The Deep

Chapter Ten

I woke up long before dawn ever touched the rooftops outside and lay there in the darkness thinking. I was completely awake, totally aware of where I was and what had happened, yet sometime during the fade-out of sleep a new thought had come to me with such immediate clarity that I woke up.

And now I couldn’t recall it.

I closed my eyes and tried to bring the dream back. There were no images in the dream; more like a sudden revelation where the facts are laid out and explained. Something like a blackboard where a problem is laid out and long parabolic curves touched related factors.

After a little while I gave it up and turned on my side to try for a little more sleep. I thought it would never come and just as it seemed as though it did Cat was shaking me awake and the light overhead was an enemy that ought to be smashed.

I said, “Okay, okay, I’m up.”

Cat shoved a folded copy of the paper at me and tapped the two-column spread in the comer. “Roscoe’s laying it on you again. You should of spoken sharp to that boy.”

I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and scanned his “Uptown Speaking.” It was pure Roscoe Tate, well reported, nicely barbed and effectively aimed. In brief, violence and death hit the former Bennett empire again, this time directed at the new headman and unfortunately tagging a lesser one. Two men were dead, the police investigation seemed to be deliberately hampered and the town was ripe for more murders yet to come. Next on the list would probably be a “former partner of Bennett who inherited his crime empire and intended to run it to his own satisfaction.”

I tore the column out, stuck it in my pants pocket and got dressed. Cat was all for taking Roscoe Tate down some, but I waved that away. Tate wasn’t doing anything he hadn’t done for twenty-five years. In fact, he was in a good spot to pick up leads and if he wanted to do a smear campaign on me he was welcome to it. In this business publicity like that made the suckers shake more and gave you a status edge when you wanted to deal with another arm of the organization.

Cat said, “Have it your own way. Don’t muss him. Wait till you got a gun down your throat.”

“How?”

“Them uptown guys. They haven’t said much yet. They’re waiting to see how this thing blows. If they think you got too big a bull on ’em they’re going all the way to get you taken out.”

“Somebody already tried, remember?”

“So what? They won’t pay off on a contract until the hit is made. That means Lew James goes after you himself or finds another partner.”

“Lew James won’t be moving fast for a little while yet. He’s the one we want to talk to.”

That made Cat’s eyes light up. “He shouldn’t be too hard to find. Let me see what I can do. I’ll go pick up Charlie Bizz. He’s one guy with an ear in every joint in town and he ought to know something. From what I know about Lew James it ain’t goin’ to take much to get him to talk. Little of the old cellar treatment will make him yell his damn top off and there ain’t no Fifth to take with us. That sound okay?”

Scrawny little Cat living on gravy time and going all out again. Friends. I said, “You be careful, Cat.”

“Ain’t I always?”

“Not always. You threw in with me.”

“I know which side is buttered,” he grinned.

“Okay, give it a try, but if there’s any tough stuff you let Charlie Bizz handle it or get me. Now suppose we get over to the Green House so buddy Hurd can get those statements.”

He nodded, picked my hat from the nail in the wall and tossed it to me. “Wish I could figure you, Deep.”

“Don’t try.”

“Hell, Hurd never gave anybody a break before. He hates your guts and now he really must be churning. You’re making him eat crap and he don’t take to it.”

“Tough.”

“He’s waiting, Deep. You can call down all the protection you can get, but someday Hurd’ll have you standing right over a job with that rod in your hand and no protection in the world’ll keep you from catching one.”

“Maybe.”

Gently, Cat touched my shoulder. “Like you told me... suppose you be careful.”

“Sure,” I said, “Just tell me how.”

“Start by leaving that rod here for a change. Don’t ask for trouble.”

I laughed, stripped off the piece, waited while he stashed it and shoved him out the door.

Roscoe Tate was standing outside the precinct station talking to one of the plain clothes men I had seen the night before. He nodded wordlessly, finished his conversation and walked over to us.

I said, “Morning, kid.”

Without any preliminaries he answered, “You had to get Helen wrapped up in this pretty fast, didn’t you?”

I shrugged it off. “Relax, little man, she’s clean.”

“Involvement with the police doesn’t get anybody clean.”

“She did me. She was my alibi.”

“That’s what I heard. When does she become your accomplice?”

