Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

by Robert B. Parker

  “Twenny-five men,” the guard mumbled. “Three shifts of six on the grounds and seven for Mr. Costigan when he travels.”

  “What’s the surveillance setup?”

  Hawk still held the back of his shirt, but the guard was standing now. Hawk wasn’t holding him up.

  “Cameras on the perimeter. Monitors in here. Cameras on each corner of the house, monitors in the security room.”

  “What brought you down here?”

  “Gate guard is supposed to call in every fifteen minutes.”

  “Somebody waiting to hear from you?”

  The guard shook his head. “I’m in charge of the shift.”

  I put the .25 hard against the tip of his nose. “There’s the gate guard, you two, and the two guys walking around the house. That makes five. You said there’s six on a shift.”

  Hawk said, “Tell me ’fore you shoot. I don’t want his brains all over me.”

  “Awright,” the guard said, “awright. Bob’s in the security room. We’re supposed to report in.”

  “Do it,” I said. “Call in and say you caught two prowlers and you’re bringing them up to security. Tell him your partner is going to stay with the gate guard for a while, make sure that’s all there was.”

  I moved the gun from his nose and Hawk let go of his collar. There was a line of sweat on his upper lip, and his face was pale except for a reddish streak along his right jawline where I’d hit him. He picked up the phone and punched out two numbers with the same hand that held the receiver. Then he put the receiver to his ear.

  “Hello, Bob. It’s Rocky. Yeah, it’s all right. We got two prowlers. Slade’s going to stay here with Mickey for a while. Make sure. I’ll bring the two prowlers up.… Yeah. Be up in a minute.… Okay. Bye.”

  He hung up. Hawk said, “Rocky?”

  I took Rocky’s gun off my hip and emptied it, and put it back in its holster and clipped it back onto his belt. I put the shells on the desk. Hawk pulled his shirt out and let the shirttails hang over the .44, stuck in his belt. We went out of the guard shack and walked to the Bronco. Rocky’s partner lay at the edge of the guardhouse in the shadows, his neck turned at an odd angle. He wasn’t moving, and wasn’t going to. There was a bench seat in the front of the Bronco, and we sat three across, Hawk and I slouching like cowed felons, Rocky driving.

  “How long you figure it take us to pick off the whole twenty-five?” Hawk said.

  “More time than we got,” I said. “But not much. Were you guys in charge of security at Pearl Harbor?”

  Rocky swung the Bronco around the house and pulled to a stop in front of the brass-studded oak door on the basement level. There were two other identical black Broncos parked in the wide turnaround, and a bright green light gleamed over the entrance.

  I palmed the little .25 again.

  “You take each of us by the arm,” I said to Rocky, “and walk between us into the security office. You let go of either one and I’ll kill you. You got that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go.” I reached over and took the keys from the ignition. We got out of the car and Rocky came around and took each of us by the arm, grasping firmly just above the elbow. At the door we turned sideways and Hawk went in first, and then Rocky and then me, with Rocky holding on to each arm for dear life. A portly red-haired man wearing a western-style gun belt with a pearl-handled revolver in the holster was sitting on a high stool looking at four television monitors in a bank along the far wall. Below the monitors was a two-way radio rig, and three telephones.

  Without taking his eyes off the monitors he said, “Sit them over there. Do I need to talk with them before we call Mill River PD?”

  Hawk took the sap out of his pocket and hit Rocky at the base of the skull with it. Rocky’s legs went limp and folded beneath him and he fell the way a building implodes from a wrecker’s blast. Bob heard the thud and turned from the monitors, his hand going toward the pearl-handled gun on his hip. He stopped half turned and stared at the small unwinking eye of the .25 an inch from him. Hawk stepped across Rocky’s prone position and sapped Bob. Bob lurched forward off the stool and took a staggering step and Hawk hit him again and he pitched forward, toward the monitor panels. I caught him before he hit them and guided him onto the floor.

  “Twice?” I said.

  “It’s an unfamiliar blackjack,” Hawk said. “Ain’t got the feel quite right.”

