The Silver Cobweb Read online

  With his boot, Kerrigan pushed away the man’s rifle. Then he bent down, feeling for a heartbeat.

  He stood up and looked at me. “Stone cold dead.” His hand trembled on his own rifle. I knew why, too. He had just killed a man and it would stay with him a long time.

  I looked at the man s face. It had at least a week’s growth of beard on it, but it was vaguely familiar to me, as though I had seen a picture of him before. The yellow shirt was soiled and covered with blood.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “George ‘Slicker’ Hozak,” Kerrigan said, his eyes in pain.

  “The Newburyport bank job?”

  “That’s it. Hozak, the brains of the outfit.”

  “He had guts, too,” I said. “I’ll grant him that much. He could have run. But he didn’t. He stayed and shot it out.”

  “He couldn’t run,” Kerrigan said tonelessly. “He was cornered like a rat, so he had to fight like a rat. Look and see, kid.”

  I looked down at the body and saw what Kerrigan meant. Hozak’s right leg, partially covered with his left, had a crude wooden splint running from hip to ankle. The bandage wrapped around the splint was muddy and caked with pus. For the first time now, I was aware of a stench coming from it. Gangrene. Once, in Korea on patrol, I had come across a wounded ROK soldier. He had lain there for several days and he had smelled the same way.

  “My guess is it’s a femur wound,” Kerrigan said. “His thigh was in rotten shape.” A big, bluebottle fly buzzed over the body and landed on Hozak’s face. Kerrigan brushed at it absently, then fixed his eyes on me. “How did the shooting start?”

  “He spotted me up in a tree,” I said.

  Kerrigan said, “A tree? What the hell were you doing up in a tree?”

  I smiled wanly. “It’s a long story. But I think Russell Westlake is dead.” I pointed to the pond. “His body’s in the drink.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “From the tree,” I said. “There’s a body out there and I think it’s Westlake’s.”

  Kerrigan set the safety lock on the Winchester. “I heard rifle shots when I came in. I saw your cruiser but I didn’t see you. Hozak was shooting but you weren’t shooting back. What happened?”

  “That’s another long story, Phil. You see, I was—”

  “If it’s such a long story,” Kerrigan said, “I’d better go and radio the bigwigs first. Then you can tell me.”

  18

  THEY BROUGHT THE BODY UP OUT OF DORSET POND. It was Russell Westlake’s and it was tied to an old black, cast-iron stove. Later, Ballistics said he had been killed by bullets from Hozak’s rifle. The medical examiner’s autopsy showed Westlake was already dead when he entered the water.

  The luggage in the little cottage was identified as belonging to Mary Ann Fedder and Russell Westlake. The .22 Remington rifle had not been fired recently and that had belonged to Russell Westlake, too.

  Meanwhile, even before the big brass came, we had begun a search of all the camps in the area. We didn’t have to look far. The camp Hozak had been using for a hide-out was the one across the grove that had boiler plating covering the windows. Inside there was a bad stench of blood and decay, old pus-stained bandages, empty penicillin bottles, empty cans of food, empty whiskey bottles and many flies. But there was no money from the Newburyport robbery.

  Throughout the day we went from cottage to cottage around the pond, searching for further evidence, for other signs of occupancy, for witnesses. We found none.

  It was about eight o’clock in the evening when I came back to the barracks. Detective-Lieutenant Ed Newpole was waiting in the guardroom for me. He took notes as I related everything that had happened that morning. I left nothing out either. When I came to the part about dropping my revolver from the tree, his hand poised with the pen for a moment and a little glint came to his eyes, but he said not a word.

  When I was finished he put the pen down and brought out a pipe. “You and Rigsby did some good thinking,” he said. “It’s the kind of thinking old Walt would have done.”

  “Thanks,” I said. He always called my father “old Walt” even though he and my father were about the same age.

