The Deep

Chapter Nine

Hugh Peddle wasn’t hard to find. His ready availability to any and all had brought him to the top politically and it was his own personal order that he was ready to see friend or enemy anytime. This time he was in Walter Lico’s Blue Pheasant Inn just off Broadway in midtown Manhattan having a late supper with Benny-from-Brooklyn. Their table was nearly in the middle of the room, surrounded by dozens of others, all filled, and as safe a place to talk business as any. If the muscle boys were around they must have had their backs to me because I saw neither.

Without being asked I pulled an empty chair out for Helen, seated her and took the other.

Their reaction was beautifully casual and unimportant, nothing showing that might draw a curious eye from another table. An almost-friendly nod, a courteous finger wave to a waiter for a menu, a simple ordering of two more coffees and then Hugh Peddle said, “Are you prepared to take me up on my offer?”

Benny looked up slowly, but I had seen that look before and knew he wasn’t in on the deal Hugh had offered me.

I said, “If I took it, it would be at twice the price.”

He didn’t hesitate. “Well?”

“I got something else to do first.”

Benny reached over and tapped the back of my hand. “Deep, the next thing you got to do is drop dead. You’re just not big enough to set up shop around here.”

“You got a short memory, kid. You forgot already what happened in Bimmy’s.”

Benny’s face turned wooden.

“I could do it right now all over again and if you don’t think so, just keep talking like that.”

He licked his lips without wetting them. “You’re crazy,” he said almost to himself.

The waiter came then, put down our coffee and left. I said, “Peddle... what did Bennett have on you?”

His drink stopped halfway to his mouth. “What are you getting at?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Let’s say this, Bennet operated with a sharp eye. He knew who had potential and who didn’t and the ones who showed promise he went after until he had something big over their heads and held it until it could be useful to him.”

Peddle shrugged and said nothing. Benny Mattick glowered, hunching his shoulders under his jacket.

“What was it he had on you, Councilman?”

“I don’t like guessing games.”

“Let’s not kid each other. I knew Bennett when. I knew him like a book, inside and out and he knew me the same way. Twenty-five years ago we laid out a plan of operation and that was the way it would be. It was a long-range plan that was damned adult thinking and Bennett stuck to every detail of it from that day on. We knew where we were going then.”

Hugh Peddle smiled grimly and sipped his drink. “If you know so much, then you hold the cards.” The grin became a chuckle. “But there are no cards, otherwise you’d show them.”

I shook my head. “Not yet, Hugh. This game just started. The stakes aren’t high enough yet. There’s a lot of bidding to do.”

His grin was a plain sneer now. He was thinking ahead and thought he had me. “I think you’ve cut into the wrong game, Deep. I can’t figure you for a threat at all.”

“No? Well somebody does. Enough to get a couple of imports to knock me off.”

“So?” Hugh’s face grimaced with pleasure, his fat creasing around his eyes. “It sounds like a good idea. You think it was my doing?”

“No,” I said. “Not you. I don’t think you’d bother when you have your own boys handy.” I glanced over at Benny. “Now you take buddy Mattick there, he might think of it.”

Benny jerked and looked about him almost wildly.

“But I don’t think he did either. He knows what would happen. I’m no slob to leave myself uncovered. If they got me then Benny would be the first to go afterwards and he knows it. In fact, it would do Benny good to make sure I stay alive.”

Hugh’s eyes squinted and searched my face. He put down his drink and leaned across the table. “Tell me, Deep... where did you come from?”

“Far away from you, Councilman.”

“What are you there?”

It seemed that the whole room was quiet when it really wasn’t. Benny was looking at me and beside me, Helen was motionless, watching me, waiting.

I grinned. “Big.”

“So big that if you get killed your troops’ll come in shooting, is that it?”

Helen’s hand on my arm tightened involuntarily. “That, friend,” I said, “is exactly it. This is my own private pet project, but they’re all standing by in case I get in a bind.” I let out a sharp laugh as I watched his face. He knew it wasn’t a bluff. He knew what I said would happen and he let it roll around in his mind until he had the pieces in place.

“You don’t have gang wars any more, Deep.”

“No?”

