The Deep

Chapter Thirteen

I knew I was on the floor. I knew there should have been pain, but the strange alchemy of the body had started and where the pain actually was I could feel only a throbbing sensation. My head pulsated with each heartbeat like a dam being attacked by floodwaters.

Vaguely, I heard Lenny call out for the other guy to come get me out of there.

He came reluctantly and tested my side with a foot. “Whatsa matter wit’ leavin’ him here?”

Lenny wasn’t the old Lenny any more at all. He could talk it and he could think it, and he could even try to live up to the old days, but time had shrunken him inside and he couldn’t take sight of the rough stuff any longer. “Just get him out of my sight and don’t ask questions. Put him in the bedroom and stay there with him.”

“Crap. I wanted to sack out. After we knock him off we gotta go alla way to that stinkin’ quarry in Jersey wit’ him. I’m pooped.”

“Sleep in a chair. Get him inside.”

To drag me he had to untie me from the chair. I could tell when he did it only by the sounds and the way he rolled me around. There was no feeling at all in my hands and feet. I kept my eyes closed, though with the way they must have been swollen knew he couldn’t have told whether they were open or shut anyway.

He got his hands under my armpits and dragged me across the room, into the bedroom, and let me flop on the rug beside the bed face down. With no more concern than if I had been dead he walked back outside, spoke to Lenny and made himself a drink.

I tried to move and managed to get halfway over. I brought my knees up and fought to get my hands under me. There was no way of feeling if I did or not; feeling had been strangled off from my shoulders down. But the sudden motion did do one thing. It brought the pain back, a great, sweeping tidal wave of pain that crashed through the barrier of numbness my body had set up and closed down on me like a monstrous pair of pincers. I let go with a terrible sound I couldn’t help and went back on my face again.

The only good part about it was that the pain reached my hands and feet as the circulation was restored and although I was powerless to move them much I knew I could move them a little and it might be enough if I played it right.

When the guy came back he carried the two strands of ropes that had held me to the chair, knelt on the floor beside me and tied my hands behind my back. He finished that, threw a few loops around my feet, knotted them and got up and laid down in bed as though nothing had happened at all.

Outside Lenny was making himself another drink. He had two more within a few minutes and between them mouthed a few curses at the world in general.

On the bed the guy began to breathe slowly, but lightly. He wasn’t quite asleep yet and I couldn’t afford to disturb him now. My hands were still tingling, and though bound, were coming back to normal. There was nothing professional in the rope job the boy did on me and the slight amount of pressure I managed against his efforts was enough to allow me the slightest bit of slack.

I had to wait. I had to lie there and wait while I wanted to explode.

To take the tension off I forced myself to think. I tried to put the whole thing together in my mind and cull out the loose ends and eliminate the mistakes.

Why did Bennett die?

Now there was a poser. Alive, he was a threat. He wielded a power that could line up forces the way he wanted them, both political and illegal. Sure, even Holiday admitted that and Peddle proved it by being in the club. There were others involved to make that much certain.

But Holiday had said a peculiar thing. The syndicate didn’t really mind Bennett. It was easier to take him than knock him over. Why?

Back to Wilson Batten then. He laid a finger on Bennett that Helen had known too. Immaturity. Bennett hadn’t really wanted much at all! His idea of bigness was really so small they could afford to let him have his way... but what he had was big enough so that they played it his way all the way and without reservation.

No, the mob wanted him alive. They couldn’t afford him dead at all.

Benny? Could Benny have killed him? Unlikely. Benny just didn’t measure up to that kind of courage. He would have showed signs of what he had in mind and Bennett would have gotten there first. Or the mob. They’d hit Benny if they knew he was going after Bennett. With a power package, Benny would be more dangerous to them than Bennett by far.

Then there was Tally’s death. Hers was the forgotten one.

And there was something else I almost forgot. Whoever killed Tally had killed Bennett and had tried to kill me.

The weapons?

