The Deep
- Автор: Спиллейн Микки
- Год: 1961
- Язык: английский
- Год: E. P. Dutton & Company
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Deep». Краткое содержание книги:
Deep was back in town after a twenty-five year exile — to inherit an empire and avenge a death. He and Bennett had made the inheritance pact when they were kids — blood brothers in crime. They had known then that even New York was too small for them both to share, and so they had tossed a coin to determine who would stay and who would build his organization in another town. Deep had lost and gone.
But now Bennett has lost — been murdered in his own home — and Deep is ready to prove lie is strong enough to take over. Deep wants Bennett’s killer; the others want Bennett’s job. And all too many of them — including the beautiful Irish — want Deep dead.
The Deep is the mastermind in one of the most exciting stories Spillane has ever written — a breathtaking tale of violence in action.
“Not this time.”
“You bracing somebody?”
“In a manner of speaking. It won’t take much.”
“All right. I don’t suppose I have to remind you about Lew James and Morrie Reeves. Cat is all shook at you traveling alone even if he doesn’t mention it.”
“I know the route, kid,” I reminded him.
“Sure you do. Just keep it cool.”
I told him I would and hung up.
Helen was watching me through the glass of the booth and when I pulled the door open she said, “You won’t go alone, Deep.”
I leaned over and kissed her. She was so big I didn’t have to lean far at all and even — with that brief touch I could feel the fire start again. “I never expected to, Irish,” I said.
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.”