The Deep (5 page)

“Deep ...”

“Yeah. Your memory doesn't go back very far, Irish. Hardly at all.”

She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “Deep ...”

“You can still say it nice, kitten.”

It came back to her in small pieces; the street, the gang, the kid stuff in school. The roof where we leaned against a warm chimney and two children walked through the virginity of love with a first kiss.

Then she remembered it all, and other things too, until it showed in the hardness of her face. “You were better off out of mind, Deep.”

“That seems to be the general opinion all over.” I grinned, let my eyes search her completely, then: “You're a good-looking dame, Irish, though that isn't much of a change. You always were.”

“I know.”

“You should. It's pretty obvious.” I knew when I had quit smiling. I said, “You got it working for you too, haven't you? Lenny is up there these days.”

Her hand was a streak aiming for my face but it wasn't fast enough. I caught it, threw it down and held her tight against me. “Don't try that again, kid. Nobody touches me without getting bounced and I'd hate for it to be you. Don't figure that punk Lenny and me to be in the same class and if you want to put yourself on his level then be damn nice to me. Damn nice, understand? I'll belt you cockeyed as fast as look at you if you ever get funny with me again.”

There was a breathless quality in her when she said, “You're off it, Deep. You're dead and buried already.”

I nodded. “So I've heard, only I won't be the first there, and therein lies the rub.”

Her eyes arched up at me.

“Everybody hates to get killed,” I said. “Nobody quite wants to be hero enough to go first.”

I let her go and she drew back, rubbing her wrist. “You stink, Deep.” She said it quietly, disgust plain in her voice.

“What happened to Tally?”

“I don't know. She called me earlier and was slightly hysterical. I figured she was drinking and told her to go to bed. When I came by she was in a chair, out like a light with half a bottle of shoo-fly gone.”

“You called a doctor?”

“Naturally. He was here all morning.”

“Nothing serious?”

“Not physically.”

“Why did she call
you,
Irish? You're an uptown broad. You haven't smelled this neighborhood since you were twelve. You're as out of place here as a hat on a horse.”

“You stink, Deep.”

“Now you're talking neighborhood again. Talk uptown and answer me, damn it.”

She pulled back, a frown across her face. “All right, I'm uptown. But I had one friend in my life.”

“Not Tally.”

“No, not Tally. Her sister.” She saw me studying her and shook her head. “You don't remember her. Girls didn't mean that much to you then. She was my age and we were in the same class. You know what happened to her?”

Tally had told me that herself. I said, “Yeah, Bennett got her hosed up. She flipped.”

Muscles and cords made tight lines in her neck. “Off a roof she flipped. She killed herself.” Her smile was deadly and hard. “That was your friend who did that.”

“So?”

“So you stink, Deep.”

I slapped her across the mouth with the back of my fingers and watched the red seep into her face. “Stay at ease, kitten. With me, stay at ease.”

It was almost as if I hadn't touched her. “You're tough, aren't you?”

“Real.”

“Mind if I stick around and see you get killed?”

“Not a bit.”

“I'm going to enjoy it.”

“I'll try to put on a good show.”

“Of that I'm sure. And I'll help you. I'll try to get you killed just as hard as I can.”

Her arms reached up and went around my neck and that warmth I had felt at the door wrapped around me like an oven and her mouth was a tantalizing, wet kiss of death, a quick fiery thing that was hello and goodbye in one.

When she drew away she glanced down at the bed. “Why'd you come?”

“You wouldn't understand,” I said.

“Try me.”

I took a check out of my pocket with Tally's name on it and showed it to her. “A grand.”

“Hardly worth her sister's life.”

“You stupid dame, it isn't compensation. It's payment for information.”

“What makes you think she'd give it to you?”

When I glanced at her she almost backed away. “Because she's like you,” I said. “She wants to see me killed too. She'd give me anything I wanted to get me killed.”

“Not anything.”

“But you would,” I said. “You'd give me anything.”

“That's right. Just so I could be sure it would get you killed.” Her breath was coming too fast and there was a hot depth in her eyes.

I wrote a short note, clipped it to the check and put it on the empty pillow beside Tally. When I looked up I said, “I'll see if I can't arrange it that way. Come on.”

Downstairs I found a neighbor who, for twenty bucks, would stay with Tally, and a doctor who, for another twenty, would look in on her at intervals. A quick call to Augie got me a guy who would stake out the house and make sure everything went okay.

When I came out of the phone booth Irish was waiting, nicely tucked into a mink that did nothing to disguise the contempt she felt when she had to look at me.

But that was okay too. It's more fun catching a mouse than playing with one and she was some mouse.

I steered her outside, waved a cab over and nudged her in. I told the driver the name of a club and leaned back. Irish looked across the seat at me, the contempt clouded by curiosity. “Why all the business with Tally?”

“Because anybody who hates so hard is bound to have something I can use,” I said.

“Use for what?”

“To find Bennett's killer.”

“A very noble crusade.”

“And you want me to get killed.”

“More than that, remember? I want to be there to see it happen.”

“Aren't you afraid you'll get sick?”

“Maybe, but it will be worth it.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate too. I hate just as hard as Tally. I hate whatever turns little kids into filthy, immoral things who can turn on their own kind for something like money or power. I hate the political lusts and greed that drive decent people to the wall so one person can be big. I hate that so hard I could spit and that's why I hate you.”

“And yet you're Lenny Sobel's... friend?” There was contempt in my voice now.

“It's a point you probably couldn't understand,” she said, “but I'll tell you anyway.” The corners of her eyes drew up in nearly oriental points. “By being his... friend, I can exert enough influence to make it easier on... some people.”

