The Deep (9 page)

“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.

When I read it I handed it to Cat. He grimaced and said, “Wise guy. You want to learn him one?”

“It's bad enough he has to live with himself, Cat.”

“He always was a punk. Him and his chicken liver sandwiches.” He flicked his eyes up at me. “Saw him give a dog half a sandwich once when a hungry little-kid was standing right next to him.”

“Dogs got to eat too,” I said.

Both of them looked at me, their faces impassive. I said, “I'll speak to the boy myself. That sticks and stones bit don't go with me.”

Augie said, “Play it smart, Deep. You don't want to fight the press.”

“I don't? Why not? What do you think the press can do? So they call me names. They put on the heat. So what?”

“It's not quite like the old days,” he insisted.

“I know, pal. It's improved, if anything.”

Augie squirmed a little in his chair. “Tate doesn't pull any punches. He's not like ... us. All his life he worked hard. He peddled papers and clerked in the office until he finally got his name in print. He sweated. He's not an easy guy to push around. It's been tried and he blew the top off things. You get him going and he gets pretty damn mad.”

“I've seen him mad before, feller. Remember, Cat?”

“When you lifted his poke?”

“Yeah.”

Cat chuckled at the memory. “Tried to shoot you. He grabbed a piece off Frankie Carlo and tried to shoot you. Boy, I can still see you flipping over that railing into Morgan's basement.” He laughed again. “How come you never blasted him after that, Deep?”

I grunted and shoved back in my seat. “Hell, I had it coming, I guess. Couldn't blame him. Anybody did it to me would've had a split head quick. Funny thing, when I slammed that door in his face he just laid there and cried like a damn baby. I could hear him bawling, then that stinking Sullivan picked him up and took him home. I bet his old lady browned out when he went home with a cop.”

Augie said, “You were lucky you didn't get creamed.”

I laughed at him. “Hell, he didn't even come close. Besides, he got his money back. Nine bucks and forty cents. It was the first thing he asked for when I saw him the other day.”

“You're pressing your luck, Deep,” Augie told me.

“Yeah, well let's go press it some more.”

“How?”

“We're going to see Benny-from-Brooklyn and his buddie Dixie.”

“You're crazy,” Augie said softly.

I nodded. “Natch.” I grinned at him. “But first let's talk to our newspaper friend.”

Hymie was too busy at his counter to talk and told us that Roscoe Tate was probably still at home. I left Cat there to hold him in case he came in, walked two blocks down and turned the corner to where Roscoe still lived in a tenement apartment and posted Augie at the door while I went in.

Unlike the other buildings, this one smelled clean. It may have been Roscoe's influence or simply a few bucks extra to the super, but there were no garbage cans, cartons or carriages in the hallway and nobody had swiped the hundred-watt bulb that hung overhead.

But it was still a tenement and it was still on The Street and for a second it hit me what a bunch of sentimental fools the whole bunch were. Bennett ... the old club, his apartment a replica of the original place, Wilse Batten in modern quarters but still doing business on the old turf and Augie waiting around to inherit, Benny Mattick and Dixie stamping around as barons and on top of it all the ballot box boys at the call of the K.O. troupe. And off by himself, Roscoe Tate, taking it all down for his sheet, racking their system when he could right from their own ball park. Sentimental slob or not, at least he was the only smart one. He didn't have to take any funny money or any crap from the angle boys and he had his fair share of loot and the kind of prestige that counted.

Roscoe lived on the ground floor and answered my knock himself. When he saw who it was he eyed me speculatively a moment, nodded and stepped back so I could come in.

Sentimentality didn't exist at all. Roscoe had had enough slobbery in his earlier days not to want to prolong it in any way later. A studied hand had chosen the colors and the pieces and in every way his apartment reflected the touch of the bachelor and money well spent.

I said, “Nice place.”

“I like it.”

“That figures. You go it alone?”

“Most of the time.”

“Well, you never were the one to waste money on a broad.”

His shrug had a degree of contempt in it. “I still don't. They're free for me now like they used to be for you.”

“Good for you, kid,” I told him. His eyes flicked to mine a second, watched me with disgust, then softened to their normal ice quality and he waved to a chair and sat down himself.

“You didn't come to talk girls, did you?” Tate asked me.

I shook my head. “Murder.”

“So?”

“Have you been working close to the fuzz?”

“The police are happy to get anything I give them. They reciprocate in kind. Whatever's known about Bennett's death, I know.”

“Don't feel so big. I have an ear at the big door myself. What I hear is that the cops think Bennett was killed where he lay ... inside his apartment. Now, is this the latest or is this a blind?”

Automatically, his fingers plucked a pencil from his pocket and he reached for a lined yellow pad on the table in front of him. “What are you thinking of, Deep?” He was the inquisitive reporter suddenly.

“You give me one answer and I'll give you another.” His face had a shrewd expression and he nodded. “That's the only way they see it. Why?”

