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.
“I was lucky. Wilse got there fast. Some strings got pulled someplace maybe. It happened faster than I thought it would. I was pretty damned lucky.”
“See if it holds.”
“What do ya want, Deep? I told ya, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it!”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me.”
“Well, say it.”
“When I came in the club it was you and Benny up there. He was reaching for the catbird seat. Where did you come in?”
The tension was too much for him. He took a deep breath, shuddered and flopped back on the couch. “I was backin’ him,” he said.
“He need it?”
“Benny don’t take chances.”
“So you and the shiv go along. It was like with you and Bennett.”
“Why not?”
“How come Benny-from-Brooklyn wanted to manage?”
“He never told me nothin’ and I didn’t ask. With me it’s for loot and nothin’ else.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Cat?”
Cat shook his head. “That’s the way I got it too, Deep.”
“Benny ever say anything to you?”
Cat’s grin was small and crooked. “Who’s gonna tell me anything? I only went in to get outa the rain. If it wasn’t that I carried the old brand the new bunch wouldn’t let me in the cellar.”
I stood up and grinned down at Dixie. His eyes watched me closely, his hopped-up mind trying to pin all the angles down. I said, “One more thing. I shot up a couple of the boys in Bimmy’s. They went to a Doc. Who?”
Dixie didn’t worry it out any. “Halpern. John Halpern. Got a drugstore on Amsterdam. He got run outa the union five years ago.”
Cat said, “I know him. He handles all the hot stuff for the boys.”
“Okay, Dixie, play it cool. Keep your mouth shut and if you get any big ideas I want to be the first to know.”
“Who thinks?”
“You better start. I want to know who killed Bennett.”
He moved his eyes again, swiped at his mouth and watched us blankly as we went out.
Downstairs Helen spoke for the first time, tiny lines of curiosity tugging at the comers of her eyes. “You ask funny questions, Deep.”
“It’s a funny business, Helen.”
Cat said, “What now? It’s almost twelve.”
“Nothing we can do now,” I told him. “Let’s drop Helen off and hit it. You want to go uptown, Irish?”
“I’ll take a cab.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“In the morning I’ll have to make arrangements to see that... Tally’s taken care of.” I felt her fingers tighten on my arm. Her face pressed against my shoulder suddenly. “The bastards. Oh, the dirty bastards!” she said softly.
“Don’t sweat it, Helen. I’ll find out who did it.”
She shook the hair away from her face and looked at me. Her eyes were wet, her lower lip between her teeth. “Not you, Deep. Please don’t find anybody.”
Then her mouth was a hot thing again, crying unintelligibly against my lips, her hands cradling my face with a wild urgency. I held her a moment, then forced her away gently. “Go home,” I said. “There’s always tomorrow.”
She smiled, nodded and said, “Tomorrow.” She picked a folded letter from her pocketbook, jotted down a number on the comer of it, tore it off and handed it to me. “Call me,” she said, her voice husky.
I whistled a cab over, opened the door for her and waved her off.
On the curb Cat chuckled, “You got yourself a big one, Deep. She’s all gone over you.”
I liked the idea.
“It gets more like the old days every minute, don’t it?
For a second I remembered some of those old days and shook my head. “I hope not. Come on, let’s go down the comer and find another cab.”
You get a feeling sometimes that things aren’t just right. It’s like little things crawling up your back and across your scalp. It happens when you get to be a real pro in the game and can read all the signs and smell all the smells. It’s a little thing that seeps across space and barely touches you, if it does at all, but that peculiar sense you’ve developed from running the back alleys and rooftops and living past the slugs and razor-edged blades... it tells you that something is out of joint and you only have a small time to find out what it is.
Cat knew it too. He knew it the second he got out of the cab and I saw him go up on his toes and make both ends of the street with an unobtrusive glance. I paid the cabbie off, tipped him and when I put my change back I did it neatly so that when my hand came away it had the .38 in it.
We didn’t need any signals at all. Long ago it had been a well practiced maneuver with Cat and me and the motions came naturally. He laid back and to the left, planning every move the second something broke, keeping a split between us so we couldn’t be taken out by any one person. He knew I had the rod in my fist and didn’t object when I went ahead.
I opened the door, walked in normally and knew on the first step inside what was coming. I yelled, “Watch it, Cat!” and dove for the floor as a red wink flashed from the door to the side and with a quiet snap a bullet slammed into the wall over my head.
The .38 in my hand bucked twice before the other silenced rod went off again. This time it went off into the floor and with a harsh choking sob a body followed it down.
It took a few seconds for the echoes of the gun to diminish. As the waves of sound receded I heard feet hammering inside, a window smashing open, and I yelled, “The back, Cat... there’s one going for the back!”
I was taking a chance but I figured there wouldn’t be more than two. I hopped over the body on the floor, crouched and ran inside and felt my way through the rooms, trying to recall the layout of furniture. I made it to the back and saw the gray opening of the window pale against the black of the night beyond it.
There was no way for Cat to cover the exit except by going all the way around the comer and if he ran his lungs probably wouldn’t hold up. I got through the window, jumped the eight feet to the pavement and waited until I had the layout straight. Someplace not too far off somebody kicked a can and rattled it across the concrete.
I didn’t wait then. I jumped the fence in back, landed in another yard spotted with crates and strange garbage forms, picked my way around it and reached the seven-foot fence at the other end. If the yards hadn’t changed any there was an alley between Glover’s and Constantino’s only now it was Mort’s Dry Cleaning and Alverez the Grocer. That opening to the street was where the other one was going and if he made it he had it all the way.
Damn.
I didn’t know the details of the route any more. Garbage piles change in twenty-five years. People nailed up the boards we had deliberately loosened and rearranged the backyard puzzle until it was almost a maddening maze. But if the other guy didn’t know it either the edge was the same. I went up and over three more, felt my clothes tear twice and the second time a nail ripped a gouge along my calf.
Then there was the last one and I saw the guy up ahead.
He wasn’t running now. He was down in a squat, moving crablike but fast. His hand was out ahead of him, the gun like an elongated finger, pointing.
I came up slow, getting him between me and the yellow light from the street lamp at the end of the alley and in that sick glow I saw what had slowed him up.
Mr. Sullivan was coming up the alley at a half trot with his service gun out, his hand fumbling under his coat for his flashlight and in one second he was going to be dead.
I had time to holler, “Down, Sully!” and saw him go flat. The guy spun, snapped another silent shot at me and when I rolled, still another. That was all the time he had. Mr. Sullivan fired once from a prone position and the guy held his crouch a moment longer, then slowly sat down.