Hugh’s mouth tightened into a lipless snarl. “Let me tell you something, Deep... you know what happened to Dutch Schultz? Sure you do. The mob hit him because he endangered their operation. If they hadn’t, the cops would have gone all out to wipe out the mob. It’s still like that, see? Maybe where you come from they don’t play like that, but if you stick your neck out and get it chopped off there’s going to be a lot of organizational work done on your bunch from both ends of the stick. Brother, you’re not that big. You don’t take cops and...” he paused, reaching for the word, then, “... the rest without losing. Believe me, if you were that big, Deep, I would have heard about you. Everybody would have heard about you. You don’t stay hidden and stay that big. Nobody does.”

I let him finish, then added, “Let’s say nobody else. Just me. I’m the exception.”

It was my tone that stopped him. His eyes couldn’t hold on my face any longer and to take the edge off he reached for his drink. Benny sat there with the cords in his neck showing, the hate so fierce inside him you could almost smell it.

“And you’re wrong, Hugh. If I get hit, you’ll fall. All the way. You’ll take the big six-foot fall, you know what I mean?”

He finished his drink and signaled for another. When it came, he tasted it, put it down and said, “You could be worse than Bennett.”

“What did he have on you, Councilman?”

“Why, nothing. Nothing at all.”

I laughed again, softly. “I’m going to find out, buddy. You see, Bennett didn’t die for nothing. He was a threat. He had a lot of people by the throat and every one of them was the wrong kind to have. They couldn’t move in because what he had was too big to buck, but one day he got to be too big of a threat and somebody took the chance anyway and knocked him off. Trouble was, whatever Bennett held over his head the killer didn’t get and laying around someplace is a large package of trouble.”

“You think so?” Peddle said noncommittally.

I nodded gravely and grinned. “I think so.”

“But if you knew you’d have it now and be making a deal.”

“Maybe. But I know this, Councilman. I’m going to find it.”

“Oh?”

“That’s right. You know why? Because nobody ever knew Bennett like I knew him. For me only he left a clue someplace... somewhere he’d be certain I’d come across it and could take up where he left off just like we said we’d do twenty-five years ago. Pretty soon now I’m going to remember what that vital piece of information was and then I’ll have it and you guys’ll be sweating your piles out. Meanwhile every one of you are going to stand pat. You’re going to be hurting like crazy and the first one out of line gets shot a little bit. You heard what happened in Bimmy’s so if you think I won’t throw a slug into somebody you’re nuts, pal, plain nuts.”

Hugh’s voice had gone hoarse. “What do you want from me?”

I stood up and pulled Helen’s chair back. “Bennett’s killer,” I said. “Maybe you can help find him. You’re the big political wheel with a finger in every pie. Thanks for the coffee.”

When we walked away I could feel their eyes follow me. As we neared the door I saw Hugh’s two gunbearers. They were watching me too, so I nodded politely and since we were more or less all in the same game and this wasn’t the time or place for their special services, they nodded back knowing we both understood the situation like old pros and there were no hard feelings.

Before we left I called Augie. Cat had phoned in a few minutes earlier and said Dixie was in his room at the Merced and he’d stick with him until I got there. So far Augie hadn’t come up with anything but was still looking. I told him to keep at it until we were sure the place was clean and stay there until I got in.

It was difficult to know what Helen was thinking. The disapproval of anything I did was well hidden; the concern I knew she felt didn’t show at all. It was as if she were lost in the middle of some remote problem, studying it for a way out. She took my arm, held herself close to me and when I glanced at her, smiled. I squeezed her arm under mine, waved a taxi over and told him to take us to the Merced.

Dixie was a pale lump stretched out on the couch. His mouth was still a swollen mass and all that seemed alive were his eyes. He was in slacks and a T-shirt, his eyes red-rimmed and wild-looking, yet showing the wily cunning of a mainliner with a fresh hole. He lay there, his fingers working as if they were caressing the haft of a shiv and he divided each moment between Cat and me, thinking who he wanted to kill first.

I said, “You want to talk, Dixie?”

“Hop it.”

“How would you like for me to throw a gag in your mouth and shackle you to a water pipe up here for three-four days? You think I won’t, then button up. Whatever I want to know you’ll tell me, maybe even tomorrow.”

The sweat started on his lip and his mouth seemed to quiver with the thought.

“How often you shooting up now, kiddo? Every three hours?” I picked his arm up and looked at it. He was pin-cushioned all the way up on both arms to actual scarification and probably popped in his legs now. “Think you can take a twenty-four hour dry run?”

