The Deep

Chapter Seven

At seven fifteen Cat came in and shook me awake. He lit a butt, sucked in a drag and stood there coughing his lungs out for a couple of minutes. He tried it again, but it wasn’t any better so he squashed it out.

I said, “You have long, Cat?”

His shoulders hunched in a bony shrug. “I died a long time ago, Deep.”

“Get off it.”

“No kidding.” He squinted down at me. “My time was up two months back. It’s all gravy now.”

“No chance for a cure?”

Cat shook his head. “Maybe last year, but what the hell? What difference does it make? You know, I ain’t even got a bucket to kick. If I had, some crumb would swipe it anyway.” He grinned at me and coughed into his handkerchief again. “This world isn’t worth while living for or dying over,” he said. “Everybody’s money hungry and trying to kill each other off like crazy. The lucky ones get it early and it’s over with. The rest have to sweat it until something catches up with ’em. Me... maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones.”

I sat up in bed and stretched until my shoulders cracked. I climbed out, looked at Cat and shook my head. “So be a fatalist. Drop dead.”

He laughed and it started him hacking again. When he stopped he rolled his handkerchief into a ball and left the room. I heard the toilet flush, then he came back. “You know, Deep... the only sorry part is that I’m starting to have fun again. Like the old days, remember?”

My face started to tighten up. “Were they really fun, Cat?”

“I don’t know. I never knew anything different. Sometimes I wondered. The old man whaling the crap out of me, never enough to eat, hardly a week without getting your head almost knocked in. We had our kicks, though.”

“Remember the club from Ninth Avenue who gave that dance?” I asked.

“When those goons tried to shag Helen and Sugar Lee down the cellar? Sure I remember that. Man, how we tore that place apart. Hardly nobody walked home that night. I got six stitches in my head from that one. You and Bennett beat hell out of that cop who tried to break it up.”

“He busted my nose,” I said.

“You stole his rod, too, so it evened things up. You still got that rod, Deep?”

I pointed to my pants hanging on the closet door. The .38 in the speed rig weighed them down, pulling them out of shape. I said, “Go call Augie and get him over here.”

“Sure, Deep.” He was halfway out the door when he stopped and turned around. “You know, them days weren’t really so much fun.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “I know. Then we were all punks. Now we’re going to have fun. We’ll make up for it.”

Augie had some details of the operation with him. The package was small, but the scope of the organization a vast thing that swept like the smear of a giant hand across the city, poking fat fingers into Jersey and outlying sections.

I went over the sheets quickly, getting a synopsis picture of Bennett’s empire, estimating the take and the angles. I spent a couple hours making notes for my own reference, then stacked the sheets and put them back in the folder.

I handed them to Augie. “Anybody give you any trouble?”

“No. They might have wanted to, but no one did.”

“Good. Where’s the breakdown on it?”

“Mr. Batten has it in a safe place. It’s available anytime we need it.”

“Or want it,” I said.

“Or want it,” he repeated.

“I don’t suppose Wilse likes the idea.”

“He hasn’t much choice, has he, Deep?”

“None. You think he’s holding anything back?”

Augie shook his head. “He can’t afford to. Mr. Batten isn’t exactly the... violent type. He doesn’t want trouble. I think he’d prefer to wait you out.”

“He’s remembering something you’re forgetting, Augie.” He looked at me, puzzled. “All Bennett’s trinkets will come to me by law. Me or Batten. But you don’t inherit an empire of policy slips and horse rooms and whore houses and protection that goes with it. You take it. It’s up for grabs and the biggest one takes it. I got it now.”

“That’s right, Deep. All you have to do is keep it.”

I gave him a nasty grin and nodded. “It won’t be hard.”

At noontime Hymie’s deli around the corner sent up lunch. There was a paper on the tray turned to Roscoe Tate’s column of “Uptown Speaking” and I knew how it got there. The lead paragraph was the first step in building my coffin, the gentle whisper of hate, the feathery touch of fear.

When I read it I handed it to Cat. He grimaced and said, “Wise guy. You want to learn him one?”

“It’s bad enough he has to live with himself, Cat.”

