The Deep

Chapter Eight

Unconsciousness was only a partial thing. All feeling was gone, but there was still the knowledge of what had happened. There were still sounds from outside, vehicle sounds and people sounds. There was knowledge that my mouth was open and the incredible sour dirt taste of floor filth was on my tongue. There were things stumbling over me, then the door opened and closed, smashing into my head in the motion. But at least it turned my mouth to one side.

Sensation flooded back on a tidal wave of pain. It ran up my legs and back, then centered in my neck at the base of the skull. I got to my knees, spat, and when I could, wiped my mouth with my sleeve. I spat again, stood up and felt the sticky wetness oozing down through my hair. It took a full minute of standing propped against the wall before I felt like moving and when I did my foot nudged the makeshift sap and it rolled across the floor. By the light of a match I could still see some of my hair stuck to the tacky side of the soda bottle and all I could think of was how lucky I had it when the thing didn’t break and slice me open like a peeled banana.

When I walked outside the street traffic was normal and there wasn’t anybody at all who seemed to have special eyes for the doorway. There was an old man looking in Grogan’s window and I tapped him on the arm.

“You see anybody come out of here, mister?”

He turned, looked at me, then past me to the doorway. His shrug was a universal gesture of the neighborhood. “I see nobody.”

I grunted, rubbed my hand across my head and let him see the blood on my fingers. “I just got cold cocked.”

His mouth tightened into a grimace and he said harshly, “Them damn kids. Damn kids, all of them. All the time they do that. Stay in the vestibule with the light out and hit you when you come in. Every night I hear. You shouldn’t go in without light being on. They killed old Julian Chaser like that. For thirty cents they got.” He spat disgustedly and walked away, his advice given and his contempt of humanity more firm than ever.

Then I swore under my breath, reached for my pocket and felt the wallet still there and the rod in the belt rig. I swore again as I slammed the door open and ran up the stairs, stumbling over the junk piled around the landings.

The door was open, the inside dark. I felt for the light, snapped it on and stood there waiting, the gun heavy in my fist. I sidled across the room, groped for the light in the bedroom and pulled it. I was careless as hell and if another gun was there waiting for me I was going to be all the way dead.

But there wasn’t any other gun. There was only Tally Lee lying there with her head smashed in, the blood on her face not yet coagulated. She wasn’t sprawled in the attitude of death; she lay in the relaxed position of sleep and she was lucky. She never knew what hit her.

I knew what hit her, though. I had tasted of it downstairs earlier.

For a few seconds I just stood there and took in the details. There was only one out of place and that was the throw rug kicked to one side almost violently when there hadn’t been but one violent act in the room.

One other detail was there and it was a couple of minutes before it made sense. When it did the throw rug made sense too and the back of my head began to pound again and I wanted to shoot somebody so bad I could taste it.

Beautiful Irish Helen’s coat was hung on a rack in a corner of the room.

I called to her quietly but there was no answer. I called again and parted the drapes that separated the living room from the others. The street light coming in the uncurtained windows outlined the few pieces of furniture. I saw a floor lamp to one side, found the switch and turned it.

Every motion I made was instinctive. My mind was a numb thing that wanted to see or know nothing, shocked with the knowledge that Helen, who lay there sprawled half off the couch with a thin line of blood running down her cheek, was dead too.

My fingers found a pulse, then my mind came back alive again and I lifted her to the couch. The crazy mad inside me made my hands shake and pulled my body so tight that every movement was almost awkward.

There was a lump under her hair and the skin was broken, but it was no more than that. I wet a towel, wiped her face and waited until a soft moan moved her mouth.

“Helen... Helen.”

She moved her head and her eyes squinted with agony. I held the towel against her and stroked her face until she opened her eyes. They were blank at first, then puzzled. I said, “What happened, honey?”

Memory of it returned slowly. I could see it come back, reaching for an answer. “Deep?”

I squeezed her face gently. “You’re okay, baby?”

Plaintively she said, “Deep?”

“Easy, sugar. It’s me.”

Then it hit her all at once and her eyes were great big things alive with terror and before she could scream I put my hand over her mouth and held her head close to me.

When it passed I looked down at her. “What happened?”

Her tongue wet her lips. “The door... I answered the door. I thought it was... you.” Her eyes were wide, staring at me.

“It wasn’t me, baby.”

