The Venus Death

by Ben Benson

  Beaupré gave it. Newpole turned away, his face taut and inflexible. “It was Reece,” he said to Walsh. “We’d better get out there, Ralph.”

  We raced down the turnpike in a patrol cruiser, siren screaming, red roof light flashing. I sat hunched forward over the wheel. Every time I swung the car around occasional traffic, my left arm stabbed with pain.

  Ahead of us, at the bottom of a hill, we saw red flares on the road. I slowed the car. Now I could see the blinking red light of a cruiser on the shoulder of the highway. I stopped the car and we jumped out. There was a pall of smoke.

  People milled around. We broke through them. The car was off the road, pushed into a thick-trunked, tall oak tree. The motor had splintered and disintegrated. The smashed front windshield lay against the trunk of the tree. The steel body of the car was crumpled like an accordion, the frame twisted and warped. There was a smell of scorched paint and the acrid odor of burnt rubber. A steady cloud of smoke and steam rose up.

  At the left side of the car, Phil Kerrigan, his face blackened and the front of his uniform smudged, tugged at the twisted door with a jack handle. Another trooper, a short dark boy named Manny Green, was playing a hand fire extinguisher on the front of the car. I moved close and looked through the shattered glass of the side window. I saw Fulton Reece slumped over the steering wheel. Kerrigan strained on the jack handle and the door snapped open.

  We dragged Fulton Reece out and laid him on the shoulder of the road. Kerrigan knelt down beside him. He pulled out a flashlight and lifted the eyelids. Then he closed them. He stood up and shook his head slowly.

  “Anyway,” Newpole said, “it was a good try.”

  Green had been pushing the crowd back. Now he came over. “Dead?” he asked.

  “As soon as he hit, I think,” Kerrigan said. He bent down and wiped his hands on a tuft of tall brown grass. “I can’t understand it, Lieutenant. It was a clear straightaway. A tire didn’t go. It’s almost like he turned off deliberately into the tree.”

  “Yes,” Newpole said. “Now I think we’d better move everybody back. The gas tank is liable to go up.”

  There was the sound of a keening siren. It became louder and closer. It came down the hill and stopped with a low growl. I looked around and saw the ambulance. A white-coated doctor jumped out and ran over to us. He carried a black bag in his hand.

  I reported to Captain Walsh’s office the next morning. He was standing at the big wall map. He said, “The troop and all substations have searching patrols out in every direction.” He turned away from the map and went back to his desk. “You’ve still got a bad arm, and I need a cruiser for traffic patrol.”

  “But I’m feeling fine, sir,” I said. “I could—”

  “You’ll patrol the turnpike east of Danford. Ten miles. That’s all.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I put on my cap and went out.

  The traffic was light and the patrol card showed only a small stolen car list. There was a haze in the fields and the sun was pale and the air crisp and sharp. I drove along slowly on the far right side of the road. Ahead of me I saw the junction of Route 105. I pulled over and stopped the cruiser.

  It wasn’t a hunch or instinct this time, but cold reasoning. I was putting myself in Al Yekiti’s position and thinking what I would do if I were him. He wouldn’t go back to Danford after the killing. The Danford cops would be shaking down every hiding place in town. He would head out. But if he headed out too far he would run into the State Police roadblocks. Perhaps he had gone around them. And perhaps he had not.

  I decided to go off territory. I didn’t cut off my radio but I didn’t call in and tell them, either. I turned onto Route 105 toward Bellfield. I went by the same farmhouses of a week ago, the same rocky fields and the gnarled apple trees.

  I came to the narrow dirt road which led to Deer Pond. I turned the cruiser in, jouncing slowly over the ruts and rocks. A quarter of a mile before the pond I stopped in the middle of the road. I got out. I walked up the hill. I cut through the trees to the edge of the clearing. I stood behind a tall pine. Across the brown carpet of needles I could see the yellow Boothbay cottage. It was bleak and lifeless.

  Beyond the cottage, the blue waters of Deer Pond sparkled in the October sun. There was no sign of human life. I went back to the road and continued on, following it as it wound around the pond. I searched the ground for tire tracks. I watched both sides of the road for telltale signs in the underbrush.