“And maybe rougher on others?”

“Maybe.”

“Have you ever forgotten the night on the roof by the chimney?”

“No.”

I grinned to myself.

“But that doesn't stop my wanting to be there when you get killed. I'll give anything to see it happen.”

“Anything?”

She nodded earnestly. “Anything.”

When they tore the guts out of Fifty-second Street, one of the bistros was overpaid for expediency's sake, changed its name from The Kickoff to The Signature, and with a small move north and the perversity that belongs only to New York, became an overnight bang and by now a two-year success story.

It had good food, smooth music, premium beer and whisky and top prices, and you still needed reservations even for lunch unless you were big enough to bandy Lenny Sobel's name around and make it stick.

When we got out of the taxi, Irish Helen's face was beautifully quizzical, not so much at me as at herself, not knowing whether to stick it or run out.

I overtipped the driver a buck for luck, took her arm and started toward the door.

She said, “You know where you're going, don't you?”

“Sure,” I nodded. “Your boy's place. Maybe you'll sound off and he'll be hot for my head.”

“Smart guy. You're real smart, Deep.”

“I've been told already.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes were real cold. “You should be scared stiff, man. You should be shaking in your shoes.”

I stopped with my hand on the ornamented handle of the door. “You ever see me scared, sugar?”

“Maybe not in the old days.”

“You won't see me now either.”

“So you're a big one,” she said flatly.

For a couple seconds I just looked at her, then nodded. “Everybody's asked me that lately. I told them, so I'll tell you too. Yeah, I'm a big one. They never saw anyone big like I am.”

The frown creased her eyes again. “How did you know this was Lenny's place?”

I grinned at her. “I'm a big one, remember?” I opened the door and eased her through.

The headwaiter was an impeccable Slav imported in '49 from Paris by the
Galveston
and lately lured to The Signature by the big buck. His name was Stashu, he wore two hero pips in his lapel for underground activity in the last war and a nod of recognition from him could put you on the smart list in anybody's book.

Others were standing in the lobby, a few accepting cocktails on the house from a pretty waitress. Some of the junior exec types waited their time at the bar, preferring the side lines of the main room to the ignominy of just waiting.

I handed my hat and raincoat to the kid in the checkroom and turned back to Irish Helen. She was tall and cool, feeling everyone's eyes on her and playing it just right. She was waiting to see what happened next and waiting to laugh when it didn't. I walked to the plush chain where Stashu was quietly talking to a waiter. He looked up, smiled and nodded, lowered the plush chain and led Helen and me to a table and discreetly removed the reserved sign that had somebody else's name on it.

He took our orders personally, smiled again and left. Helen looked up at me, something like a shadow across her face. “That went too nice, Deep.”

“Of course.”

“You've never been here before.” It was a flat statement.

I just looked at her and waited.

“How'd you work it?” she asked.

“Headwaiters are paid to know people. Everybody.”

The shadow left her face and now I could see the tight lines of indecision that touched her. “He'll tell Lenny,” she said.

“He'd better.”

The drinks came then, timed flawlessly to make lunch the thing that it should be. Twice Stashu stopped by, inquired with his flavored English if everything was all right, and left happily when assured that it was. At two-thirty the lunch music faded into cocktail hour numbers, the room partially emptied and Lenny Sobel made his appearance.

He was fatter now. Still greasy looking, but able to wear five-hundred-buck suits and a ten-grand ring with an air of authority.

Lenny Sobel never walked fast. It might have been that he couldn't. It might have been that he didn't want to. He neither walked nor strolled. It was sort of a
step
that he took. He made it hard for the two who walked behind him. They had to either stop a moment then catch up or quarter the area at a slow pace merely to stay abreast.

He reached the table, smiled a fat smile first at Helen, then smiled a fat smile at me.

I said, “Hello, pig,” and if it weren't for Lenny's fast hand wave I would have been shot right there and the two boys back of me on somebody else's kill list.

But I knew the slob would wave them off fast and my grin told everybody I knew it. I said, “Make them come around in front, Lenny.”

His smile was still there. It was a friendly smile, bunching the fat under his eyes into humorous lines. He brought them around in front and they stood there docilely, just waiting. If Lenny said kill... they'd kill. Right now he said to stand. So they stood.

One was a TV western type, tiny-hipped and over-broad at the shoulders where his jacket was cut to carry a rod. The other was as average as a person can get. I nodded to them both and in order said, “Harold ... Al. Good to see you.”

Only Al, the average one, flicked. I said. “Your buddy's a Q and Dannemora grad, Al. Lousy partner.”

Lenny Sobel's hand touched my shoulder. “You know my associates?”

“Sure. Great guys. Al's the smart one, though, and you got to watch him. Not a rap to his name and looking to go places.”

The hood looked at me steadily, nothing showing in his face this time.

Sobel asked, “That right, Al?”

“I work for you, Mr. Sobel. You know what I can do.”

Lenny's smile broadened. “You ever meet this man, Al?”

“Not yet, Mr. Sobel. I think I'm going to like it if you want me to introduce myself.”

The fat wreathed itself into a laugh around Lenny's mouth. “Deep?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “For fun why not pull the cork and let me shoot all three of you. First you, Lenny, then these two
schmarts
in order. It should be fun. Go ahead, pull the cork.”

Helen's voice was a hoarse,
“No
... Deep!”

The two hoods came in a step.

I said, “Tell them for me, Lenny.”

They looked at him and watched his fat smile fall apart. Lenny said, “Let it drop.”

Al started, “If you want, Mr. Sobel ...”

“Let it drop, Al,” he repeated softly. “You and Harold wait for me outside. I'll be along.”