His head rolled on the cushion and he stared at me. “I don’t know nothin’.” His words came out almost muffled by his swollen mouth.

“Let’s find out.”

Dixie moved his bony shoulders in a shrug. “So go ahead, big man,” he said. “Take over.”

“Bennett,” I said.

“What about him? You think I bumped him, you’re nuts. The cops already worked me over good. They tried to nail me. Batten got me clear.”

“Not with me he didn’t.”

Something in my voice got to Dixie. He jerked upright and swung his feet to the floor and glared at me. “You lookit, Deep, I...”

“Shut up, Dixie. You just answer me.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded.

“The night Bennett was killed you were down at the liquor store picking up a case of booze, right?”

“Scotch,” he nodded.

“Why? Bennett wasn’t a big drinker.”

“He had a party coming on, that’s why!”

“When?”

“How would I know? He didn’t tell me that. He was all hopped up about something, that’s all I know.”

“Okay, so you went down and got the Scotch. Keep going.”

Dixie glanced nervously from Cat to me and shook his head. He shrugged again and wiped at his mouth. “What’s to tell? So he calls up and says to bring up a case of rye too.”

“Which you did,” I reminded him, “in time to find his body.”

He coughed, then croaked, “I didn’t bump him. I was there all the time! The guy in the store, he...”

“I know what he said. He covered it okay. Good alibi. He’s a good citizen with nothing down on him. Votes regular, sits jury duty, attends P.T.A. So you’re clean.”

“Well what do ya want with me? Jeez, I didn’t...”

“Buddy,” I told him, “if it were you who hit Bennett I would’ve read the signs. So would everybody else.”

His eyes were scared stiff now. He didn’t see what I was driving at but knew something was coming and all he wanted was out.

I said, “How long were you in the liquor store, Dixie?”

He got it out without thinking first. “Hell, two hours. Sure, all that time! The guy can tell ya that. Hell, we watched TV and chewed it that long. I’m clean. Deep, you can’t...”

“That’s a long time to pick up two cases of liquor, kid. Ten minutes to the store either way, two hours there... that makes almost two and a half hours away from the house. A pretty long time to run an errand. Bennett didn’t go for that kind of crap. When he said to do something he meant like now.”

Dixie’s lips were too dry to lick. “What you gettin’ at?”

“Easy, kid. You could have been part of a setup. The word goes out to stay clear of Bennett’s place during a certain time... or if you get clear to make a call to let somebody know... and then blooie, Bennett catches it and you’re clean. Almost.”

He didn’t like that last word.

“The cops figure like that and tie it in and you’ll be doing the turkey act downtown. Cold turkey. Think you could take it?”

“Deep... jeez! Look, you know I wouldn’t... hell, Bennett and me, we was friends. You know, friends!” He was perched on the very edge of the bed shaking like a scared bird.

“Why’d you stay away so long, Dixie?”

He didn’t try to lie out of it. He knew it wouldn’t have gone over so he simply made a gesture with his shoulders and looked back up at me.

“I needed a blast, that’s why! You know Bennett. He wouldn’t let nobody near him if they was carrying a package. I couldn’t stash nothing in his place either. I tried it once and that damned dummy housekeeper found it and Bennett beat hell outa me for figuring I could pull it off. He kept me up there so long I was going nuts. I hadda blast, so when he told me to get down for the booze I took off. I didn’t have no stuff up here and called in for it from the liquor store. That punky stiff who brought the stuff took all that time to get over there. I damned near died. That’s why I had to sit and watch TV. The guy in the store thought I just had a cold and fed me hot lemonade and aspirin and wouldn’t let me go outside until I felt better. Hell, I was all over sweat and running off and when that stiff waltzes in with the junk I could hardly hold it. I let off in the men’s room, gave the hype and the other stuff back to the stiff and he took off. So I felt better and that jerk thought it was the lemonade and the aspirins. He closed up shop and even helped me back to the apartment.”

Dixie’s face twisted in a grimace, not knowing what I’d make of it. “That all?”

“Sure. The cops come, they shook me down, but by then I called Batten and we got squared away.”

“With your record it’s a wonder they didn’t hold you over.”

