Mickey Spillane - The Deep

My face started to tighten up. “Were they really fun, Cat?”

“I don’t know. I never knew anything different. Sometimes I wondered. The old man whaling the crap out of me, never enough to eat, hardly a week without getting your head almost knocked in. We had our kicks, though.”

“Remember the club from Ninth Avenue who gave that dance?” I asked.

“When those goons tried to shag Helen and Sugar Lee down the cellar? Sure I remember that. Man, how we tore that place apart. Hardly nobody walked home that night. I got six stitches in my head from that one. You and Bennett beat hell out of that cop who tried to break it up.”

“He busted my nose,” I said.

“You stole his rod, too, so it evened things up. You still got that rod, Deep?”

I pointed to my pants hanging on the closet door. The .38 in the speed rig weighed them down, pulling them out of shape. I said, “Go call Augie and get him over here.”

“Sure, Deep.” He was halfway out the door when he stopped and turned around. “You know, them days weren’t really so much fun.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “I know. Then we were all punks. Now we’re going to have fun. We’ll make up for it.”

Augie had some details of the operation with him. The package was small, but the scope of the organization a vast thing that swept like the smear of a giant hand across the city, poking fat fingers into Jersey and outlying sections.

I went over the sheets quickly, getting a synopsis picture of Bennett’s empire, estimating the take and the angles. I spent a couple hours making notes for my own reference, then stacked the sheets and put them back in the folder.

I handed them to Augie. “Anybody give you any trouble?”

“No. They might have wanted to, but no one did.”

“Good. Where’s the breakdown on it?”

“Mr. Batten has it in a safe place. It’s available anytime we need it.”

“Or want it,” I said.

“Or want it,” he repeated.

“I don’t suppose Wilse likes the idea.”

“He hasn’t much choice, has he, Deep?”

“None. You think he’s holding anything back?”

Augie shook his head. “He can’t afford to. Mr. Batten isn’t exactly the... violent type. He doesn’t want trouble. I think he’d prefer to wait you out.”

“He’s remembering something you’re forgetting, Augie.” He looked at me, puzzled. “All Bennett’s trinkets will come to me by law. Me or Batten. But you don’t inherit an empire of policy slips and horse rooms and whore houses and protection that goes with it. You take it. It’s up for grabs and the biggest one takes it. I got it now.”

“That’s right, Deep. All you have to do is keep it.”

I gave him a nasty grin and nodded. “It won’t be hard.”

At noontime Hymie’s deli around the corner sent up lunch. There was a paper on the tray turned to Roscoe Tate’s column of “Uptown Speaking” and I knew how it got there. The lead paragraph was the first step in building my coffin, the gentle whisper of hate, the feathery touch of fear.

Murder has come back to Manhattan. The death of “Boss” Bennett had the crime hierarchy scrambling for control of his multimillion dollar enterprise of filth and corruption. But they were too late. A dead man had left his hand in office. The Heir Apparent had been selected long ago and has taken command. The Deep One is back. Murder is with us again.

When I read it I handed it to Cat. He grimaced and said, “Wise guy. You want to learn him one?”

“It’s bad enough he has to live with himself, Cat.”

“He always was a punk. Him and his chicken liver sandwiches.” He flicked his eyes up at me. “Saw him give a dog half a sandwich once when a hungry little-kid was standing right next to him.”

“Dogs got to eat too,” I said.

Both of them looked at me, their faces impassive. I said, “I’ll speak to the boy myself. That sticks and stones bit don’t go with me.”

Augie said, “Play it smart, Deep. You don’t want to fight the press.”

“I don’t? Why not? What do you think the press can do? So they call me names. They put on the heat. So what?”

“It’s not quite like the old days,” he insisted.

“I know, pal. It’s improved, if anything.”

Augie squirmed a little in his chair. “Tate doesn’t pull any punches. He’s not like... us. All his life he worked hard. He peddled papers and clerked in the office until he finally got his name in print. He sweated. He’s not an easy guy to push around. It’s been tried and he blew the top off things. You get him going and he gets pretty damn mad.”

“I’ve seen him mad before, feller. Remember, Cat?”

“When you lifted his poke?”

“Yeah.”

Cat chuckled at the memory. “Tried to shoot you. He grabbed a piece off Frankie Carlo and tried to shoot you. Boy, I can still see you flipping over that railing into Morgan’s basement.” He laughed again. “How come you never blasted him after that, Deep?”

I grunted and shoved back in my seat. “Hell, I had it coming, I guess. Couldn’t blame him. Anybody did it to me would’ve had a split head quick. Funny thing, when I slammed that door in his face he just laid there and cried like a damn baby. I could hear him bawling, then that stinking Sullivan picked him up and took him home. I bet his old lady browned out when he went home with a cop.”

Augie said, “You were lucky you didn’t get creamed.”

I laughed at him. “Hell, he didn’t even come close. Besides, he got his money back. Nine bucks and forty cents. It was the first thing he asked for when I saw him the other day.”

“You’re pressing your luck, Deep,” Augie told me.

“Yeah, well let’s go press it some more.”

“How?”

“We’re going to see Benny-from-Brooklyn and his buddie Dixie.”

“You’re crazy,” Augie said softly.

I nodded. “Natch.” I grinned at him. “But first let’s talk to our newspaper friend.”

Hymie was too busy at his counter to talk and told us that Roscoe Tate was probably still at home. I left Cat there to hold him in case he came in, walked two blocks down and turned the corner to where Roscoe still lived in a tenement apartment and posted Augie at the door while I went in.

Unlike the other buildings, this one smelled clean. It may have been Roscoe’s influence or simply a few bucks extra to the super, but there were no garbage cans, cartons or carriages in the hallway and nobody had swiped the hundred-watt bulb that hung overhead.

But it was still a tenement and it was still on The Street and for a second it hit me what a bunch of sentimental fools the whole bunch were. Bennett... the old club, his apartment a replica of the original place, Wilse Batten in modern quarters but still doing business on the old turf and Augie waiting around to inherit, Benny Mattick and Dixie stamping around as barons and on top of it all the ballot box boys at the call of the K.O. troupe. And off by himself, Roscoe Tate, taking it all down for his sheet, racking their system when he could right from their own ball park. Sentimental slob or not, at least he was the only smart one. He didn’t have to take any funny money or any crap from the angle boys and he had his fair share of loot and the kind of prestige that counted.

Roscoe lived on the ground floor and answered my knock himself. When he saw who it was he eyed me speculatively a moment, nodded and stepped back so I could come in.

Sentimentality didn’t exist at all. Roscoe had had enough slobbery in his earlier days not to want to prolong it in any way later. A studied hand had chosen the colors and the pieces and in every way his apartment reflected the touch of the bachelor and money well spent.