“Ask her yourself,” I grinned and winked over his shoulder.

Roscoe said something I didn’t hear, turned and waited for Helen to pay the cabbie off. She came up smiling, made a kiss with that lovely mouth of hers and blew it to me.

“Ask me what?” she said.

The change that came over Roscoe when he saw her was a funny thing; you saw it in parents whose kids had gotten out of control and were too big to handle any more, and in older ball players who just couldn’t beat the ball to first when it used to be such an easy thing to do. There was a touch of pathos in his expression first, then bewilderment and just as quickly there was only a subtle trace of deep concern for someone he loved very much.

“Helen...”

“Hello, Roscoe.” She slipped her hand through his arm affectionately and gave him a fond squeeze. “Now what’s all this about?”

“You know what it’s all about,” he told her. There was no malice in his voice, but he looked up at me meaningfully. “I want to talk to you.”

“All right,” Helen said pleasantly, “but hadn’t we better go inside first? We told Sergeant Hurd we’d be here at ten and it’s almost that now. Afterwards we can have coffee and talk.”

Roscoe made a wry motion with his mouth, nodded, then walked toward the building. Helen held out her hand to me, tightened on mine to say hello and we followed Tate inside.

Hugh Peddle, Benny and the cab driver had already been in, their statements taken, signed and filed. It didn’t take long to get ours on record while Hurd stood by in a seemingly casual manner, nodding as we talked, mentally correlating the facts. A couple of times he touched his mouth as he looked at me, reminding both of us that time was time and a moment of it was reserved for a special kind of meeting between us.

When the paper work was done I said, “You get a make on the guy Sullivan shot?”

“This morning. A real killer type from Illinois. The police there figure him for at least a dozen hits in the area and there’s a sneaky rumor out that he’s an enforcer for the pasta boys. He’s the kind somebody pays a lot of loot to for services rendered. You sure have some nice guys looking you up, buddy. A few slugs from his gun were in your pal Augie.”

“I didn’t see it in the paper.”

“It just came in an hour ago.”

“Morrie Reeves,” I said.

Hurd looked at me coldly.

Cat bit his lips and made a motion with his head for us to get out of there. Helen said nothing, but caught Cat’s sudden nervousness.

“You’re getting cuter all the time,” Hurd said. “You know this last night?”

“Let’s say I wasn’t sure last night.”

“Maybe you know something else. There was another guy on the party who pumped a few into Augie too. The one who got away.”

“Lew James,” I grinned. “They were registered at the Westhampton as the Wagner brothers.” Before Hurd could reply I said, “I’m trying to be cooperative, Sergeant. A man in my position has some curious sources of information, but if I get anything I’ll be happy to share it with you.”

He leaned back against the edge of the desk and placed his hands flat on its top. “You really pile up snow ahead of you, Deep. It’s good to watch you operate. I learn a lot just watching. I used to watch Bennett the same way. He was pretty cute too and had big connections all the way up the line. He was smart besides. He never left himself open where he’d take the kind of fall most big guys take. No tax problems or anything like that. No, he stayed clean until he finally got rapped by some punk kid and that was that.”

Now it was my turn to get curious. “Punk kid?” I repeated.

“Yeah, your old buddy Bennett was killed by some punk kid. The big shot of the decade who could make mobsters and politicians jump got bumped by a punk kid. That’s no way for a big shot to go, is it?”

Hurd watched my face with a peculiar kind of fascination, like I was some sort of unusual specimen.

“It was a zip gun that got your pal, a common zip gun. You ought to remember the kind, you made enough of them, didn’t you?” He stopped, remembering something, then said sarcastically, “I almost forgot... you didn’t use a zip. You packed a rod you lifted from a cop, didn’t you? Still wear it, Deep?”

I shrugged, opened my coat back innocently and heard Cat say in a whisper, “Jeez...”

“A zip, Deep. A single .22 from a zip gun. Ballistics even could tell how it was made. A section of a car radio aerial, a nail-point firing pin driven in by rubber band action... pretty damn effective.”

“Science is wonderful,” I said. “This can’t be top secret information, can it?”

“You’ll read all about it in the afternoon editions.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Cat said, “Come on, Deep,” and tugged at my arm.

