by Len Wein
His hand around Frieda’s slightly fleshy waist, Daniel Shagan drew her back into the bedroom and locked the door behind them.
Stretching from the upper tip of Manhattan to the lower East Side, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive becomes an overpass at various points along its winding route. Dangling upside down from the Thirty-sixth Street overpass, Spider-Man sighed. Things were lousy and looking worse. It would be almost laughable if it weren’t so terribly grim.
Let’s hear it for the conquering hero, folks. I help little old ladies across the street, then they bash me with their umbrellas. I nab dangerous criminals for the police, then get ticketed for jaywalking. Yeah, that’s what I like so much about this business: all those little fringe benefits.
Spider-Man tried to stretch away the tensions, then looked around him. To one side lay the East River, a smelly, scum-infested sumphole that constantly clogged his sinuses. To the other side lay crumbling, rat-infested tenements. Definitely not a scene to cheer a despairing soul much, is it?
Spiderlike, the costumed figure slid down his webbing to the ground, then leaped across the street toward one of the stronger-looking firetraps lining First Avenue. Clinging to the brick, he scurried up the building’s side to the roof, where he squatted down next to a particularly ugly stone gargoyle with half its nose shorn away. He patted it gently on the head.
“You’re looking about as good as I feel right now, handsome,” he observed as he started off across the river toward Queens.
Peter thought again of his loving and fragile Aunt May, who had raised him since the death of his parents so many years before. In fact, Aunt May and Uncle Ben were the only real parents he had ever known, and now only she was left.
He could picture the delicate old woman in the small apartment she shared with Anna May Watson, Mary Jane’s own aunt. May Parker had devoted her life to Peter, doting over him, protecting him against ills real and imagined. Gravely, Spider-Man wondered what her reaction would be if she ever learned that her sweet, spineless nephew was also the incredible Spider-Man. The thought made him wince.
May Parker’s heart was terribly weak; she had suffered several major attacks in the past three years alone. He doubted she could survive another. And the shock of discovering Spider-Man’s greatest secret would certainly kill her.
The Web-slinger stood up, his shoulders hunched, his head low. I can’t allow anything to happen to Aunt May, he thought. She must never learn the truth. And if that means I must put an end to Spider-Man, then I’ll do it—and gladly. Once I’ve cleared the Wall-crawler’s name, I’m going to hang up this stupid mask permanently!
Ted Williams slept the sleep of the dead, which was, in this case, somehow appropriate. It took a cold, harsh voice several attempts to finally rouse him from his slumber. The eyes Williams opened were puffy, almost as puffy as the rest of his porcine body. He shook his head from side to side to clear away the cobwebs, and his sleep-blurred vision came slowly into focus.
Williams reached out but suddenly found his fingers stuck to something. It felt like a rope that had been dipped into some sort of glue. Then Williams made the mistake of looking down—to find himself suspended in the center of a monstrous spider’s web that spanned the distance between his apartment building and the skyscraper next door. He was twenty-six stories from the street.
“Edward Anthony Williams, the time has come for us to talk.” The voice was deep, menacing. Williams peered desperately into the darkness and saw only two strangely inhuman eyes glaring back at him. Only the eyes, and nothing more.
“Who do you work for, Williams?” The voice was not questioning—it was demanding.
Perspiration flowed across Williams’ forehead; his faded cotton pajamas offered little protection from the late night chill. “You heard me, Williams. You would be wise to answer me—before my webbing dissolves and sends you plunging to your doom.” Williams began to tremble.
“Wh-who are you? Where are you? I can’t see anything but—”
The chilling voice cut him off in mid-sentence. “I ask the questions here, Williams, and I demand answers. Who do you work for?”
“Argon Oil! I work for Argon Oil. Please, what else do you want from me?” Williams was shaking visibly now, his doughy mouth contorted in fear.
“You work for someone other than Argon, Williams, someone who threatens to destroy the entire oil industry. I will know his name, Williams, before you know mine.”