Not a heavy caliber gun and a few well placed, immediately fatal shots the way it had happened to Augie and Lew James and Cat. Not the signs of an experienced pro.

A zip gun and a bottle. A kid’s trick. A lousy kid’s trick that screwed up the works and started a chain of death that still wasn’t over.

Sure, from the beginning it went like that. Take it the way a kid would... he figured a guy like Bennett would have cash around and cased his place until he knew the routine. When he knew only Bennett and Dixie were in the house he waited and when Dixie went out, he went in. Bennett answered the door thinking it was Dixie back and there stood the kid.

The kid’s first hit, maybe. He pulled the trigger and that’s all he had, that one shot. He got Bennett in the neck... maybe Bennett staggered and fell, but he wasn’t dead. The kid saw that and panicked. While Bennett lay there he got in the elevator and took it down, forgetting to grab any loot.

I could feel the excitement rising in me. I tried to follow Bennett’s actions and the kid’s at the same time and it began to come out clear.

Naturally, it would have been a local punk, one of the neighborhood gang members. Bennett recognized him and knew where he’d run to and tried to cut him off. He went down the fire escape and through the yards behind the buildings the way I had followed Morrie Reeves after he killed Augie. Bennett had headed for that same alley Morrie had hoping to cut the kid off, all that time holding his hand over the hole in his neck.

And that was as far as he got. The internal hemorrhage killed him right there.

That was where the night people came in. Was Tally coming home from a drunk when she saw him? He must have been close to the mouth of the alley to be that easily seen from the street. I could see Tally in my mind, watch her take in the dead man with one grand look of pleasure, spit on him and walk away knowing that now the fun would begin.

Then Pedro... he robbed the body and got off the scene.

But because of these two the picture had changed.

Where was the killer all this time?

Why didn’t he run? Could it be that he was seen in the area by Tally or at least thought he had been seen? He shouldn’t have killed her; Tally would never have spoken against him. Or maybe that the body was almost lying in the killer’s back yard and its very presence would mean an unnecessary danger if anybody put two and two together. A zip gun meant a kid gang. The Scorps?

So the killer carried Bennett back. Bennett was no lightweight, but even a panicky old lady can do remarkable things. He got him back through the rear, took him up the fire escape, dumped him in his own living room and left.

A cute detail had fooled the police. Bennett had bled a lot when he was first hit and messed the room up just right. Who would have thought that he had gone out and been returned to the same spot again?

A zip gun. A kid’s kick. A simple stupid kill and all hell cuts loose.

Lenny broke a bottle outside. He cursed too loudly to be sober and stumbled into the living room. My head was turned so I could see him through the doorway and when he stopped, cursed again and walked into the darkened bedroom I thought it was over.

“That stinking Knight Owl Club. That whole bunch of stinking jerks!” He took another pull of his drink and yanked the door shut after him.

It was funny, in a way. Just a cellar club from years ago, but the repercussions never ended. They just could-n’ t get it out of their heads. The K.O.’s dominated their lives, everyone who was touched by it.

Nostalgia? Sentimentality? Environment?

It was like I told Helen... it was all tied up with the club.

And then the sudden truth came at me like a bomb that grew and grew in size as you watched it and the whole thing burst open in a wild sheet of flame that left you too stunned to do more than gasp.

It was all there. It fell right in place. I had pieces and Helen had pieces and Batten had pieces and Roscoe had pieces and Lenny had pieces and Holiday had pieces and now it was one big whole and it could be too late at any moment to pull the cork.

On the bed the guy’s breathing was deep and regular. I tried the ropes, being as quiet as I could. I let my hands hang lifelessly so that no muscular activity would swell them, then began the slow process of stretching and loosening my bonds.

Twice, the man on the bed turned, saying something in his half-sleep, then drifted off again. Each time I waited until I was sure he wouldn’t hear the small noises I made, then went back to work on the ropes.

One hand came loose, taking skin with it and I unwound the length of rope from my other and freed my feet. When it was done I lay there until I knew I was all right again, then got up quietly and did what I had to do to the guy on the bed.

