Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (13 page)

“There’s a couple of federal guys want to talk with you,” Quirk said.

“FBI?” I said.

“One of them.”

“What do they want to talk about?”

Quirk shifted in his seat so that he was faced back around front, talking without looking at me, staring out the front window while he spoke.

“They want to talk about helping you with the California authorities.”

“Mighty white of them,” Hawk said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that nice.”

“And then maybe you can help them with something,” Quirk said.

“Ah yes,” I said.

“They want you to take Costigan out,” Quirk said.

Belson took his dead cigar out of his mouth and threw it out the window. He took a thin cheap cigar from the breast pocket of his corduroy sport coat. He stripped the cellophane from it and stuck it in his mouth and lit it with a wooden match that he snapped into flame with his thumbnail. We passed the Hyatt Regency and went up the little
hill and over the underpass where the BU bridge comes in.

“Jerry?” I said.

“Un huh.”

“How about Russell?”

“Your option, I think,” Quirk said. “They’ll give you details.”

“Be an honor,” Hawk said, “help our government in time of need.”

“An honor,” I said.

Without looking back Quirk said, “And maybe we can give you a little help finding Susan,”

“How about if the deal with the feds falls through?”

Quirk turned again and looked at me.

“I’m a cop,” he said. “I been a cop for thirty-one years. I’m serious about it. You understand. I wasn’t serious about it, I’d have done something else for thirty-one years. You’re wanted for murder, I got to arrest you. And I’m not claiming it would break my heart. You are a world-class pain in the balls. And the goddamned phantom beside you is a lot worse. But if I don’t have to arrest you, I won’t. And I might feel okay about that too. Either way, I’ll help you with Susan. I like her.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Quirk said.

We picked up Mt. Auburn Street, past the hospital. Belson’s cigar smelled like a burning shoe.

“Phantom?” Hawk said.

“The ghost who walks,” I said.

“Oh shut the fuck up,” Quirk said.

Belson pulled the Chevy in by the curb of a yellow diner in Watertown. Quirk and Hawk and I got out. Belson sat in the car with the motor idling.

“You want me to bring coffee out?” Quirk said.

“Yeah,” Belson said. “Black.”

The three of us went into the diner. There was a long counter opposite the door and along the right wall four booths. In the back booth two men sat with thick white china mugs in front of them. The wall behind the counter was mirrored and two large coffee urns loomed at each end. On the counter there were slices of pie in glass cases, and muffins, and plates of donuts. We went to the back booth and slipped in opposite the two men. I knew one of them slightly, McKinnon, an FBI agent. Both of them wore gaberdine raincoats although it was sunny and not very cold. A very fat middle-aged woman with dark skin and a mole on her chin came to take our order. I ordered black coffee. Quirk ordered two black, one to go. Hawk ordered hot chocolate and a double order of French toast. The two feds accepted a refill on the coffee. The waitress brought everything except Hawk’s French toast. Quirk took the black coffee to go out
to the car and gave it to Belson, then he came back in. Nobody said anything while he was gone. He came back in and sat down and picked up his mug and sipped the coffee. He looked at Hawk.

“French fucking toast?” he said.

“I give you a bite when it comes,” Hawk said.

McKinnon said, “McKinnon, FBI. This is Ives.”

Ives looked like a salt cod. He was lean and weathered and gray-haired. His raincoat was open and under it I could see a green bow tie with little pink pigs on it.

“I’m with the three-letter agency,” he said.

“You with the Tennessee Valley Authority,” I said. “Well damn, I always wanted to meet someone like you. TVA is my favorite.”

“Not TVA,” Ives said.

“He’s with the fucking CIA,” Quirk said.

When Quirk said the sacred letters Ives looked uncomfortable, like he was fighting the impulse to turn his coat collar up.

He said, “Let’s not broadcast it, Lieutenant.”

Hawk said in a full voice, “Broadcast what?” and Quirk looked away trying not to smile.

McKinnon said, “Come on, we know you’re both funnier than a case of the clap. You’ve proved it, now let’s move on.”

“We are trying to pursue this informally,” Ives said. “We don’t need to. I can have Lieutenant
Quirk place you under arrest and the discussion can be held more formally.”

Quirk looked carefully at Ives and spoke very distinctly. “You can’t have Lieutenant Quirk do anything at all, Ives. The closest you can come is to ask.”

“Aw, Jesus Christ, Marty,” McKinnon said. “Come on. Let’s see if we can’t just talk business here and stop fucking around.”

The fat waitress appeared with a huge platter of French toast and a pitcher of syrup.

“Who gets the toast,” she said.

“Here,” Hawk said.

The waitress put the food down and went away.