Williams’ lower lip trembled, more from fright than from the cold. “I don’t know his real name, I swear to you. He calls himself the Master Planner. Please—that’s all I can tell you.”
“You’re lying, Williams, and I will not tolerate that.”
Beside Williams’ head a strand of the webbing suddenly dissolved, and Williams’ oppressive weight made the rest of the web lurch violently. Only the web’s remarkable adhesive prevented him from falling. The fat man wheezed in terror, then struggled to catch his breath.
“I wasn’t lying to you, I swear it. I get a call sometimes, ordering me to make photostatic copies of certain top priority documents, which I deliver to a contact man. My money comes in the mail the following morning.”
“And where do you meet this contact man, Williams?”
Williams squinted into the darkness, trying to discern the shape of his mysterious interrogator. But all he could see were those two white eyes, those hideous, unearthly orbs. “It’s Miller’s Warehouse, over on Twelfth Avenue. That’s where I bring everything. I was supposed to make a delivery later tonight.”
“When?”
“In a couple of hours. But I won’t make the delivery if you don’t want me to. I’ll do anything you say if you’ll just leave me alone.”
“That would be wise, Williams—most wise.”
Williams’ voice was slightly calmer now, slightly more sure. “I’ve told you everything, mister. That’s all I know. What else do you want from me?”
Williams awaited a reply, but heard only the blare of taxi horns far in the distance. He looked desperately around him; the glowing eyes were gone. He was alone, trapped in the center of an impossible spider’s web, twenty-six stories above the street.
Cautiously, Williams strained against the clinging adhesive, pulling one leg free, then the other. In moments he was loose, and slowly, fearfully, he crawled along the webbing, inching his way toward the open bedroom window that seemed impossibly out of reach.
Beneath him the webbing swayed ever so gently. Sweat poured across the fat man’s face in torrents. But after a seeming eternity his pudgy fingers clutched the waiting windowsill and, heaving in effort, he tumbled into his apartment.
Without hesitation, Williams headed for the telephone, his trembling growing slighter with every step, his flaccid features taking on an uncharacteristic firmness. Carefully, he dialed a long-memorized number, and a soft, reserved voice responded at the other end of the line. “Yes, Williams?” it said.
“Shagan was right, sir. Spider-Man is asking questions about our operation.”
“You did as I told you?”
“Exactly as you told me, sir. I answered the Web-slinger’s questions precisely as you ordered, sir—and Spider-Man bought every lying word of it.”
“Splendid, Williams. Then that altruistic fool is finally mine!”
Nine
Gloria Grant neatly typed the final line of her letter, then examined it for errors; Jonah Jameson disliked errors. He also disliked smudges, misfolded mail, and the thirteen-cent postage stamp. Come to think of it, J. Jonah Jameson disliked practically everything about everything since Herbert Hoover had lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
According to Jameson, the modern workaday world had become a shambles. The seeming simplicity of the good old days was gone, replaced by an intricate maze of rules and regulations designed solely to drive the Daily Bugle’s peerless publisher to distraction.
Glory was satisfied with the letter, which meant Jameson would only pick it apar
t for a minute or two, providing, of course, the rest of his day hadn’t gone sour since last she spoke with him. That was before Jonah and Joe Robertson had huddled together over their lunch-long secret meeting. The office was buzzing with speculation: Was Robbie going to be promoted? Was he going to be fired? Was Jameson quitting? Was he preparing to fire the entire staff? Everybody knew everything, and nobody knew anything—all at the same time.
Taking a deep breath, Glory knocked on Jameson’s door, then entered. Jonah was standing behind his desk, staring out the window at a panoramic view of New York. Joe Robertson was sitting in a hard-backed chair studying a pile of papers and making notes. It always amazed Glory how Jameson, a rough, tending-to-the-vulgar publisher, and Robbie, a quiet middle-of-the-roader, got along so well. They seemed so very different. Yet perhaps it was those differences that made them fit together so well. Two human jigsaw puzzle pieces, interlocking, supporting one another where it counted the most.