I put my hat on and opened the door for Helen but Cat beat her through. If he had had a tail it would have been as bushy as a Christmas tree. He motioned me aside and in a low tone told me he was going for Charlie Bizz, then to look for Lew James. I slipped him a C note to take care of expenses and told him to keep in touch through Wilson Batten and to meet me later at the apartment. In no case, though, was he to stick his neck out. Helen picked up Roscoe at the entrance and we all went down to Hymie’s together. Roscoe didn’t like it, but he had no choice. Besides, he had a reporter’s big nose for news and anything he got from me could be used in my obituary notice.

Over the coffee Roscoe didn’t pull any punches. He came flat out and said, “Helen, do you realize what you’re getting into?”

“I think so. I’m not worried.”

“But I am.”

She reached over the table and patted his hand. “I’m not a little girl any more.”

“You’re letting this punk con you, Helen. You’ve always been a sucker for hard tales and hard guys.”

“Ease off, Roscoe,” I said.

His eyes bit into mine. “Why should I? It’s nothing you don’t know. You’re no stranger to this street. Just think back. In school she pals with the hard-luck kid of them all... Betty Ann Lee.”

“We were friends,” Helen reminded him gently.

“Friends? A kid from a tramp family who had more arrests as a juvenile than any other two around? She was whoring at fifteen and she was a friend?”

“She couldn’t help it, Roscoe. You know where the money she made went to. That family of hers wasn’t much. They lived on what she brought in.”

“Okay, ours wasn’t much either,” he said, “but we made out. When I kicked the old man out we did fine. Nobody had to go whoring around.”

“She didn’t have anybody else to do it for her,” Helen said.

“It didn’t matter. She would have gone down anyway. She wound up with Bennett until she took a dive off a roof. A damned narcotic addict throwing herself around under every guy she met and this is a friend?”

Something buzzed in the back of my mind then. I said, “I heard it that Bennett didn’t want anybody playing with H in his back yard.”

“Pious attitude, wasn’t it?” Roscoe sneered. “Just like you guys. When Betty Lee took the leap it shook hell out of Bennett. He wanted no part of anything that could dirty up his little house... nothing that meant a federal rap. In his business the feds would go all out to make a connection between him and anybody in the narcotics trade. They’d harass him to death if they thought they had something. No, Bennett was shrewd. He kept all the way away... after the damage was done. Now Helen here can’t lose the old school ties and stays friendly with punks she should have shaken off long ago.”

Roscoe grimaced, his hands clenched tight with anger. “Now you come along. The worst of the lot. Worse than Bennett or Sobel or anybody.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

His grimace twisted into a smile. “I’m not. All I have to do is sit back and wait. Your kind always winds up the same way. Dead.”

“You hate pretty hard, Roscoe.”

For a second he paused reflectively, then shook his head. “Not really. It’s a luxury I can’t afford. If I hate I can’t be objective, and if I’m not objective I can’t be a reporter. Let’s say I’m cynical and slightly embittered. After years of this street and turning the worst of things inside out to see how they’re made anybody would be bitter. But most of all you learn patience. There’s a certain course that events take that simply can’t be altered and if you can wait those events will reach a conclusion. It’s like watching somebody on a trolley car. They twist and turn, go up this street and that, stop and start, but no matter what they think or do, that trolley is following immovable tracks and there is only one end it can reach.

“You’re on a trolley, Deep. You got on when you were a kid. You picked your direction, paid your fare and now you’re stuck with the ride. It’s all downhill, the trolley’s lost its brakes and at the end is a big steel bumper that wipes you right out of existence.”

“Nice picture,” I said.

“You’re all on the same trolley car, Deep. Capone, Schultz, Nelson, Dillinger, Diamond, Bennett and you. With you the ride isn’t over yet.” He paused, smiled, and went on. “I don’t mind watching you ride it, Deep. I can get your obit ready right now and file it away until the time comes because I know where that ride will end.” He lost the smile then, his eyes became tight. “The sorry part is watching someone else take the ride with you. It’s bad enough when they pay their own way like you and Bennett, but when they deliberately hook on for fun’s sake it’s sheer waste.”

Helen got his implication and shook her head. “I know what I’m doing. Please don’t worry.”