  I looked at the monitors. There was nothing on them except the still lawn and the two guards slowly making their intersecting circles of the house, appearing on one screen then another as they moved. I looked around the security room. There were some canvas-backed director’s chairs and a Formica-topped table with a Mr. Coffee machine on it and some mugs lined up on a shelf beyond it. There were newspapers scattered around and a cardboard box that donuts had come in. On the wall opposite the entrance there were two doors. The first was locked. The second opened into a full bath. On Bob’s belt was a set of keys hanging from a belt loop by one of those slip-catch hooks with a ring on it. Hawk was squatting beside Bob looking at Bob’s gun.

  “Ruger .357 Max, single-action,” Hawk said. “Man must be expecting a rhinoceros to charge in here. Got the grip customized, too.”

  “Keys,” I said.

  Hawk unsnapped them and tossed them to me.

  “Better kill them,” Hawk said. “You got that knife. Better cut their throats. Leaving people around like leaving a bomb ticking,” Hawk said.

  “We killed the pimp and his gunny.”

  “He’d have killed the two whores,” Hawk said. “Like you said, we got them into it. We got them out.”

  I shrugged.

  “These dudes will kill us, if they can,” Hawk said.

  “If they can,” I said.

  “If they do what happens to Susan?” Hawk said.

  I shook my head and started sorting through the keys to open the second door.

  “You spent your life in a mean business, babe, trying not to be mean. And so far you got away with it mostly. But there’s stuff on the line that never been on the line before.”

  I found the right key for the last door.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Gimme the knife,” Hawk said.

  “No.” I turned from the door. “Letting you do it is like doing it, only worse. It’s doing it and pretending I didn’t.”

  “We after Susan,” Hawk said. “That makes this your show. But I ain’t along on this just ’cause I care about you.”

  There was no sound in the room except a faint hum from the TV monitors that only underscored the silence.

  “I know,” I said. “I know that. It’s the way I know you’re human.”

  “She make both of us human, babe,” Hawk said. “I don’t want to lose her much more than you do.”

  I unlocked the door. Beyond it there were stairs.

  “Let’s go up there,” I said. “See if Costigan can help us find her.”

  CHAPTER 13

  We found Jerry Costigan sitting in a black leather barcalounger by his fireplace reading a thick book by Karl Von Clausewitz. The fireplace was burning low and looked just right for roasting an ox. The room was air-conditioned. Above the fireplace were crossed broadswords and below them a family crest with lions rampant and all of that. There was a Latin inscription and the name COSTIGAN on a scroll across the bottom. The walls rose, punctuated with marble buttresses, into the darkness. The vaulted ceiling was lost in darkness. Spaced along the front wall between the leaded-glass windows that rose nearly as high as the ceiling were full-size suits of armor. On a table beside the Barcalounger was a decanter of what looked like port, a wedge of Stilton cheese and some fruit, and a silver server.

  I said, “You rang, sir?”

  Costigan looked at Hawk and me standing in his living room and didn’t blink. Instead he picked up a leather bookmark from the table, put it in his book, and put the book on the table and said, “Well?”

  I said, “I wan
t to know where Susan Silverman is.”

  Costigan picked up a glass of port and sipped it. “So what?” he said.

  “She is with your son,” I said. “I want you to tell me where they are.”

  Costigan sipped a little more port.

  “What will you do if you know where they are?” he said.

  “Find her, take her away.”

  “If you can,” Costigan said.

  “We’ve gotten this far,” I said.

  “So I notice. I told my security people that we were vulnerable until we unified the two security systems.”

  “Probably installed the perimeter ones first,” I said. “And when you added the house stuff you didn’t think to overlap them.”

  “We are in the process,” Costigan said.

  “Where’s Susan?” I said.

  “Is this the gentleman who hit my son recently and was jailed for it?”

  Hawk moved close to Costigan and stuck the muzzle of the big .44 against Costigan’s neck at the base of the skull.

  “He stalling,” Hawk said. “He waiting for help.”

  I nodded and moved closer to Costigan. “You hit a button some way,” I said.

