The Deep (2 page)

“On ... hundred-third.”

I waited.

“Over Brogan's market. Look... about what I said ...”

“That's okay, Tally.”

Now her whole lower jaw was quivering. “I ... I run off at the mouth sometimes, you know?”

“Sure, I know.”

“What I said ...” she swallowed hard and bit into her lip.

“About being a delinquent? A creep? Better off bumped? You telling me you didn't mean those things, Tally?”

Then suddenly the fear was gone. The hardness and defiance came back and she said, “I said it. I meant it.”

At the end of the bar Jocko-boy glanced back, startled.

I grinned at her real big. “That's the way, kid. If you say it, then mean it.”

Her eyes went all funny looking. She studied my face for three deep breaths, then having decided, she reached for her glass and drained off what was left in the bottom. When she put it back on the bar she turned and stared up at me with tight, cold eyes and whispered hoarsely, “You're not Deep. You're too damn polite to be Deep.
He
would have splashed me by now. Deep never liked to be called names and he hated dames who talked too much like I just did.” She took another breath, her eyes widening. “I can make up for having a big mouth, feller. I can pass the word that a phony's loose looking for trouble.”

I nodded. “You do that. That would make everything real interesting then.”

“Be glad to, big guy.” Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Hell, man, if you were Deep you'd be packing a rod under your hand day and night just looking for somebody to shoot up.
Old Deep the cannon-boy
they used to call him. Too stinking tough to even bother hiding it. Carried the old rod where everybody could see it.” Her eyes ran over me disgustedly. “You're Deep? Nuts.”

I reached in my pocket for a half buck and spun it out on the bar. When I looked back at Tally her eyes were gone all wide and jumpy with fear and she couldn't take them off the spot at my side where she had seen the .38 in the speed rig.

I said, “Don't forget to tell 'em, Tally,” and walked outside.

Wilson Batten had his office in the new building that had replaced the old Greenwood Hotel. The modern façade was a white smear in the darkness, the rain glistening coldly on the marbleized surface, an incongruous structure like a false tail on a dog.

A band of lighted windows girdled the second floor so I crossed over and pushed in through the full-length glass doors. On the wall beside the self-service elevator was a building directory listing all the occupants. Only the second floor was in all caps. It read, “WILSON BATTEN, ATTORNEY.”

Very simple. But this was a world where simplicity was a necessity. It was an asset in other worlds, too, where simplicity was really concealed arrogance.

I grinned, skipped the elevator and went up the stairs. In the foyer two girls were belting themselves into raincoats before a strip of mirror. One had a mouthful of bobby pins, so she nudged the other to take care of me.

“We're just closing,” she said.

“Oh?”

“You waiting for one of the girls?”

I took my hat off and shook the rain out. “I hadn't thought of it. Should I?”

The impudent smile looked me up and down. “You wouldn't wait long, I don't think.”

“I never have.”

“No,” she said, “I don't suppose so.” The smile drifted away when I didn't move and she added, “You wanted something?”

“Wilse.”

“Who?”

“Wilse. The Boss. Batten.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Not now. You can't ...”

“Now,” I said.

“Listen ... mister ...”

“Now,” I repeated.

Behind me the voice was soft, but had a bigness to it that was a quiet threat.

“Some difficulty, Thelma?”

“He wants to see Mr. Wilson.”

“I see. I'm afraid it's much too late at the moment ...”

I turned around slowly and looked at him. He hadn't changed much. Always the terribly efficient laddie who could make himself indispensable, but never enough genius to quite reach the top. One thing about Augie, though. He always was on the side of a winner. He could always tell them.

His eyes frowned, not his face. Something worked in his mind, like a mental yeast, but he couldn't finger it. For a second his shoulders tightened, then relaxed because that wasn't the answer, either. He was still the same Augie. He could still tell. He said, “You'll see Mr. Batten then.”

When I agreed with a nod the two girls watched with amazement.

“Your name, please.”

“Don't you remember, Augie?” My grin stretched a little. “Deep. Tell Wilse it's Deep.”

Under his chin the cords of his neck strained against the collar. He remembered all at once, his brain settling into a new pattern of
now
and
later,
then he shrugged his huge shoulders under the tailored jacket and smiled. His voice had a pleasant rumble, an intonation of efficiency waiting to be utilized.

“I should have,” he said. “But you've changed, Deep.”

“We all change.”

He stared at me hard. “You're bigger, somehow.”

“Bigger,” I repeated. “Good word.”

 

The office I walked into was all mahogany and Gauguin. They hit you both at once and made you minimize the man behind the desk. He looked up, starched and creased, his hair thin across his head, but still dark. It's funny how few balding guys ever turned gray.

I said, “Hello, Wilse,” and he pretended to recognize my voice.

“Deep.” He stood up and extended his hand. “Good to see you, boy. Good to see you.”

My grin ignored his hand. “I bet. I bet you're just overjoyed, Wilse.”

His face was a professional mask but I knew what was happening to him. I pulled a chair up with my foot and sat down, dropping my hat on the floor. Augie reached for it and I said, “Leave it there.” He stopped, threw a fast glance at Batten and stepped back.

“Old Wilse,” I said, “the thief of Harlem ...”

“See here, Deep!”

“Shut up when I'm talking, Wilse.” I smiled and his eyes searched it for meaning. “You came a long way from the walk-up off Broadway. From old
Batty
Batten
to Mr. Wilson Batten, Attorney. Pretty good for a thief, but not much different from a lot of success stories I know.”

I shoved out of the chair and walked the perimeter of the room, studying each Gauguin in turn. Half were originals. The other half pretty expensive copies. “You did okay, feller.”

“Deep ...”