  “You’ll have to make out a full report of your own,” Newpole said, tamping tobacco into his pipe. “I might as well fill in some of the background for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “We don’t have any eyewitnesses,” he said, “so we’ll have to plug along with what evidence we have. The few missing parts we’ll have to fill in with ideas of our own. It’s quite a case.”

  He lit the pipe, puffed on it, then sank back in his chair. “It starts, of course, with the bank robbery in Newburyport. A well-planned job. Any Hozak job is well-planned. Small gang. Three men. One hitch, though. A minor car accident on Water Street. The Newburyport foot patrolman investigating the accident is a few minutes late for lunch. So he shows up and takes some shots as the men are breaking from the bank. That’s where Hozak himself got it in the thigh. The others dragged him into the car and they sped away.

  “Next the alarm went out and all highways in the radius were blocked. But the Hozak plan was good. They had a hide-out, not in Ipswich where they’ve tried to decoy us, but in Dorset. Why did they pick Dorset? Because it was close by and because Dorset is a one-cop town and has no police radio. So the men turned off before they hit the roadblocks, went through Dorset and holed up at Dorset Pond. Safe enough for a little while. None of those cabins would be opened for a month. By that time they would split up and take off one by one.

  “Yes, a good plan. But there was a second hitch. Hozak was wounded more than they thought. He couldn’t be moved. So they bound him up the best they could and waited for him to get better. He didn’t. The leg got worse and they knew they had to get him out of there and to a doctor. So Swenke went to Boston and made arrangements to rent a truck. In it they were going to transport Hozak. I don’t know where. These thugs always have a doctor they own.”

  Newpole drew on the pipe and looked at me. “Now Mary Ann Fedder comes into the picture. She and Westlake have rented the cottage across from Hozak’s for their honeymoon. They come there with their luggage and drop it off. Cute, funny little secret. Poor kids. Nobody knows they’re going to honeymoon only five miles away from Main Street. Nobody knows but Hozak who’s looking out through the boiler plating, watching them and getting badly frightened about it. So he tells Swenke and Swenke hurries back that afternoon with the truck. Swenke goes into the hide-out cottage and drags out Hozak.” Newpole put his pipe down. “You understand that this part of it is only guesswork. We have to fill it in the best way we can.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But it sounds logical.”

  “All right,” Newpole said. “Just as Swenke is carrying Hozak out, Mary Ann drives into the grove, bringing a suitcase. She sees Swenke and Hozak, gets scared, turns her car around and drives off. Swenke drops Hozak and goes after her. If she gets to a phone, everything is all over. So he chases her into Dorset and kills her as she’s phoning the barracks. When Swenke drives away he’s heading back toward the pond. He never gets there. You capture him. Hozak is still out at the cottage, helpless. Swenke is in jail as quiet as a man with a talkative wife and a tough mother-in-law.

  “Now Russell Westlake comes into the picture. What was in his mind we’ll never find out. But we do know now he had withheld information from us. He had one trump card we didn’t have—knowledge of the honeymoon cottage. For whatever reason he had, he came to the pond. The poor lad may have thought he was being an avenging angel. He might have gone back just to retrieve his things. He might have gone there to take the law in his own hands. We’ll never know. Revenge does terrible things to people. Anyway, he drives out to the grove. There’s a spot beside the Hozak cottage with an old mattress on the ground. We think Hozak used it for getting some sun. Westlake spots Hozak or Hozak spots him. Whichever it was, Hozak shoots and kills Westlake. The body is then tied to a stove, b
rought out to the middle of the pond and dumped. Then Westlake’s car is driven to the state forest in Ipswich and abandoned. That’s our story. Only there’s a big hitch in our story, too.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He smiled broadly. “Where, son?”

  “There were three men in all this,” I said. “Not just Swenke and Hozak. Three men pulled the robbery. Ordinarily, the third man could have been in South America by now. But he wasn’t. When it came to Westlake’s murder, Swenke was in jail and Hozak was badly wounded. Hozak couldn’t have handled Westlake’s body. He couldn’t drive Westlake’s car to Ipswich. The third man is still around, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes,” Newpole said. “We want the third man. A man strong enough to handle a heavy stove. A local man.”

