The Deep Page 6

  “Not here,” I told him. “They just found him here.”

  He frowned at me, then his eyes went to the dark brown stains that matted the rug and the mess by the door and the bloodied handprint on the wall.

  I took the copy of the police report from my pocket, went over it carefully, then handed it to Augie. “They think he got it inside here. He thrashed around while he was dying and messed the place up. Their opinion is that a guest was responsible.”

  He never took his eyes from the sheet. “Nobody could get that close to him. Besides, any entertaining he did never took place up here.”

  “You’ve been here, Augie. You aren’t new to this room.”

  He still didn’t look up. “Twice when Mr. Bennett had an illness he needed legal work done. I was the liaison agent between him and Mr. Batten. He had a gun beside him all the while.” He finished the report and handed it back.

  “Bennett died in an alley up the street,” I said. I filled in the details except for saying who Pedro was and watched him while he thought it over.

  It didn’t make sense to him, either.

  I said, “Augie ... why did they want him dead?”

  “They...”

  I cut him off with, “Not who, Augie. Why. Why did Bennett die?”

  “He was pretty big, Mr. Deep.”

  “I know.”

  “The big guy is always the target.”

  “Why, Augie?”

  “I can only guess,” he said.

  “So guess.”

  His hands folded together again. “Talk has it the syndicate is growing.”

  “Bennett was in.”

  “Mr. Bennett was a scared man. The syndicate seemed to find it ... impossible to deal with scared men.”

  “You’re reaching for it but you’re not hitting it, kid.”

  He teetered on his toes again and stared down the empty expanse of the room. “Suppose I give you my opinion in an illustration. Mr. Bennett was one, who instead of controlling the team with a slight touch of the reins, preferred, instead, to jerk them whichever way he wanted to go.” He stared at me steadily a moment, then added, “It’s only an opinion, of course.”

  “Of course. But there’s only one thing wrong and you know it as well as I do. This was no syndicate kill. Their method never varies. The outside boy who never sees the payee, the big blast and so-long. They’re not going to pop him off with a .22 and they’re not going to hit anybody in the neck from two feet away. You know how many professional kills are still unsolved locally?”

  “I know of a few.”

  “This isn’t one.”

  “It could be,” he said quietly.

  “This was eyewash? A red herring?” I shook my head. “No dice, friend.”

  “The word has been out a long time.”

  He was feeling again. I said, “They could be getting smarter. I hate to give them that kind of credit, but it could happen. A nice sloppy job with some gimmicks thrown in could really mess things up for the cops. The only hitch is that the cops don’t know Bennett didn’t die here.”

  “In time they could find out,” he said.

  “But who’s that smart, Augie? Who wanted Bennett dead that badly?”

  Augie smiled again, his eyes glinting. “Why, Mr. Deep, everybody wanted Mr. Bennett dead.”

  “Enough to buy a kill and leave a possible chink in the armor?”

  “I think so.”

  “Or was it that somebody hated him that hard?”

  “It could be that too.” He smiled again. “Nobody in the driver’s seat is ever liked.”

  I nodded and made a tour of the room again. I went into the bedroom for a cursory look around, then into the bathroom and back to the kitchen. The place had been searched. Thoroughly. The police shook the place down the first time, but somebody else had done it too. I called Augie in and pointed to the scratch marks on the floor where the refrigerator had been moved out and back.

  “What do you make of it, Augie?”

  “The cops didn’t do it.”

  “No ... they wouldn’t go that far.”

  “What would fit under or behind a refrigerator?”

  The thought was plain. Augie shrugged and frowned. “A kilo or two of H could make it, but Mr. Bennett wouldn’t keep it around.”

  “He was in the business, wasn’t he?”

  “Only secondhand, I understand. He did business with those who were in the business.”

  I said, “There are two other possibilities. Jewels or cash.”