“When I took the lock off... it flew open. I fell down... and then something...” she sucked in a breath jerkily, “...Deep, what happened?”

“You got slammed on the head, kid.”

“But who...”

“I don’t know. He got me too.”

“Deep...” She reached up and touched my face. “What happened to... Tally?”

“She’s dead, Helen.”

“No!” She bit into her lower lip to hold back a cry, her eyes filling up. Then she could hold it no longer and let it all come out of her in huge, gasping sobs that racked her whole body and I held her tightly until it passed.

I wiped her face again and sat her upright, and when I knew she was thinking clearly again I said, “Now, listen, kid. Can you remember anything about him at all?”

She shook her head. “Only... what I told you.”

“You didn’t see his face? How was he dressed?”

“No. It happened... too fast.”

“Did he talk?”

“No. I... don’t know. No, he didn’t say anything.” She frowned at me and glanced around the room. “Did you... bring me here?”

“Not me. He did,” I told her. “He wanted Tally. He dragged you in here and killed Tally.”

A shudder ran through her body and she stiffened under my hands. “But why, Deep... why?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll find out though.”

“What will we do?” Her voice caught in her throat.

“Call in the blues, kid. There’s nothing else to do.”

“But Tally...”

“She was important to somebody. Now she’s dead. Look, are you all right? Can I ask you things?”

“I’m... all right.”

“Good. Now don’t make any mistakes. We haven’t much time. Tell me what happened since you got back here.”

She licked at her lips and brushed her hair back from her face. Even though she was sitting on the ragged edge of hysteria she managed to stay on top of it all the way. She let the tautness ease out of her body, then she clasped her hands in her lap and stared at the floor, thinking back.

“The doctor was here then. He said she was all right and gave her something. A... sedative, I think. Mrs. Gleason from next door... that’s the one who stayed with her... went back as long as I was here. I fed her when she woke up and...”

“She say anything?”

“Nothing... special. She was still pretty sick. I gave her another capsule the doctor left and sat with her a while.” She paused and squeezed her hands. “Deep...”

“Yeah?”

“She was scared. Even when she was asleep she was scared. She tried to scream in her sleep and couldn’t.”

“Go on.”

“She said your name. She said Bennett’s name too, but yours was the first.”

“Repeat it.”

“It... wasn’t coherent.”

“Just tell me. Let me fill in the blank spaces.”

“It was... about how she could fix everything. She kept saying she’d tell somebody and he’d do it, or he’d know what to do. Then she’d try to scream. She’d say your name, then Bennett’s.”

I studied it a minute, then shook my head. “It doesn’t add yet.”

“Deep... did she die... because of you?”

I covered her hands with my own, feeling my face go tight at the question. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t lie, Deep.”

“I’d never lie to you, kitten.”

“Did she then?”

“I don’t think so. Not directly, anyway. Somehow I think she would have gotten it whether I was here or not.”

“What will we do, Deep?”

“Like I said, call the cops.”

“What will happen to you then?”

“I’m not scared of any cops, kid. You should know that.”

“Then call them.”

“Sure, kitten,” I said. Her eyes were hard again, patiently waiting to see what would happen. I helped her up, took her out past what had been Tally into the kitchen, holding her so she couldn’t see what was on the bed, then went to the phone.

The desk said a car would be right along and not to touch anything. I said sure and hung up the receiver. I went back to the bedroom and found the check I had pinned to Tally’s pillow on the dresser. I tore it up and flushed the pieces down the toilet. It was something she couldn’t use any more now.

Then I slid the .38 off my belt, shoved it down under a pile of slop in the garbage pail, hauled the dumbwaiter up, stuck the pail on it and sent it down again. Then I went into the living room with Irish and waited.

Sergeant Ken Hurd had been an uptown kid himself. His face had been chopped up long ago by knuckles and clubs and there was no way at all to tell what he was thinking. His eyes were a cold light blue totally devoid of expression, but somehow, behind it all, you could sense the terrible hate he had. There were only two kinds of people to him, those who broke the law and those who enforced it. The good didn’t matter. Usually they were just stumbling blocks to catching the other kind. And those were the ones he hated with a fine, thriving hate.

He had a big rep, this one. You talked soft and walked quiet when he was there. When he asked you answered or he was likely to smile a little bit and that was the worst part because there was something implied in the smile that meant bleeding trouble then or later and he really didn’t care which.

