Killer's Payoff

by Ed McBain

  Again Teddy frowned.

  “You know I love you dearly,” Carella said, grinning. “You’re a wonderful kid.” He paused. “I love you, kid—but, oh, that Mencken’s wife.”

  Teddy tried a frown and then burst out laughing. She flung herself into his arms, and he said, “Hey, hey, how’m I ever gonna solve this case if you carry on like that?”

  But he had already stopped thinking about the case.

  OH, THAT COTTON HAWES.

  On Tuesday morning, July ninth, he left the city.

  It was truly a beautiful day, not too hot for July, but with the sun shining brightly overhead and a fresh breeze blowing in over the River Harb. He crossed the Hamilton Bridge, at the foot of which a dead blond girl had been found long before Hawes had been transferred to the 87th. The River Harb looked quiet and still that day. He went into the next state, following the Greentree Highway, which bounded the river, heading north. He drove with the top of his Ford down. His jacket rested on the seat beside him. He wore a sports shirt with wide alternating black and red stripes. He wore old Navy gray trousers. Hawes had once been a chief petty officer, and he still had most of his Navy clothes. He wore them often, not because of sentiment but simply because his cop’s salary didn’t allow the range to buy all the clothes he’d have liked to own.

  The wind caught at his red hair as he drove along. The sun beat down on his head and shoulders. It was a good day, and he was beginning to feel in a slightly holiday mood, almost forgetting why he was driving to upstate New York. He remembered again when he passed Castleview Prison. He could look across the River Harb into his own state, and there he could see the gray walls of the prison merging with the sheer face of the cliff that dropped to the river’s edge below. Directly opposite, almost on the road he drove, was the castle from which the prison derived its name. The castle had allegedly been built by a Dutch patroom in the days of early settlement. It stared across the river and into the next state, providing an excellent view of the prison walls. And from the prison, the castle could be seen, and so it was called Castleview. He looked at the prison now with only passing interest. It would one day, in the not too distant future, become an integral part of his life, but he did not know that now, and he would not know it until long after the Kramer case had been solved.

  On that July morning it only reminded him of crime and punishment, and it brought his thoughts back to the reason for his trip to the Adirondacks. When he stopped for lunch that afternoon, his mind began to wander because, alas, he fell in love.

  The girl with whom he fell in love was a waitress.

  She wore a white dress and a white cap on her clipped blond hair. She came to his table, and she smiled, and the smile knocked him clear back against the wall.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” she said. When he heard her voice, he was hopelessly gone. “Would you care to see a menu?”

  “I have a better idea,” Hawes said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Go back and change into your street clothes. Show me the best restaurant in town, and I’ll buy you lunch there.”

  The girl looked at him with a half-amused, half-shocked expression on her face. “I’ve heard of speed demons,” she said, “but you just broke the sound barrier.”

  “Life is sweet and short,” Hawes said.

  “And you’re getting old,” the girl replied. “Even your hair’s turning white.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say I don’t even know your name. I say I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you because I don’t get off until I’m relieved at four. I also say you’re from the city.”

  “I am.” Hawes paused. “How’d you know?”

  “I’m from the city myself. Majesta.”

  “That’s a nice section.”

  “It’s fine. Especially when you compare it to this hick village.”

  “You here for the summer?”

  “Yes. I’m going back to college in the fall. I’m a senior.”

  “Have lunch with me,” Hawes said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cotton.”

  “Your first name, I mean.”

  “That’s it.”

  The girl grinned. “Like Cotton Mather?”

  “Exactly. Only it’s Cotton Hawes.”

  “I’ve never had lunch with a man named Cotton,” the girl said.

  “Go tell your boss you have a terrible headache. I’m the only customer in the place, anyway. He won’t miss either of us.”

  The girl considered this a moment. “Then what’ll I do the rest of the afternoon?” she asked. “Working helps me kill the time. You can go crazy in this miserable village.”

  Hawes smiled. “We’ll figure something out,” he said.

  The girl’s name was Polly. She was an anthropology major, and she hoped to go on for her master’s after graduation and then for her doctorate. She wanted to go to Yucatán, she said, to study the Mayan Indians and learn all about the feathered serpent. Hawes learned all this during lunch. She had taken him to a restaurant in the next town, a restaurant that jutted out over a pine-shrouded lake, cantilevering over the waters below. When he told Polly he was a cop, she didn’t believe him, and so he showed her his gun. Polly’s blue eyes opened wide. Her wonderful mouth curved into a long O. She was a deceptively slender girl with a well-rounded bosom and wide hips. She walked with the angular sveltness of a model.

  When they finished lunch, there wasn’t much to do in town, and so they had a couple of drinks. The couple of drinks weren’t sufficient on a day that was turning hot, and so they had several more. There was a juke box in the lounge off the restaurant, and so they danced. The afternoon was still very young and a good movie was playing in the local theater, and so they went to see it. And then, because it was time for dinner when they once more came into the daylight, they ate again.

  There was a long evening ahead.

  Polly lived in a two-room cottage near the restaurant for which she worked. The cottage had a record player and whisky, and so they went there after dinner.