  The frown deepened between his eyes and he shook his head again. “No jewels. He never fooled with that market. Neither was it cash. We handled all Mr. Bennett’s accounts and he declared everything to keep out of the Treasury boys’ hands. He was investigated every year but was absolutely clear. No, it wasn’t cash. He never did a cash business. Within the statute of limitations he was clean, clean.”

  “So I’m missing a bet.”

  His eyes sought mine. “Evidently.”

  “Don’t be smug, Augie. It’ll come.”

  We went back to the living room and just stood there, looking. Finally I said, “Why is this place so familiar, Augie? There’s something here I can’t quite latch onto.”

  “Can’t you tell?” he said. “Can’t you remember back?”

  “I’m trying.”

  Then I got it. The plush, the maroon, the incongruity of everything. “It’s like the old cellar club, isn’t it. Make this stuff old and worn, toss some dirt around and use candles instead of lights and you got the old K.O. clubroom.”

  “That’s right.”

  “A real sentimental slob,” I muttered.

  “No ... just no class.”

  There was no doubting the sincerity in his voice. Augie had come a long way and he knew just where he was headed, but now his opinions were showing the influence of his attitude. He was big and he was hard, but he wasn’t kill-toughened and this one little thing kept him a step behind the leader. So far.

  “I’ll be staying here from now on, Augie. Make sure everything is in order. You know, phone, groceries. And get somebody in to clean up.”

  “It’s been taken care of already, Mr. Deep.”

  Before I could answer him the phone rang and I lifted it from the cradle. I said, “Yeah?”

  And Cat’s clipped voice on the other end said breathlessly, “Deep? Good. Look, I just spotted two boys I knew from Philly. Lew James and Morrie Reeves. They hire out and they come expensive. They checked in at the Westhampton under the names of Charles and George Wagner and after they went to their room I slipped the doll at the PBX a bill to listen in to their calls and the only one they made went to a public phone and the guy on the other end brought you into it. Said you were in Bennett’s place.”

  “How’d you know it was an outside phone?”

  “Hell, I could hear all the racket. Sounded like a subway booth.”

  “Could you spot the voice?”

  “Jeez, Deep, I couldn’t. Look, you better blow, man. Them cats are hot for your skin. These boys got a wild rep, you know?”

  “So have I, Cat.”

  For a few seconds he was quiet. “You want me to stick with them? If you want I could pull something that could make these cats scat like crazy.”

  “Let them go. They won’t be in too much of a hurry. They’ll make themselves nice and comfortable first.”

  “Well, what should I do? Man, you’re being set up!”

  “So come on over and have a drink. We’ll talk about it later.”

  His voice was a tired whistle and he hung up. When I put the phone back I told Augie to round up a couple of the old crowd to stake out the place and then beat it on home.

  He made the calls there, picked up his hat and waved so-long. I waved back and watched him get into his car from the front window, then I turned the TV on, sat on the floor and waited for Cat.

  Twenty minutes later the chimes went off, I pushed the buzzer to open the downstairs door and li
stened to the hum of the elevator climbing up.

  There was a single sharp rap on the door and I yelled to come in, then looked around. But it wasn’t Cat. It was Councilman Hugh Peddle and his two friends were well dressed hoods who went along under the title of “advisors.”

  Rather than get up from the floor I waved to the chairs and said, “Sit down, laddies, sit down. You’ll have to excuse the informality. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  Hughie’s eyes sneered back at me. “It’ll only be a short visit, Deep.”

  “Oh?” I could feel a nasty grin pulling at my mouth. “How’d you find me?”

  “You left a wide path, Deep. You were leaving yourself open to being found, but don’t think you’re being clever.”

  “You came to tell me this, huh?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So?”

  “How much will you take to leave town?”

  I inched back slowly and leaned against the sofa. “I’ll collect a million or so by sticking around, pal.”

  “Only if you meet the terms of Bennett’s will.”

  “You mean to sell out now?”

  “Not at all. Let Batten have what there is. Keeping it and managing it is nothing but a headache. You take a cash settlement and leave. The sum will be quite substantial.”