They let Hurd work where he wanted and he picked the hardest end of town. He liked The Street because he ran an operation without complaints because if you complained it would be worse for you the second time around. Ken Hurd was a deadly cop.

And now he was watching me.

He let me talk, took it all down, watched me some more with an air of patience as if he were waiting for something, then let Helen give her story. Just as she finished Mr. Sullivan came in with Augie and Cat and the worms started crawling around inside me.

Sullivan said, “Here they are, Sergeant.”

Cat took one look at the body on the bed and sucked in his breath with a whistle. Hurd said, “Know her?” and Cat nodded.

“Talk up,” Hurd said softly.

For a second Cat went as cold as he was, then shrugged and said, “Tally Lee. Good kid. I knew her all my life. What happened?”

Augie volunteered the same information himself, then stood there waiting.

On the other side of the bed the Medical Examiner finished his examination, snapped his bag shut and flipped the sheet up over the body.

Hurd said, “What does it look like?”

“No more than an hour ago. That soda bottle’s the weapon, all right. Well make it positive later, of course, but there’s no doubt about it as far as I’m concerned.” He nodded toward me then, “If it got him as well, and we’ll know by the hair comparison tests, you’ll have a time hanging it on him.”

“You’re sure he was out?” Hurd asked him.

In a typical manner the doctor fingered the welt on my head as he went by. “He was out, all right. Of course, in a case like this you can always try for a self-inflicted bruise.”

“Thanks,” I told him.

“No trouble,” he smiled.

The plain-clothes man who had been given the bottle came in frowning, the bottle impaled on a wooden dowel rod. He was shaking his head and said, “No prints at all. Everything’s messed up. It’s possible there may be something under the blood stains, but we’ll have to let the lab finish with that first.”

“Okay,” Hurd told him. “Pack it in.” Then he turned to Mr. Sullivan and said, “What about these two?”

“They were in The Pelican bar. Lew Bucks said they had been there for three hours and Grady the waiter backed him up.”

Without changing expression Augie said, “We can go then?”

Hurd’s snaky eyes touched his, moved to Cat, then took in Helen and me. “You’ll go. All of you can go.” We knew what he meant, but to be sure he threw in, “with me.”

“What for?” I asked him.

His smile was all for me now. “For fun, Deep. I got news of a little rumble down the block. Nobody seemed to have been hurt, but there were blood stains in the back room of Bimmy’s Tavern and some slugs stuck in the wall. It seems like you three had been seen going in there just before it all happened.”

“Oh?”

“So I think it’d all be nice if we went over to the Green House where we can make an issue out of it.”

Cat went a little white around the mouth and his eyes narrowed. I knew what he was thinking, shook my head when he glanced at me with a look that said let it ride. Augie caught the exchange and said nothing.

They called the precinct station the “Green House.” The name had come down from a generation ago and still stuck, but it was only this one precinct that had the name. It meant there was something special about this place and there was. To those on the street outside it was like the Bastille was to some and the Tower of London to others. It was a tough house in a tough place and things went on inside there that weren’t pretty to think about and even worse to be a part of. Somebody once said they broke more murder cases out of that building than any six others like it in the city and you knew they weren’t wrong.

At eight-thirty I was in the Green House again after a long time and when I looked around all I could think of was that the fixtures had been changed a little but the smell was still the same. It stank of cigars, wet clothes and man-sweat held fast in an atmosphere gray with cigarette smoke.

Outside in the reception room they left Helen, Cat and Augie to sit and think and wait. Cat was sweating, dragging hard on a smoke. Augie was his impeccable self, seemingly unworried, but nevertheless concerned. It was Helen who had acted strangely. She was one bundle of fury well contained and if the slobs had any sense they would have cut her out of it in a hurry. Any fuzz with time in grade should have been able to spot an innocent bystander without too much trouble and to throw one like Helen in with a rat pack was plain asking for it. So hell, let Hurd get his tail eaten out later. He should know.

But Hurd wasn’t the kind to care. He and the other three stood around watching me and I knew what the pitch was. I’d go out soft and somebody else would break without trouble.

I said, “You going to book me in?”

“In time maybe.” Hurd took off his jacket and folded it, then laid it across the back of a chair. He was a big guy, all right, heavy across the shoulders and in the arms. The meanness stood out in the cords of his neck and danced in his eyes. The others just watched, hoping I’d try to break out. It was a pretty old story.

