“Science is wonderful,” I said. “This can’t be top secret information, can it?”
“You’ll read all about it in the afternoon editions.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Cat said, “Come on, Deep,” and tugged at my arm.
I put my hat on and opened the door for Helen but Cat beat her through. If he had had a tail it would have been as bushy as a Christmas tree. He motioned me aside and in a low tone told me he was going for Charlie Bizz, then to look for Lew James. I slipped him a C note to take care of expenses and told him to keep in touch through Wilson Batten and to meet me later at the apartment. In no case, though, was he to stick his neck out. Helen picked up Roscoe at the entrance and we all went down to Hymie’s together. Roscoe didn’t like it, but he had no choice. Besides, he had a reporter’s big nose for news and anything he got from me could be used in my obituary notice.
Over the coffee Roscoe didn’t pull any punches. He came flat out and said, “Helen, do you realize what you’re getting into?”
“I think so. I’m not worried.”
“But I am.”
She reached over the table and patted his hand. “I’m not a little girl any more.”
“You’re letting this punk con you, Helen. You’ve always been a sucker for hard tales and hard guys.”
“Ease off, Roscoe,” I said.
His eyes bit into mine. “Why should I? It’s nothing you don’t know. You’re no stranger to this street. Just think back. In school she pals with the hard-luck kid of them all ... Betty Ann Lee.”
“We were friends,” Helen reminded him gently.
“Friends? A kid from a tramp family who had more arrests as a juvenile than any other two around? She was whoring at fifteen and she was a friend?”
“She couldn’t help it, Roscoe. You know where the money she made went to. That family of hers wasn’t much. They lived on what she brought in.”
“Okay, ours wasn’t much either,” he said, “but we made out. When I kicked the old man out we did fine. Nobody had to go whoring around.”
“She didn’t have anybody else to do it for her,” Helen said.
“It didn’t matter. She would have gone down anyway. She wound up with Bennett until she took a dive off a roof. A damned narcotic addict throwing herself around under every guy she met and this is a friend?”
Something buzzed in the back of my mind then. I said, “I heard it that Bennett didn’t want anybody playing with H in his back yard.”
“Pious attitude, wasn’t it?” Roscoe sneered. “Just like you guys. When Betty Lee took the leap it shook hell out of Bennett. He wanted no part of anything that could dirty up his little house ... nothing that meant a federal rap. In his business the feds would go all out to make a connection between him and anybody in the narcotics trade. They’d harass him to death if they thought they had something. No, Bennett was shrewd. He kept all the way away ... after the damage was done. Now Helen here can’t lose the old school ties and stays friendly with punks she should have shaken off long ago.”
Roscoe grimaced, his hands clenched tight with anger. “Now you come along. The worst of the lot. Worse than Bennett or Sobel or anybody.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
His grimace twisted into a smile. “I’m not. All I have to do is sit back and wait. Your kind always winds up the same way. Dead.”
“You hate pretty hard, Roscoe.”
For a second he paused reflectively, then shook his head. “Not really. It’s a luxury I can’t afford. If I hate I can’t be objective, and if I’m not objective I can’t be a reporter. Let’s say I’m cynical and slightly embittered. After years of this street and turning the worst of things inside out to see how they’re made anybody would be bitter. But most of all you learn patience. There’s a certain course that events take that simply can’t be altered and if you can wait those events will reach a conclusion. It’s like watching somebody on a trolley car. They twist and turn, go up this street and that, stop and start, but no matter what they think or do, that trolley is following immovable tracks and there is only one end it can reach.
“You’re on a trolley, Deep. You got on when you were a kid. You picked your direction, paid your fare and now you’re stuck with the ride. It’s all downhill, the trolley’s lost its brakes and at the end is a big steel bumper that wipes you right out of existence.”
“Nice picture,” I said.
“You’re all on the same trolley car, Deep. Capone, Schultz, Nelson, Dillinger, Diamond, Bennett and you. With you the ride isn’t over yet.” He paused, smiled, and went on. “I don’t mind watching you ride it, Deep. I can get your obit ready right now and file it away until the time comes because I know where that ride will end.” He lost the smile then, his eyes became tight. “The sorry part is watching someone else take the ride with you. It’s bad enough when they pay their own way like you and Bennett, but when they deliberately hook on for fun’s sake it’s sheer waste.”
Helen got his implication and shook her head. “I know what I’m doing. Please don’t worry.”
“You do, Helen? You really do? You knew what you were doing when you let Lenny Sobel go soft over you? A hoodlum a dozen years older than you. You knew it when Bennett hung you on his arm for a decoration every time he toured the hot spots?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“You know it now too, I suppose. You’re sentimental all over again over this creep because you used to have a crush on him.”
Helen glanced at me and smiled. “This is what happens when you have an older brother.”
“Let him have his opinions. He’s worked hard enough for them.” I looked at Roscoe over the rim of my cup. “Your simile is nicely put but has a big flaw in it.”
“Has it?”
I finished the coffee and threw a buck on the table to cover the bill.
“Very plainly.”
“None that I can see, Deep. Suppose you point it out.”
I stood up. “Coming, Irish?”
