Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

by Robert B. Parker

  “Leo appear to have about six different credit cards in six different names,” Hawk said. “That seem dishonest to me.”

  Fay and Meg edged back down the hall and looked carefully out into the living room.

  “I think you’ll like all this better,” I said, “if you don’t look at the bodies.”

  Meg turned back at once, but Fay looked carefully past me at the two corpses. Her face had no expression. Then she looked at me.

  “What about us,” she said.

  I took four hundred dollars from the briefcase and gave it to her. “Two days’ pay,” I said.

  “And we can go?”

  “Yes.”

  “You shot him for us,” she said. “He’d have blamed us.”

  There was too much money in the briefcase to count quickly.

  “Toss what you got in here,” I said, “and let’s roll.”

  Hawk put credit cards and licenses and Allie’s gun and the money from the two wallets in the briefcase and I closed it.

  “Got some car keys,” Hawk said. “Hope he ain’t driving something look like a carnival ride.”

  “With those clothes,” I said, “no chance. Probably a BMW.”

  Fay was still standing in the hallway. Meg had come down the hall behind her carrying two suitcases. Fay was watching me.

  “You didn’t have to burn them,” Fay said. “Why’d you burn them?”

  “Seemed like a good idea,” I said.

  “Two guys you didn’t even know, for two whores you didn’t even know.”

  “Know you better than we know Leo,” Hawk said.

  “Good-bye,” I said. “Sorry for the trouble.”

  Meg said, “Good-bye.”

  Fay simply looked after us as we went out the door and down the steps to the street.

  A silver gray Volvo sedan was parked at the curb.

  “You pretty close,” Hawk said. “A preppy pimp. Can’t count on nothing out here.” He got in the driver’s side. I put the briefcase on the backseat and got in beside him and we rolled out onto Mission Street.

  “First we eat,” Hawk said. “Then what?”

  “Mill River,” I said. “I want to take a gander at Jerry Costigan.”

  “You like buffalo stew?” Hawk said.

  “Certainly. And Cleveland stew and Detroit stew …”

  “No. Buffalo meat. There a place up on Van Ness serve buffalo stew, we slip in, eat some, slip out, and head for Mill River.”

  “And if the cops show up,” I said, “we can circle the wagons.”

  We locked the briefcase in the trunk of the Volvo and went into Tommy’s Joynt and ate buffalo stew. Buffalo stew tastes very much like beef stew. But there’s nothing wrong with beef stew. We each had a large bowl and sourdough rolls and a side of coleslaw and three bottles of Anchor Steam Beer. No cops came. No sirens blew. Warner Anderson and Tom Tully didn’t come in and put the arm on us. We finished our meal and went outside and got in Leo’s Volvo and headed south again toward Mill River.

  Ten minutes out of the city I made Hawk stop the car and I threw up on the side of the road.

  When I got back in the car Hawk said, “You shot Leo to protect those whores.”

  I nodded.

  “Had to be done,” Hawk said.

  “I know.”

  “You’ll feel better in a while,” Hawk said.

  “Better than Leo,” I said.

  CHAPTER 11

  While Hawk drove I canvassed the briefcase. Allie’s gun was a Colt .45 automatic with a full clip. That gave us four guns, but no spare ammunition. And each gun took a different load. If this took long we’d have to reorganize the arsenal. I kept my .25, put the .45 and the police .38 with one round spent into the briefcase. Then I counted the money. We were back on 101 south of the airport when I finished.

  “Eleven thousand, five hundred and seventy-eight dollars,” I said.

  “Eight bucks?” Hawk said. “Who pays a whore eight bucks? ‘Give you round-the-world for thirty-eight big ones, honey.’ ”

  “The pocket money from Allie’s wallet, probably,” I said.

  “He look like a guy carries eight bucks,” Hawk said. I put the money back in the briefcase. Then I looked at the credit cards and licenses. There were three American Express cards, a Visa, two MasterCards, all in different names. There were licenses to match each name and a picture of Leo on each.