  “Leave to where?”

  “Wherever you came from. Wherever you want to go. Just leave.”

  “Who’s got that kind of dough?” I asked.

  “Never mind. It’s there and there’s no catch to it. The money can be deposited for you, handed over in cash ... any way you prefer. No rough stuff afterwards. You get to keep the money.”

  “That’s a real nice deal, Hughie.”

  “Well?”

  “I like it here.”

  The smaller of the two hoods smiled gently, as if he felt sorry for me. His mouth never moved when he spoke. “If you want, Mr. Peddle, we can push this bird a little. It’s not hard to make them reasonable.”

  I said, “Tell him, Hughie boy.”

  The Councilman got all red in the face and I could see his beefy shoulders hunch under the coat. He made an impatient motion with his hand and turned back to me again. “What about an outright sale then. The price will be above anything you can make in a lifetime and you can keep Bennett’s junk too.”

  I timed it so he wouldn’t know I was reaching. “What’s there to sell, Hughie boy?”

  He didn’t trust himself to speak. There was rage in his face but fear in his eyes and before the wild anger of the moment could make him point the finger I looked at the two hoods and said, “Either one of you even twitches and I’ll pop one right between your horns.”

  A tic pulled at the mouth of the taller one, like he was trying to keep from laughing. “You can’t be that fast,” he said. He kept watching my hands where the thumbs hooked into my belt. He was wondering how long it would take to make a cross-draw to a shoulder holster.

  I said, “I know how you can find out.”

  The red left Hughie’s face and he said, “Stop it, Moe. He’s got the rod on his belt.”

  The hood sucked in his breath at the mistake he almost made and let his face go blank. Then the small one chuckled. “From the floor he’d be your only hit, friend. What do you think I’d be doing?”

  Behind him Cat said softly, “You’d be dying, chump,” and when the guy turned around he looked down the barrels of a shotgun and went dead white. Hugh Peddle touched them both, turned and walked out. The elevator whined again and I watched them climb into a car on the street below.

  When Cat lowered the hammers of the shotgun and propped it in a corner I said, “Who tipped you?”

  “The stakeout across the street.”

  “What’d you do, fly in like Peter Pan?”

  He laughed like a little kid. “You forgetting the old Cat, Deep? Up the fire escape and in the window. Like fog. Remember that poem?”

  “About the fog coming in on little cat feet?”

  “Yeah. Well, that’s me. And you better be the same, you feel like staying alive.”

  “The imports?”

  “Them is right. I made a coupla calls and got a confirm on the target. It’s you. Five G’s apiece across the board.”

  “I come expensive.”

  “You don’t know how much. They also got another five G’s to split between them from another source to hold up the play for a few days.”

  “Screwy,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He craned his neck to look at me squarely. “You ain’t shook, Deep?”

  “Nah,” I waved my thumb at the couch. “Let’s sack it out a while.”

  “Sure, Deep. Mind if I have a drink first?”

  “Help yourself.”

  He walked over, opened one end of a cabinet and brought out a bottle. One drink started him coughing until he almost collapsed, then he straightened up and wiped his eyes. I said, “You know your way around here, Cat?”

  “Natch. Ben used me for a mailman. He never used the phone when he wanted orders passed around. Why?”

  “No reason. Let’s hit it.”

  He rolled on the couch and I headed in to the bedroom. As I got to the door Cat asked, “Suppose those guys drew and I wasn’t there, Deep?”

  “I would have popped them between the horns, buddy.”

  “You think?”

  “They wouldn’t be the first ones I popped,” I said softly.

  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.

  Murder has come back to Manhattan. The death of “Boss” Bennett had the crime hierarchy scrambling for control of his multimillion dollar enterprise of filth and corruption. But they were too late. A dead man had left his hand in office. The Heir Apparent had been selected long ago and has taken command. The Deep One is back. Murder is with us again.