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.
Batten nodded sagely, paused, then: “Unless you knew him well you would never realize that he was retarded.”
“Retarded!” The word exploded out of me.
“That’s right, retarded. He had more of a juvenile outlook on things than an adult one. You’ve been in his apartment. You know how he hung on to the past. Look at how he set things up for you if you came back. Your erstwhile friend was retarded.”
I said, “He did pretty well for a backward child.”
“No doubt about it. Like all juveniles he had a shrewdness an adult can hardly duplicate. He had a child’s callousness and a solid criminal bent that helped him right along. These are the attributes that put Bennett on top. He worked things from a wild angle that nobody but a juvenile would even consider and because he did he caught certain persons off guard and before they could recover Bennett had the ball.”
“That doesn’t sound like a retarded action.”
“It isn’t. I said he had a criminal bent. Bennett wasn’t a retarded juvenile... he was a retarded adult. Along certain lines he still thought like an adult. A criminal adult. That, Deep, is a rough, unpolished, but accurate picture of Mr. Bennett as I see it. You should see it too.”
“For me it’s harder,” I told him. “I only knew him as a juvenile.”
“You were lucky.”
I pulled a chair over and perched on the arm of it. “So Bennett picked up choice bits and pieces of people and held them over their heads. Now, the big question, where did he keep them?”
Batten sat back and stared at the ceiling. “I wish I knew. I really do.”
“What would you do with it?”
Only his eyes moved back to me. “Simple. I’d make a lot of friends. I’d make a present of those choice bits and pieces as you call them to the parties concerned and sit back and enjoy their largesse. All legal, no trouble, everybody saying thank you and I would need no more.”
Before I could answer the phone rang. Batten picked it up, frowned and handed it to me. It was Cat on the other end and he told me he still hadn’t run Lew James down but hadn’t checked out all the places he could be either. He had gotten to the Westhampton after the cops and made out a little better than they had. With the aid of a double sawbuck the desk clerk, who was an inveterate cop hater, thought he could remember a number that one of them had called. He couldn’t recall it then, but knew it would come back to him after a while because it had a certain rhyme to it. Meanwhile Charlie Bizz was hitting the medicos a guy could see without worrying about gunshot wound reports.
Wilson Batten was waiting for me to clue him in but I didn’t bother. When I put the phone up I said, “Supposing you figure out where Bennett put the stuff before I do, Batten?”
He meant it when he answered, “Then I’ll tell you all about it. You see, I figure you for a psychotic too, and like most psychotics, clever in certain fields. If I thought it out, then so would you and I’d rather not have you on my back with a gun than enjoy the profits such a discovery could bring me. Life, after all, is worth more than money.”
“Keep it in mind, friend. You have it pegged exactly right except for the first part.”
“About being psychotic?”
“Yes.”
“Does the thought gnaw at you?”
“Not the slightest.”
“Time will tell.”
I nodded. “You have any immediate plans?”
“Nothing I can’t cancel.”
“Good. Then you hold down that chair. I might want you in a hurry.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
I dug out the piece of paper Helen had written her number on and called from a drugstore down the street from Batten’s office. Her place was an apartment hotel in the west seventies and she wanted me to come over as soon as I could. I told her to have something ready to eat and I’d be there in twenty minutes.
She was more beautiful than ever, standing there in the doorway waiting for me. A black velvet housecoat accentuated the panther-black of her hair, the thin scarlet beading matched the moist redness of her lips.
Big. Beautifully big. She stood with one leg partially thrust out and the velvet molded itself around the fullness of her thigh in a manner more sensual than nakedness itself. She needed no open neckline to highlight the grandeur of her breasts. Their eloquence was evident in their proud thrusting, having motion and life of their own under the rich texture of the gown.
“Do I pass?” she smiled.
When I grinned back she took my arm and pulled me inside.
“Didn’t mean to stare,” I said. “It’s just that I got a fetish for big lovely broads. Besides, black intrigues me.”
“It’s supposed to. To intrigue you even further I might suggest that I haven’t got a damn thing on under it, either.”
I tossed my hat on an end table and sat down. “Suggestions, suggestions, never any proof.”
She stuck her tongue out at me, suddenly flipped open a button with the tip of her fingers and threw the housecoat open like a pair of great batwings. I had that one brief flash of an incredible combination of black and white sweeping through curves and planes into beautiful hollows and columns then just as quickly the batwings folded shut again. It was exactly like getting hit in the pit of the stomach when you weren’t expecting it and left sucking air and wondering what happened.
I stood up feeling disjointed and said, “Damn it, Irish, don’t ever do that again!” My voice came out rough on the edges and I could feel the dryness in my mouth.
She didn’t back off. She took a step nearer, then her hands were on my face. “Why shouldn’t I, Deep?”
Having a shaky feeling when a dame was close was a new sensation to me. There had been many women and many times. There were other big ones and other beautiful ones, but never one like this.
I didn’t dare touch her. I couldn’t take the chance. I wanted to push her away but I knew that if I touched her at all the moment would be too explosive and I couldn’t afford the resulting emotion.
“Deep...?”
“You said it once, kitten. I’m poison. Nobody knows it better than you.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
When I finally could breathe right I sucked my gut in and stepped back. “Something just occurred to me, Irish.”
She knew what I meant. She seemed to retreat inside herself for a second and when she turned her head away it was because her eyes were wet.
“You mean that once I would have given anything to see you killed?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“You think this is part of that wanting?”
“I don’t know. You’re an actress. I’m not a good critic. There are times when I don’t know what to think.”
Helen turned, looked at me and there was no guile in her at all. She smiled gently. “You’re not fooling me at all, Deep. You know how I feel and I know how you feel. Shall I be direct?”
I nodded.
“I love you, Deep.”
She said it quietly, with dignity, as though she had known about it and thought about it all her life. She stood there watching me, waiting patiently until I grinned at her because there was nothing I could say then because she knew it all anyhow.
“Does it always happen this way, Irish?”
“I don’t know. It never happened to me before this.”
“We’ll have to talk about it some more,” I said. “Later.”
Her face clouded somewhat and she folded her arms across her chest. “Will there be a later, Deep?”
“Why?”
“You’re out to kill. You know what will happen.”
Once again I opened my coat. Like Hurd, her eyes went to my belt and when they came back to mine it was worth seeing. She came to me slowly, her hungry mouth reaching for mine, her arms possessive and demanding, the body warmth of her through the soft folds of her clothes. I could still taste her after she took her mouth away.