  Polly lived alone in the cottage. Polly was a very pretty blond girl with blue eyes, deceptively slender with a well-rounded bosom and wide hips. Polly was an anthropology major who wanted to go to Yucatán. Polly was a city girl who was bored to tears with the village and tickled to death she had met this entertaining stranger with a white streak in his hair and a name like Cotton.

  She fell in love with him a little bit, too.

  She lived alone in the cottage.

  And so to bed.

  10.

  FROM THE SHORES of the lake and the entrance to Kukabonga Lodge, you could see the green-backed humps of the mountains and the clear blue of the sky beyond. The lodge was small, built of logs that seemed a part of the surrounding greenery. A double flight of wooden steps rose from the flat rock almost at the lake’s edge, rose in tentlike ascent to the front door of the lodge. The front door was a Dutch door, the top half open now as Hawes mounted the stairs. He mounted the stairs wearily and almost dejectedly. He had already checked half a dozen of the lodges scattered through the mountains, doggedly working his way north with Griffins as his starting point. None of the lodge owners remembered a man named Sy Kramer. Most of them admitted that the real hunters didn’t come up until the end of October, when the deer season started. September wasn’t such a good time. One lodge owner admitted his place was full of what he called “cheater hunters” during the early part of September. These, he said, were men who came up with girls after telling their wives they were off to the wilds to hunt.

  Hawes was disappointed. The country was lovely, but he had not come up here to admire the scenery. Besides, he was no longer in love and he was becoming rather bored with the continuous slope of the land, the brazen cloudless blue of the sky, the constant chatter of birds and insects. He almost wished he were back in the 87th, where a man couldn’t see the sky for the tenements.

  It grows on you, he thought. It’s a
hairy bastard, but you get to love it.

  “Hello, there,” a voice at the top of the steps said.

  Hawes looked up. “Hello,” he said.

  The man was standing just behind the lower half of the Dutch door. The visible half of his body was lean and tight, the body of an Indian scout, the body of a man who labored in the sun. The man wore a white tee shirt, which covered the hardness of his muscles like a thin layer of oil. His face was square and angular; it could have been chiseled from the rock that formed a backdrop for the lodge. His eyes were blue and piercing. He smoked a pipe leisurely, and the ease with which he smoked softened the first impression of hard muscularity. His voice, too, in contrast to the wiriness of his body, was soft and gentle, with a mild twang.

  “Welcome to Kukabonga,” the man said. “I’m Jerry Fielding.”

  “I’m Cotton Hawes. How do you do?”

  Fielding opened the lower half of the door and stepped onto the landing, extending a browned hand.

  “Glad to know you,” he said, and they shook. Fielding’s eyes darted to the white streak in Hawes’s otherwise red hair. “That a lightning burn?” he asked.

  “No,” Hawes said. “I was knifed. The hair grew in white.”

  Fielding nodded. “Fellow up here got hit by lightning. Like Ahab. He’s got a streak something like that. How’d you get knifed?”

  “I’m a cop,” Hawes said. He was reaching into his back pocket for identification when Fielding stopped him.

  “You don’t need it,” he said. “I spotted the shoulder holster when you were bending as you came up the steps.”

  Hawes smiled. “We can use a man like you,” he said. “Come on down to the city.”

  “I like it up here,” Fielding said graciously. “Who you chasing, Mr. Hawes?”

  “A ghost,” Hawes said.

  “Not likely to find many of those around here. Come on inside. I’ve been hankering for a drink, and I hate like hell to drink alone. Or aren’t you a drinking man?”

  “I can use one,” Hawes said.

  “Of course,” Fielding said, as they went into the cabin together, “I know cops aren’t allowed to drink on duty—but I’m not likely to write a letter to the commissioner. Are you?”

  “I hardly ever write letters to the commissioner,” Hawes said.

  “Didn’t think you did,” Fielding answered.

  They were inside the lodge now. A huge stone fireplace dominated the room. Flanking the fireplace, in the same pattern as the steps outside, was another double set of stairs leading, apparently, to rooms just below the peak of the roof. There were four doorways off the main room. One of them was open, and Hawes could see through it into a kitchen.

  “What’ll it be?” Fielding asked.

  “Scotch neat.”

  “I like a man who drinks his whisky neat,” Fielding said, grinning. “It tells me he likes his coffee strong and his women soft. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” Hawes said.

  “Tell you something else about yourself, Mr. Hawes,” Fielding said. “I’ll bet you’ve never put a bullet in an animal or a hook in a fish unless you were hungry.”

  “That’s true,” Hawes said.

  “Ever shot a man?”

  “No.”

  “Not even in the line of duty?”

  “No.”

  “Were you in the service?”

  “Yes.”

  “See action?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you never shot anyone?”

  “I was in the Navy,” Hawes said.

  “What rank?”

  “Chief petty officer.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Torpedoes,” Hawes said.

  “On what?”

  “A P.T. boat.”

  “Chief petty officer on a P.T. boat?” Fielding asked. “You were practically second in command, weren’t you?”

  “Practically,” Hawes said. “The skipper was a j.g. Were you in the Navy?”