“Because that's not the way it happened.”

“Go on.”

“That small-caliber bullet didn't kill Bennett right away. He saw who hit him, got up and started after him. He lasted long enough to get to the alley between Glover's and Constantino's. You know where?”

“Sure, that's not far from Hymie's delicatessen, only now it's not Glover's and Constantino's. It's Mort's Dry Cleaning and Alverez the grocer.”

“So okay, you know where I mean.”

He made some marks on the paper. “It's an interesting thought.”

“It sure is. It means the killer realized Bennett followed him and carried him all the way back to his apartment.”

Tate shook his head. “That would be stupid. What difference would it make to the killer if he wasn't caught?”

“That, friend, is a catch question. I don't know.”

“Then how do you know about the other bit.”

“Because a girl put me on to something. You know Tally Lee?”

Tate nodded, waiting.

“She said she wanted to spit on my corpse like she did on Bennett's. It was a peculiar thought because she should never have had that opportunity to spit on Bennett. But she said it and she meant it. She wasn't kidding. Then an admirer of mine turned up with a souvenir ... Bennett's watch. When he lay there dead a guy riffled his poke, lifted the watch and sold it. The kid who got it figured he was doing me a big one by bringing it around.”

Roscoe Tate was excited now. His fingers wrote, although his eyes never left my face. His mouth was animated, seeming to mouth every word as I said it. When I finished he said, “Damn, you know what this means?”

“Sure. One of the night people could have been there to see who carried Bennett back. They're funny people, those. They live close to the shadows and see everything that goes on in every damn hole in the neighborhood. No matter where you go there's always one of them around. Eyes all over the place. You know, they used to scare me back in the old days. No matter what time it was I could always imagine someone peering out through dirty curtains or someone curled up in a pile of garbage watching what I was doing. Man, I kicked through more trash piles and knocked over ash cans looking for night people than I have hairs on my head. I found them, too. When I did me and Bennett kicked the crap out of them so bad they never remembered a thing or even wanted to. After a while with us they wouldn't watch. They'd just take off.”

“You carry a mad a long time, Deep.” He was grinning at me. The little jerk was happy to see me get worked up inside and I knew why.

I let my fists uncurl and grinned back at him. That much would make him sore and it was good enough for me.

He said, “Suppose I call this in,” and reached for the phone.

I waved at him and he hesitated. “Knock it off. This'll keep a little while. The fuzz have their own stoolies. I'd like to stay a step ahead.”

“Then why give me this?”

“Because you have you own sources, kid. They're not mine, but they're important. I'll trade you information as it comes. You keep me hot with whatever you get from your end or the fuzz.”

He smiled and nodded. “It sounds good, Deep. Stick your neck out all you want. I'll be real glad to help you get yourself killed. Even to putting the stops on a good yarn.”

“You and Irish Helen ought to get together. You have mutual interests.”

For a moment he was quiet, then, “Don't do anything to hurt her, Deep. You've always loused up everything and if you louse up her I'll do anything I can to hose you.”

“Anything?”

“That's right.”

I grunted and got up. “That's what she said too. Fine friends I got.”

He didn't say anything. He sat there and watched me go out. But at least we had a trader pact and I knew Tate would come across. You couldn't ask for much more than that.

 

Bimmy's White Rose Tavern was a nothing joint that catered almost solely to neighborhood traffic. It had a local reputation for having great pig's knuckles and a good minor brand beer, and it was a rare time when trouble ever started along its bar. Bimmy saw to that. His three hundred pounds was a lot of meat to come up against. Bimmy wanted it quiet. It paid off that way. His back room was Benny Mattick's office and the long green that came his way depended on just how quiet he kept it.

I left Cat outside and Augie and I went in to the bar. We served ourselves at the glass knuckle barrel and when I threw a buck on the counter Bimmy came down to make change.

I said, “Benny in back?”

“Who?” His little eyes reached out for me.

“You play it cute, Bimmy, and you'll get this knuckle rammed down your throat.”

His finger slipped open the catch at the end of the bar and he raised the section and squeezed through. He still smiled the way he used to, his mouth pulling down at the comers, the scar under his chin widening with the grin.

Then he recognized Augie. Then me. The smile stayed fixed, but he didn't move in at all. I said, “Be nice, Bimmy, and maybe I won't shoot up anybody in your joint. Especially maybe not you. Oke?”

He nodded.

“I asked you something.”

“He's back there.” I looked at him and waited, then his eyes shifted toward the closed doors at the end and he said, “Dixie and Lenny Sobel and some uptown gents are there too.”

“Thanks.”

We walked back and Augie played his part right and opened the door for me. He opened it fast and all the way so I was able to cover the room quickly with one look and spot the only two boys who were in any kind of a position to make a play. The pitch hit them too suddenly and they didn't move and it was all mine. I stepped inside and Augie closed the door gently, leaning against it as if he had all the time in the world.