He was no trouble at all.

He lay there unconscious, a gag in his mouth, breathing heavily through his nose while I tied him hands-to-feet with a single strand of rope that he wasn’t about to loosen. As I finished I heard the phone ring and Lenny move to answer it. He said, “Yeah... yeah. I got it,” then tapped the receiver bar down, held it and dialed a number. When it answered he said, “Dave? How many you got there? Yeah, six will do it. Holiday call? Okay, then you know you take orders from me this trip. No stay there. I want in on this so don’t move without me. Stay in the neighborhood and when I drive up you can move in. Hit Peddle and take the girl alive. We’ll do the whole thing inside there where nobody will hear a thing. No, you’ll know me. I’ll drive the red and white panel truck that belongs to the restaurant. When you see it, start moving in. Just you wait until I get there, understand?” He grunted and slammed the phone back, then let out a little laugh, swirled the ice in his drink, finished it and set the glass down. I heard him walk toward the door. I got behind it. He still had my gun.

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.

Sentimental.

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.

Had Bennett recognized the symbolism?

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 was certain now. It was a scream from upstairs.

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.

I laid the sights of the .38 on the back of Al’s head and held it so I was sure of the shot. He had his foot ready and was going to put the boot to her in another second and the instant he moved his brains would come out through the front of his face.

My finger curled around the metal, I started the squeeze, already had Hugh and the other one in my peripheral vision to kill next, when somebody yelled and Hugh spun around toward the door at the far end of the room and said, “Who was that?”

“Knock that light out!” Al told him.

Hugh reached the switch, flipped it and threw the place into total darkness.

They had locked the door, but it gave under a barrage of shots. I heard Hugh yell hoarsely and run toward the far end. He wasn’t a pro like the other pair. They snapped off a couple of fast shots, scrambled for the protection of the furniture and stayed there.

I put the gun back. I didn’t waste any of the seconds I had left. I went crabwise across the floor, found Helen and dragged her backwards. By then the ones outside had hit the front entrance and knocked the door open. Somebody was yelling for a light.

She tried to fight me until I told her to be still. She recognized my voice and slumped with the sheer relief she felt.

Together we inched forward on the floor, got to the break in the room and cut around the angle of it.

Behind us the roar of gunfire was a steady thing and bullets were slapping into the walls and skipping off the metal things. Somebody began screaming and wouldn’t stop.

I said, “Are you hurt badly?”

“No. They had... just started to... really hurt me.”

“We have to climb down a flight and bypass the action.”

“All right.”

So I helped her out above me, guided her feet into the rungs and hoped the steel would hold until we reached the level below.

Luck was on our side this time and it did. The gunfire above abated, then started again. Feet slammed down the stairs and we flattened out against the wall. When they passed we followed them down, stopped at the first landing, cut back to the rear where the other stairwell went down to the basement and held it while I listened.

A voice far above us was yelling that they had them and the shooting stopped abruptly. Another voice found Al, the other and Peddle, and they were dead. Somebody wasn’t quite sure about one and there was another shot and everybody laughed.

When they couldn’t find Helen they made a circuit of the room and suddenly realized what had happened, only they thought she had done it all by herself. There was a sharp order and feet began pounding down the stairwell. I grabbed Helen and we made the last run into the old clubroom.

Outside on The Street sirens began their unearthly howl, coming closer and closer and it was almost all over.

They never quite reached us. They stopped when they heard the squad cars and being pros, knew the score. They scrambled for a way out, knew that the cops would have that end covered too.

We huddled there in the pale light that drifted out of the coal bin, heard the cops smash their way in and listened while the shooting started again. They were pros up there and were going as far as they could because there was nothing else to lose. On the top floor were three dead men and the wheel would turn on all of them because of it. All they could do now was take out their hate on society until they were dead or their bullets were gone and hope they died first because the death the law prescribed was, in reality, more horrible than dying with a cop’s bullet in your gut.

