The Deep (3 page)

I laughed quietly, and for moments it was the only sound in the place. Then his finger got white around the paper and his eyes rolled up to meet mine. “Deep,” he said.

“Hello, Roscoe.”

“You crumb, you got nine dollars and forty cents?”

“Why sure.”

“Put it down.” His forefinger tapped the table top. “Here.”

“Why sure.” I counted out the dough and laid it on his notes with a grin. A long time ago I had smacked him silly and lifted his weekly take out of his jeans. Now I laughed again when Roscoe picked up the cash and shoved it into his jacket pocket.

His face was pulled into tight lines and I could tell he was wishing that he was real man-sized for a change. “Don't spoil it for me, you bastard,” he said. “I promised myself I'd take that dough back from you sometime.”

“You want interest?”

“Don't be so stinking condescending.” He licked his lips, tasting the beads of hate-sweat that had made a fine line under his nose. “I was hoping to take it off your corpse.”

“Now you got it back, buddy. No hard feelings?”

“You louse. You miserable louse.” He waited to see what would happen and when I grinned the malice hissed through his teeth. “So what do you want?”

My shoulders hunched in a shrug. “I don't know. Not yet. But it's
somebody
I want, Roscoe. You follow?”

“I got ideas.”

“You know why I came back?” I asked him.

His hand wiped more hate-sweat away. “Yeah,” he said “I think I know. I'll even talk about it because I hope I can get something on you that will hang you high as a kite.”

“Then why?”

“You want the outfit. It's yours by inheritance. A whole mob of blank-faced idiots to go with it. A hand-hewn chunk of corruption and violence all set to roll into action. Brother, you and Bennett were some buddies, I can say that all right. You guys really stuck to the creed of the old gang. You make a blood pact and you sure keep it!” He stopped, his teeth an uneven line across his face. “So Bennett wills you the whole works ... the buildings, the clubs, the dough... everything.” “Nice of him.” “There's only one hitch... you got to be louse enough to keep it.”

I looked at him for a long time, the grin getting bigger. “You sure that's why I came back?”

“Yeah. I'm sure. You've been away too long for anything else. It's big dough now. A million bucks and a tailor-made mob.
If
you can keep it. Murder's a tough rap and easy enough to prove.”

I let the grin drop. “You little screwball, I didn't come back for any million bucks. I don't
need
any mob or any million.” I stopped, then, “I didn't kill him, you pothead! You think I'd stick my neck out for that kind of stuff?”

Something happened to the expression on his face. The tenseness came out of it and there was an excited nervousness in its place. Roscoe said quickly, “Then
you
know where it is. Bennett left you that too.”

I stood up and pushed the chair back to the wall. “Buddy, I came back for one reason. I want the laddie who bumped Bennett. Bad, I want him. You know?”

His voice was almost hushed. “I know.” His mouth was a fine, tight line now. “That crazy kid stuff stuck with you. The blood crap. You want a kill, don't you?” He didn't let me answer at all. He said, “So okay, find him. I'm with you all the way. I hope you kill the pig so I can put the whammy on you. I want so bad to write your obit that it's coming out my ears. I'll help you find him, Deep. I hope you wipe out all the old pig crowd. Decimate the block if you have to. All the kids are growing up in Bennett's shadow and somehow I'm getting the feeling that you're even worse.”

His chair skidded back and he stood up, his head tilting up into mine. “Tell me one thing, Deep. You're big where you came from just now. You're real big, aren't you?”

I laughed at him again. “Real big,” I said.

His eyes flattened out. “Bigger than Bennett?”

“A lot bigger,” I told him.

He accepted it with a nod. “I'll write your obit yet.”

“That's okay. I'll even rough you in on background details as long as you help me find out who bumped Bennett.”

“Deep, I'll be glad to. Happy is the word. Happy, happy. We get him, then you.”

“You talking or doing?”

It was his turn to smile now. “You know me better. You were all bigger, but I don't scare. Not one damn bit. The pigs all know me and the way I feel. I'll blast hell out of them in my column anytime I can and they know it. So they lay off. You know the pigs. They figure me for an occupational hazard and anybody I tag deserves it. At the same time they're pretty cagy. I may come from the block, but this boy's no part of it. If they tag me they get bounced by the cops and hard or the paper steams things up something awful.” His grin spread. “Bennett's gone... and now I think you'll be next. That'll be good.”

I watched the pleasure of the vision creep into his eyes, watched him satisfy himself with a probing thought into the future. Then he said, “You inherited a lot of trouble, Deep. You'll never know.”

“I inherited more,” I said.

The notes under his hand balled up when he made a fist. His neck swelled into his collar and had a turkey-like color with the tendons standing out as if his head was Marconi-rigged. Still he tried to bluff it out. “What?”

“Helen. Irish little Helen. I understand I inherited her too.”

Each word was a soft little thing. “I'll kill you myself if you go near her, Deep. Stay away, understand? Keep your filthy hands off the kid.”

“Love, Roscoe? Distant affection?”

The curse he spit at me was even softer than his words.

I said, “She was Bennett's too. Now she's mine. She's part of the inheritance.”

“You're going to be dead fast, Deep.”

“Not by you, little man. You're too much a stickler for law and order. It might occur to you, but it won't happen. You'll wait for a slug or the law to get me and in between you'll die a little yourself. I hear she's quite a gal now. All big and beautiful like nothing else that ever came off the block. She was too young to deb in the old days, but I hear she's even better now. Hit a couple big shows on Broadway and got the slobs running after her. Yeah, Roscoe, she must be some doll. How come you're in love with her?”

His mouth hardly moved when he spoke. “I'm not. You just have a short memory, Deep.” His eyes got heavy and dark. “She's my half sister, remember?”

