The Deep Read Online Free Page A

quite define. It put a slick on the black pavements and gave the streets a sick, unhealthy glow.
    I stood across from the hundred-year-old building that had been given a new face, but still smelled the same. The sign was new too. The old one had been hand printed, but this one was of neon, yet still read KNIGHT OWLS A.C.
    Bennett always had been a sentimental slob, I thought. The old slogan... he’d stuck by it to the end. Once a Knight, always a Knight . There was no cutting loose, no drawing back. He’d owned the fanciest apartments and flashiest clubs in the city, but home base was the old spot where the Knights began.
    From the beginning to the end, the difference was only a matter of three floors. The Knights had their beginning in a cellar. They graduated a flight at a time until they finally had the whole place.
    And now, behind the carefully guarded grime that almost opaqued the windows, the Knights were meeting again. The king was dead. They’d be humping to find themselves a new one.
    Those laddies had a lot to learn. They could stop humping right now.
    The new king was here.
    I crossed over to HQ and shoved the door open. It was the first time there was no squeal on the knob. In the old days a low buck drew that duty. You showed the sign or else.
    The stairs still had the same carpeted surface. The holes were just bigger, that’s all. There was a dip in the. railing where Bunny Krepto had carved out a chunk with a switchblade the night before he had been killed and up at the top of the landing the broken end had been worn smooth from hundreds of hands passing over the raw end of the break thousands of times.
    I pushed the door open with my foot and it swung in without a sound. The guy at the post had his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, watching the to-do up past the bar at the rostrum, a butt dripping from his mouth and his eyes fogged up with hoople juice.
    Like the old days, I thought. Nothing much had really changed. Instead of a pack of kids squatting on orange crates and old benches, the elaborate theater seats were filled with gray heads and big bellies and here and there you could spot the faces that had been on the front pages of the tabs the past year.
    But their expressions were the same. Flat, unimaginative. But lustful, and that kind made up the best army to crowd out the rest. Benny Mattick was up at the microphone, his Brooklynese still unspoiled. Older and fatter, but still Benny-from-Brooklyn. Still the hot hood-man who had shot his way out of a dozen cop traps and the lad who had peddled a million in horse without ever having an arrest record.
    Beside him was Dixie. I looked at the lank figure with the sunken cheeks, surprised that he was still alive and wondered how his arms had stood up under the barrage of needles that had juiced him into so many big ones. His pin stripe had a two-hundred-dollar look and the rock on his middle finger was worth a few grand uncut.
    I stood there until the squeal spotted me and swung around with one hand yanking at his pocket. He stopped without getting his hand loose, grinning stupidly.
    He said, “You got it?”
    I didn’t pull out the card they all carried now. I waited until he’d had a good look at me then peeled my sleeve back so he could see the old K.O. scars engraved on the back of my wrist by a knifeblade.
    His face changed then. It was something that always happened to the new ones. That K.O. was prewar and wide enough to stay livid and each period was made with a lit cigarette butt.
    I walked to the end of the seats and slid down beside the little guy and said, “Hello, Cat.”
    The double take was for real. “Jeez ... Deep! When did ... ”
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œJeez, Deep ...”
    â€œI asked you something, Cat.”
    â€œWe’re reorganizing, Dep. Jeez, Benny thought ...”
    â€œWhen did he take over?”
    Cat swallowed hard, the spit having trouble going down. “Right