“Yes.”
“I don’t think so.”
The frown grew deeper and more puzzled. I said, “I keep thinking of something I saw when I first got here ... all the big boys ... the Hugh Peddles, the uptown crowd, the gray-flannel representatives of the syndicates themselves.”
“At the meeting?”
“That’s right,” I nodded. “They were all sitting there listening to Benny Mattick proclaim himself king. The power boys, the money crowd, the mob reps ... all sat there and listened to half-ass Benny-from-Brooklyn take over the club and never said a thing.”
“But Benny ...”
“I know, a nothing,” I told her, “but the other night he was at a conference with Hugh Peddle and although Hurd claims to be one of the common men he doesn’t sit in on supper conferences with hoods like Benny.”
“What are you getting at, Deep?”
“I think Benny let a very broad hint go out that he was the recipient of Bennett’s personal power package that kept everybody in line.”
“You think he killed Bennett?”
“Benny was too cheap a punk to bother holding in line by the blackmail route. Hell, Bennett could have intimidated him any which way. Remember, Benny was part of the old gang. He’d have nothing to lose by knocking off Bennett especially if he knew where the stuff Bennett held was hidden. Even if he didn’t know, he was in a position to make a threat stick. Nobody dared call his bluff since there was a good possibility that he did have Bennett’s ear as an old K.O. member and was his benefactor in case of death. Bennett’s so-called will left me, his old buddy, cash, etc., but made no mention of any fact file. That could well have been left to somebody else.
“So Benny tried for the big one. He could have killed Bennett then made the grab. Unfortunately, I showed up. I was the only one who could call his bluff. When I did, that left him with egg on his face Now I’m beginning to see how he could have arranged for a couple of boys to come in to knock me off. Cute. Very, very cute.”
The entire thought startled her. It was something she had never figured on. “Then ... you think ... it was Benny Mattick?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “Let’s go ask him.”
Bracing Benny without a rod to back things up shouldn’t be too hard. As long as he didn’t call the bluff.
Benny-from-Brooklyn had changed boroughs when he was ten but he had never lost his accent. We gave him the tag because we had two other Bennys in the club back then. They both died when they wrecked a stolen car, but Benny-from-Brooklyn stayed Benny-from-Brooklyn anyway.
Now he lived in a converted brownstone off Third Avenue in a fringe area that was scheduled for demolition within a few months. Six buildings from the east end of the block had already been evacuated and two razed into a pile of rubble. A bulldozer was shoving the brick and timbers into separate piles and two men with jackhammers were attacking a huge slab of concrete.
Like most bachelors, Benny had the ground-floor apartment. There were no names on the two other bells at all. I rang Benny’s, waited and rang again. I tried the other two bells and had no luck there. When I went back outside I looked at the windows upstairs and they were blank, curtainless. Either Benny had the place to himself or the others evacuated ahead of the demolition.
Helen asked, “What shall we do now?”
“I won’t waste the trip over, that’s for sure.”
She watched me open the foyer door in a good old-fashioned way. I kicked the lock out and splintered the wood, but I wasn’t worrying about what anyone would say. Benny’s front apartment door was on the right and in case the bell didn’t work outside, I knocked on it with my fist.
Except for the muffled sounds of the construction crew down the block, the place was totally quiet. I didn’t fool around here either. I didn’t mess around with any gimmicks to open the lock when a kick in the right place with two hundred pounds behind it would be faster.
Helen watched me nervously. To her, what I did was a criminal invasion of privacy and as cold-blooded as stepping on a cat. The motions came to me naturally and she could tell that it was a practiced movement and when she looked at me she knew I was enjoying myself and put out a hand to stop me.
But the door was open and I went inside, my hand automatically feeling for the rod that wasn’t there any more.
I saw Benny and shoved her at the second the gun blasted out of the darkness from the comer of the room. Helen smashed into the wall, covered by the corner of it, but there was nothing there for me. I dove flat, rolled, felt my hand close on a small table and I threw it without stopping. There were two more shots that tore into the floor where I was then I heard a scramble from the other room, the slam of a door closing and I got back on my feet.
It was too damn dark. My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the light. They still had a yellow spot in the center from the flash of the gun. I groped my way across the room, found the door and got through. A window stood open looking out into the growing dusk. I took a chance of getting my head blown off and looked out.
