Read The Deep for Free Online Page B

boy’s place. Maybe you’ll sound off and he’ll be hot for my head.”
    â€œSmart guy. You’re real smart, Deep.”
    â€œI’ve been told already.”
    â€œYeah.” Her eyes were real cold. “You should be scared stiff, man. You should be shaking in your shoes.”
    I stopped with my hand on the ornamented handle of the door. “You ever see me scared, sugar?”
    â€œMaybe not in the old days.”
    â€œYou won’t see me now either.”
    â€œSo you’re a big one,” she said flatly.
    For a couple seconds I just looked at her, then nodded. “Everybody’s asked me that lately. I told them, so I’ll tell you too. Yeah, I’m a big one. They never saw anyone big like I am.”
    The frown creased her eyes again. “How did you know this was Lenny’s place?”
    I grinned at her. “I’m a big one, remember?” I opened the door and eased her through.
    The headwaiter was an impeccable Slav imported in ’49 from Paris by the Galveston and lately lured to The Signature by the big buck. His name was Stashu, he wore two hero pips in his lapel for underground activity in the last war and a nod of recognition from him could put you on the smart list in anybody’s book.
    Others were standing in the lobby, a few accepting cocktails on the house from a pretty waitress. Some of the junior exec types waited their time at the bar, preferring the side lines of the main room to the ignominy of just waiting.
    I handed my hat and raincoat to the kid in the checkroom and turned back to Irish Helen. She was tall and cool, feeling everyone’s eyes on her and playing it just right. She was waiting to see what happened next and waiting to laugh when it didn’t. I walked to the plush chain where Stashu was quietly talking to a waiter. He looked up, smiled and nodded, lowered the plush chain and led Helen and me to a table and discreetly removed the reserved sign that had somebody else’s name on it.
    He took our orders personally, smiled again and left. Helen looked up at me, something like a shadow across her face. “That went too nice, Deep.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œYou’ve never been here before.” It was a flat statement.
    I just looked at her and waited.
    â€œHow’d you work it?” she asked.
    â€œHeadwaiters are paid to know people. Everybody.”
    The shadow left her face and now I could see the tight lines of indecision that touched her. “He’ll tell Lenny,” she said.
    â€œHe’d better.”
    The drinks came then, timed flawlessly to make lunch the thing that it should be. Twice Stashu stopped by, inquired with his flavored English if everything was all right, and left happily when assured that it was. At two-thirty the lunch music faded into cocktail hour numbers, the room partially emptied and Lenny Sobel made his appearance.
    He was fatter now. Still greasy looking, but able to wear five-hundred-buck suits and a ten-grand ring with an air of authority.
    Lenny Sobel never walked fast. It might have been that he couldn’t. It might have been that he didn’t want to. He neither walked nor strolled. It was sort of a step that he took. He made it hard for the two who walked behind him. They had to either stop a moment then catch up or quarter the area at a slow pace merely to stay abreast.
    He reached the table, smiled a fat smile first at Helen, then smiled a fat smile at me.
    I said, “Hello, pig,” and if it weren’t for Lenny’s fast hand wave I would have been shot right there and the two boys back of me on somebody else’s kill list.
    But I knew the slob would wave them off fast and my grin told everybody I knew it. I said, “Make them come around in front, Lenny.”
    His smile was still there. It was a friendly smile, bunching the fat under his eyes into humorous lines. He brought them around in front and they stood there