  I walked five hundred yards, six hundred. Then I saw something. There were brush marks on the dirt road, as though somebody had swept there with branches. Then, on the right side, there were some matted broken weeds. They had been fluffed up, but the swath they had made was about the width of a car.

  I turned off the road. I pushed into the underbrush, the brambles scratching against my puttees. I opened the flap of my holster and loosened the long-barreled revolver. My shoes crackled on the dry leaves. I followed the swath. I came upon some brown pine branches banked up high. I walked around them first. Then I moved in and began to pull them away. Hidden behind them was a car. It was Al Yekiti’s black sedan.

  I circled around the car, pulling away pine branches. There was a bullet hole through one side and another through one window. I opened the door and looked inside. It was musty-smelling and empty. The upholstery was stained and torn.

  I left there. I went back to the road. I walked down, past the Boothbay cottage, to my cruiser. I radioed Troop E Headquarters. When I was through I left the cruiser and went back up the road again. I stood behind a tree at the edge of the clearing and kept watch on the cottage.

  I didn’t hear the cruisers coming. The only way I knew was that a fine haze of dust began to drift above the trees below me. I went down the road to meet them.

  They had parked the cars among the trees. There were six men, including Captain Walsh, Sergeant Beaupré and Corporal Arthur Sherman. The corporal carried a tear-gas gun. Manny Green held a Winchester rifle. Kerrigan and Ravelli had shotguns crooked under their armpits.

  “Did you see anybody in the cottage?” Walsh asked me.

  “No, sir,” I said. “But their car isn’t far. If Manette Venus knew about the cottage, then Yekiti would know, too.”

  “You didn’t show yourself, did you?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “I like my men eager, but not that eager.” Walsh turned around. “Beaupré, we’ll go up and reconnoiter. Lindsey, take a Thompson and come with us.”

  Kerrigan reached into a cruiser and handed me a submachine gun. I went up the dirt road with Walsh and Beaupré. We came off the road, crouched down and crawled through the dry-smelling underbrush. We stopped at the edge of the clearing. The wind sighed through the pines. The sun dappled the carpet of pine needles. A bird twittered somewhere. A squirrel ran up a tree and chattered at us from a high perch. A vagrant breeze rippled the waters of the pond.

  Walsh studied the yellow cottage. “No sign of life,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “No smoke coming from the chimney.”

  “If you want me to go take a look—” Beaupré said.

  “No,” Walsh said. “It’s possible they’re in there. If they had a supply of food stashed away, they wouldn’t have to move for a while.”

  I spoke to him from my prone position. “I could go ahead and show myself, sir. Maybe I could draw their fire.”

  “You won’t do anything of the kind,” Walsh snapped. “Let’s go back.”

  We crawled back to the road. We walked down and joined the others. Walsh glanced at their somber faces.

  “We’ll surround the cottage,” he said in a measured voice. “You’ll use cover. Make sure you have a good thick tree trunk in front of you. And nobody does anything until he gets the signal. Beaupré, you’ll distribute your three men. Corporal Sherman and Lindsey, you keep with me.”

  The pale blue tunics and dark blue breeches spanned out and melted away in the woods. Walsh looked at the intent face o
f Sherman, then at me. He took out his pocket watch and held it in his hand. We waited silently. He put the watch away and walked up the road again. Sherman and I followed him.

  “Wait here,” Walsh said. He stepped forward into the edge of the clearing and showed himself.

  “Yekiti!” he called. “Calvaris! Horace! You’re surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

  There was no answer from the cottage. The wind sighed through the trees again.

  “Yekiti!” Walsh called out.

  He waited for an answer. There was none. He came back to Sherman and me. His face was red from the shouting.

  “Either they’re not in there,” he said, “or they’re playing possum.”

  “I’ll go take a look,” Sherman said.

  “Let’s have no more of that,” Walsh said quietly. “Lindsey, you cover me. I’m going down there.”

  He walked out. He started slowly for the cottage. He seemed small and forlorn out there by himself. I brought the Thompson up and wrapped the canvas thong tightly against my arm.

  There was a tinkle of glass from the cottage. Three rapid pistol shots crackled in the still air. Walsh hit the ground face down. I fired a burst at the cottage with the Thompson. Then another. Walsh stood up and ran back, his short sturdy legs churning the ground.