  “You get some horn-rimmed glasses,” Hawk said, “and shave off that five-day growth you might get by using those cards and licenses. You preppy like Leo.”

  “I’ll leave the beard,” I said. “They’ll think I’ve grown a beard since the picture and it will cover up the fact that I have a strong manly jaw and Leo’s is weak and unassertive.”

  I put the credit cards back in the briefcase.

  “Remember where Mill River Boulevard is?” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  “Jerry Costigan lives off it on something called Costigan Drive in something called The Keep.”

  “The Keep?” Hawk said.

  “The Keep.”

  “The more money you honkies get,” Hawk said, “the sillier you get.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Didn’t you grow up in a place called The Ghetto?”

  “Shit,” Hawk said. “You got me.”

  “See, you intolerant bastard.”

  Hawk drove quietly for a moment and then he began to laugh. “Maybe I move to Beverly Farms,” Hawk said, “buy a big house call it The Ghetto.” He made ghetto a two-word phrase.

  “The Wasps would turn lime green,” I said.

  “Match their pants,” Hawk said.

  The sun was beginning to set as we pulled off Route 101 and the slant of its decline hit the rearview mirror and Hawk had to tilt his head to keep from being blinded. We went the wrong way on Mill River Boulevard on our first try and had to U-turn and head back before we spotted Costigan Drive. Hawk pulled over to the side of the road and we sat with the motor idling and looked.

  There was a redwood sign that said PRIVATE DRIVE, in gold lettering. The road curved up past it into a canyon. There were no mailboxes, no evidence that anyone else lived up the road. The hill into which the canyon cut was wooded and quiet. Not even birdsong broke the silence.

  “Let’s walk in,” I said.

  “Might be far,” Hawk said.

  “We got time to be careful,” I said.

  Hawk nodded. He got out and opened the trunk and took out the jack handle. I stuck the .25 in my hip pocket. We began to walk up the road. The butt of the big .44 stuck out of Hawk’s side pocket. The weight of the guns tended to tug at our pants. They’d removed our belts at Mill River PD.

  “Next stop,” I said softly to Hawk across the narrow road, “we gotta get belts.”

  “Rescuing maidens suck if your trousers fall down,” Hawk said.

  “Didn’t Sir Gawain say that?”

  Hawk raised his hand and we froze. There was no one in sight but around the next bend of the road we could hear a radio playing: Fats Domino singing “Blueberry Hill.”

  “A golden oldie,” Hawk murmured.

  We stepped into the woods and slipped through the woods toward the sound of the music.

  The music came from a gatehouse, on the left side of an ornate wrought-iron gate from which extended on either side a ten-foot fieldstone wall with razor wire swirled along the top. Beyond the gate the road curved up through some dandy-looking green lawn and out of sight again. Hawk squatted on his heels beside me. We listened to a disc jockey make a cash call to someone in Menlo Park. Through the open door of the gatehouse I could see the head of a man leaning back with his hands clasped as if he was in a swivel chair with his feet up.

  “Name the amount and it’s yours,” the disc jockey said, his voice electric with excitement.

  “I only see one,” I said to Hawk.

  Hawk said, “Hard to be sure, though.”

  “Ohhh, I’m sorry,” the disc jockey said, his voice tr
embling at the lip of despair. “But keep on listening, will ya. You never know, we may call you back.”

  “Even if there’s only one, he’s inside and we’re outside. We try to bust in he’ll trip an alarm.”

  The radio played Lennie Welsh singing “Since I Fell for You.”

  Hawk and I stayed still and watched. No one came in. No one went out. The head in the door of the guardhouse moved out of sight. Some insects made a small hum in the alder and scrub cedar around us. On the radio there was a commercial for a restaurant with a famous salad bar. Then Elvis Presley sang “Love Me Tender.”

  “How come everybody like him,” Hawk said.

  “He was white,” I said.

  The guard appeared at the door of the gatehouse. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat, and a white shirt and chinos and cowboy boots. He had a handgun in a holster on his right hip. He looked at his watch, surveyed the road and went back inside the guardhouse.