“You do, Helen? You really do? You knew what you were doing when you let Lenny Sobel go soft over you? A hoodlum a dozen years older than you. You knew it when Bennett hung you on his arm for a decoration every time he toured the hot spots?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“You know it now too, I suppose. You’re sentimental all over again over this creep because you used to have a crush on him.”

Helen glanced at me and smiled. “This is what happens when you have an older brother.”

“Let him have his opinions. He’s worked hard enough for them.” I looked at Roscoe over the rim of my cup. “Your simile is nicely put but has a big flaw in it.”

“Has it?”

I finished the coffee and threw a buck on the table to cover the bill.

“Very plainly.”

“None that I can see, Deep. Suppose you point it out.”

I stood up. “Coming, Irish?”

“Can we meet later? I have to pick up a script at the producer’s office in twenty minutes. I’ll be free this afternoon.”

“I’ll call you later then. See you too, Roscoe.”

“Deep...”

“Now what?”

“The flaw in my simile.”

I shrugged. “A guy could get off the trolley any place he wanted, couldn’t he?”

Very pleasantly, Roscoe shook his head. “No, Deep, not you. You’re committed all the way. You can’t get off.”

“Hell, it’s my nickel,” I told him. I winked at Helen, she made a kiss at me and I left.

The cop on duty at Bennett’s apartment wouldn’t have let me in, but Mr. Sullivan told him it was all right, the place was mine and he didn’t argue the point.

I looked at Sullivan’s baggy suit and said, “How come you’re in plain clothes?”

“Off duty.”

“Busman’s holiday?”

“Something like that. I have an interest in you. I don’t want it to lag, especially after last night.”

“Nice of you.”

“Don’t mention it.” He nodded toward the door. “Do I get invited in?”

“Be my guest.”

In the room where Augie had died the chalk outlines of his body still marked the floor. There were a few burned-out flash bulbs in an ash tray and the place stank of cigar smoke. The blood by the door had dried brown and after scanning the yellow pages of the directory I found a janitorial service who would send somebody right over to clean up.

Sullivan was like a big dog, tagging behind me as I went through the place. On the second floor he ran his hand over an expensive piece of leather-and-oak and said, “First time I’ve been up here. Funny how a guy like Bennett should live.”

“Everybody to his own taste.”

“Hoods don’t usually like being salted down in a neighborhood like this when they’re loaded.”

“Bennett was a funny guy.”

“Very funny.” He turned and stared at me. “You going to stay here too, Deep?”

“You mind?”

“Remember what I told you the other day? There’s enough natural trouble on the block without bringing it in from outside. I always mind trouble. You ought to know. I belted you around often enough. There wasn’t one of you punks from the K.O. Club I didn’t brace at one time or another. You know something? All of them swore they’d get me. More guys were going to put a shiv in me, brain me or put a bullet in my head than I can remember. You too, Deep. I remember you crying like a baby with the blood running off your head and yelling you were going to take me apart with your bare hands. You remember that too?”

I laughed at him. “I was thinking of it last night when that guy was going to plug you.”

“Thanks again,” he said casually.

“Don’t mention it. I was saving you for me.” Sullivan grunted with disgust and turned away to inspect the room. While he did I went around the rest of it alone. There were little things to indicate that Augie had thoroughly searched the place and from the signs he had gotten to the ground floor where he was hit without finding anything.

I took Sullivan up to the apartment, poked around up there and was pretty certain Bennett hadn’t used the building to hide his personal effects. I kept getting a strange feeling, one I realized had puzzled me since I started on this. It was the same thing that had awakened me last night.

Somebody had said something, somebody had done something or I had my hand on something that could tie this whole thing together. I was reaching for it when Sullivan said, “This place is familiar. Everything but the wall to wall dirt and the old back room for your shag parties.”

“You caught on faster than I did.”

“I hauled you guys out of that place often enough.” He stared around the room, his hands on his hips. “Like being back?”

“I’m not particular.”

“It figures.” He looked at me, the years of watching the world go by showing on him, and automatically he bunched himself like he was going to swing on me.

Before his reflexes could take over, I said, “Anything you particularly want to see?”

“Uh-uh. You’re the only one I’m interested in.”

“You going to tail me around?”

“Afraid it’ll spoil your reputation?”

“Could be. I wouldn’t want that to happen.”

