The Deep Read Free Page A

Cosmo Taxi Service, the old clubhouse building, several real estate properties consisting of tenements, lots, garages... I’ll list them for you... half interest or better in four businesses and a brewery.”
    â€œNice,” I said. “Any cash?”
    â€œTen thousand upon appearing, which is now. All other monies and so forth when you have met the provisions of the will.”
    I held out my hand with a grin. Wilson Batten looked at it, then the grin, and let a hard smile crack through his lips. He opened the middle desk drawer, slipped out a yellow cashier’s check and laid it in my palm. I said, “Last question. How long have I to meet the ... provisions.”
    His smile had a nasty touch of laughter in it. “A week.” All his teeth showed through it. “You think you can make it, Deep?”
    I folded the check, shoved it in my pocket and stood up. “No trouble. Plenty of time.” When I walked to the door I could feel his eyes on me and when I reached it I turned around and gave him a little taste of what he had to look forward to. I said to Augie, “Coming, friend?”
    He didn’t even look at Wilson. He said, “Yes, Mr. Deep,” and walked out behind me.
    Like I said, Augie was the kind who could always tell.
    Â 
    Roscoe Tate was the first kid on the block who had ever had a job. When he was fourteen he made the six-to-eight rush hour at the subway entrances with the two-star tabs and brought home more drinking dough for his old man. A year later he told the rumdum to beat it, called the cops to back up a nonsupport, wife-beating and cruelty-to-children charge, made it stick and supported the family from then on.
    Now it was twenty-five years later and the papers he hawked once he wrote for now. The old man had drunk himself to death, the mother was in L.A. with a married daughter and Roscoe carried on a vendetta with the block he grew up on. The only trouble was, he couldn’t make himself leave it.
    He sat it out in Hymie’s deli behind a chicken liver sandwich and a phone, scowling at some notes he had made. I walked in alongside the row of stools and pulled an antique chair out from behind the counter. Hymie looked up, his face squeezed mad, ready to cream anybody who’d touch his private throne, then froze solid.
    When I slid the chair under the table and slouched in it Roscoe said without looking up, “You want big trouble, feller?”
    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.
    â€œHello, Roscoe.”
    â€œYou crumb, you got nine dollars and forty cents?”
    â€œWhy sure.”
    â€œPut it down.” His forefinger tapped the table top. “Here.”
    â€œWhy 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.”
    â€œYou want interest?”
    â€œDon’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.”
    â€œNow you got it back, buddy. No hard feelings?”
    â€œYou 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?”
    â€œI got ideas.”
    â€œYou know why I came