When I turned around and grinned Batten stopped with his mouth open. I said, “Batten, you're a thief. You're a scheming shyster who made good. You fenced stolen property once, you bought anything I could steal, you covered the boys pushing the happy stuff and were a good contact between certain parties and certain crooked cops.”

“Several times I took you off the hook, Deep.”

“You sure did, and you sure got your pound of flesh.” I walked over closer and looked down at him. “I was a lot younger then.”

“You were a punk,” he challenged softly.

“But a good one. A tough one.” I sat on the edge of the desk. “Remember Lenny Sobel? Remember the night the king and his court came to take you apart for a double cross and Bennett and I paid you off for all the favors? We put the big guys under a couple of guns and spit on them when they wilted. Sobel sent them back for us the next night and we sent him three shot-up hoods. Then I shot Sobel just for fun. Right in the behind. Remember that, Wilse?”

“All right. You were tough.”

I shook my head. “Not really, friend. You know what I was.”

“A juvenile delinquent.”

“That's right.
Now
I'm tough.” Then I grinned real big. “You know?”

The professional mask was back again. “I know,” he acknowledged.

To one side Augie changed his stance. He was facing me now. There was more butter on my bread.

I said, “You have Bennett's will?”

“That's right.”

“It's all in order?”

“I was his legal advisor.”

“What does it say?”

For a moment he judged me, straining hard to see if I could be had. “Provisionally, you are his inheritor.”

“What provisions?”

“First, that you arrive within two weeks after his death.”

“This is the fourth day.”

He nodded. “Second, that you satisfactorily determine his killer's identity in the event of violent death.”

“Nice of him.”

“He had great confidence in you, Deep.”

“Was the word determine or avenge?”

“Determine. Mr. Bennett wanted it otherwise, but it never would have stood up. Legally, that is.”

“Legally, of course. Now one more question, Wilse. Determine to
whose
satisfaction?”

“You are very astute, Deep.” He opened the drawer of his desk, drew out a newspaper tearsheet and pushed it toward me. Outlined in red was a two-column, full-length spread titled “Uptown Speaking” by Roscoe Tate.

I didn't have to read it again. It was one man's hate being spilled over into print. A guy who couldn't make it the soft way crying out loud because others did. A guy who had a hate for three people in the world. Me, Bennett and himself.

“Prove it to Roscoe?”

“Not necessarily. Merely ‘determine.' ” A smile tugged at the comer of Batten's mouth. “That won't be easy, you know.”

“ ‘No, it won't. He hates me pretty hard.”

The smile widened. “That's not why.”

I looked at him quickly.

“Tate thinks you did it, Deep.”

“Silly boy.'”

“But with reason.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“The empire was a big one. You had been unheard from for twenty-five years. Could be that you knew where Bennett stood and decided to take over, figuring that he'd stick to the old agreement you two had of the survivor inheriting and... well, taking care of the... killer?”

“It's a killer, Wilse.”

“You see how it figures.”

“I see. Now tell me something. If I don't prove out, who gets the domain?”

His smile went into all teeth. White teeth very big and clean. “Me. I get it all.”

“Smart boy,” I said.

“Quite.”

“I may have to kill you, Wilse.”

He got pasty-white then. “You'd be tied into it so tight ...”

“That still wouldn't stop me from killing you, Wilse. It would be easy. No trouble at all.”

The slack in his face was that of an old man. For a minute he had forgotten what the real tough ones were like. In twenty-five years he had grown big to the point where sudden death had no personal meaning any longer, now he was staring it down again.

I said, “What do I come into?”

“Supposing I read the will. That should ...”

“Tell me yourself, Wilse. You won't lie. I'm not worried.”

His mouth was a fine, tight line, the tautness reaching up to his eyes. “The Cosmo Taxi Service, the old clubhouse building, several real estate properties consisting of tenements, lots, garages... I'll list them for you... half interest or better in four businesses and a brewery.”

“Nice,” I said. “Any cash?”

“Ten thousand upon appearing, which is now. All other monies and so forth when you have met the provisions of the will.”

I held out my hand with a grin. Wilson Batten looked at it, then the grin, and let a hard smile crack through his lips. He opened the middle desk drawer, slipped out a yellow cashier's check and laid it in my palm. I said, “Last question. How long have I to meet the ... provisions.”

His smile had a nasty touch of laughter in it. “A week.” All his teeth showed through it. “You think you can make it, Deep?”

I folded the check, shoved it in my pocket and stood up. “No trouble. Plenty of time.” When I walked to the door I could feel his eyes on me and when I reached it I turned around and gave him a little taste of what he had to look forward to. I said to Augie, “Coming, friend?”

He didn't even look at Wilson. He said, “Yes, Mr. Deep,” and walked out behind me.

Like I said, Augie was the kind who could always tell.

 

Roscoe Tate was the first kid on the block who had ever had a job. When he was fourteen he made the six-to-eight rush hour at the subway entrances with the two-star tabs and brought home more drinking dough for his old man. A year later he told the rumdum to beat it, called the cops to back up a nonsupport, wife-beating and cruelty-to-children charge, made it stick and supported the family from then on.

Now it was twenty-five years later and the papers he hawked once he wrote for now. The old man had drunk himself to death, the mother was in L.A. with a married daughter and Roscoe carried on a vendetta with the block he grew up on. The only trouble was, he couldn't make himself leave it.

He sat it out in Hymie's deli behind a chicken liver sandwich and a phone, scowling at some notes he had made. I walked in alongside the row of stools and pulled an antique chair out from behind the counter. Hymie looked up, his face squeezed mad, ready to cream anybody who'd touch his private throne, then froze solid.

When I slid the chair under the table and slouched in it Roscoe said without looking up, “You want big trouble, feller?”