“He always was a punk. Him and his chicken liver sandwiches.” He flicked his eyes up at me. “Saw him give a dog half a sandwich once when a hungry little-kid was standing right next to him.”

“Dogs got to eat too,” I said.

Both of them looked at me, their faces impassive. I said, “I’ll speak to the boy myself. That sticks and stones bit don’t go with me.”

Augie said, “Play it smart, Deep. You don’t want to fight the press.”

“I don’t? Why not? What do you think the press can do? So they call me names. They put on the heat. So what?”

“It’s not quite like the old days,” he insisted.

“I know, pal. It’s improved, if anything.”

Augie squirmed a little in his chair. “Tate doesn’t pull any punches. He’s not like... us. All his life he worked hard. He peddled papers and clerked in the office until he finally got his name in print. He sweated. He’s not an easy guy to push around. It’s been tried and he blew the top off things. You get him going and he gets pretty damn mad.”

“I’ve seen him mad before, feller. Remember, Cat?”

“When you lifted his poke?”

“Yeah.”

Cat chuckled at the memory. “Tried to shoot you. He grabbed a piece off Frankie Carlo and tried to shoot you. Boy, I can still see you flipping over that railing into Morgan’s basement.” He laughed again. “How come you never blasted him after that, Deep?”

I grunted and shoved back in my seat. “Hell, I had it coming, I guess. Couldn’t blame him. Anybody did it to me would’ve had a split head quick. Funny thing, when I slammed that door in his face he just laid there and cried like a damn baby. I could hear him bawling, then that stinking Sullivan picked him up and took him home. I bet his old lady browned out when he went home with a cop.”

Augie said, “You were lucky you didn’t get creamed.”

I laughed at him. “Hell, he didn’t even come close. Besides, he got his money back. Nine bucks and forty cents. It was the first thing he asked for when I saw him the other day.”

“You’re pressing your luck, Deep,” Augie told me.

“Yeah, well let’s go press it some more.”

“How?”

“We’re going to see Benny-from-Brooklyn and his buddie Dixie.”

“You’re crazy,” Augie said softly.

I nodded. “Natch.” I grinned at him. “But first let’s talk to our newspaper friend.”

Hymie was too busy at his counter to talk and told us that Roscoe Tate was probably still at home. I left Cat there to hold him in case he came in, walked two blocks down and turned the corner to where Roscoe still lived in a tenement apartment and posted Augie at the door while I went in.

Unlike the other buildings, this one smelled clean. It may have been Roscoe’s influence or simply a few bucks extra to the super, but there were no garbage cans, cartons or carriages in the hallway and nobody had swiped the hundred-watt bulb that hung overhead.

But it was still a tenement and it was still on The Street and for a second it hit me what a bunch of sentimental fools the whole bunch were. Bennett... the old club, his apartment a replica of the original place, Wilse Batten in modern quarters but still doing business on the old turf and Augie waiting around to inherit, Benny Mattick and Dixie stamping around as barons and on top of it all the ballot box boys at the call of the K.O. troupe. And off by himself, Roscoe Tate, taking it all down for his sheet, racking their system when he could right from their own ball park. Sentimental slob or not, at least he was the only smart one. He didn’t have to take any funny money or any crap from the angle boys and he had his fair share of loot and the kind of prestige that counted.

Roscoe lived on the ground floor and answered my knock himself. When he saw who it was he eyed me speculatively a moment, nodded and stepped back so I could come in.

Sentimentality didn’t exist at all. Roscoe had had enough slobbery in his earlier days not to want to prolong it in any way later. A studied hand had chosen the colors and the pieces and in every way his apartment reflected the touch of the bachelor and money well spent.

I said, “Nice place.”

“I like it.”

“That figures. You go it alone?”

“Most of the time.”

“Well, you never were the one to waste money on a broad.”

His shrug had a degree of contempt in it. “I still don’t. They’re free for me now like they used to be for you.”

“Good for you, kid,” I told him. His eyes flicked to mine a second, watched me with disgust, then softened to their normal ice quality and he waved to a chair and sat down himself.

“You didn’t come to talk girls, did you?” Tate asked me.

I shook my head. “Murder.”

“So?”

“Have you been working close to the fuzz?”