  “Why local?”

  “The hide-away cottage, the one with the boiler plating. It doesn’t belong to anybody who lives around here. It belongs to a former Haverhill man who’s a small shoe manufacturer. A year ago last spring, he moved his factory to Knoxville, Tennessee. His cottage has been empty since. No danger of anyone coming there. Only a local person would know that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “A man named Joe Derechy.”

  “How do you figure Derechy, Ralph?”

  “Because he lives in a cottage near the pond. A perfect lookout spot for the gang. He’d see all the traffic going back and forth. It would be unusual this time of year and, unless he was in on the deal, he’d mention it to Chief Rigsby. And I remember asking Derechy when I was checking the area. Although he had been all through there picking wood, he told me he had seen no cars and the cottages were all empty. And this too, Lieutenant. Derechy was on welfare and suddenly he became a free spender, treating people at The Red Wheel taproom.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Newpole said. “Especially when Derechy has taken his car and made tracks fast.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. Even before the shooting started. His wife says he left as soon as you and Rigsby drove by their cottage and entered the woods. That’s when he beat it.”

  “Is there a GA out on him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Newpole said, putting his cold pipe into his pocket. “They’ll pick up Derechy somewhere. But there are still a few holes in the case. For one thing, we have no line on the robbery money. Maybe we’ll find it on Derechy when he’s taken. If we don’t, he’s the type who’ll sing like a little dickey bird.” He glanced at me. “You look a little tired and dirty, Ralph. All pooped out?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “I was supposed to go on my day off this afternoon. I think I’d better see the sergeant.”

  I didn’t go on a day off. Neal told me that all my days off were cancelled until further notice. He did give me a break, though. As long as I had no patrols until the next morning he would let me have an eight-hour night pass. But I had to write my report first.

  I did that. By the time I was through it was 10:00 P.M. I turned the report in, got showered, shaved and dressed in civilian clothes. When I went down into the parking lot for my car, I headed toward the one place I wasn’t supposed to go. The Red Wheel.

  It wasn’t that I was deliberately trying to get into trouble again. I had enough trouble as it was. But Lieutenant Newpole had said there were a few holes in the case.

  I knew what one of them was. I had the silver cobweb in my pocket.

  19

  IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT AND THE RED WHEEL WAS CROWDED. Quite a few newspapermen were in the taproom and one of them recognized me. I told him I wasn’t news and that I didn’t know any more than he did. He hung on a little, unbelievingly, then let me go.

  When Amy Bell came on, I moved out of the taproom and stood in the foyer watching her. She played the piano and sang several numbers, but her voice was listless and had lost its vibrant tremor. She seemed mechanical in her actions. The other patrons sensed the change in her, too, because the dining room was quite noisy when she sang. When she went off with a quick bow, the applause was scattered and halfhearted. I gave a note to a waiter to take to her dressing room, telling her I wanted to see her in the taproom.

  When I went back to the taproom, Harry gave me a busy, cheery hello as he deftly mixed drinks along with two white-coated assistants. I ordered a bourbon and soda just to have something in my hand. There was a little argument with Harry when I insisted on paying for it. But I did pay.

  I leaned half on the stool and half on the counter, sipping on the drink, not thinking of anything or anybody except Amy Bell. Somebody patted my back. I turned around and saw Carl Podre standing behind me.

  He said, “What’s this I hear about you paying for your drink?”

  “The boss wants it that way,” I said. “In my business you don’t argue with the captain.”

  “You work for a bunch of stiff-necks,” Podre said. “What the hell do they think I’m going to do? Corrupt you?”

  “They’re cops,” I said. “Cops have suspicious minds.”

  He laughed. “Hell, after doing the Hozak job today, they ought to give you the State House. Kid, you’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol. You’re really going high, wide and handsome. I mean it. Look around. The town’s jumping with joy and the place is loaded with newsmen. What do you say? I’ll let them know you’re here and we’ll take some pictures.”