“You’re being stupid,” I said.

“Okay, clown, tell me how.” He loosened his tie and cuffs and smiled at me.

“I’m not booked in,” I said. “You have no statement going for you. On top, I’m clean.”

“Someplace you’re not so clean. Someplace you got to be on the books, Deep. That’s what I’d like to know. Where? Where did you come from, Deep?”

“Drop dead,” I said.

He caught me with one big meathook and launched me off my chair onto the floor and when I shook the tears out of my eyes I stood up, set the chair back and sat down.

“What do you think about that, Deep?”

This time I smiled. I shouldn’t have felt like that, but I was getting that crawly feeling again like I was going to explode and like with him, when I smiled, it showed. It was big and plain and real and I said, “Do it one more time, Hurd, and all of you will have to go on me, but buddy, you’ll go hard. If I don’t make it here there will be another time and another place. Keep your hands off.”

“Threats, Deep?”

“Just telling you, buddy.”

“So tell some more. Like about the blood in Bimmy’s place.”

“Suppose he tells you. It’s his joint.”

“Bimmy is scared. He isn’t talkative.”

“Aren’t they all.”

Hurd tipped the light up so I got it in the face a little better. “We’ll find somebody who saw who was in the back room.”

“Go ahead. Then get a complaint signed by them.”

“You seem to know how it works.”

“I’ve been in these places before,” I said.

“You’re right. We even have a record of the times. Would you like to see the records?”

“The hell with ’em. Arrests aren’t convictions.”

“You’re playing it too hard, Deep.”

“Is there a better way?”

“I hear you carry a gun.”

“You shook me down. Did I have one?”

“No, but I saw your belt out of shape like it happens when you wear a gun in a holster. Since when does a hood like you get so fancy as to wear it there?”

When I didn’t answer a throaty voice from the back said, “The old story is he wore a cop’s gun, Sergeant. He took it from a plain clothes man some of them downed.”

Hurd played it cute. “Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot. He’s a cop fighter. Like he just told me about. Is that right, Deep?”

I shrugged. Let him sound off.

“But to get back... what about you? You after the guy who bumped your buddy?”

“He’d be nice to meet,” I said.

“Maybe you know who he is.”

“Not yet.”

“Supposing you find out?”

“I’ll be a good citizen. I’ll call the police.”

“You may not get the chance. We’ve picked up some more rumors that make you look like a bad bet. You aren’t liked.”

“I heard that too. I ought to call for police protection.”

Hurd moved in close, smiling again. “You’re a real wise guy, aren’t you, Deep? You got a big mouth.”

I saw it coming and rolled with it just enough. I came up off the floor with my right going out and caught Hurd in the nose and the blood went all over both of us. Before the others could get in he landed two in my stomach while he got two for himself in the kisser and for five seconds it was mine, all mine.

The sap across the back of my head made it his and when I kissed the cold stone floor of the room with the flat of my face there was a wild sound of noise in my ears. I was still face down when I came to and Hurd was sitting in the chair he had had me in with a doctor taking stitches in his face. Over by the door Wilson Batten was sounding like a lawyer, waving a paper around while the uniformed cop tried to talk him quiet.

I got up slowly, grinned at Hurd and turned it off when I looked at Batten. I said, “It damn well took you long enough to get here.”

Hurd swore softly. I wiped the dirt off my face and walked over to him. “I called Batten before I called you, friend. I figured somebody would make a try for my skin.”

“Shut up and get out of here.”

“The other three go with me.”

Batten said, “They’re all right, Deep. They can leave. I’ll have a paper on them in ten minutes otherwise.”

The doctor finished with Hurd’s mouth, gave him a prescription to fill that he crumpled up and tossed on the floor and picked up his tools. I let out a nasty laugh and said, “I told you not to play it tough, Hurd. Somebody has to take you.”

“Out, punk. There’ll be other times.”

“Sure.” I wiped my clothes off, found my hat on a chair by the door and nodded for Batten. He let me go ahead of him out to the desk and behind me Hurd stayed close.

Cat’s eyes went wide when he saw Hurd’s face. Augie, as usual, was impassive. But it was Helen who seemed to catch the whole thing in one swift glance. Intuitively, she knew what had happened and her emotions played hell with her promise. She was all the way on my side. Big, beautiful Irish Helen had proud eyes for me and a funny little grin that said, Damn, man, let’s go.