“The police are happy to get anything I give them. They reciprocate in kind. Whatever’s known about Bennett’s death, I know.”

“Don’t feel so big. I have an ear at the big door myself. What I hear is that the cops think Bennett was killed where he lay... inside his apartment. Now, is this the latest or is this a blind?”

Automatically, his fingers plucked a pencil from his pocket and he reached for a lined yellow pad on the table in front of him. “What are you thinking of, Deep?” He was the inquisitive reporter suddenly.

“You give me one answer and I’ll give you another.” His face had a shrewd expression and he nodded. “That’s the only way they see it. Why?”

“Because that’s not the way it happened.”

“Go on.”

“That small-caliber bullet didn’t kill Bennett right away. He saw who hit him, got up and started after him. He lasted long enough to get to the alley between Glover’s and Constantino’s. You know where?”

“Sure, that’s not far from Hymie’s delicatessen, only now it’s not Glover’s and Constantino’s. It’s Mort’s Dry Cleaning and Alverez the grocer.”

“So okay, you know where I mean.”

He made some marks on the paper. “It’s an interesting thought.”

“It sure is. It means the killer realized Bennett followed him and carried him all the way back to his apartment.”

Tate shook his head. “That would be stupid. What difference would it make to the killer if he wasn’t caught?”

“That, friend, is a catch question. I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know about the other bit.”

“Because a girl put me on to something. You know Tally Lee?”

Tate nodded, waiting.

“She said she wanted to spit on my corpse like she did on Bennett’s. It was a peculiar thought because she should never have had that opportunity to spit on Bennett. But she said it and she meant it. She wasn’t kidding. Then an admirer of mine turned up with a souvenir... Bennett’s watch. When he lay there dead a guy riffled his poke, lifted the watch and sold it. The kid who got it figured he was doing me a big one by bringing it around.”

Roscoe Tate was excited now. His fingers wrote, although his eyes never left my face. His mouth was animated, seeming to mouth every word as I said it. When I finished he said, “Damn, you know what this means?”

“Sure. One of the night people could have been there to see who carried Bennett back. They’re funny people, those. They live close to the shadows and see everything that goes on in every damn hole in the neighborhood. No matter where you go there’s always one of them around. Eyes all over the place. You know, they used to scare me back in the old days. No matter what time it was I could always imagine someone peering out through dirty curtains or someone curled up in a pile of garbage watching what I was doing. Man, I kicked through more trash piles and knocked over ash cans looking for night people than I have hairs on my head. I found them, too. When I did me and Bennett kicked the crap out of them so bad they never remembered a thing or even wanted to. After a while with us they wouldn’t watch. They’d just take off.”

“You carry a mad a long time, Deep.” He was grinning at me. The little jerk was happy to see me get worked up inside and I knew why.

I let my fists uncurl and grinned back at him. That much would make him sore and it was good enough for me.

He said, “Suppose I call this in,” and reached for the phone.

I waved at him and he hesitated. “Knock it off. This’ll keep a little while. The fuzz have their own stoolies. I’d like to stay a step ahead.”

“Then why give me this?”

“Because you have you own sources, kid. They’re not mine, but they’re important. I’ll trade you information as it comes. You keep me hot with whatever you get from your end or the fuzz.”

He smiled and nodded. “It sounds good, Deep. Stick your neck out all you want. I’ll be real glad to help you get yourself killed. Even to putting the stops on a good yarn.”

“You and Irish Helen ought to get together. You have mutual interests.”

For a moment he was quiet, then, “Don’t do anything to hurt her, Deep. You’ve always loused up everything and if you louse up her I’ll do anything I can to hose you.”

“Anything?”

“That’s right.”

I grunted and got up. “That’s what she said too. Fine friends I got.”

He didn’t say anything. He sat there and watched me go out. But at least we had a trader pact and I knew Tate would come across. You couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Bimmy’s White Rose Tavern was a nothing joint that catered almost solely to neighborhood traffic. It had a local reputation for having great pig’s knuckles and a good minor brand beer, and it was a rare time when trouble ever started along its bar. Bimmy saw to that. His three hundred pounds was a lot of meat to come up against. Bimmy wanted it quiet. It paid off that way. His back room was Benny Mattick’s office and the long green that came his way depended on just how quiet he kept it.