I knew what I’d see. Emptiness. An open court-yard exiting into a dozen other buildings. The backyard jungle.
There was no use going after him. I went back in the front room and found the light switch and threw it on. Helen was still crouched breathlessly against the wall. I gripped her hand, pulled her up, then she saw Benny Mattick.
Her eyes widened with the initial shock of seeing a dead man and her fingers bit into my wrist like talons.
She still couldn’t believe it. “Is he ...”
“Very much so.” I stood over him, looking into those death-glazed eyes that were slitted open. There were two closely spaced holes in his chest right over the heart and he had died so quickly that little blood had spilled out and there was only a small stain on his shirt.
“Did you ... see who it was?”
I turned around. Helen was trembling now, her hand at her mouth. I said, “No, I missed him.”
“What will we do?” The shock was evident in the sound of her voice.
“Let me think a minute.”
“The police ...”
“No. Not yet. I need time. Damn it, we can’t afford to get tied into another kill together!”
I thought back over the time element. Benny hadn’t been dead but a few minutes, possibly shot just before we arrived. If the killer hadn’t used a silencer the shots would have been muffled by the racket the demolition gang made down the street. At least the guy didn’t have enough time in here to do much more than pump two slugs into Benny.
Without wasting time I went through the apartment hitting all the likely places Benny would have used to lay something away. Benny Mattick had never been overly imaginative and he wasn’t smart enough to be devious. If he had hidden anything in that apartment I would have found it. There were two dusty Banker’s Specials behind the phony fireplace and a Colt Cobra in an archaic shoulder holster lying on the catch bottom under the lower drawer of his dresser and three grand in hundred-dollar bills in a pocket of a suitcase.
But nothing like I was looking for. Nothing at all.
Helen had her back to the body, trying hard to keep herself in check. I said, “The place is clean.”
She didn’t understand what I meant.
I said, “Nobody tried to shake the place down. Whoever it was came here for one reason... to knock him off.”
“Deep ...” her hands were bloodless as they squeezed each other, “they’ll think it was you.”
“Relax. Nobody knows anything yet. This was a professional job, kid, and nobody’s letting the cat out of the bag.”
“Could somebody outside ... have seen him? Or us?”
“People don’t react to ordinary things. Besides, this block is half deserted. If we go out of here in a normal fashion chances are nobody will see us at all. Look, I have to make a phone call.”
“Please ... hurry. I don’t want to be here with ... that.”
“Wait out in the vestibule. I’ll only be a minute.”
The phone was on a table beside a corner chair. I called Wilson Batten and asked him if Cat had called in. He said he had and gave me a number to call. When he hung up I found the directory, looked up Hymie’s Delicatessen and asked for Roscoe to come to the phone.
“Yeah, Tate here.”
“Deep, friend. I have a story for you.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“You’ll appreciate this one. Benny-from-Brooklyn has been killed. I’m at his place now.”
Incredulously, he asked, “You, Deep?”
“Don’t be an idiot. I found him this way.”
Roscoe’s excitement mounted. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. They all fall sooner or later when you come around. Hurd’ll be happy to hear about this. I don’t suppose you called him?”
“No, and I wouldn’t either if I were you. Irish is here with me and unless you want the heat on her you’ll play this one real cool.”
“You miserable bastard,” he said.
“Save it.”
“Okay, let’s hear your suggestion. I know you have one.”
“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 th
e 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.
I stayed in the deepest shadows and when I found the position I wanted, squatted down until my eyes were level with the dividers that separated the buildings. In the background the far lights of midtown Manhattan winked at me, rows and rows of lights unbroken in their pattern.
Then the pattern broke. Just the slightest motion blurred the lowest row of lights in the Lever Building and I grinned and followed the shadows to the divider, bellied across and got behind him. He couldn’t afford to be too patient. Time was running out on him too. Those shots had been heard and he only had minutes to make his break in, but even then, minutes are enough.
I came up fast, but I wasn’t any Cat. He heard me when I was ten feet away, gasped, swung and fired in the same motion and the slug crackled past my head and ricocheted off something behind me. He never had time for a second shot because I dove in under his gun hand and slammed him against the parapet with every bit of my weight and strength. I saw his gun go up and over to the street and heard him swear as he clawed at me with a crazy determination and for a second he almost broke away.
The Deep Page 14