“I was lucky. Wilse got there fast. Some strings got pulled someplace maybe. It happened faster than I thought it would. I was pretty damned lucky.”

“See if it holds.”

“What do ya want, Deep? I told ya, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it!”

“There’s something that’s been bothering me.”

“Well, say it.”

“When I came in the club it was you and Benny up there. He was reaching for the catbird seat. Where did you come in?”

The tension was too much for him. He took a deep breath, shuddered and flopped back on the couch. “I was backin’ him,” he said.

“He need it?”

“Benny don’t take chances.”

“So you and the shiv go along. It was like with you and Bennett.”

“Why not?”

“How come Benny-from-Brooklyn wanted to manage?”

“He never told me nothin’ and I didn’t ask. With me it’s for loot and nothin’ else.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Cat?”

Cat shook his head. “That’s the way I got it too, Deep.”

“Benny ever say anything to you?”

Cat’s grin was small and crooked. “Who’s gonna tell me anything? I only went in to get outa the rain. If it wasn’t that I carried the old brand the new bunch wouldn’t let me in the cellar.”

I stood up and grinned down at Dixie. His eyes watched me closely, his hopped-up mind trying to pin all the angles down. I said, “One more thing. I shot up a couple of the boys in Bimmy’s. They went to a Doc. Who?”

Dixie didn’t worry it out any. “Halpern. John Halpern. Got a drugstore on Amsterdam. He got run outa the union five years ago.”

Cat said, “I know him. He handles all the hot stuff for the boys.”

“Okay, Dixie, play it cool. Keep your mouth shut and if you get any big ideas I want to be the first to know.”

“Who thinks?”

“You better start. I want to know who killed Bennett.”

He moved his eyes again, swiped at his mouth and watched us blankly as we went out.

Downstairs Helen spoke for the first time, tiny lines of curiosity tugging at the comers of her eyes. “You ask funny questions, Deep.”

“It’s a funny business, Helen.”

Cat said, “What now? It’s almost twelve.”

“Nothing we can do now,” I told him. “Let’s drop Helen off and hit it. You want to go uptown, Irish?”

“I’ll take a cab.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“In the morning I’ll have to make arrangements to see that... Tally’s taken care of.” I felt her fingers tighten on my arm. Her face pressed against my shoulder suddenly. “The bastards. Oh, the dirty bastards!” she said softly.

“Don’t sweat it, Helen. I’ll find out who did it.”

She shook the hair away from her face and looked at me. Her eyes were wet, her lower lip between her teeth. “Not you, Deep. Please don’t find anybody.”

Then her mouth was a hot thing again, crying unintelligibly against my lips, her hands cradling my face with a wild urgency. I held her a moment, then forced her away gently. “Go home,” I said. “There’s always tomorrow.”

She smiled, nodded and said, “Tomorrow.” She picked a folded letter from her pocketbook, jotted down a number on the comer of it, tore it off and handed it to me. “Call me,” she said, her voice husky.

I whistled a cab over, opened the door for her and waved her off.

On the curb Cat chuckled, “You got yourself a big one, Deep. She’s all gone over you.”

I liked the idea.

“It gets more like the old days every minute, don’t it?

For a second I remembered some of those old days and shook my head. “I hope not. Come on, let’s go down the comer and find another cab.”

You get a feeling sometimes that things aren’t just right. It’s like little things crawling up your back and across your scalp. It happens when you get to be a real pro in the game and can read all the signs and smell all the smells. It’s a little thing that seeps across space and barely touches you, if it does at all, but that peculiar sense you’ve developed from running the back alleys and rooftops and living past the slugs and razor-edged blades... it tells you that something is out of joint and you only have a small time to find out what it is.

Cat knew it too. He knew it the second he got out of the cab and I saw him go up on his toes and make both ends of the street with an unobtrusive glance. I paid the cabbie off, tipped him and when I put my change back I did it neatly so that when my hand came away it had the .38 in it.

We didn’t need any signals at all. Long ago it had been a well practiced maneuver with Cat and me and the motions came naturally. He laid back and to the left, planning every move the second something broke, keeping a split between us so we couldn’t be taken out by any one person. He knew I had the rod in my fist and didn’t object when I went ahead.

I opened the door, walked in normally and knew on the first step inside what was coming. I yelled, “Watch it, Cat!” and dove for the floor as a red wink flashed from the door to the side and with a quiet snap a bullet slammed into the wall over my head.