  “Lousy shots,” he said, breathing heavily from behind his tree trunk. “And I’m no small target, either.” He twisted his body around. “Okay, so they’re in there.” He cupped his hands and shouted, “Sergeant Beaupré! Give them a shotgun blast.”

  A second passed. There was the explosion of a shotgun, then two together. Then a fusillade. The cottage windows shattered.

  There was a rapid answering fire from the cottage. I could hear the distinctive burp of a German Schmeisser machine pistol. Now came the single shots of revolver fire and the high-powered whine of a repeating rifle. A faint smoke filtered through the cottage windows. Bullets thumped against tree trunks, or ricocheted and screamed away. Pine cones fell. Pine needles wafted down.

  “I’d like to take them alive,” Walsh said soberly. “I don’t care about Yekiti. He wouldn’t talk anyway. But if Calvaris and Horace are in there we could get information from them.”

  Sherman was putting a tear-gas shell into his gun. He tested for wind direction. “Maybe those two want to surrender, sir. But they’re afraid of Yekiti.”

  “It’s worse for them this way,” Walsh commented. “All this will do is get them killed.”

  A bullet pinged off the tree in front of Walsh. He squeezed his thick body back. “That was close,” he said. He nodded to Corporal Sherman. “Give them a whiff of tear gas, Arthur.”

  The corporal lifted the short, fat-barreled rifle and sighted it along a tree branch. He fired. The tear-gas shell arched through the air and hit the ground at the edge of the cottage. A gray cloud of smoke rose up.

  “Another, Arthur,” Walsh said. “Bring up your elevation.”

  Sherman fired again. The shell looped through the air, bounced on a window sill and dropped inside the cottage.

  “Lucky,” Sherman grinned.

  “Good,” Walsh said grimly. “Another. And bring it up a fraction more.”

  Sherman pushed another shell into the chamber and fired again. The shell lobbed through the air and through the jagged glass of the window. Smoke billowed out.

  Walsh turned to me. “You were in the cottage before, weren’t you, Lindsey?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were those rooms fully enclosed?”

  “No, sir. They were partitioned only as high as the eaves.”

  “Good,” Walsh said. “They won’t be able to shut off the room with the tear gas in it. It’ll spread.” He cupped his hands. “Beaupré! Hold your fire.”

  The firing died away. Among the trees there was a stillness. We waited. The smoke drifted away from the cottage. We could hear coughing from the troopers near the lake.

  Suddenly the front door of the cottage opened and two men burst onto the porch. They were covering their eyes with their hands, but I recognized them as Calvaris and Horace. They felt around for the screened porch door, opened it and stumbled down the stairs. Tears ran down their faces.

  “This way!” Walsh called. “Here!”

  They turned in the direction of his voice. They staggered like blind, drunken men.

  Now a huge figure loomed in the doorway of the cottage. Yekiti came onto the porch, with the machine pistol in his hands. He coughed. He began to scream loudly and obscenely at Calvaris and Horace.

  “Drop the gun!” Walsh called to him.

  Calvaris and Horace ran, zigzagging over the ground. Yekiti didn’t drop the gun. He fired through the screening of the porch, spraying bullets at the two running men. I saw puffs of dust as Horace was hit. He fell down, rolled over and lay still. Calvaris screamed and dropped to the ground. He began to crawl on his stomach, his hands pulling at tree roots.

  I broke into the clearing and aimed the Thompson at Yekiti. It jumped in my hands. The porch screening shredded. Yekiti dropped his machine pistol. He hit the screen door, tore it away from its hinges. He tumbled down the three steps to the ground.

  Captain Walsh ran for him. I was close behind. At the porch stairs I looked down at Yekiti, not recognizing him now in the gore and filth, the face shattered beyond a semblance of humanity. Captain Walsh poked at the huge body with his toe.

  “So that’s the end of him,” Walsh said. He pushed his revolver back into its flap holster. “If he’d have lived any longer, he’d have mangled a few more old shopkeepers.” He turned to me. “How does it make you feel, Lindsey?”

