The Silver Cobweb Read online

  “No,” I said. “I guess not.”

  “All right. So you ride with Pellegrini and keep your trap shut. It’ll leak out, I suppose, but as far as you know, Ludwell quit for personal reasons. You get it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And here’s another thing. I expect you to be around this barracks for a while. So when you go on time off you give us an address where we can reach you. No more of that stuff we had this morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which reminds me. Your punishment has come through. You’ve lost all time off for a month. Personally, I think they let you off too easy. There’ll be no more fights with drunks in public places. I don’t care if they insult your grandmother. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When can your father get out here?”

  “Next week, if it’s all right with you.”

  “Thursday. Both Kerrigan and I will be here then. I’ll have the cook make something special for him. What does he like?”

  “Fried chicken and biscuits.”

  “Fried chicken and biscuits next Thursday,” Neal said, making a note on his pad. “Okay, take off. You don’t expect Tony to wait all day for you, do you?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  Pellegrini drove. We were in Cruiser 28 driving along U.S. 1. Pellegrini looked over at me. “So Ludwell went and quit, huh?”

  “So I heard,” I said. “Must have got a better job.”

  “He’s smart,” Pellegrini said, flashing white teeth in a broad smile. “A guy’s out of his mind being a trooper.”

  “I don’t see your resignation going in,” I said.

  “Me? I’m crazier than a bedbug. I like the hours. Some weeks, if I try real hard, I put in almost seventy hours. And who do they think they’re kidding about Ludwell?”

  I smiled back at him, but said nothing.

  He said, “How much time off did you lose?”

  “A month.”

  “They must be getting soft. When you lose time off it doesn’t go against your record like a suspension. In my day, a public brawl was good for at least a sixty-day suspension.”

  I grinned at that. In his day. Pellegrini was all of twenty-six.

  We rode down the turnpike to the Newbury line. There the shortwave radio rasped and said. “K2 to Cruiser 28. A Signal 16 at Dozier Farm in Newbury. Chicken theft. Go ahead, 28.”

  Pellegrini picked up the handphone and pressed the button. “Received okay. 28 off.”

  He hung up and shook his head dolefully. “Investigate some stolen chickens. All week we’ve been living on red meat. Now we’ve got to go and look for some crummy chickens and get chicken lime all over our nice shiny boots. Well, you wanted to be a trooper, kid. Nobody sent for you.”

  “You’ve got to take them big and small,” I said. “I heard rumors if you crack this one you’ll get an extra day off.”

  “Ha, ha,” he said. “I’ve got a comic riding with me. Listen, I got only one extra day off since I’ve been with this troop. That was because my mother was sick in the hospital.” His teeth flashed again as he made a right turn off the turnpike. “I’ll tell you the truth why I’m sticking with this outfit. You can’t beat the chow. Real Italian spaghetti and meatballs at least once a month.”

  “You’ll stick,” I said. “When they retire you at fifty you’ll still be chasing taillights.”

  “Not me, kid. That’s twenty-four years from now. Any guy who stays with the State Police that long hasn’t got strength enough to ride patrols. I’ll be too old and feeble and worn out. The only way they can keep me is to put gold bars on these shoulders and sit me behind a desk at GHQ. That I’d like. You ever see some of the girls who work there?”

  “At that age you won’t be interested in girls.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. As long as I’ve got eyes in my head I’ll be interested in girls. There’s a plump little one up on the fifth floor—” He broke off. “How can you think of girls right now? We’ve got to find those little lost chickens. That’s what I don’t like about this job. I just had my boots polished and now I’m going into a hen yard and get chicken lime all over them. Why the hell couldn’t Danny Driscoll have been riding down here instead of me?”

  “What do you have against Driscoll?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Only I swear he’s got a sixth sense. He took the Peabody-Danvers patrol where he’ll probably run into nice clean felonies like statutory rape or embezzlement. Me, I have to get chickens.”

  I laughed. Pellegrini turned his head to me and began laughing, too, knowing, of course, that I understood him perfectly.

  Pellegrini and I would get along fine.

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