“Don’t let it bother you. I’ll just poke around myself, the big, friendly beat cop who takes his job to heart. I always liked kids if you recall, especially them and their club activities. That’s why I enjoy roaming around on my off time. Now you take them Scorpions that hole up in the basement of Decker’s place like you guys used to in your joint... now there’s a fine bunch of lads. Top-notch sports. Today I heard some funny things coming from their turf. Strange things.”

“Lay off, Sullivan,” I said tightly.

His smile was just the way it was when he tore me up with his cuffs so long ago. Big, broad and mean. “Deep, I’ve been around here a long time. I take everything that happens here to heart. I’m part of this place and proud of it and don’t you try crowding me.”

I waved my thumb toward the door. “Have it your own way, only get off my premises.”

Downstairs Sullivan stood talking to the uniformed cop at the door and watched me walk off.

The janitor of the building that housed the K.O. Club was an incipient wino who hadn’t changed much since I had seen him last. He had been bald at forty, with rheumy eyes and a whiny voice and we had used him to pick up booze from the liquor store when we couldn’t buy it ourselves for being underage. He got paid off with a jolt or two and slept on the old cot in the back room.

Now he was sixty-five, the skin of his head wrinkled, his eyes still a baleful red and his breath still that of a practiced rumdum. But old Henny Summers still knew what the score was and how the game was played and when I knocked on the door he took a quick look, swallowed hard and forced a smile.

“ ’Lo, Mr. Deep.”

“How’s things, Henny?”

“All right, all right. Mr. Batten, he called and told me this was your place now. You gonna keep me on, Mr. Deep?”

“Why not?”

“No reason. I done pretty good here. Place always like Mr. Bennett wanted it. Clean up every week and get it ready for when he wanted a meeting.”

“Good.”

“You wanna go through the place, Mr. Deep?”

“Later maybe.”

“Everything’s pretty good. Kids break in sometimes and mess around a little bit. Broke a chair once and stole some glasses. Last week they broke the back door to the cellar. I fixed it shut. This time I nailed it. Yesterday a little kid threw a bottle in here. Knocked a pane out in the window. I kicked his behind for him, I did.”

“He needed it. Look, Henny, you know this building pretty well?”

His eyebrows went up as he puzzled that out. “Sure, Mr. Deep. Ain’t I been living here all this time?”

“Bennett spend much time here at all?”

“Mr. Bennett?” His brow creased and he shook his head. “He come for the meetings. Sometimes he threw a party. You know, beer and that stuff. He never liked the fancy deals. More like the old days. The guys in the ward, they had a bit of fun. Nice broads too. Once one of ’em come to me and right there she...”

“He ever come here alone?”

“By himself?” Henny’s mouth turned down. “What for?”

“Any reason’ll do.”

“He used to stop by to tell me when he was having a party. Sometimes, I mean. Other times he’d call up or send somebody over. Couple times long while ago he came over with a jug and we talked about the old days. Talked a lot about you, Mr. Deep. How nobody never heard from you or nothin’. Mr. Bennett, he figured you had yourself something going and someday you’d march back in and you and him could take up together again.”

Henny gave a toothless laugh and waved me into the back. “Wanna see the old place downstairs? Mr. Bennett, him and me sat there when we talked. Knocked off the jug and really talked. Come on.”

He didn’t have to show me the way. There wasn’t an inch of the place I didn’t know and not an inch had been changed. We went through the narrow vestibule and down the stairs and when Henny flipped the switch there was the old place where plans and broads had been made at the same time and Carlos Stevens had knifed the skinny kid from the French Royals who was caught trying to raid our arsenal and where Teddy the Lunger and I had fought it out with icepicks and both picked up three punctures before I got him bad enough to end it.

It was a big square cement-walled room with powdery white frosting all over and mildew touching the furniture. Henny saw me eyeing the empty space at the end and said nervously, “Cat... he took out that old couch. Mr. Bennett let him. If you want, I can...”

“Forget it.”

“The radio still works. Sometimes I listen to it. When Mr. Bennett was here them times with the jug we sat and listened. Only gets one or two stations.”

I stepped down the rest of the way for a better look around. The smell of dust and damp became familiar again and it didn’t seem like twenty-five years had passed since the last time I was in here. The same curtains still hung, shielding the alcove off where the cot was and the door on one side to the coal bin still hung on hinges that had nails through them for pins.