Helen said, “Deep...?”

“I didn’t lay a gun on anybody,” I said.

Her hand felt for my face, found it and pulled it down to hers. Her mouth was cold and I could feel her tremble under my hands.

“Please, Deep... I don’t understand.”

“Look...”

“Hugh Peddle came. He made me tell him what you had said.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “I know what he did.”

“He thought I knew.”

“He was wrong.”

A riot gun roared into the night, tearing things apart. Whistles shrilled and somebody shouted orders directly above us. More sirens were coming in now, surrounding the block. Like an air raid, I thought. Death a few feet away. You huddle together in a dungeon of a cellar and listened to death upstairs.

I said, “I called Roscoe. He should be watching this. It’ll make quite a story.”

“But... he hates you.”

“He hated everybody, kitten.”

She felt the change in my voice. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me, were you engaged to Bennett?”

Helen pushed back, stared at me, her eyes searching for my meaning. One side of her face was all swollen, but she was still beautiful. “No, Deep,” she said. “He asked me, but I told him no. You know what I was trying to do.”

“He didn’t know that, kid. He thought he had you. He was going to let all the boys in on the big secret that he was going to ask you to marry him.”

“But how could he...”

I interrupted. “He never grew up. Remember... he still thought like back in the old K.O. days. To him, if you stayed close, you were his.”

“He was mad! I never...”

“Did you tell Roscoe he asked you that?”

“Well, yes, I did, but...”

The firing grew more intense. A section of ceiling powdered and came down like snow around us.

Very slowly, almost dreamlike, Helen turned and looked up at me. Her eyes were large, dark. She caught my intimation but couldn’t believe it. “Not Roscoe,” she said.

“Your half brother.”

She put the seal on it herself. “No... he was my father’s stepson, thanks to an earlier marriage. He really wasn’t my brother at all.”

The last seal. It was done.

I said, “He was always in love with you.”

“Oh, no.” Her face buried itself against my chest and I knew I had to tell her then.

“It was Roscoe, kitten. It was bad enough he hated all of us, but long ago I had you and he knew it. He wanted you himself and because I had you it warped his whole life. He didn’t stay here for any reason other than to direct his hate at the things that took you away from him.

“Me, I was long gone. Psychos learn to redirect their hatred and you even helped. He could take almost anybody, but never me or Bennett. When Bennett proposed to you he flipped. He really flipped. It was like having me there again. It was the old days. He went all the way back to the crazy hatred of the old days.”

She still couldn’t understand. It was too big for her.

“He went nuts, sugar. Roscoe went absolutely nuts. All he could do was think of how he could kill Bennett and he reverted to those old days himself. He had no gun but knew where we used to keep them. He got down here and opened the arsenal and found a zip.

“You know, if the gun hadn’t been there he might have come back to normal. He might have realized what he was about to do, but there was still a couple of pieces and some ammo in the old spot behind the shelves and he pulled one out and loaded up.

“Bennett was killed at night. Early. Not a normal hour for a kill at all. It was before ten when most pros haven’t started out yet. Roscoe went up there, popped Bennett who was waiting for Dixie, ran for it and passed the alley where Bennett had run. See... he hadn’t killed Bennett. When he knew Bennett followed him he had been running toward his own sanctuary... Hymie’s deli, which was still open. The thought that anybody would connect them scared him and in that frenzy all psychos get, did the impossible... carried Bennett back to his apartment and dropped him.”

I nodded.

“That’s what happened. He was out of his mind. He was a full-fledged madman. He was something else, too. He was a catalyst. He did something terrible to the world he lived in. He ousted Bennett but reintroduced me. He started things happening, instituted forces he never thought existed, and in his madness, never gave a true thought to what he had done.”

Somebody opened up with a Thompson upstairs. There was another scream. They were firing from the full perimeter of the building now and the sound of guns and cars and voices was a cacophony of sound that made music perfectly suited to the city. It was a moment of moments.