“Can we meet later? I have to pick up a script at the producer’s office in twenty minutes. I’ll be free this afternoon.”
“I’ll call you later then. See you too, Roscoe.”
“Deep ...”
“Now what?”
“The flaw in my simile.”
I shrugged. “A guy could get off the trolley any place he wanted, couldn’t he?”
Very pleasantly, Roscoe shook his head. “No, Deep, not you. You’re committed all the way. You can’t get off.”
“Hell, it’s my nickel,” I told him. I winked at Helen, she made a kiss at me and I left.
The cop on duty at Bennett’s apartment wouldn’t have let me in, but Mr. Sullivan told him it was all right, the place was mine and he didn’t argue the point.
I looked at Sullivan’s baggy suit and said, “How come you’re in plain clothes?”
“Off duty.”
“Busman’s holiday?”
“Something like that. I have an interest in you. I don’t want it to lag, especially after last night.”
“Nice of you.”
“Don’t mention it.” He nodded toward the door. “Do I get invited in?”
“Be my guest.”
In the room where Augie had died the chalk outlines of his body still marked the floor. There were a few burned-out flash bulbs in an ash tray and the place stank of cigar smoke. The blood by the door had dried brown and after scanning the yellow pages of the directory I found a janitorial service who would send somebody right over to clean up.
Sullivan was like a big dog, tagging behind me as I went through the place. On the second floor he ran his hand over an expensive piece of leather-and-oak and said, “First time I’ve been up here. Funny how a guy like Bennett should live.”
“Everybody to his own taste.”
“Hoods don’t usually like being salted down in a neighborhood like this when they’re loaded.”
“Bennett was a funny guy.”
“Very funny.” He turned and stared at me. “You going to stay here too, Deep?”
“You mind?”
“Remember what I told you the other day? There’s enough natural trouble on the block without bringing it in from outside. I always mind trouble. You ought to know. I belted you around often enough. There wasn’t one of you punks from the K.O. Club I didn’t brace at one time or another. You know something? All of them swore they’d get me. More guys were going to put a shiv in me, brain me or put a bullet in my head than I can remember. You too, Deep. I remember you crying like a baby with the blood running off your head and yelling you were going to take me apart with your bare hands. You remember that too?”
I laughed at him. “I was thinking of it last night when that guy was going to plug you.”
“Thanks again,” he said casually.
“Don’t mention it. I was saving you for me.” Sullivan grunted with disgust and turned away to inspect the room. While he did I went around the rest of it alone. There were little things to indicate that Augie had thoroughly searched the place and from the signs he had gotten to the ground floor where he was hit without finding anything.
I took Sullivan up to the apartment, poked around up there and was pretty certain Bennett hadn’t used the building to hide his personal effects. I kept getting a strange feeling, one I realized had puzzled me since I started on this. It was the same thing that had awakened me last night.
Somebody had said something, somebody had done something or I had my hand on something that could tie this whole thing together. I was reaching for it when Sullivan said, “This place is familiar. Everything but the wall to wall dirt and the old back room for your shag parties.”
“You caught on faster than I did.”
“I hauled you guys out of that place often enough.” He stared around the room, his hands on his hips. “Like being back?”
“I’m not particular.”
“It figures.” He looked at me, the years of watching the world go by showing on him, and automatically he bunched himself like he was going to swing on me.
Before his reflexes could take over, I said, “Anything you particularly want to see?”
“Uh-uh. You’re the only one I’m interested in.”
“You going to tail me around?”
“Afraid it’ll spoil your reputation?”
“Could be. I wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“Don’t let it bother you. I’ll just poke around myself, the big, friendly beat cop who takes his job to heart. I always liked kids if you recall, especially them and their club activities. That’s why I enjoy roaming around on my off time. Now you take them Scorpions that hole up in the basement of Decker’s place like you guys used to in your joint ... now there’s a fine bunch of lads. Top-notch sports. Today I heard some funny things coming from their turf. Strange things.”
“Lay off, Sullivan,” I said tightly.
His smile was just the way it was when he tore me up with his cuffs so long ago. Big, broad and mean. “Deep, I’ve been around here a long time. I take everything that happens here to heart. I’m part of this place and proud of it and don’t you try crowding me.”
I waved my thumb toward the door. “Have it your own way, only get off my premises.”
Downstairs Sullivan stood talking to the uniformed cop at the door and watched me walk off.
The janitor of the building that housed the K.O. Club was an incipient wino who hadn’t changed much since I had seen him last. He had been bald at forty, with rheumy eyes and a whiny voice and we had used him to pick up booze from the liquor store when we couldn’t buy it ourselves for being underage. He got paid off with a jolt or two and slept on the old cot in the back room.
Now he was sixty-five, the skin of his head wrinkled, his eyes still a baleful red and his breath still that of a practiced rumdum. But old Henny Summers still knew what the score was and how the game was played and when I knocked on the door he took a quick look, swallowed hard and forced a smile.
“ ’Lo, Mr. Deep.”
“How’s things, Henny?”
“All right, all right. Mr. Batten, he called and told me this was your place now. You gonna keep me on, Mr. Deep?”