“Mr. Deep, I got a jug in there if you’d like a pull? Kind of like celebrating the old days, huh?”

“Later maybe.” I turned back to the stairs. “Come on, let’s blow.”

Henny seemed almost disappointed by my attitude. “Mr. Bennett, he liked it down here.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Mr. Deep, what’ll I do with all the stuff Mr. Bennett ordered?”

“What stuff?”

“Fifty cases of imported beer and all those cases of mixers. The guy from National Distributing wanted to know where to deliver it.”

“You got me. What was it for?”

Henny’s shoulders came up in an exaggerated shrug. “Who tells me? Mr. Bennett was gonna throw a party. He told me to get the big room ready for a big time. I ast him about the jugs and he said he’d take care of that end hisself. You know Mr. Bennett... he wouldn’t let no jugs lay around here. He always brought it all up hisself.”

“When did this happen?”

“Same day he got killed. You think I ought tell ’em to take it back? Don’t suppose there’ll be any party now. Hell, I didn’t know what kinda party it was supposed to be anyway. Big stag blowout Mr. Bennett said. He was throwing hisself a stag party oney I don’t know why. Just said he had a big surprise for everybody.”

“Well, there won’t be any party now. Tell National to cancel it.”

“Okay, Mr. Deep.”

I took a quick tour through the building with Henny in my wake, whining an opinion about almost everything and hopefully trying to find out if I was going to keep him on. When I said I would he quit whining and followed me quietly.

When we were downstairs again I asked him, “Did Bennett have a safe in the building?”

“Safe? No, sir. Any papers like after a meeting he took out. He never kept nothin’ here.”

The assumption was logical enough. Anybody could get into the building without any trouble including the kids. If Bennett kept anything big on board old Henny certainly couldn’t stop them from tearing the place apart piece by piece to find it. Even if anybody thought there was something hidden on the premises they could always put a torch to the place and that would be that.

No, if Bennett had a package someplace it would be safe from fire, theft or anything else.

The only annoying thing about it was the knowledge that he would have made sure there was some way I’d know how to find it.

It’ll be just you and me, Bennett, I had said. Why the hell whack this town in half when it’s only big enough for one of us? We ain’t always gonna be kids, by damn. We shot out Sobel’s behind. Pretty soon we’ll be talkin’ loud enough for everybody to hear.

Damn right, Deep, Bennett told me. These days you gotta look ahead. You gotta think big. Them other punks upstairs, they talk big but they all work for some other punk. Me, you, we’re gonna be top punks. Hell, not punks. Big shots. Just like that. I can smell it comin’.

And nobody could think bigger than me. Sure. So why compete? There’s other cities and other places. We stay here and pretty soon we’re bumping heads. That good? Hell, no. So we split. We flip a coin and loser takes off and finds a new place to take over. That’s thinking sensible, pal. No blood being spilled in the family for us.

It wasn’t new talk. We had planned it months ago and we knew every detail of it. Whoever goes, Deep, I’m sure gonna miss you. Remember how we said... like if anything happens to the other one, his buddy will get everything? Whatever I get if anything happens to me you can have and you’ll know where it’ll be. I’ll never change. K.O.’s ain’t like them other clubs. We signed it in blood.

Damn right, Bennett!

Okay, who’ll flip the coin?

Wake up that wino Henny back there. Let him do it.

He woke up Henny who tossed the coin. It came up tails. I lost. We shook hands solemnly and I walked out to find my own turf. I had never come back until now.

Absently, I said, “Henny, do you remember flipping the coin?”

Henny looked back just as absently. He didn’t even know what I was talking about. I gave him a fin for his trouble and stood on the street corner until a cab came by and gave him Batten’s address.

A new Picasso had been added to the Gauguins on the wall. It was a smear of color and crooked forms and the signs of being expensive. Batten sat tilted back in his chair looking at it and when he turned his head the girl behind me said without apology, “He wouldn’t let me call, Mr. Batten.”

Wilse nodded, the girl smiled at me and closed the door.

“Don’t spend money you haven’t got yet, Batty.”

“I can wait.” He rolled over to the desk and made himself comfortable. When I sat down he asked, “What’s on your mind?”

“Bennett.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Did he have a safe deposit box anywhere?”