“He was a madman at the first kill,” I said. “Not the second.”

“What?” Her voice sounded small.

“Roscoe killed Tally, Irish.”

“He... no!”

But she knew I was right. “He wasn’t mad the second time around. He knew what he was doing then. I scared him when I told him that Tally spat on his corpse. I scared hell out of him when he heard about Pedro bone-picking. All he thought was that they had seen him run by, or perhaps pack the body back. He got to Tally with the only weapon he had at hand — a bottle. He nearly killed me with the same thing.

“That’s what I overlooked. It was a simple kill to begin with. An amateur kill. Only the prize involved was so big I gave other people credit for smoking up the trail. It would have been worth the try.”

She said, “But Tally...”

“He wasn’t a madman then, kid. He was covering his tracks. I’ll give you odds that before long a small Mexican named Pedro will turn up dead someplace with his head squashed in or his throat cut. Roscoe knows the turf. He could run anybody down he wanted to. He’s as worldly-wise as I am and playing it just as cute and now his back is to the wall.”

From the darkness of the coal pit Roscoe said, “Not all that far, Deep.”

We couldn’t quite see him, but we could hear the madness in his voice. Out of the shadows his hand protruded and in it was a gun if you could call it that, and that you had to because it had already killed two people. Long ago Bennett had killed Spanish John with it and not too long ago Roscoe had killed Bennett with it and now there was another bullet left and it was going to be in me. I had to come first because when I was done it would be an easy job to handle Helen and not too hard to explain away the kill, especially when you were a madman and knew the ropes too.

He stayed right there, the gun leveled at my head with a strange, deadly precision that most amateurs don’t ever attain but a madman might.

There was death all around us now. Upstairs the hammering had slowed, become intermittent, then suddenly stopped. There were feet pounding up the stairs... voices shouting back and forth, counting the dead.

It had to come.

It came very close by too.

Somebody had found the door that led to the old cellar club.

The K.O.’s.

Us.

Remember us? We were the big ones.

Time again, the one factor that enveloped us all. There was so much of it. He could shoot me and club her to death. No trouble. It would stick. He was smart. He could do it, explain it off and get a story out of it afterwards. I thought of all the ways he could do it and knew how easy it would be.

She said, “No matter. It’s over now, isn’t it?”

Back there in the darkness I knew he was ready. The gun was small, but the tube of it was something I could look into. I could even imagine the deadly little .22 nestling there ready to puncture my skull the way Bennett had designed it to, knew the chances of a misfire were as remote as missing your head with a hat. The little man was crazy cool and had already thought out the answers and I was his only obstacle left.

There were only seconds more and we all knew it and Helen squeezed my forearm not really knowing what to do, the pure love she felt wanting to throw herself in the line of fire, but holding back because I pushed her back and let Roscoe play it all the way out.

“You’re dead, Deep.”

His voice sounded strained when he said, “The end of the trolley ride, Deep.”

“Is it?”

“You’re like all the rest. You paid your nickel, you get the ride.”

“I guess you heard what I said.”

“I heard it all.”

“You’re nuts, Roscoe.”

“Let’s say I was. As you stated, now I’m protecting myself.”

“You’re still nuts.”

“No more.”

“Sure you are, small man. You forgot the big point.”

He paused, then. “Go on.”

“The trolley ride.”

“So.”

“It’s my nickel. I can get off wherever I please. Remember your simile of the trolley?”

And he did. Like the amateur he was he came screaming through the door with the same gun he had killed Bennett with only this time it was for me and while Helen was screaming with a partial realization of what was happening I drew and fired and shot Roscoe Tate through the right eye and his brains spattered all over the clubhouse walls.

He seemed terribly shrunken in death, a little guy who had nursed a big hatred for those for whom he’d held a big envy too long. It wasn’t the bullet that killed him. It was The Street. He had been killed a long time ago and never knew it.