  “A little squeamish inside, sir. It’s not like war. It’s like hunting wild animals.”

  “It’s a job we have to do sometimes. I never could stomach it myself. I won’t be eating any more today.”

  “You sir?”

  “Me. In all these years I’ve never gotten used to it.” The other troopers were now in the clearing. Phil Kerrigan was examining the dead body of Horace. Sergeant Beaupré was putting handcuffs on Dick Calvaris. Calvaris was crying hysterically. Walsh heard the crying.

  “Beaupré,” he said. “Maybe you’d better check and see if he was hit somewhere.”

  “Not a scratch on him,” Beaupré said. “Calvaris is scared, that’s all.”

  Walsh went up the stairs, through the porch and into the cottage. I followed him. The remains of the tear gas made me cough and sputter. My eyes smarted and tears gushed out of them. Walsh kept dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief.

  There was a shambles of crockery. There were scattered, opened cans of food and rinds of fruit. Empty whisky bottles and empty beer cans. A litter of cigarette butts. They weren’t even animals, I thought. Animals would have lived there cleaner.

  The pine walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. My shoes crunched on broken glass. There were a .30-30 Winchester rifle and a .45 Colt automatic pistol.

  Corporal Sherman came in with Manny Green and Hank Ravelli. They searched the cottage systematically, from one end to the other. There was no .32-20 Colt.

  I heard footsteps on the porch. Phil Kerrigan came in. Behind him was the slim form of Cole Boothbay. Boothbay walked up to Captain Walsh.

  “You phoned me from the barracks earlier,” Boothbay said. “You said something about criminals living here. Was that it?”

  “That was it,” Walsh said.

  Boothbay stopped short and looked around with shocked eyes.

  “My God,” he said. “Why did they pick my cottage?”

  “They heard of it through Manette Venus,” Walsh said. “It’s one of those things.”

  “Look at this damage,” Boothbay shouted. “Who’s going to pay for it?”

  Sergeant Beaupré said, “Maybe you can collect from the Yekiti estate.”

  “You’re not being funny, are you?” Boothbay said sharply. “Some of this damage is due to the police.”

  “The sergeant was only joking,” W
alsh said. “If you want to make a claim to the Commonwealth, have your lawyer contact the attorney-general.”

  “I’ll put in a claim for the entire cottage,” Boothbay said. “I couldn’t use this place any more. There were two men killed in here, weren’t there?”

  “Not in here,” Walsh said. “They were shot outside. Mr. Boothbay, is that your Winchester rifle there?”

  “No,” Boothbay said emphatically.

  “The Colt automatic?”

  “I never owned a weapon in my life.” He craned his neck, looking at the kitchen. “They cleaned out my refrigerator, too. Filthy animals. The place looks worse than a pigsty.”

  “It takes all kinds to make a world,” Walsh said briskly. “Okay, Beaupré. Wrap it up. I want to get a normal duty roster working again.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THEY brought Calvaris from the cellblock and into the guardroom. Sergeant Stan Maleski sat him in a chair and gave him a cigarette. Then they ranged around him. Captain Walsh, Detective-Lieutenant Chet Granger, Captain Angsman, and the Danford Chief of Police. Kerrigan and I were there as door guards.

  Granger was doing the interrogation. “What was the plan?” he asked Calvaris.

  “We didn’t have no plan no more,” Calvaris said. “We had to beat it when Helen got knocked off.”

  “Why didn’t you pull it anyway?”

  “We couldn’t get to our stuff in the warehouse. We figured we’d run into a stake-out.”

  “What was the original plan?” Granger asked.

  “It was gonna be next Friday,” Calvaris said, his sharp, unshaven face turning from one to the other. “The Staley Woolen Company. We had these funny masks and the smoke bombs and the guns. We wait until the armored truck drops the payroll and takes off. Then we go in.”

  “Who was to take the gate guard?” Granger asked.

  “Me. They let me off first. I’m hanging around the gate like I’m looking for a job. Yekiti and Horace wait in the car down the road. I walk in and talk to the guard in the booth. Then I put the slug on him, tape him up and dump him on the floor. The car comes up quick. I stay in the booth and keep the gate clear. Yekiti and Horace go in and hit the office.”