Wilson Batten waited until we were on the sidewalk outside the Green House before he gave me a light-lipped, “You’re absolutely nuts, Deep.”

“Not me, Wilse.”

“You don’t tear into anybody like Hurd.”

“You don’t play tough with me, either. Somebody had to tell him.”

“All right, but if he wanted to make something stick tonight he could damn well have done it. Instead he played it smart and let you run so he’d have more fun putting the heat on. Listen, Deep, Hurd isn’t any beat cop. He’s got his own special brand of hatred for guys like you and now you’re on his list. That’s almost like being dead.”

“You were lucky, Deep,” Cat said.

Augie broke into a smile for the first time. “Not him... us. We would have had our turn next.”

“See what I saved you, Helen?”

Her hand touched my arm. “Thanks.” Her eyes shadowed somewhat. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not me, kid.”

“Hell,” Cat said, “when this gets noised around about him bracing Hurd there won’t be a punk in the neighborhood who’ll step loud around us.”

I felt Helen squeezing my arm again, a nervous, impatient motion. Her voice was soft when she said, “Deep... does it have to be like... this?”

“I can’t think of any other way, kitten. Can you?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “I guess not.”

“It’s an easy way of seeing me knocked off, if you remember.”

“I think I’d rather forget.”

Batten stepped out in the gutter and waved toward the far end of the street trying to flag a taxi. “Then you’d better start forgetting by getting out of here.”

Automatically, I felt my back pocket, then patted my coat. I said, “I left my wallet back there.”

Batten stepped back on the curb. “I’ll go get it.”

I stopped him right there. “My pleasure,” I said. “They don’t bother me at all in there. Let me have my fun.”

The desk sergeant frowned when I told him where my wallet probably was and sent a uniformed cop to go look for it. I half followed him down the hall and while he went the rest of the way I knocked on Hurd’s door, opened it and stepped inside. He threw a couple aspirins down his throat, washed them down with a glass of water and sat back as if he had never seen me before and waited to see what I had to say. I walked to his desk, took the pen from its holder, wrote a number down on his desk pad and said, “Buddy, I don’t want anybody on my back at all. In this town there are connections to be had and these I got, so do us both a big favor and call that number. But in case you’re feeling salty about that rap in the teeth, I’ll let you get that off your chest anytime.”

His eyes went to the pad, went colder still and when they looked back at me were even a paler blue than before, a light, deadly blue that was almost hypnotic with hate.

“You’re really trying for big time, aren’t you?”

“Never start at the bottom. There’s nothing like the catbird’s seat.”

“I’ll remember,” he said, his face blank.

I said, “How far are you going after Irish?”

Hurd scowled and stared at me.

“Helen Tate,” I told him.

He leaned forward on the desk, his arms bulging under his shirt. He still hadn’t relaxed and I could almost smell the anticipation he had of getting me alone. “You like her, Deep?”

“She’s an okay broad as far as I know. She’s not involved with anything.”

Hurd’s grin came back again, slow and mean. “Anybody fooling around with Lenny Sobel or Bennett is involved with everything.”

“So they were kids together.”

“They were more than that together. They were real clubby, big man. Bennett angeled a show for her twice.”

“He got his loot back. They made plenty, I hear.”

“How was he repaid... in cash? Now there’s the rub. It might even be something to think about. Maybe all this time you’ve carried the big torch for that fluff and when you came back you had to knock your old buddy off to pick up the pieces with her. Interesting.”

I nodded. “But unoriginal. You get no needle in me with ideas like that.”

“At least it’s a starting point.” His grin showed the edges of his teeth. “Come back again and we’ll talk some more,” he told me. “In fact, I may get out an invitation anytime. I’m making you my pet project, Deep.”

“You do that.”

“I will,” he agreed.

“Don’t forget to call,” I said, pointing to his notepad.

“I don’t forget,” he told me.

I left, picked up my wallet from the cop, said thanks and went back to where Wilse had whistled down a cab. We dropped him off first, left Cat and Augie at my new apartment and then I gave Tally Lee’s address.

Helen tightened when I said it, her head swiveling around to look at me. “Why there?”

“To pick up my gun. I left it under a pile of garbage,” I told her.

