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.
He was like that, leaning back against an empty cardboard carton when I got there, the silenced gun still in his hand as though it were a part of him, a small hole in his forehead.
Down the alley Cat was silhouetted in the light. He came up to us slowly, sucking air in great gulps, and when he saw who was down, fell on his fanny in the dirt.
I said, “Nice shooting, Mr. Sullivan.”
All around us lights were going on in the windows. Voices called back and forth and somebody yelled for somebody else to call the cops. Softly, Mr. Sullivan said, “Yeah, you do that.” Then he looked up at me. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I suppose you’ll have a good story going for this one.”
“Real good, I was attacked. There’s another one in the hallway of the building. How come you made it in the alley?”
“I saw your friend here yelling and pointing this way. I catch on fast.”
“Okay, then leave him here with Cat and let’s get back to the building.” I looked at Cat and felt his face. “You feel all right?”
“I feel... lousy, but I’ll live. Go on.”
Sullivan said, “A squad car will be along. Tell them to come to the apartment.”
“Sure, sure. And Deep...”
“What?”
“Watch it.”
“Don’t worry. Let’s go, Sully.”
Sullivan tried hard, but he was a harness cop long on the beat and speed had left him behind years ago. We went on a jog and turned the corner as the sirens whined up the street behind us. There were scurrying shadows that darted out ahead of us, running only because we ran or because they saw the blue and brass. Trouble was something they wanted no part of, neither see it, hear it nor feel it.
The door was still open, gaping inwards on darkness. Sullivan pushed me aside, went in with his flash in one hand and gun in the other, found the wall switch and threw it up.
Automatically, I hit for the wall as the light came on, not taking any chances.
Sullivan looked at me and I looked at him. The spot in the doorway where I had gunned down the other one was empty. There was a big splash of blood on the floor and finger streaks on the wall and more by the outside door and what happened was plain enough.
Number One had been hit too lightly. He made it out while I went after his partner.
I said, “Inside, Sullivan,” and went through the doorway. Behind us a uniformed cop and a plain clothes man came in with a rush.
When I turned the light on we all stood there looking at the body on the floor. He had taken at least three shots in the head and a few more in the chest and any one of them would have been fatal. But pros don’t take chances and go for broke when they hit somebody.
Sullivan said, “That’s Augie.”
From in back of him Sergeant Hurd said, “Things are looking up, aren’t they?” His face had a blue bulge on one side of his mouth that gave him a partial sneer.
“Can it, Hurd,” I told him.
“Still tough?”
“Always.”
A cop came in with his arm through Cat’s and brought him in the room. In the light Cat had a sickly pallor and his cheeks were sunken deep in his face, each ridge of bone sharply outlined. He looked at me, his lips pulled back over his teeth, holding back the pain in his chest, and nodded. I knew what he meant.
The M.E. didn’t take long to get there. He was resigned, but pleasant about it. The fresh kills he didn’t mind at all and unlike a lot of M.E.’s, wasn’t afraid to give an immediate opinion. He went over Augie quickly, established the time of death definitely enough to satisfy Hurd, put it between an hour and a half and two hours ago and said he’d make it official with a p.m. in the morning.
I told Hurd to call Helen and Hugh Peddle and check the cabbie who brought us to the building. Hurd was a cop who liked to see things done right away. Before he finished talking to Peddle who he finally ran down in a midtown bistro, he had the cabbie in the foyer and got a statement from him too.
There wasn’t much I could add. As far as I was concerned they were prowlers who thought maybe Bennett left some stuff around and Augie surprised them going through the place.
Hurd took it all down solemnly, told us not to leave town and let us clear out while the techs took over. Cat said we’d be at his address and headed for the doorway.
I started to follow him when Hurd said, “Deep...”
“Yeah?” I paused, watching him.
“I made that call.”
“Good for you. I got plenty pull, hah?”
He waited a few seconds before answering, his face tight. Under his coat his shoulders twitched like he was ready to use his hands again.
“Walk softly, Deep,” he said.
I nodded, turned and got out before any of the newspaper crowd could make the scene. For Cat’s sake I took it easy, but it was still too fast for him. We had to stop three different times to let him get his breath back before we reached his building. He lived downstairs in the back of a squalid hovel hardly fit for a dog, a single room partitioned off from the rest of the cellar with a single overhead bulb, a couple of rickety chairs and a faded maroon couch.
“Home,” he said, and half fell on the couch.
He tried a cigarette, hacked himself into a state of near unconsciousness, recovered and threw the butt down. “Damn things,” he muttered.
“Cat...”
“I gotcha, Deep. The dead guy was Morrie Reeves.”
“You know what happened, don’t you?”
Cat nodded, opened his eyes and looked across at me. “They thought they was hitting you. They didn’t expect him to be there. Then they waited for you.” He laughed, the sound rattling deep in his throat. “You shook ’em when you went through that door. Boy, when them pros miss a hit they can’t make it the second time around the same night, can they? Damn, they didn’t like your kind of luck, that’s why the other one ran when you got his partner.”
“I didn’t get him good enough.”
Cat turned on his side so he could see me. “I was wondering about that, Deep.”
“What?”
“Nobody shook you for your rod. You walked out clean. Then that stuff with Hurd about a call.”
“So?”
“Hell, man, I’ve seen the big boys who can make one call and back off the cops. Even shake up a precinct if they want to. Back in the old days when we was kids the upstairs boys even ran city hall. So I know when a guy’s big. Trouble is, them big guys fall sooner or later and I hate to see you take the tumble. Been a long time since I had a friend.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Where you been all these years, Deep?”
I grinned at him and shook my head. “Some other time, kid.”
“Okay, Deep.” He sat up and patted the couch so that the dust flew out of it. “Let’s open up and sack out on it.”
“I’ll take the floor, buddy.”
“Don’t be so damn snobbish. You put in time on this before.”
I squinted at him in the dull light.
Cat let out a laugh. “This is the original of the one in Bennett’s place. It used to be in the cellar in the old K.O. days... the first piece of furniture we ever stole. You carried one end of it out the back of old Moe Schwartz’s secondhand store.”
Then I remembered it and laughed. “Open it up, you sentimental slob,” I said. “You guys just can’t break loose from the old days, can you?”
Chapter Ten
I woke up long before dawn ever touched the rooftops outside and lay there in the darkness thinking. I was completely awake, totally aware of where I was and what had happened, yet sometime during the fade-out of sleep a new thought had come to me with such immediate clarity that I woke up.
And now I couldn’t recall it.