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.
“Natch. We need the body discovered. You can say you came to get a statement from Benny and found him this way. Don’t worry, nobody will spot us. And you keep your big mouth shut.”
Roscoe cut the connection without another word.
I wiped the phone clean, checked the floor where I had rolled and had shoved Helen, saw nothing that could possibly have identified us and went out to Helen.
The street was quiet now, the crew finished for the day. The first edge of darkness was folding in around the city and as though nothing at all had happened, Helen and I went down the steps, turned west to Third and walked six blocks before I flagged down a cab.
Helen couldn’t stop shaking. She fought to control it but couldn’t get the thought of Benny lying there dead and the guy shooting at us out of the darkness of the room out of her head. I tapped the cabbie, gave Helen’s address to him and got back to the building.
Upstairs I made her take a couple of aspirins and lie down and told her to stay there until I called. I threw a blanket over her, kissed her lightly and ran my fingers through the black silk of her hair.
Half chokingly she said, “Please, Deep... don’t do... anything.”
“Don’t worry, kid.”
“No matter what you do... it can spoil things.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Her hair tumbled about her face when she shook her head with easy desperation. “Do nothing at all. Please, Deep. We have so much now. Don’t go spoil it for us. Don’t ruin it all. We can get out of this place... if you’ll only do nothing.”
“Honey...”
She could read the expression on my face. “All you need is a gun in your hand and you’ll use it. We’ll both be finished then. You know that, don’t you?”
There wasn’t anything I could say.
She said, “You have something in mind, haven’t you?”
“Yes. The whole thing’s tied up in the damn K.O. Club.”
“Can’t you... leave it to the police.”
Some things you can’t explain to women. I didn’t try now. I told her I’d call or come back when I had a few more answers and would know then how I’d handle the situation.
At least it satisfied her. She let go my hand reluctantly and turned her face into the pillow.
You can bring them up tough and hard and even keep them that way, but when they see dead eyes and bullet holes punched in a guy’s chest the horror of it is always brand new. That is, if they’re normal.
I called the number Cat had given Batten and the receiver was lifted after a partial ring. I asked, “Cat?”
Cat seemed to be half out of breath. “Jeez, Deep, where you been?”
“Pretty busy. Where are you calling from?”
“You know the Welshman’s Bar?”
I said I did. It was a midblock spot on Lexington in the Forties.
“I been waiting, man. You want Lew James, you better get down here.”
“Where’d you find him, Cat?” I sensed the edge in my voice now.
“Wasn’t me. Charlie Bizz ran him down. You put a big hole through the muscle where the neck joins the shoulder and he had to get to a doc. Charlie Bizz got the word out and found out who. It was Anders. You remember Anders? Doc Anders. He’s the one they tried to nail a narcotics rap on five years ago and couldn’t make it stick.”
“I know who you mean.”
“Well, he was guilty, all right. He was strictly a syndicate man. So Lew James knew who to go to and you know what that means?”
“Yeah, a syndicate hit. It’s big. Where is he now?”
“Right around the corner in a rooming house. Number two twenty-four. He came right from Doc Anders’ place to here so it must be a joint Anders keeps handy for something like this. Bizz stayed behind him all the way and I took it up after we made contact. You get down here and we’ll take the guy.”
“Give me twenty minutes. And listen... things are popping fast. Benny Mattick has been knocked off.”
“Benny?” He couldn’t believe it. “Jeez, Deep, who...”
“It looks like mob action now. Benny couldn’t make his bluff work when he tried to take over the club. It makes sense now, at least in some ways. Remember the meet in Bimmy’s? You know who those boys were.”
“Sure. Them’s the big ones. Front men for the organization.”
“Chances are Benny was trying to pull a power play. He still could have convinced them, then we came in. When Benny crapped out there he had it.”
On the other end Cat let out a chuckle. “Can’t say we don’t go all the way. No more kid stuff. Right to the top. Jeez, Deep, when I think of all the times we scrounged apples off pushcarts... and now this.” He laughed right out and rasped into a cough. When it subsided he said, “If I live through this it’ll be somethin’.”
“Lay off the butts and you’ll make it. Now hang on, I’ll be there as fast as I can. I won’t even stop off to pick up my rod, so play it cool, understand?”
The bartender said yes, he saw the guy I described, all right. He kept coming in and going out, having a small beer each time and looking like he was waiting for somebody. But he had gone out ten minutes ago and hadn’t come back yet.
I knew what had happened. Cat was keeping a running check on the rooming house to make sure it just wasn’t a blind where Lew James might have switched to another track. I’d give him another five minutes anyway.
But even then he didn’t show.
I could smell it again. The wrongness. Something got screwed up and you could feel it in the air. I threw a buck on the bar for the beer and didn’t wait for any change. Two twenty-four he had said, a rooming house right around the corner.
Which comer, damn it!
South was closest and I tried that and there was no two twenty-four close by. I ran, retracing my steps, feeling the eyes of the curious follow me. I rounded the comer, followed the numbers down but I was on the wrong side of the street. Two twenty-four was directly across from me, a faceless house in a faceless neighborhood. There was a pale yellow glow coming from a front basement window and the vague outline of a woman reading a paper showed through the curtains. Upstairs was blacked out.
Nowhere could I see Cat. The only thing I could think of was that Lew James had left and Cat had followed him. But I had to be sure. I had to check. I took the six porch steps in one bound, stopped in the outside foyer and knew that inside something was going hot.
Cat’s shoes were there by the door, side by side.
Then the shots tore the night apart and a man’s scream was cut off in the middle.
I went through the door with no attempt at being quiet. I let out a hoarsely shouted, “Cat!” and from upstairs he answered, “Here, Deep!”
Something smashed against the wall above me and splintered. Glass shattered with an exploding sound and then there was a single shot as I reached the landing and dove into the darkness of the doorway in front of me.
He moaned softly from a few feet away. I said, “Cat?”
“Up on... the roof. Back way. Get... him, Deep.”
I mouthed some wild kind of curse and rammed through the rooms. I caught a table across my thighs and threw it into kindling against a chair. My eyes were adjusted to what little light there was and I spotted the open door that led to the stairway. Most houses had only one staircase, but this had ben renovated. I went up the last flight and paused in the doorway. Nobody was making a sucker of me on a rooftop. I peeled off my coat, threw it through and as I did a shot boomed out from one side and the coat was hit in midair.
That’s all I gave him time for. I went out the kiosk, cut to the left and stopped where I was covered by a corner of the exit and listened.
Downstairs somebody was yelling his head off, but up here it was dead quiet. I slipped my shoes off and put them down, then circled behind the sloping back of the rooftop exit. The gravel bit into the soles of my feet like small knives but I was past feeling it.