  “We need to get him out,” Hawk said. “But we don’t want to do it with a big ruckus ’cause we only want him.”

  “The tar baby,” I said.

  “You speaking to me,” Hawk said.

  “You ever read Uncle Remus?” I said.

  “You gotta be shitting,” Hawk said.

  “Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby,” I said. “ ‘Tar baby sit and don’t say nuffin.’ ”

  Hawk was quiet, watching the guardhouse.

  “I’m going to go out and sit in the road and wait for him to come out and see what the hell I’m doing.”

  I took the .25 out of my pocket and palmed it. Then I moved back through the woods to the road out of sight of the gate. I walked slowly up the road directly toward the gate, and when I was about ten feet from it I sat down in the road and folded my hands in my lap with the gun out of sight and stared at the gate.

  The guard came out of the guardhouse and looked at me through the gate.

  “What the hell are you doing,” he said.

  He was a stocky man with a drooping mustache and a thick neck. When I didn’t answer he looked at me carefully. I didn’t move. I kept my eyes focused on the gate at about belt level.

  “You hear me?” he said. “What are you doing out there?”

  Tar baby sit and don’t say nuffin.

  “Listen, Jack, this is private property. You’re on a private road. You understand? You’re trespassing. You keep sitting there and you’re subject to arrest.”

  Nuffin.

  The guard took his hat off, and ran his hand over his nearly bald head. He put the hat back on and tilted it forward over his forehead. He pursed his lips and put one hand on his gunbelt and the other hand on the gate and looked at me.

  “Español?” he said. Behind him the radio aired a commercial for a law firm that specialized in accident claims. “Vamoose,” the guard said.

  I was sitting with my legs folded like Indians sit in the movies, and I was developing a cramp. I didn’t move. From the guard shack the radio played. It was the Big Bopper. “Chantilly lace, and a pretty face …” The guard took a big breath. “Shit,” he said, and opened the gate. As he walked toward me he took a leather sap from his right-hand hip pocket.

  When he got to me he said, “Okay, pal, last chance. Either you get on your feet and haul ass out of here, or I’ll put a knot on your head while you sit.”

  I unfolded my hands and pointed the .25 straight up at him as he bent over me. “How dee doo, Br’er Bear,” I said.

  The guard’s eyes widened and the rest of his expression went blank. He remained half bent over.

  I said, “Put the sap back in your pocket, and straighten up and I’ll get up and you and I will walk to the side of the road, just like I’m doing it because you told me to.” I thumbed the hammer back on the automatic. “Anything goes wrong I’ll shoot you in the head.”

  The guard did what I told him to. I kept the gun near my body and the guard between me and the gate in case someone came down and saw us. At the edge of the road I said, “Step ahead of me into the woods.” Five feet into the woods Hawk was leaning against a tree. When we reached him he hit the guard across the back of the head with the jack handle. The guard grunted once and fell forward. He lay still except for his right leg, which twitched slightly.

  “Br’er tire iron,” Hawk said.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hawk and I walked through the open gate and closed it behind us. The radio was playing something I’d never heard by a group I didn’t recognize. In the guard shack was a desk, a swivel chair, a phone, what appeared to be a remote electronic opener for the gate.

  I opened the top drawer of the desk.

  “Nice to find some ammo,” I said. “Too many pieces, too few bullets.”

  There was no ammo in the desk. I put the guard’s gun in and closed the drawer.

  Hawk had left the tire iron in the woods. The loop of the guard’s blackjack hung from his left hip pocket. The .44 stuck out of his right-hand side pocket.

  The sun was down and it was getting dark as we walked up Jerry Costigan’s curving drive with his immaculate green lawn spreading silently out on either side. At the next curve there was a stand of evergreens, and past them, though still a hundred yards away, was the house. It was brightly lit with concealed spotlights.