I left Cat outside and Augie and I went in to the bar. We served ourselves at the glass knuckle barrel and when I threw a buck on the counter Bimmy came down to make change.

I said, “Benny in back?”

“Who?” His little eyes reached out for me.

“You play it cute, Bimmy, and you’ll get this knuckle rammed down your throat.”

His finger slipped open the catch at the end of the bar and he raised the section and squeezed through. He still smiled the way he used to, his mouth pulling down at the comers, the scar under his chin widening with the grin.

Then he recognized Augie. Then me. The smile stayed fixed, but he didn’t move in at all. I said, “Be nice, Bimmy, and maybe I won’t shoot up anybody in your joint. Especially maybe not you. Oke?”

He nodded.

“I asked you something.”

“He’s back there.” I looked at him and waited, then his eyes shifted toward the closed doors at the end and he said, “Dixie and Lenny Sobel and some uptown gents are there too.”

“Thanks.”

We walked back and Augie played his part right and opened the door for me. He opened it fast and all the way so I was able to cover the room quickly with one look and spot the only two boys who were in any kind of a position to make a play. The pitch hit them too suddenly and they didn’t move and it was all mine. I stepped inside and Augie closed the door gently, leaning against it as if he had all the time in the world.

Dixie lay on the couch, his mouth and jaw strangely out of shape. His eyes saw me, but he didn’t move. Benny’s mouth was still swollen, hatred twisting it into a painful grimace. Behind Lenny Sobel Harold and Al stayed close together, only this time Al kept one hand in his pocket. The other three who turned around were uptown all right. Uptown and on the fashionable side where the doorman saluted and pedigree was stamped on the doorbell nameplates.

I said, “Everybody’s hurting around here today.”

“Be smart, Deep,” Benny told me. “What d’ya want?”

“Nothing, friend. I got it all. It’s what you want.” I looked at the three gentlemen from uptown and their faces flushed.”

“Go ahead, Deep.” Benny’s voice was raspy, his bloated lips softening the Red Hook accent.

“What made you think you could take over, friend?”

“Who else was...”

“You didn’t wait very long.”

“The organization wasn’t gonna come apart because you wasn’t handy, Deep. You...”

I interrupted again. “I don’t suppose you talked to Batten, did you?”

“So what’s he got? You don’t show, he got...”

“Maybe a million in enterprises, Benny-boy. But that’s not big time when you can walk out with the rest of the package, is it?”

For a short space it was still. One of the uptown boys sucked wetly on a cigar and coughed out blue smoke. None of them wanted to watch me at all. They were on the wrong end of the stick this time, drawn there by necessity, but there just the same, the chagrin of it drenched and basted with the stink of hypocrisy.

Lenny Sobel leaned back in his chair, a lifetime of experience in these matters showing in his face as he weighed and divided the possibilities and at last, arriving at a conclusion, he said to me alone, “Do you have anything to control... or to sell?”

My grin was as nasty as I could make it. “I could have.”

“But you don’t,” he smiled, then the smile went mean. “You haven’t figured it out all the way yet and you don’t have it.” When I didn’t answer he said, “You’ve run the prettiest bluff I’ve ever seen,” and with a barely perceptible movement of his head he said over his shoulder, “Get him.”

I hit Harold in the hip with one that shattered his pelvis and caught Al in the biceps before he could make a left-handed draw. For one unbelieving second the little hood looked at his ruined arm then let out a long sob and fainted.

When I cocked the .38 I grinned at Lenny and watched the color run out of his face. Right then he looked old. A beaten, terrified hood who had stuck around just one day too long and now he knew it. Words that he was trying to say wouldn’t come out and he seemed to choke on his tongue. Benny was watching, fascinated, his eyes wide and filmy looking. The three from uptown who had never been so close to death hadn’t time to have the horror of the moment register yet.

I said, “Stand up, Lenny.”

He choked again and tried to run and stumbled over his gunbearers. While he was still on his knees I put a hot one across his rump and he let out a hoarse yell.

“Just like the old days,” I said. “Right in the behind.”

