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 leaned back against the edge of the desk and placed his hands flat on its top. “You really pile up snow ahead of you, Deep. It’s good to watch you operate. I learn a lot just watching. I used to watch Bennett the same way. He was pretty cute too and had big connections all the way up the line. He was smart besides. He never left himself open where he’d take the kind of fall most big guys take. No tax problems or anything like that. No, he stayed clean until he finally got rapped by some punk kid and that was that.”
Now it was my turn to get curious. “Punk kid?” I repeated.
“Yeah, your old buddy Bennett was killed by some punk kid. The big shot of the decade who could make mobsters and politicians jump got bumped by a punk kid. That’s no way for a big shot to go, is it?”
Hurd watched my face with a peculiar kind of fascination, like I was some sort of unusual specimen.
“It was a zip gun that got your pal, a common zip gun. You ought to remember the kind, you made enough of them, didn’t you?” He stopped, remembering something, then said sarcastically, “I almost forgot... you didn’t use a zip. You packed a rod you lifted from a cop, didn’t you? Still wear it, Deep?”
I shrugged, opened my coat back innocently and heard Cat say in a whisper, “Jeez...”
“A zip, Deep. A single .22 from a zip gun. Ballistics even could tell how it was made. A section of a car radio aerial, a nail-point firing pin driven in by rubber band action... pretty damn effective.”
“Science is wonderful,” I said. “This can’t be top secret information, can it?”
“You’ll read all about it in the afternoon editions.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Cat said, “Come on, Deep,” and tugged at my arm.
I put my hat on and opened the door for Helen but Cat beat her through. If he had had a tail it would have been as bushy as a Christmas tree. He motioned me aside and in a low tone told me he was going for Charlie Bizz, then to look for Lew James. I slipped him a C note to take care of expenses and told him to keep in touch through Wilson Batten and to meet me later at the apartment. In no case, though, was he to stick his neck out. Helen picked up Roscoe at the entrance and we all went down to Hymie’s together. Roscoe didn’t like it, but he had no choice. Besides, he had a reporter’s big nose for news and anything he got from me could be used in my obituary notice.
Over the coffee Roscoe didn’t pull any punches. He came flat out and said, “Helen, do you realize what you’re getting into?”
“I think so. I’m not worried.”
“But I am.”
She reached over the table and patted his hand. “I’m not a little girl any more.”
“You’re letting this punk con you, Helen. You’ve always been a sucker for hard tales and hard guys.”
“Ease off, Roscoe,” I said.
His eyes bit into mine. “Why should I? It’s nothing you don’t know. You’re no stranger to this street. Just think back. In school she pals with the hard-luck kid of them all... Betty Ann Lee.”
“We were friends,” Helen reminded him gently.
“Friends? A kid from a tramp family who had more arrests as a juvenile than any other two around? She was whoring at fifteen and she was a friend?”
“She couldn’t help it, Roscoe. You know where the money she made went to. That family of hers wasn’t much. They lived on what she brought in.”
“Okay, ours wasn’t much either,” he said, “but we made out. When I kicked the old man out we did fine. Nobody had to go whoring around.”
“She didn’t have anybody else to do it for her,” Helen said.
“It didn’t matter. She would have gone down anyway. She wound up with Bennett until she took a dive off a roof. A damned narcotic addict throwing herself around under every guy she met and this is a friend?”
Something buzzed in the back of my mind then. I said, “I heard it that Bennett didn’t want anybody playing with H in his back yard.”
“Pious attitude, wasn’t it?” Roscoe sneered. “Just like you guys. When Betty Lee took the leap it shook hell out of Bennett. He wanted no part of anything that could dirty up his little house... nothing that meant a federal rap. In his business the feds would go all out to make a connection between him and anybody in the narcotics trade. They’d harass him to death if they thought they had something. No, Bennett was shrewd. He kept all the way away... after the damage was done. Now Helen here can’t lose the old school ties and stays friendly with punks she should have shaken off long ago.”
Roscoe grimaced, his hands clenched tight with anger. “Now you come along. The worst of the lot. Worse than Bennett or Sobel or anybody.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
His grimace twisted into a smile. “I’m not. All I have to do is sit back and wait. Your kind always winds up the same way. Dead.”
“You hate pretty hard, Roscoe.”
For a second he paused reflectively, then shook his head. “Not really. It’s a luxury I can’t afford. If I hate I can’t be objective, and if I’m not objective I can’t be a reporter. Let’s say I’m cynical and slightly embittered. After years of this street and turning the worst of things inside out to see how they’re made anybody would be bitter. But most of all you learn patience. There’s a certain course that events take that simply can’t be altered and if you can wait those events will reach a conclusion. It’s like watching somebody on a trolley car. They twist and turn, go up this street and that, stop and start, but no matter what they think or do, that trolley is following immovable tracks and there is only one end it can reach.
“You’re on a trolley, Deep. You got on when you were a kid. You picked your direction, paid your fare and now you’re stuck with the ride. It’s all downhill, the trolley’s lost its brakes and at the end is a big steel bumper that wipes you right out of existence.”
“Nice picture,” I said.
“You’re all on the same trolley car, Deep. Capone, Schultz, Nelson, Dillinger, Diamond, Bennett and you. With you the ride isn’t over yet.” He paused, smiled, and went on. “I don’t mind watching you ride it, Deep. I can get your obit ready right now and file it away until the time comes because I know where that ride will end.” He lost the smile then, his eyes became tight. “The sorry part is watching someone else take the ride with you. It’s bad enough when they pay their own way like you and Bennett, but when they deliberately hook on for fun’s sake it’s sheer waste.”
Helen got his implication and shook her head. “I know what I’m doing. Please don’t worry.”
“You do, Helen? You really do? You knew what you were doing when you let Lenny Sobel go soft over you? A hoodlum a dozen years older than you. You knew it when Bennett hung you on his arm for a decoration every time he toured the hot spots?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“You know it now too, I suppose. You’re sentimental all over again over this creep because you used to have a crush on him.”
Helen glanced at me and smiled. “This is what happens when you have an older brother.”
“Let him have his opinions. He’s worked hard enough for them.” I looked at Roscoe over the rim of my cup. “Your simile is nicely put but has a big flaw in it.”
“Has it?”
I finished the coffee and threw a buck on the table to cover the bill.
“Very plainly.”
“None that I can see, Deep. Suppose you point it out.”
I stood up. “Coming, Irish?”
“Can we meet later? I have to pick up a script at the producer’s office in twenty minutes. I’ll be free this afternoon.”
“I’ll call you later then. See you too, Roscoe.”
“Deep...”
“Now what?”
“The flaw in my simile.”
I shrugged. “A guy could get off the trolley any place he wanted, couldn’t he?”