Jameson turned to Glory, his thick eyebrows raised in a silent question. Glory smiled. “Your letter to the mayor’s office, Mr. Jameson—the one about ridding this city of Spider-Man. It needs your signature.”
Jameson grunted, and the muscles at the base of Glory’s neck tightened involuntarily in anticipation of Jonah’s typical ten-minute tirade against the Wall-crawler. She’d heard it so often, she’d already learned it by heart. Yet, every time Spider-Man’s name was mentioned, Jameson would repeat his overzealous complaints, as if the other person were only hearing them for the first time.
Jonah crossed the office and signed the letter without reading it. “Thank you, Miss Grant. That will be all. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” With that he turned back to the window, and Glory staggered out of the room, confused, bewildered, and slightly worried. Something was definitely wrong with that man.
Robertson waited until Glory had left before picking up the conversation where he and Jameson had left off. “Frankly, Jonah, none of my informants have been able to learn a thing. There’s something brewing all right, something nasty—but the word is out, and everyone has shut up like the proverbial clam.”
Jameson lit another cigar and offered one to Robbie, who refused. They’d been working together for years, and Jameson still couldn’t pry Robertson away from his precious pipe. “You know, Robbie, it’s typical. Everything is going wrong, and nobody wants to tell the press a damned thing. But you mark my words. When every oil company in this country starts answering simple inquiries with ‘No Comment,’ and when every pipsqueak stoolie in a city as large as New York suddenly gets struck deaf, dumb, and blind, then whatever is happening is not only big—it’s bigger than big. It’s downright tremendous!”
Jameson puffed on his cigar, exhaling small smoke rings that curled through the air. “There’s the stink of corruption here, Robbie, and I want to get to the bottom of it. Call it a gut reaction, but something inside me says this story is going to be bigger than Watergate, maybe even bigger than Spider-Man.”
Joe Robertson nodded thoughtfully as he rose from his chair. “Who do you want me to put on this, Jonah? Caruthers? What about Jake Connover? He’s our top crime reporter.”
Jameson shook his head. “No, Robbie. This is more than any mere crime, much more. Criminals don’t get involved with oil companies, and even if they did, there isn’t a criminal in this country powerful enough to force them to shut down their steady flow of press releases. I’m telling you, Robbie, for this we need better than the best.”
Jameson smiled, and Robbie suppressed a shudder. Jolly Jonah’s smile was enough to wilt a plastic flower. “We’re going after this story, Robbie. You and I. We’ll show those hotshot young punk reporters what this business is all about. We’ve got what it takes, mister: the know-how, the nerve. We’ve got everything we could possibly need.”
Except, Robertson thought glumly, the sense to know enough to quit while we’re ahead.
The Gibraltar Bar and Grill on Thirty-second and Ninth isn’t ever likely to count Jacqueline Onassis among its clientele. Three chipped and splintered tables, surrounded by mismatched chairs, press up against a long-unpolished bar. It is the hangout of some of the scummiest scum to ever infest New York. The poor, the unwashed, the misbegotten aren’t allowed in the Gibraltar; it would give the joint too much class.
Whisper O’Conner, a one-armed, one-eyed misfit, more used to sleeping tucked away in a liquor bottle than in a bed, sat on a wobble-legged chair in the rear of the foul-smelling saloon, next to the old “Fireball” pinball machine that hadn’t worked right since 1962. It went tilt on the same day that Whisper did, and from that point on, the dirty down-and-outer tended to park his butt beside the battered old contraption.
True to his name, Whisper’s voice was faint, and the taller man who strained to hear him had to hunch over the table until he was practically face-to-face with the bedraggled drunk. Whisper’s breath had begun to singe his guest’s eyebrows.
“Thanks, mister, I really appreciate the drink. I don’t drink as much as I used ta. No, really, I mean it. I used to drink like a fish, y’know, but I hadda cut back. Doctor’s orders.” Whisper paused for a moment, then smiled. “Now I only drink half as much as the old days. Feel a whole lot better for it, too. ‘Cut back,’ the doctor said, so I did. I took the water out of my Scotch and . . .”