I grunted at him. It was a point I had forgotten about. “I'll play it real cool, son. Just don't interfere or I'll twist you a little bit.”

“Just like the old days.”

“That's right.” I looked straight at him and his eyes walked across my face, finding the scars and scratches that are the stamp of the jungle bred. He saw the rest of it too and let the disgust of it seep into his expression.

“What is it you want to know, Deep?”

“How did Bennett die?”

“You read the papers.”

“That's right, but review me.”

Roscoe shrugged. “He answered the door of his apartment and the killer popped him one right in the neck.”

“With a .22,” I added.

“Yeah, and close enough to give him a powder ring.” He paused a moment. “A damn .22. A woman's kick.”

His voice had a sneer in it. “Don't worry about your inheritance. Helen didn't pop him. She was rehearsing for a show that night.”

“Where was Dixie?”

“He alibied out.”

“That's what the papers said. Bennett sent him down for some Scotch. But how does it stand with you?”

“It was good. Bennett called him while he was at the place and told him to bring up a case of rye too. The guy there took the order and let his clerk go back with Dixie. They found the body together.”

I said, “And everybody went for the picture.”

“Yeah, and it stands, too. The guy at the liquor store added a new note... he and Bennett had a code word that okayed all calls, meaning that it was Bennett calling and not half the mob getting in on his booze bill.”

“So Dixie was clear.”

“He never was smart enough to dream up a thing like that.”

“Then who got Bennett?”

“Ask the cops, sucker.”

“They're too happy to see him dead to wonder much who killed him. Besides, I don't want information. I just want guesses.”

Roscoe's face squinted up tight. “You know, Deep, I wish I did have a guess. I wish I had any kind of lead at all because I'd like to be around when you try taking the lid off.”

“Off what?”

“Your inheritance.”

The rain had started again; one of those slow, musty New York rains that has a meanness to it you can't quite define. It put a slick on the black pavements and gave the streets a sick, unhealthy glow.

I stood across from the hundred-year-old building that had been given a new face, but still smelled the same. The sign was new too. The old one had been hand printed, but this one was of neon, yet still read KNIGHT OWLS A.C.

Bennett always had been a sentimental slob, I thought. The old slogan... he'd stuck by it to the end.
Once a Knight, always a
Knight
. There was no cutting loose, no drawing back. He'd owned the fanciest apartments and flashiest clubs in the city, but home base was the old spot where the Knights began.

From the beginning to the end, the difference was only a matter of three floors. The Knights had their beginning in a cellar. They graduated a flight at a time until they finally had the whole place.

And now, behind the carefully guarded grime that almost opaqued the windows, the Knights were meeting again. The king was dead. They'd be humping to find themselves a new one.

Those laddies had a lot to learn. They could stop humping right now.

The new king was here.

I crossed over to HQ and shoved the door open. It was the first time there was no squeal on the knob. In the old days a low buck drew that duty. You showed the sign or else.

The stairs still had the same carpeted surface. The holes were just bigger, that's all. There was a dip in the. railing where Bunny Krepto had carved out a chunk with a switchblade the night before he had been killed and up at the top of the landing the broken end had been worn smooth from hundreds of hands passing over the raw end of the break thousands of times.

I pushed the door open with my foot and it swung in without a sound. The guy at the post had his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, watching the to-do up past the bar at the rostrum, a butt dripping from his mouth and his eyes fogged up with hoople juice.

Like the old days, I thought. Nothing much had really changed. Instead of a pack of kids squatting on orange crates and old benches, the elaborate theater seats were filled with gray heads and big bellies and here and there you could spot the faces that had been on the front pages of the tabs the past year.

But their expressions were the same. Flat, unimaginative. But lustful, and that kind made up the best army to crowd out the rest. Benny Mattick was up at the microphone, his Brooklynese still unspoiled. Older and fatter, but still Benny-from-Brooklyn. Still the hot hood-man who had shot his way out of a dozen cop traps and the lad who had peddled a million in horse without ever having an arrest record.

Beside him was Dixie. I looked at the lank figure with the sunken cheeks, surprised that he was still alive and wondered how his arms had stood up under the barrage of needles that had juiced him into so many big ones. His pin stripe had a two-hundred-dollar look and the rock on his middle finger was worth a few grand uncut.

I stood there until the squeal spotted me and swung around with one hand yanking at his pocket. He stopped without getting his hand loose, grinning stupidly.

He said, “You got it?”

I didn't pull out the card they all carried now. I waited until he'd had a good look at me then peeled my sleeve back so he could see the old
K.O.
scars engraved on the back of my wrist by a knifeblade.

His face changed then. It was something that always happened to the new ones. That K.O. was prewar and wide enough to stay livid and each period was made with a lit cigarette butt.

I walked to the end of the seats and slid down beside the little guy and said, “Hello, Cat.”

The double take was for real. “Jeez ... Deep! When did ... ”

“What's up?”

“Jeez, Deep ...”

“I asked you something, Cat.”

“We're reorganizing, Dep. Jeez, Benny thought ...”

“When did he take over?”

Cat swallowed hard, the spit having trouble going down. “Right when Bennett got it. Jeez, Deep. The club's big. You can't let things get shook.”

I waved him quiet. From the stand Benny-from-Brooklyn was getting all wound up. He was nominating himself for king and from the look on his face it was all over but the shouting.

The Knights were big. They had loot. They were the protectors of the precinct. They were a political power that had need of a fine hand at the wheel and Benny was the man.

I looked around to see how the others were taking it, and it was still just like the old days. They didn't like it but they weren't looking for a showdown, either. They all had that bland, drawn expression that mirrored nothing, accepting what came for the time being, at least.

When Benny turned on his smile I knew the talking was about over. Next they'd take a standing, unanimous vote and go up to the bar for a beer. The others anticipated it too and shuffled in their seats.