  “It’s under the book, on the table,” Costigan said. “If anything is placed on that spot the alarm goes off.”

  At the far end of the room two men appeared with Uzi submachine guns. They came into the room and stepped to either side of the door. The room was so big I wasn’t sure the Uzis had the range. Four more men came in behind the first two and fanned out along the wall. All had revolvers.

  “Drop the weapons,” I said, “or we will blow Costigan’s head off at the neck.”

  “No,” Costigan said.

  The bodyguards froze, guns leveled.

  “You kill me and you’ll lose the girl for sure. You’ll be dead and, believe me, my son will take it out on her.”

  “Won’t do nothing for you,” Hawk murmured.

  “What would Clausewitz call this,” I said.

  “A stalemate,” Costigan said. He held his head steady against the press of Hawk’s gun. “They can’t shoot, because you have me. But you can’t shoot because they have you.”

  “Is she here?” I said.

  “No,” Costigan said.

  “We have to know,” I said.

  Costigan shrugged. No one else moved.

  “On your feet,” I said. Hawk took hold of Costigan’s collar with his left hand and pulled him up out of the seat, rising behind him as he did with the muzzle of the .44 pressed up under Costigan’s chin. If it is possible to look contained while you’re being dragged upright with a gun pressed under your chin, Costigan did it.

  “Room by room,” I said. “Starting at the top.” Hawk and I stood pressed close to Costigan, Hawk holding him with the gun at his chin. The six bodyguards fanned slowly around us as we moved toward the door. Three in front, the other three in back. I watched the back three. We moved, a kind of traveling ambush, into the front hall and slowly up the vast winding stairway that went two stories to the top floor.

  “They shoot Gone With the Wind here?” Hawk said as we went up a slow step at a time.

  “Probably not,” I said. “Why? You still hot for Butterfly McQueen?”

  “It was her, or Aunt Jemima,” Hawk said. “You given any thought to how we get Susan out of here, if she here?”

  “One thing at a time,” I said. “First we see if she’s here.”

  “Orderly,” Hawk said.

  Except for us all was silence. The three bodyguards in front of us backed up the steps a stair at a time, one Uzi and two handguns. Behind us the other three kept the circle closed with the same firepower. I was getting sick of looking at .357 magnums.

  On the third floor we began to move in our peculiar minuet from room to room, turning on the lights in each. Several of the rooms were clearly housing for the bodyguards. Others were apparently for show, full of elegant furniture, gleaming with lemon oil and tree wax and devoid of human sign. As we moved slowly from room to room sweat began to form on Costigan’s forehead. I understood it. There was sweat on mine, too. The strain of moving always with infinite care, always in a circle of threat, made the world beyond that circle seem insubstantial. The world within was intensely immediate.

  Hawk was humming softly to himself, “Harlem Nocturne,” as we moved from door to door.

  “He appears to be enjoying this,” Costigan said, his speech constricted slightly by the pressure of Hawk’s gun.

  “Paradigm of the black experience,” I said.

  The circle of guards moved in perfect concert to our movement. Hawk had Costigan’s collar and I held on to his belt in front, keeping my back to him, facing out toward the guards. The guy with the Uzi was a thin man with a long neck and a big Adam’s apple. The Adam’s apple kept bobbing up and down as he swallowed. He swallowed a lot. The guard next to him had a thick blond mustache; his blond hair was razor cut and blow-dried and sprayed so firmly into place that he looked like he was wearing a helmet. He looked like he was thinking of other things. Surfboards, maybe, or his new Neil Diamond album. The third guard was middle-aged and gray-haired and medium-sized. He didn’t look nervous or distracted or eager or anything. He looked like he might hum along with Hawk soon.

  Of the three I could see, the blond beachboy was the weak link. The guy with the Uzi and the Adam’s apple was the most likely to shoot when he shouldn’t. Gray Hair was the one who’d be the hardest. The other three were Hawk’s problem. I couldn’t see them without looking away from my three, so I didn’t think about them.