  “That’s out,” I said. “I didn’t do the job, Carl. It was Kerrigan.”

  “What the hell, you were with him, weren’t you?”

  “Not me. All I did was get in a jam.”

  “How?”

  “Some day I’ll tell you all about sticky pine-tree sap. I’m going to make a study of it.”

  He looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed. I suppose he thought I had meant to say something funny and he laughed to be polite about it.

  “How’s Amy?” I asked.

  “Not so good, Ralphie.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know. She’s ’way off form tonight. Did you hear her?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What do you think is wrong with her?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” he said. “She’s been that way since the other day when she went riding with you.”

  “She tell you about that?”

  “She tells me nothing. I called her at Danziger’s and the old lady told me. Did you two have a fight?”

  “No,” I said. “There was no fight.”

  “I don’t know what’s got into her. She stays in her dressing room. She won’t come out and mix. These girls, they begin to get a little name and they start getting temperamental on you. Always happens. The best of them become bitchy.”

  I turned on the stool. “I wouldn’t want anybody to call Amy bitchy,” I said. “Not anybody. Not even you, Carl.”

  He smiled quickly. “Don’t bulge your muscles at me, Ralphie. Relax. I was talking about entertainers in general, not Amy. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I don’t always like the way you talk, Carl.”

  “Look, Ralphie, take it from an old friend. You’re wasting your time with Amy. I mean it from the heart. You’re reaching for something you can’t have. It’s out of your class.”

  “What do you mean by class, Carl?”

  “You know what I mean. This girl moves in different circles now. She meets the big money, the fast spenders, the Las Vegas-Palm Springs-Miami crowd. Sure, you’re a good-looking kid and you look real sharp in your tailored uniform. But what can you give her?”

  “Give? Dammit, why does it have to be give all the time? What if two people love each other?”

  “Ralphie boy,” he said pityingly. “What’s with this cornball love business? You go down to the slums and you see these faded, worn-out women with their hordes of brats. You ever see love between them and their husbands? Their husbands are down at the corner saloon lapping up beer because they can’t afford whiskey. They stay there all night. They don’t want to go home to a crappy house filled with squalling kids who are eating
up every nickel of their paycheck. Ralphie, money brings love. You ask any of the big-money boys. They’ll tell you there’s nothing like a mink coat to make a woman real sexy. I mean it. Any psychologist will tell you that money, diamonds and furs do something chemical to a woman.”

  “Not the way I studied chemistry.”

  “This is a different kind of chemistry, Ralphie. It’s a new world. New values. Today you buy love like you buy a pair of shoes.”

  “Then I don’t like the new world,” I said.

  “So play it your own way. But, if I were you, I wouldn’t include Amy in my plans.”

  “Don’t figure everybody by your own values, Carl.”

  “I’m not. Look, you sent Amy a note to her dressing room, didn’t you?”

  “You’ve got a good spy system, Carl.”

  “Sure, my waiters. They work for me, not you, Ralphie. They tell me everything that goes on. So you sent Amy a note to meet you here in the taproom. Has she shown?”

  “She’ll show.”

  “She’s cooled off on you,” he said. “A girl might get a little excited at first. Then she starts to think of the size of your monthly paycheck.”

  “Don’t sneer at my paycheck,” I said. “I’m no fifty-dollar-a-week cop. I can support a wife.”

  “I know. They pay you pretty good and it gets better as you go along. But these girls go for the big money, Ralphie. The big dough. When you’re in the twenty-five-thousand-a-year class then you talk to them.”

  “You mean you’re in a position to talk to Amy?”

  “Nothing personal, Ralphie.” He waved his hand, encompassing The Red Wheel. “This place makes money.”

  “If it was all yours. You don’t own this club, Carl.”

  “I’ve got a piece of it. Some day it’ll be mine.” He patted my back. “You’re all right, kid. Just shorten your sights a little. There’s a dame for every man in this world.”

  “I’ll wait right here for Amy,” I said.