“Why not?”
“No reason. I done pretty good here. Place always like Mr. Bennett wanted it. Clean up every week and get it ready for when he wanted a meeting.”
“Good.”
“You wanna go through the place, Mr. Deep?”
“Later maybe.”
“Everything’s pretty good. Kids break in sometimes and mess around a little bit. Broke a chair once and stole some glasses. Last week they broke the back door to the cellar. I fixed it shut. This time I nailed it. Yesterday a little kid threw a bottle in here. Knocked a pane out in the window. I kicked his behind for him, I did.”
“He needed it. Look, Henny, you know this building pretty well?”
His eyebrows went up as he puzzled that out. “Sure, Mr. Deep. Ain’t I been living here all this time?”
“Bennett spend much time here at all?”
“Mr. Bennett?” His brow creased and he shook his head. “He come for the meetings. Sometimes he threw a party. You know, beer and that stuff. He never liked the fancy deals. More like the old days. The guys in the ward, they had a bit of fun. Nice broads too. Once one of ’em come to me and right there she ...”
“He ever come here alone?”
“By himself?” Henny’s mouth turned down. “What for?”
“Any reason’ll do.”
“He used to stop by to tell me when he was having a party. Sometimes, I mean. Other times he’d call up or send somebody over. Couple times long while ago he came over with a jug and we talked about the old days. Talked a lot about you, Mr. Deep. How nobody never heard from you or nothin’. Mr. Bennett, he figured you had yourself something going and someday you’d march back in and you and him could take up together again.”
Henny gave a toothless laugh and waved me into the back. “Wanna see the old place downstairs? Mr. Bennett, him and me sat there when we talked. Knocked off the jug and really talked. Come on.”
He didn’t have to show me the way. There wasn’t an inch of the place I didn’t know and not an inch had been changed. We went through the narrow vestibule and down the stairs and when Henny flipped the switch there was the old place where plans and broads had been made at the same time and Carlos Stevens had knifed the skinny kid from the French Royals who was caught trying to raid our arsenal and where Teddy the Lunger and I had fought it out with icepicks and both picked up three punctures before I got him bad enough to end it.
It was a big square cement-walled room with powdery white frosting all over and mildew touching the furniture. Henny saw me eyeing the empty space at the end and said nervously, “Cat ... he took out that old couch. Mr. Bennett let him. If you want, I can ...”
“Forget it.”
“The radio still works. Sometimes I listen to it. When Mr. Bennett was here them times with the jug we sat and listened. Only gets one or two stations.”
I stepped down the rest of the way for a better look around. The smell of dust and damp became familiar again and it didn’t seem like twenty-five years had passed since the last time I was in here. The same curtains still hung, shielding the alcove off where the cot was and the door on one side to the coal bin still hung on hinges that had nails through them for pins.
“Mr. Deep, I got a jug in there if you’d like a pull? Kind of like celebrating the old days, huh?”
“Later maybe.” I turned back to the stairs. “Come on, let’s blow.”
Henny seemed almost disappointed by my attitude. “Mr. Bennett, he liked it down here.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Mr. Deep, what’ll I do with all the stuff Mr. Bennett ordered?”
“What stuff?”
“Fifty cases of imported beer and all those cases of mixers. The guy
from National Distributing wanted to know where to deliver it.”
“You got me. What was it for?”
Henny’s shoulders came up in an exaggerated shrug. “Who tells me? Mr. Bennett was gonna throw a party. He told me to get the big room ready for a big time. I ast him about the jugs and he said he’d take care of that end hisself. You know Mr. Bennett ... he wouldn’t let no jugs lay around here. He always brought it all up hisself.”
“When did this happen?”
“Same day he got killed. You think I ought tell ’em to take it back? Don’t suppose there’ll be any party now. Hell, I didn’t know what kinda party it was supposed to be anyway. Big stag blowout Mr. Bennett said. He was throwing hisself a stag party oney I don’t know why. Just said he had a big surprise for everybody.”
“Well, there won’t be any party now. Tell National to cancel it.”
“Okay, Mr. Deep.”
I took a quick tour through the building with Henny in my wake, whining an opinion about almost everything and hopefully trying to find out if I was going to keep him on. When I said I would he quit whining and followed me quietly.
When we were downstairs again I asked him, “Did Bennett have a safe in the building?”
“Safe? No, sir. Any papers like after a meeting he took out. He never kept nothin’ here.”
The assumption was logical enough. Anybody could get into the building without any trouble including the kids. If Bennett kept anything big on board old Henny certainly couldn’t stop them from tearing the place apart piece by piece to find it. Even if anybody thought there was something hidden on the premises they could always put a torch to the place and that would be that.
No, if Bennett had a package someplace it would be safe from fire, theft or anything else.
The only annoying thing about it was the knowledge that he would have made sure there was some way I’d know how to find it.
It’ll be just you and me, Bennett, I had said. Why the hell whack this town in half when it’s only big enough for one of us? We ain’t always gonna be kids, by damn. We shot out Sobel’s behind. Pretty soon we’ll be talkin’ loud enough for everybody to hear.
The Deep Page 12