When I laughed one of the gents at the table went into a hysterical giggle and didn’t stop until he was out of breath.

“You, Benny?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I pass. You’re crazy.”

“Could be. Dixie playing?”

“You hurt him bad, Deep. He’s popping every hour.”

“Clean this mess up. Then pass the word.”

“Sure, Deep.”

“Tell ’em to get in line. That whip is going to start cracking pretty quick.”

“Sure, Deep.”

“And any more meetings, you invite me in, buddy.”

“No... you got it wrong, Deep. These are... friends.”

“Friends?” I said. “Three big pillars of the church calling a stinking hood like you friend? Don’t be so damn dumb, Benny. I know these guys and their business and if you want to go on trying to give me the business you’re going to wind up with a tag on your toe.”

“Gee, Deep...”

“Shut up. Just get in line. That means way back. You never were a big one in the old days. Don’t try to get rough now, because you don’t even have a little idea how rough it can really get.”

They said nothing and watched me leave. At the bar I picked up my forty cents change that was still there and said to Bimmy, “My apologies, fat man. They asked for it.”

He didn’t answer.

I said, “No need to remind you that this is a family matter, is there?”

When he finished his clinical study of my face he shook his head. “Don’t worry. I know what to do.”

Outside Cat was pressed against the glass, his thin body tense and shivering. He kept rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand, looking nervously up and down the block. I answered him before he could ask it. “Relax. They just got chopped up a little bit.”

“Who’d you hit?”

“Lenny and his two boys.”

“You’re bringing it on fast, Deep. Fast!”

“Not really, Cat. I’m just slowing down the action a bit.”

“Okay, okay. Just let’s get out of here so they can blow their mad. Any nabs come in, we’re tagged quick.”

I laughed and we waved down a cab and got in. At the nearest IRT kiosk I told Augie to get the breakdown on all of Bennett’s enterprises, listing every employee he ever had or anybody he ever financed. We dropped him off, then rode up Amsterdam to 101st Street where Cat had a room, picked up some of his personal effects and went on to the apartment.

On the stoop I opened the door and handed him the keys. “Stay put until I call you. Lock up. I don’t want anybody roaming around here.”

“Where you going?”

“To see a doll, Cat.”

“Look, you better let me tag along. You forgetting those boys in from Philly?”

“Lew James and Morrie Reeves,” I said, “At the Westhampton under the names of Charlie and George Wagner.”

“Yeah. And they got contacts here.”

I laughed and opened the door back of me. “So have I, pal.”

Late evening was turning into early night when I came out of Maury’s hole-in-the-wall diner on the east side of Columbus Avenue. I walked down to 103rd Street, turned the corner and started east. And there was Mr. Sullivan, looking at me with that same look he had when he beat me to my back with a pair of cuffs so long ago.

He put a hand on my chest, the motion almost a friendly gesture to any stranger watching... unless he saw the stiffness in the fingers and noticed how the night stick stopped twirling.

“The trouble’s getting bigger, boy.”

“Oh?”

“It’s only going to end one way.”

“I know, Mr. Sullivan. It has to end only one way.”

“Always the smart one,” he said.

I nodded. “I have to be.”

His eyes were like glass. “The talk is getting bigger and stronger. I don’t like it.”

“What do you figure on doing about it, old-timer?”

“It’s my beat, boy. My beat. I’ve been here a long time. I’ve seen all the big ones, all the tough ones come and go. One day they’re here, the next day they’re lying sprawled in the gutter. A couple of them I put there myself.”

“You’re over retirement age, aren’t you, Mr. Sullivan?”

The red crept into his face slowly and his hand came away from my chest. “Don’t ask for it, Deep.”

“Sure, Mr. Sullivan,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll do like you say.”

I walked around him and all the while I could feel his eyes poking holes through my back. They were two holes, very close together, smaller going in than coming out, the way a pair of steel-jacketed slugs makes them. I shook off the feeling and walked on up to Grogan’s market, opened the door into pitch darkness, my hand going to my pocket for a book of matches.

I tore one out, struck it and held it up. But I was looking in the wrong direction. Whoever had cuddled in the doorway smashed something down across the back of my head and when I hit the floor with my face there wasn’t any feeling left at all.