come up with anything, he called for his boys. They'd be in bad shape, but still more the type to squeeze a woman than he was. Peddle was ruthless. He could give the orders, but personal involvement when it came to putting heat on somebody was another thing.

I went up the stairs and like the last time, felt the notch Bunny Krepto had carved out with his switchblade the night before Petie Scotch had killed him and ran my hand over the break in the post at the top of the landing just like in the old days.

Think.

Think.

Five are looking for three. Possibly seven guns and if Peddle packed one, eight.

There was a scream again and I spotted it. They were on the top floor and I could hear the terse, whispered commands that came through the walls. The others had heard it too.

Only now the edge was mine.

I had run the course more often than they and knew the twists and turns. I knew the way the wall angled back at the landing, and how you could get through the window to the part of the old fire escape that had never been torn down and if you wanted to take a chance, could climb up.

A core of steel still existed under the rust otherwise it never would have held. I got to the window I looked for, and strangely enough it eased open after all these years, or else Henny had been a better caretaker than I assumed.

They had her in that big room, sprawled out on the floor, her raven hair spilling out over her shoulders and her dress high above the waxen smoothness of her thighs.

Hugh Peddle wouldn't look. He stood to one side examining his fingernails while the guy, Al, the guy I had shot in the arm, was standing spraddle-legged over Helen, his arm in a sling and he was enjoying everything he was doing. He had a rag wrapped around his good hand so he wouldn't carve up his knuckles and a few feet away the other guy whom I hadn't seen before watched him with obvious pleasure.