The .38 in my hand bucked twice before the other silenced rod went off again. This time it went off into the floor and with a harsh choking sob a body followed it down.

It took a few seconds for the echoes of the gun to diminish. As the waves of sound receded I heard feet hammering inside, a window smashing open, and I yelled, “The back, Cat... there’s one going for the back!”

I was taking a chance but I figured there wouldn’t be more than two. I hopped over the body on the floor, crouched and ran inside and felt my way through the rooms, trying to recall the layout of furniture. I made it to the back and saw the gray opening of the window pale against the black of the night beyond it.

There was no way for Cat to cover the exit except by going all the way around the comer and if he ran his lungs probably wouldn’t hold up. I got through the window, jumped the eight feet to the pavement and waited until I had the layout straight. Someplace not too far off somebody kicked a can and rattled it across the concrete.

I didn’t wait then. I jumped the fence in back, landed in another yard spotted with crates and strange garbage forms, picked my way around it and reached the seven-foot fence at the other end. If the yards hadn’t changed any there was an alley between Glover’s and Constantino’s only now it was Mort’s Dry Cleaning and Alverez the Grocer. That opening to the street was where the other one was going and if he made it he had it all the way.

Damn.

I didn’t know the details of the route any more. Garbage piles change in twenty-five years. People nailed up the boards we had deliberately loosened and rearranged the backyard puzzle until it was almost a maddening maze. But if the other guy didn’t know it either the edge was the same. I went up and over three more, felt my clothes tear twice and the second time a nail ripped a gouge along my calf.

Then there was the last one and I saw the guy up ahead.

He wasn’t running now. He was down in a squat, moving crablike but fast. His hand was out ahead of him, the gun like an elongated finger, pointing.

I came up slow, getting him between me and the yellow light from the street lamp at the end of the alley and in that sick glow I saw what had slowed him up.

Mr. Sullivan was coming up the alley at a half trot with his service gun out, his hand fumbling under his coat for his flashlight and in one second he was going to be dead.

I had time to holler, “Down, Sully!” and saw him go flat. The guy spun, snapped another silent shot at me and when I rolled, still another. That was all the time he had. Mr. Sullivan fired once from a prone position and the guy held his crouch a moment longer, then slowly sat down.

He was like that, leaning back against an empty cardboard carton when I got there, the silenced gun still in his hand as though it were a part of him, a small hole in his forehead.

Down the alley Cat was silhouetted in the light. He came up to us slowly, sucking air in great gulps, and when he saw who was down, fell on his fanny in the dirt.

I said, “Nice shooting, Mr. Sullivan.”

All around us lights were going on in the windows. Voices called back and forth and somebody yelled for somebody else to call the cops. Softly, Mr. Sullivan said, “Yeah, you do that.” Then he looked up at me. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I suppose you’ll have a good story going for this one.”

“Real good, I was attacked. There’s another one in the hallway of the building. How come you made it in the alley?”

“I saw your friend here yelling and pointing this way. I catch on fast.”

“Okay, then leave him here with Cat and let’s get back to the building.” I looked at Cat and felt his face. “You feel all right?”

“I feel... lousy, but I’ll live. Go on.”

Sullivan said, “A squad car will be along. Tell them to come to the apartment.”

“Sure, sure. And Deep...”

“What?”

“Watch it.”

“Don’t worry. Let’s go, Sully.”

Sullivan tried hard, but he was a harness cop long on the beat and speed had left him behind years ago. We went on a jog and turned the corner as the sirens whined up the street behind us. There were scurrying shadows that darted out ahead of us, running only because we ran or because they saw the blue and brass. Trouble was something they wanted no part of, neither see it, hear it nor feel it.

The door was still open, gaping inwards on darkness. Sullivan pushed me aside, went in with his flash in one hand and gun in the other, found the wall switch and threw it up.

Automatically, I hit for the wall as the light came on, not taking any chances.

Sullivan looked at me and I looked at him. The spot in the doorway where I had gunned down the other one was empty. There was a big splash of blood on the floor and finger streaks on the wall and more by the outside door and what happened was plain enough.

Number One had been hit too lightly. He made it out while I went after his partner.