  If the folks who built Disneyland had been asked to design a home for a reclusive and unsavory billionaire, they would have built Jerry Costigan’s house. Hawk and I stood in the carefully tended stand of trees and stared. The trees we stood in were obviously planned serendipity. Here and there across the infinite lawn were other groves. The house itself looked, more than anything else, like an English country house. Family descended from the Normans. There was an enormous terrace skirting the tall square fieldstone house with a mansard roof. At each corner there were small round towers with tall narrow windows in them. Good for pouring hot oil on Vikings. The drive curved around out of sight behind the house.

  “Be dark in another ten, fifteen minutes,” Hawk said.

  I nodded. We stood quietly in the serendipitous trees. Lights were on in the house and the windows glowed with a slightly yellower warm than the white gleam that the spotlights created. Two men walked easily around on the apron terrace, pausing to talk then moving on, making a slow circle of the house. Even a hundred yards away I could smell the cigarette smoke on the soft evening air. At the two visible corners of the house television cameras were mounted under the eaves. They moved slowly in an arc, panning left and right.

  “Cameras,” Hawk said.

  “I see them.”

  “Security like this,” Hawk said, “they going to find the gate guard pretty quick.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m surprised they don’t have both surveillance systems tied together.”

  “If they had they be shooting at us now,” Hawk said.

  “Dumb,” I said. “Dumb to put together this kind of security and allow it to be breached by taking out one man.”

  “Good to know they dumb,” Hawk said.

  A black Ford Bronco with a whip antenna on the rear and a 4 × 4 lettered in white on the side appeared from behind the house and drove down toward the gate. Two men sat in the front.

  “They’re getting smarter,” I said.

  I looked at the house. Nothing had changed. I looked back at the Bronco, its taillights red in the new darkness.

  “Time to move,” Hawk said.

  “Let’s get the truck,” I said.

  We left the trees and ran back down the curving drive after the Bronco. Hawk had taken the .44 from his pocket and held it in his left hand as he ran. Our feet, in running shoes, made very little sound on the driveway. Ahead the Bronco was parked by the guard shack, its motor idling, its doors ajar, its interior lights on. In the headlights, one man was examining the gate. The guardhouse radio made no sound.

  “Take him,” I said to Hawk. “I’ll take the guardhouse.”

  The man in the guardhouse stood with his back to the door looking down at the
log sheet on the desk. He had his hands flat-palmed on the desk and his weight was forward on them. He heard me behind him barely in time to stiffen and not in time to straighten up. I pressed the muzzle of the .25 into his neck under his earlobe and just behind his jaw hinge.

  “Not a sound,” I said.

  He stayed as he was. This guard was tall and fleshy. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a handgun in a clip-on holster pressed against the roll of fat that pressed over his belt. Another .357. Costigan issue. I unclipped the gun, holster and all, from his belt and stuck it in my hip pocket. Hawk came into the guardhouse. He was smiling.

  “Man had a world-class belt,” he said. I glanced down. Hawk was wearing it. It was buckled up tight and too long for him. The end stuck out from the buckle like an anteater’s tongue. The .44 was stuck in the belt in front. The blackjack strap still hung from his back pocket but now it was in the right-hand pocket.

  “Put your hands back on the desk,” I said to the guard, “and back away and spread your feet apart.”

  I patted him down and came up only with a pocket knife. A good one, a buck knife with a two-and-a-half-inch blade. I gave the knife to Hawk and he cut off the loose end of the belt. He closed it, handed it back, and I put it in my pocket.

  “Neatness is important,” I said.

  Hawk reached over and took hold of the back of the guard’s shirt collar and pulled him upright and put his face close to the guard’s.

  “Let’s talk about the security here,” he said. “Aside from how it sucks.”

  “I’m not talking about shit,” the guard said. He had a haircut with no sideburns, and a lot of skin showing above the ears.

  I hit him with my right forearm, bringing it up along his jaw. He would have fallen but Hawk held him up.

  “Tell me about security,” I said.

  He started to shake his head and I hit him again with my forearm. He almost went limp and I could see the muscles bunch slightly in Hawk’s neck as he increased the force to keep the guard upright.

  “Last chance,” I said. “If you don’t tell me this time, I’ll kill you and find out for myself.”