Batten let a sardonic smile twist the edges of his mouth. “Still looking, Deep?”

“You got to dig to find gold.”

“You find lead the same way.”

“Don’t be so damned enigmatic, friend.”

The smile came loose and his eyes narrowed. “I didn’t mean to be. I thought a blunt person like you would understand.”

“It came through. Now let’s speak plainly.”

He waved vaguely.

“Did Bennett ever hint to you what he was holding over everybody’s head?”

“Never.”

“You were his only legal advisor?”

“The only one.”

“You were aware, of course, how Bennett operated.”

The chair came forward and Batten leaned into his desk. “Let’s not be so specific. It was a conclusion I came to that was the basis of long examination. I see you came to the same one yourself.”

“It wasn’t hard. It was hinted at pretty strongly.”

“Well, it isn’t spoken of as general conversation, let’s say. When you discuss certain people it’s always quietly and in private and even then you can’t be sure who’s listening in. The best thing to do is keep quiet about it.”

“I’m not the quiet type.”

“You can be a dead type.”

“But not until your connection has been definitely established.”

“Like how, Batten?”

“If you’re no threat you go out for talking too loudly. If you are a threat you get the ax taken away and get hit for trying to move in and wave it.”

“Tell me about Bennett.”

Batten nodded sagely, paused, then: “Unless you knew him well you would never realize that he was retarded.”

“Retarded!” The word exploded out of me.

“That’s right, retarded. He had more of a juvenile outlook on things than an adult one. You’ve been in his apartment. You know how he hung on to the past. Look at how he set things up for you if you came back. Your erstwhile friend was retarded.”

I said, “He did pretty well for a backward child.”

“No doubt about it. Like all juveniles he had a shrewdness an adult can hardly duplicate. He had a child’s callousness and a solid criminal bent that helped him right along. These are the attributes that put Bennett on top. He worked things from a wild angle that nobody but a juvenile would even consider and because he did he caught certain persons off guard and before they could recover Bennett had the ball.”

“That doesn’t sound like a retarded action.”

“It isn’t. I said he had a criminal bent. Bennett wasn’t a retarded juvenile... he was a retarded adult. Along certain lines he still thought like an adult. A criminal adult. That, Deep, is a rough, unpolished, but accurate picture of Mr. Bennett as I see it. You should see it too.”

“For me it’s harder,” I told him. “I only knew him as a juvenile.”

“You were lucky.”

I pulled a chair over and perched on the arm of it. “So Bennett picked up choice bits and pieces of people and held them over their heads. Now, the big question, where did he keep them?”

Batten sat back and stared at the ceiling. “I wish I knew. I really do.”

“What would you do with it?”

Only his eyes moved back to me. “Simple. I’d make a lot of friends. I’d make a present of those choice bits and pieces as you call them to the parties concerned and sit back and enjoy their largesse. All legal, no trouble, everybody saying thank you and I would need no more.”

Before I could answer the phone rang. Batten picked it up, frowned and handed it to me. It was Cat on the other end and he told me he still hadn’t run Lew James down but hadn’t checked out all the places he could be either. He had gotten to the Westhampton after the cops and made out a little better than they had. With the aid of a double sawbuck the desk clerk, who was an inveterate cop hater, thought he could remember a number that one of them had called. He couldn’t recall it then, but knew it would come back to him after a while because it had a certain rhyme to it. Meanwhile Charlie Bizz was hitting the medicos a guy could see without worrying about gunshot wound reports.

Wilson Batten was waiting for me to clue him in but I didn’t bother. When I put the phone up I said, “Supposing you figure out where Bennett put the stuff before I do, Batten?”

He meant it when he answered, “Then I’ll tell you all about it. You see, I figure you for a psychotic too, and like most psychotics, clever in certain fields. If I thought it out, then so would you and I’d rather not have you on my back with a gun than enjoy the profits such a discovery could bring me. Life, after all, is worth more than money.”

“Keep it in mind, friend. You have it pegged exactly right except for the first part.”

“About being psychotic?”

“Yes.”

“Does the thought gnaw at you?”

“Not the slightest.”

“Time will tell.”

I nodded. “You have any immediate plans?”

“Nothing I can’t cancel.”

“Good. Then you hold down that chair. I might want you in a hurry.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he said.