I said, “Inside, Sullivan,” and went through the doorway. Behind us a uniformed cop and a plain clothes man came in with a rush.

When I turned the light on we all stood there looking at the body on the floor. He had taken at least three shots in the head and a few more in the chest and any one of them would have been fatal. But pros don’t take chances and go for broke when they hit somebody.

Sullivan said, “That’s Augie.”

From in back of him Sergeant Hurd said, “Things are looking up, aren’t they?” His face had a blue bulge on one side of his mouth that gave him a partial sneer.

“Can it, Hurd,” I told him.

“Still tough?”

“Always.”

A cop came in with his arm through Cat’s and brought him in the room. In the light Cat had a sickly pallor and his cheeks were sunken deep in his face, each ridge of bone sharply outlined. He looked at me, his lips pulled back over his teeth, holding back the pain in his chest, and nodded. I knew what he meant.

The M.E. didn’t take long to get there. He was resigned, but pleasant about it. The fresh kills he didn’t mind at all and unlike a lot of M.E.’s, wasn’t afraid to give an immediate opinion. He went over Augie quickly, established the time of death definitely enough to satisfy Hurd, put it between an hour and a half and two hours ago and said he’d make it official with a p.m. in the morning.

I told Hurd to call Helen and Hugh Peddle and check the cabbie who brought us to the building. Hurd was a cop who liked to see things done right away. Before he finished talking to Peddle who he finally ran down in a midtown bistro, he had the cabbie in the foyer and got a statement from him too.

There wasn’t much I could add. As far as I was concerned they were prowlers who thought maybe Bennett left some stuff around and Augie surprised them going through the place.

Hurd took it all down solemnly, told us not to leave town and let us clear out while the techs took over. Cat said we’d be at his address and headed for the doorway.

I started to follow him when Hurd said, “Deep...”

“Yeah?” I paused, watching him.

“I made that call.”

“Good for you. I got plenty pull, hah?”

He waited a few seconds before answering, his face tight. Under his coat his shoulders twitched like he was ready to use his hands again.

“Walk softly, Deep,” he said.

I nodded, turned and got out before any of the newspaper crowd could make the scene. For Cat’s sake I took it easy, but it was still too fast for him. We had to stop three different times to let him get his breath back before we reached his building. He lived downstairs in the back of a squalid hovel hardly fit for a dog, a single room partitioned off from the rest of the cellar with a single overhead bulb, a couple of rickety chairs and a faded maroon couch.

“Home,” he said, and half fell on the couch.

He tried a cigarette, hacked himself into a state of near unconsciousness, recovered and threw the butt down. “Damn things,” he muttered.

“Cat...”

“I gotcha, Deep. The dead guy was Morrie Reeves.”

“You know what happened, don’t you?”

Cat nodded, opened his eyes and looked across at me. “They thought they was hitting you. They didn’t expect him to be there. Then they waited for you.” He laughed, the sound rattling deep in his throat. “You shook ’em when you went through that door. Boy, when them pros miss a hit they can’t make it the second time around the same night, can they? Damn, they didn’t like your kind of luck, that’s why the other one ran when you got his partner.”

“I didn’t get him good enough.”

Cat turned on his side so he could see me. “I was wondering about that, Deep.”

“What?”

“Nobody shook you for your rod. You walked out clean. Then that stuff with Hurd about a call.”

“So?”

“Hell, man, I’ve seen the big boys who can make one call and back off the cops. Even shake up a precinct if they want to. Back in the old days when we was kids the upstairs boys even ran city hall. So I know when a guy’s big. Trouble is, them big guys fall sooner or later and I hate to see you take the tumble. Been a long time since I had a friend.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Where you been all these years, Deep?”

I grinned at him and shook my head. “Some other time, kid.”

“Okay, Deep.” He sat up and patted the couch so that the dust flew out of it. “Let’s open up and sack out on it.”

“I’ll take the floor, buddy.”

“Don’t be so damn snobbish. You put in time on this before.”

I squinted at him in the dull light.

Cat let out a laugh. “This is the original of the one in Bennett’s place. It used to be in the cellar in the old K.O. days... the first piece of furniture we ever stole. You carried one end of it out the back of old Moe Schwartz’s secondhand store.”

Then I remembered it and laughed. “Open it up, you sentimental slob,” I said. “You guys just can’t break loose from the old days, can you?”