We covered another two blocks before she spoke again. Her voice had that strange new note once more that was hard to fathom.

“Deep...”

“What.”

“Why don’t you just leave it there?”

“Leave what?”

A frown creased her forehead. “Leave that damn gun in the garbage where it belongs.”

“You really want me to die fast, don’t you?”

She held it back a moment, but that was all. Her eyes got wet and she bit into her lip, then turned her head away with a jerk. “Damn you,” she said.

“Helen...”

She cut me off fast. “Forget I asked. Shoot somebody. Play it big like you always did. Just remember one thing, there will never be any excuse for you to shoot anybody. You kill a man and the police will kill you. If they don’t a jury will.”

I didn’t let her see my grin. “Your sudden concern is touching,” I said gently.

Helen sniffed, shook her head with annoyance and turned back to me. She was all beautiful again, big and beautiful with ebony hair and a rich, hungry mouth. She smiled and said, “You know now... it isn’t so sudden, Deep. It’s just that it’s all come back after a long time.”

I tasted her then, felt the lush warmth of her and held her so tightly she moaned quietly through the kiss, becoming hungrier, searching and saying my name over and over again.

Evidently the cabbie was a romantic. He waited until we realized that we were there, smiling at us in the rear view mirror. I gave him a fin and said to keep the change and he smiled again and said something in Spanish that sounded like sage advice.

We were on the opposite side of the street from Tally Lee’s place and except for the single patrolman in front of the building you wouldn’t have known that anything at all had happened there. New York didn’t concern itself with the dead very long.

While Helen went into the drugstore a half block down, I crossed over, went through the basement of the building where Shriner Moe held Little Augie off during prohibition, climbed the fence in the back and found the garbage pail still on the dumbwaiter. I wiped the gun clean, put it back where it belonged and rerouted through the garbage to where Helen waited.

The drugstore was as good a place as any to call the apartment and when Cat answered I said, “You know where Dixie would be holed up?”

“Probably at the Merced Hotel. You want me to find out?”

“Do that, then stay on his tail. Keep Augie at the apartment and call in to him until I make contact. You got that?”

“Solid, man.”

“Okay, put Augie on.”

The phone changed hands and he said, “Go ahead, Deep.”

“Augie, did Batten give you all of Bennett’s records?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Are you sure Batten handed over everything?”

Without hesitating he said, “You can never be sure of Batten, but I don’t think he’d play cagey with you. Those records I gave you were pretty complete. Bennett was mighty legal and always scared to death he’d fall on an income tax charge or something, so what he had on paper couldn’t be kicked around.”

“That’s still not what I mean.”

“Maybe you’d better spell it out, Deep.”

“Okay. Like you know who was back there in Bimmy’s place. They were out of Bennett’s class but still in his crowd. Like Hugh Peddle and the others. Bennett had a long rope.”

It took a few seconds before he answered, then: “Deep, it’s one of those things nobody talks about, you know?”

“Go on.”

“Never take it away from him, Bennett was foxy. Suppose he had a private file on the big ones. It wouldn’t have to be much at all, just enough to tag that person and break him.”

“It could fit. It could be what they were hinting at.”

“I’ve often thought about it,” Augie said. “Bennett never talked though. He called and somebody jumped.”

“Did Batten?”

“Hell, Deep, Bennett never messed with the little ones. Those he could buy. What he had would be a power package.”

“It would fit behind the refrigerator?”

He grunted, remembering back. “Sure.”

“Okay. Go through the apartment. Hit every place you can and see what you come up with. The fuzz shook it down and it’s possible that the killer did too, but one thing is sure... nobody found anything or there would be a new top man calling signals. Cat and I will be calling in occasionally so stay close to the phones.”

“Right. Will you need help?”

“Not this time.”

“You bracing somebody?”

“In a manner of speaking. It won’t take much.”

“All right. I don’t suppose I have to remind you about Lew James and Morrie Reeves. Cat is all shook at you traveling alone even if he doesn’t mention it.”

“I know the route, kid,” I reminded him.

“Sure you do. Just keep it cool.”

I told him I would and hung up.

Helen was watching me through the glass of the booth and when I pulled the door open she said, “You won’t go alone, Deep.”

I leaned over and kissed her. She was so big I didn’t have to lean far at all and even — with that brief touch I could feel the fire start again. “I never expected to, Irish,” I said.