Mickey Spillane - The Deep

I put the phone back and yanked the .38 out, thumbing the hammer back. I went up the stairs into the narrow vestibule and almost tripped over Henny. He was alive, but blood flowed from a gash in his head. He still had a flashlight in his hand and I took it from him, tested it and snapped it off.

The picture was fairly clear now. Hugh Peddle had come in, sapped Henny and probably made a quick tour of the place with Helen. When she couldn’t come up with anything, he called for his boys. They’d be in bad shape, but still more the type to squeeze a woman than he was. Peddle was ruthless. He could give the orders, but personal involvement when it came to putting heat on somebody was another thing.

I went up the stairs and like the last time, felt the notch Bunny Krepto had carved out with his switchblade the night before Petie Scotch had killed him and ran my hand over the break in the post at the top of the landing just like in the old days.

Think.

Think.

Five are looking for three. Possibly seven guns and if Peddle packed one, eight.

There was a scream again and I spotted it. They were on the top floor and I could hear the terse, whispered commands that came through the walls. The others had heard it too.

Only now the edge was mine.

I had run the course more often than they and knew the twists and turns. I knew the way the wall angled back at the landing, and how you could get through the window to the part of the old fire escape that had never been torn down and if you wanted to take a chance, could climb up.

A core of steel still existed under the rust otherwise it never would have held. I got to the window I looked for, and strangely enough it eased open after all these years, or else Henny had been a better caretaker than I assumed.

They had her in that big room, sprawled out on the floor, her raven hair spilling out over her shoulders and her dress high above the waxen smoothness of her thighs.

Hugh Peddle wouldn’t look. He stood to one side examining his fingernails while the guy, Al, the guy I had shot in the arm, was standing spraddle-legged over Helen, his arm in a sling and he was enjoying everything he was doing. He had a rag wrapped around his good hand so he wouldn’t carve up his knuckles and a few feet away the other guy whom I hadn’t seen before watched him with obvious pleasure.

I laid the sights of the .38 on the back of Al’s head and held it so I was sure of the shot. He had his foot ready and was going to put the boot to her in another second and the instant he moved his brains would come out through the front of his face.

My finger curled around the metal, I started the squeeze, already had Hugh and the other one in my peripheral vision to kill next, when somebody yelled and Hugh spun around toward the door at the far end of the room and said, “Who was that?”

“Knock that light out!” Al told him.

Hugh reached the switch, flipped it and threw the place into total darkness.

They had locked the door, but it gave under a barrage of shots. I heard Hugh yell hoarsely and run toward the far end. He wasn’t a pro like the other pair. They snapped off a couple of fast shots, scrambled for the protection of the furniture and stayed there.

I put the gun back. I didn’t waste any of the seconds I had left. I went crabwise across the floor, found Helen and dragged her backwards. By then the ones outside had hit the front entrance and knocked the door open. Somebody was yelling for a light.

She tried to fight me until I told her to be still. She recognized my voice and slumped with the sheer relief she felt.

Together we inched forward on the floor, got to the break in the room and cut around the angle of it.

Behind us the roar of gunfire was a steady thing and bullets were slapping into the walls and skipping off the metal things. Somebody began screaming and wouldn’t stop.

I said, “Are you hurt badly?”

“No. They had... just started to... really hurt me.”

“We have to climb down a flight and bypass the action.”

“All right.”

So I helped her out above me, guided her feet into the rungs and hoped the steel would hold until we reached the level below.

Luck was on our side this time and it did. The gunfire above abated, then started again. Feet slammed down the stairs and we flattened out against the wall. When they passed we followed them down, stopped at the first landing, cut back to the rear where the other stairwell went down to the basement and held it while I listened.

A voice far above us was yelling that they had them and the shooting stopped abruptly. Another voice found Al, the other and Peddle, and they were dead. Somebody wasn’t quite sure about one and there was another shot and everybody laughed.

When they couldn’t find Helen they made a circuit of the room and suddenly realized what had happened, only they thought she had done it all by herself. There was a sharp order and feet began pounding down the stairwell. I grabbed Helen and we made the last run into the old clubroom.

Outside on The Street sirens began their unearthly howl, coming closer and closer and it was almost all over.

They never quite reached us. They stopped when they heard the squad cars and being pros, knew the score. They scrambled for a way out, knew that the cops would have that end covered too.

We huddled there in the pale light that drifted out of the coal bin, heard the cops smash their way in and listened while the shooting started again. They were pros up there and were going as far as they could because there was nothing else to lose. On the top floor were three dead men and the wheel would turn on all of them because of it. All they could do now was take out their hate on society until they were dead or their bullets were gone and hope they died first because the death the law prescribed was, in reality, more horrible than dying with a cop’s bullet in your gut.

Helen said, “Deep...?”

“I didn’t lay a gun on anybody,” I said.

Her hand felt for my face, found it and pulled it down to hers. Her mouth was cold and I could feel her tremble under my hands.

“Please, Deep... I don’t understand.”

“Look...”

“Hugh Peddle came. He made me tell him what you had said.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “I know what he did.”

“He thought I knew.”

“He was wrong.”

A riot gun roared into the night, tearing things apart. Whistles shrilled and somebody shouted orders directly above us. More sirens were coming in now, surrounding the block. Like an air raid, I thought. Death a few feet away. You huddle together in a dungeon of a cellar and listened to death upstairs.

I said, “I called Roscoe. He should be watching this. It’ll make quite a story.”

“But... he hates you.”

“He hated everybody, kitten.”

She felt the change in my voice. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me, were you engaged to Bennett?”

Helen pushed back, stared at me, her eyes searching for my meaning. One side of her face was all swollen, but she was still beautiful. “No, Deep,” she said. “He asked me, but I told him no. You know what I was trying to do.”

“He didn’t know that, kid. He thought he had you. He was going to let all the boys in on the big secret that he was going to ask you to marry him.”

“But how could he...”

I interrupted. “He never grew up. Remember... he still thought like back in the old K.O. days. To him, if you stayed close, you were his.”

“He was mad! I never...”

“Did you tell Roscoe he asked you that?”

“Well, yes, I did, but...”

The firing grew more intense. A section of ceiling powdered and came down like snow around us.

Very slowly, almost dreamlike, Helen turned and looked up at me. Her eyes were large, dark. She caught my intimation but couldn’t believe it. “Not Roscoe,” she said.