  “No, but my dad was. He talked about it a lot. He was a regular Navy man, you know. A commander when he died. He’s the one built this lodge. He used to come up here whenever he had leave. He loved the place. I guess I do, too.” Fielding paused reflectively. “Dad died in Norfolk, behind a desk. I guess he’d have liked to die one of two places. Either on a ship, or here at the lodge. But he died in Norfolk, behind a desk.” Fielding shook his head.

  “You own the lodge now, Mr. Fielding?” Hawes asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I guess I came to the wrong place,” Hawes said.

  Fielding looked up. He had poured the whisky, and he brought it to Hawes and then said, “How do you mean?”

  “I didn’t realize it was a private lodge. I thought you took guests.”

  “I do. Five at a time. It’s my living. I guess I’m what you’d call a bum.”

  “But you don’t have any guests now?”

  “Nope. All alone this week. I’m mighty glad to see you.”

  “Are you open all year round?”

  “All year round,” Fielding said. “Cheers.”

  “Drink hearty.”

  They drank.

  “Were you open around September first of last year?” Hawes asked.

  “Yep. Had a full house.”

  Hawes put down the shot glass. “Was one of your guests a man named Sy Kramer?”

  “Did he do any hunting?”

  “He sure did. Out every day. Brought back all kinds of stuff.”

  “Deer?”

  “No, the deer season doesn’t start until October. But he got crows and vermin—and I think he got a red fox.”

  “Did he spend a lot of money while he was here, Mr. Fielding?”

  “On what?” Fielding asked. “Nothing to spend money on in the mountains.”

  “Was he carrying a lot of cash?”

  “If he was, he didn’t say anything about it to me.”

  “Did he come up alone?”

  “Yep. I sometimes get them in pairs or in threes, or sometimes a party of five rents the whole lodge. This isn’t a whorehouse, Mr. Hawes. I only take men who want to hunt…or fish. I’ve got my own cabin back of the lodge. I entertain girls there frequently…but that’s private enterprise. I’m intruding on nobody’s morals but my own. Any man is free to do whatever the hell he wants to, I figure, but if he comes to my lodge, he comes to hunt or fish. He can screw around on his own time.”

  “Kramer came up alone, then?”

  “They all did that trip. Isn’t very often that happens, but this time it did. Not one of the five knew each other before they got here.”

  “You had five guests the week Kramer was here?”

  “Yep, and all from the city. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. One of them checked in on a Wednesday, and he left before the others. He was a good hunter, that one. Fellow named Phil Kettering. Hated to leave. I remember on the Wednesday he checked out, he got up real early in the morning, went off into the woods to hunt a little before he started the trip home. Paid me, took all his bags with him, said he wouldn’t be back for lunch, but he just had to get in a little more hunting before driving back. A good hunter, that one.”

  “How about the others?”

  “Kramer was so-so. The other three…” Fielding rolled his eyes skyward.

  “No good?”

  “Bunglers. You know. Tripped over their own feet. I guess they were all amateurs.”

  “Young then?”

  “Two of them were. Let me see if I can remember their names. One of them had a real queer name, foreign sounding. Just give me a minute…Do you want another drink?”

  “Thanks, no,” Hawes said.

  “Will you be staying for dinner?”

  “I don’t think so. Thanks a lot.”

  “Be a pleasure to have you.”

  “I really have to get back to the city. I’m overdue now.”

  “Well, if you want to stay, speak up. Won’t be any trouble at all. Gets lonely a
s hell here when the house is empty. Now, let me see. This fellow’s name. José? Was that it? Something Spanish like that…but not his second name. That was hundred-per-cent pure white American Protestant. Joaquim! That was it. Joaquim. That’s the way it’s pronounced, even though you spell it with a J. Ho-ah-keem. Joaquim Miller, that was it. Some combination, huh?”

  “He was one of the young ones, is that right?”

  “In his thirties. Married fellow. An electrical engineer, I think. Or an electronics engineer, one of the two. His wife had gone to California to visit her mother, who he didn’t get along with. So he came up here to hunt. God, he should have stayed in the city. I don’t think he liked the hunting at all. Didn’t get a damn thing but a cold in his head.”

  “How about the others?”

  “The other young fellow was about forty, forty-two, pretty well-fixed. Partner in an advertising firm, I think. I got the feeling his wife and him were headed for the divorce courts. I think his getting away from her for a week was a sort of a trial separation. That was the feeling I got, anyway.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Frank…something. Just a minute. Frank…Reuther, Ruther, that was it Without an E. Just Ruther. That was his name.”

  “And the old man? What about him?”

  “Sixtyish. Tired businessman. Got the feeling he’d tried everything from skiing to water polo. This was his week to try hunting. It was quite a week, I’m telling you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing, except that Kettering got a little bored with the beginners’ talk, that’s all. He and Kramer hit it off pretty well because he had some inkling of what it was all about. These other fellows, well. Not that they couldn’t shoot. They could shoot, all right. Any damn fool can hit a tin can on a back fence. But shooting and hunting are two different things. These men just weren’t hunters.”