  There was no one in any room on the third floor. We moved slowly back down the stairs to the second floor and began the careful, agonizing, complicated business all over again. Nine of us, moving in limited space without ever losing sight of one another. Each door we opened was crucial. Was there a lady in there? Or a tiger? I could feel my shirt getting wetter and clinging to my back. Each door we opened and closed off brought the conclusion closer and none of us had a plan for the conclusion. Even though the conclusion might be eternal. At the bottom of the stairs we had to turn a sharp left. My three guards backed slowly around the corner, I held on to Costigan’s belt and slid around after them.

  “Dosey doe,” I said.

  Hawk had changed tunes, and mode of presentation. He was whistling softly through his teeth now, “Autumn Serenade.”

  “You’re going to go through every room?” Costigan said. His voice sounded strained, as if his throat had narrowed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And when you’re finished, and you haven’t found her,” he said. “What then?”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  We went into a suite of rooms. They must have been the son’s quarters. If The Sharper Image catalogue sold fully furnished suites for young men they would look like this.

  The furniture was mostly of clear plastic, formed in one-piece curved shapes. A huge globe stood on a black lacquer coffee table. The bed had a canopy. There was a whole wall of stereo, television, tape, radio components in gleaming silver, with enormous speakers. In a living room off the bedroom was a glass and lacquer bar, fully stocked, and a small kitchen. The bathroom included a sauna and steam, there was a Jacuzzi in the tub. All of the appliances and tile were in emerald green with gold accent touches. There were fireplaces in bedroom and living room and over each hung a silver-inlaid shotgun. On the mantel in the bedroom was a picture of Susan and a man. The picture appeared to have been snapped at a party.

  “Russell,” Hawk said.

  Susan’s head was back and her mouth was wide open with laughter. Russell’s head was tipped toward her and he seemed to be exhaling cigarette smoke, a wisp of which traced off to the edge of the picture. He was surprisingly ordinary-looking for a man who’d attracted Susan. He looked young, but his hair was already receding, and there was a quality of undefinedness to his face.

  Russell had a lot of clothes, three walk-in closets full, hung ca
relessly. Some had fallen from hangers and were crumpled on the floor. His shoes were in a pile on the floor of the closet.

  “Hard to get good help these days,” I said, looking at the jumble of shoes and clothes on the bottom of one of the bedroom closets.

  We moved on.

  There was nothing else that mattered on the second floor. We’d been looking for nearly an hour. If Hawk felt the strain of holding a .44 gun up under Costigan’s chin for that long he didn’t show it. My left hand felt cramped from holding Costigan’s belt.

  The first floor had, besides Costigan’s enormous living room, an enormous dining room, an enormous kitchen, a pantry, and a two-bedroom suite in a wing off the back. One bedroom was Costigan’s. It was very ordinary. Efficient and comfortable, but no more personal than the best room in a Ramada Renaissance Hotel. Off the bedroom was a sitting room that was obviously used as an office. It too was sparse. There was a phone on an oak table that was used as a desk. A swivel chair, an oak file cabinet, a Xerox machine, and a tape recorder. We went back into the hall.

  “My wife is in bed through the door on your right,” Costigan said.

  “No help for it,” I said. “Got to look.”

  “We three will go in,” Costigan said. “The rest will wait outside. Gary, you watch us through the door.”

  Gray Hair nodded. The others moved down the hall a few steps.

  We opened the door and went in. Mrs. Costigan was in bed watching television. She had her gray hair up in rollers and some night cream on her face and looked fifteen years older than her husband. Her bulk under the satin spread was considerable.

  She said, “Jerry—Jesus, Mary and Joseph …”

  Costigan raised one hand like a traffic cop. “Just be still, Grace,” he said. “This isn’t as bad as it looks.”

  “You’ll have to join us, Mrs. Costigan,” I said.

  “Why you want me to do that?” she said in a little-girl voice. “I’m in my pajamas.”

  “Get a robe,” I said.

  Mrs. Costigan said, “Don’t look.”

  Hawk said, “Hunh,” softly under his breath.