Roscoe Tate had died when he tasted fear, and instead of spitting it out like the rest of us, forced himself to swallow it. He was killed when he let a revengeful satisfaction chain him to The Street and twist his guts until the explosion came.

Helen’s hands were pressed against her mouth, near hysteria making the cords in her neck stand out like wires, pressing her face out of shape until her face had an animal look. Blood squirted suddenly from her lips, staining her teeth a bright crimson.

But she wasn’t looking at the mess on the floor. She was looking at me.

There were more police whistles blowing upstairs. More voices and ominous sounds. Somebody threw the door open and a splash of light beamed down into our cavern, searching, yet reluctant to press the issue.

They knew where we were!

“You had to do it,” she said. “You had to do it!”

I frowned at her, looked at the gun in my hand and slammed it back into the holster.

“Helen...”

Eyes that hysteria had held wide too long suddenly washed themselves with tears and she dropped her hands to her sides in abject helplessness. Her lip was swollen from where she had bitten it and very softly a sob caught in her chest.

“You had to go and kill him, Deep. Why?”

“Helen...”

I could barely hear her voice. “Why didn’t you kill me, Deep? It would have been easier that way.” I tried to stop her, but she went on. “You killed him, but you should have killed me. In a way you really did anyway.”

“Please, Helen.”

She shook her head, the futility of the whole tragic moment caught in a single gesture. “What is there to say, Deep? I had to go and love you. I had to fall crazy in love with you. I should have known. All this senseless disregard for life and peace and happiness was part of me in the beginning too... but I got away from it. I hated it. I never wanted any part of it... I even tried to stop it. Then I came back because of you.”

She stopped me with a wave of her hand when I went to speak. “It’s no good, Deep. It’s over now. I would have waited for you forever if I had to. You were my man. You knew that, didn’t you?”

I nodded silently.

Her eyes were bright with tears and she touched my face. “I didn’t care what you did. I didn’t care what you were wherever you came from because you were mine and I was yours and when it was done we would be together, even if it was for a little while and we were very, very old.”

I said, “I didn’t come from so far away, Helen. Not in distance. Just in time.”

She listened, but didn’t truly hear. “But you spoiled it, Deep,” she told me. “You committed the one crime there’s no turning back on. You did the one thing you said you wouldn’t do. You threw all our love and our promises to the wind when you killed him.”

The tears spilled from her eyes, shining wetly against her cheeks. “If you could have been... just anybody...” she hesitated a second before she spoke... “it wouldn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t be so bad. But when you’re part of something like... all this...” she stopped, sobbed and pressed her hand to her mouth again.

You could hear them coming down the stairs now, being very careful.

“... then it’s over. There’s only death now. You committed the one crime there’s no turning back on. There’s no possible defense. You’re one of them, Deep, and when any one of them kills, the law kills back.

“And now the law is going to take you and when you die, I’ll die too. That’s what you did. In one second you threw away everything we ever had. You should have let him kill you. You did anyway. You should have let him.”

A voice called for a riot gun and there was a shuffling on the stairs. Others were standing by, ready to fire and step by step they started down.

I said, “Helen... I love you.”

She smiled, sadly, her eyes a little cloudy with tears that had a bitter sting. “I know,” she said, “and now it’s too late. There isn’t even any hope left and we had so much. So very much.”

Behind us they reached the bottom of the stairs.

Then I grinned, real big, and in a brief moment she knew that because years ago two kids had decided to split the world between them didn’t mean that both of them had to keep the pact and that somewhere along the line the worse one had found out that to hop off the trolley wasn’t the way to abandon hope. In that one brief second she knew the reasons and the answers for a lot of things.

They were there, guns out, all of them. Sergeant Hurd in front with the riot gun and the rest with service revolvers. There was only a second left now.

In that one scant second, that tiny particle of time, she had a glimpse of that flash of gold pinned to the wallet I held in my hand when they all came up behind us and lowered the guns and knew. She knew.

Sergeant Hurd said, in a tired command voice, “Nice going, Lieutenant.”