Whisper took a long swallow, rolling the cheap booze around on his tongue, savoring the bitter taste for that precious extra moment. “You got any money, guy? I mean, you’re askin’ for some heavy information, y’know, an’ a man’s gotta eat. I ain’t askin’ much, just enough ta tide me over till the New Year.”
The gray-haired man reached into his woolen topcoat and extracted a bulging wallet. Whisper stared in awe at the wad of fifties as the stranger peeled off a pair of them and held them outstretched in his hand. “If you really have the information I want, these are yours. Everyone else I’ve spoken to says you’ve been jabbering about something you overheard, something involving Roxxon Oil. I’m willing to pay to hear what you’ve been telling others for free.”
“They’re right, mister, I did hear something. Something big. But it’s gonna cost ya more than what you’re offering. I mean, if you’re so interested, maybe it’s worth two big ones to ya.”
“Don’t press your luck, Whisper. You start playing games with me, and you’ll wind up with nothing.”
Whisper grinned, an act almost as repulsive as his breath. “Well, y’know how drinkin’ sorta messes up your memory, pal. I mean, it really fouls ya up, y’know. Like, right now, I can hardly remember my name. But for that extra hundred . . .”
The gray-haired man stood up and dusted off his topcoat. “I warned you, Whisper,” he said. Then he turned and headed for the door. Whisper was beside him in an instant.
“Aw, c’mon, mister. Ya can’t blame a guy for trying, can ya? You’re still interested, and I’ll tell ya what I know for the hundred.”
Joe Robertson waited. Whisper allowed a sheepish smile to cross his ferret face. “The hundred . . . and a bottle’a Jack Daniels, okay?”
Ten
Twelfth Avenue stretched across most of New York City’s dock area, which made it a cold, windswept way. And the cold was all a bone-weary Spider-Man needed to rouse him from his nightlong melancholy. Miller’s Warehouse was just up the street to the left. Its broken windows were boarded up, its doors chained and bolted. But before the warehouse stood a telephone booth, and within the booth, blowing into his cupped hands to keep them warm, stood a man in a grimy trenchcoat. The contact man Williams had described to Spidey.
If the contact man was waiting for Williams, he was going to have a long wait. Williams wouldn’t be coming tonight, not after the scare the Web-slinger had put into him. Eventually the contact man was going to get discouraged, and hopefully, he would have to report his failure to his boss. When he did, Spider-Man would be right behind him.
Deep in the shadows of the giant steamships, the Wall-crawler waited.
The contact man would have to make his move soon. Williams was already a half hour late.
The moon that had hung high over the city when Spider-Man began his trip to Twelfth Avenue now hovered near the horizon. In a few hours it would be dawn. Spider-Man yawned. What was keeping the contact man there? He should know by now that Williams wasn’t coming. His vigil was a waste. Why didn’t he give it up?
At last the contact man glanced at his watch for the fourteenth time in ten minutes, then flipped open the phone booth and quickly stepped across Twelfth Avenue, heading east. The hunt was finally on.
At Sixth Avenue, the contact man entered the subway and soon stood on the platform, waiting for an “F” train. He was nervous, impatient, and he checked his cheap wristwatch repeatedly. His feet tapped out a tuneless rhythm in a vain attempt to keep himself warm, and occasionally he would glance up the tracks in search of the telltale glimmer that would indicate an approaching train.
It was nineteen minutes before the graffiti-spattered subway train finally arrived. The contact man entered it impatiently, sat down, and opened a copy of the Daily Bugle he’d had stuffed in his trenchcoat pocket. He turned to the comics pages and finally relaxed. It was going to be a long trip.
The train rumbled through the winding subway tunnels, pausing now and then, waiting. At last it roared out of the tunnel and clattered along an overpass toward Coney Island, Brooklyn’s half-hearted version of Disneyland—a once-glorious amusement park that no longer seemed all that amusing. Oh, the original Nathan’s was still there, of course. And the Tornado was still the greatest roller coaster anywhere. But sometime back in 1950, the magic got lost in the shuffle, and nobody ever really found it again.