“Be hard,” I said, “for anyone to distinguish you from the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” Hawk said. “Me and four honkies, how could she remember?”

“That’s real progress, I should think,” Ives said.

“That someone confuse me with you?” Hawk said.

Ives cleared his throat. “Let’s begin again,” he said. “We may be in a position to trade marbles.”

I nodded. Hawk cut a square off one of the pieces of French toast and held it across the table toward Quirk. Quirk lipped it off the fork and ate it.

“Costigan has chips on a lot of squares,” Ives said. “One is selling armaments. He is licensed and
in and of itself there is nothing illegal about being an arms dealer, as I’m sure you people know. But Costigan deals covertly with proscribed nations.”

“Heavens,” I said.

“There’s nothing frivolous about this,” Ives said. “It translates into a lot of human suffering. Moreover, Costigan or his representatives not infrequently act as agents provocateurs, burning the oil on troubled waters in sensitive parts of the world. It enhances their marketing posture.”

Hawk finished his second piece of French toast. The waitress came over and asked if we wanted anything else.

McKinnon said, “No.”

The waitress slapped a check down in front of him and went away.

“We, that is the government, have penetrated Costigan’s schoolyard several times. Each time the agent has disappeared. We have had the organization under surveillance for five years. Nothing. For God’s sake, we do better infiltrating a foreign national organization. That’s where most of our information comes from, the buying end of Costigan’s business. But no paper. No records. No bills of lading. No invoices. No checks. No letters of credit. Everything appears to be cash and numbered bank accounts. Over the years we have had two eyewitnesses. Both of them were killed.”

The waitress came back and looked at the check
still lying facedown in front of Ives. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and went away again.

“Now we have information which suggests that he may begin dealing nuclear weapons. Not the big bang, but tactical weapons, and tacs are plenty bad enough. You might wish to pause and think about the implications of atomic weaponry in the hands of, say, Idi Amin.”

“I thought he was out of business,” McKinnon said.

“He is,” Ives said. “I chose to use him as a hypothetical example for just that reason. But we all know that there are leaders in the Middle East and Africa and other suburbs of civilization who are just as irrational and savage. You can understand our concern.”

Hawk gestured toward the waitress. She came over, looking at the check. “I’ll have another hot chocolate, please,” Hawk said.

The waitress looked as if she was going to say something. Hawk smiled pleasantly at her. She paused, then she picked up the check and huffed away. Ives was silent while she went for the hot chocolate, and silent when she came back and put it down and slapped the revised check down beside it and cleared Hawk’s dish and cutlery away.

When she had gone again he said, “We had
decided to recruit someone to de-effectuate Costigan. All of this is, of course, off the record.”

“Deep background,” I said.

“When, fortuitously …” Ives said.

“He mean lucky,” Hawk said to McKinnon.

Ives sounded a little impatient, “Fortuitously, perhaps, for
all
of us, it was brought to our attention that you two were already involved in a pissing contest with Costigan.”

“How did that come to your attention?” I said.

“McKinnon.”

“How did it come to your attention?” I said.

McKinnon nodded at Quirk.

“You knew about Costigan?” I said to Quirk.

Quirk shrugged and tipped his cup so as to drain the last of his coffee without lifting his elbow from the table.

McKinnon said, “He won’t tell you, so I will. He didn’t know Costigan except as a famous name any more than you did. When the arrest warrants for you two started flowing in from California, he came in to see me. See if we could do anything to get your ass out of the crack, you know? I’d been talking with other people”—he nodded at Ives—“about their problem with Costigan and I got hold of them, and here we are.”

Hawk looked at Quirk and raised his eyebrows. “I knowed that, I give you two bites of my toast.”

Quirk said to Ives, “Let’s hear the rest.”

“So, when your situation came to our attention, we looked into you both. What we found about you tells us that you are just the people to twist Costigan’s tail for us.”

“And if we do?” I said.

“You’ll be doing your country a service. Your country will wish to repay you.”

“We kill Costigan,” Hawk said, “and you kill the charges on us.”

Ives nodded.

“Just Jerry Costigan?” I said.

“Cut off the head and the snake dies,” Ives said.

“How about Russell?” I said.

Ives shrugged. “If Russell takes over his father’s business the world can rest easier,” he said. “Russell will have all the gears jammed in six months. On the other hand, my information is that you might have your own reasons to want to drop the hammer on him. If you do we don’t object.”

“And the charges?” Quirk said.

“The charges will quite simply be deep-sixed,” Ives said. “It’s a fabric we know how to weave.”

Quirk said, “You are probably going to have to kill him anyway.”

I nodded.

“He’s got a contract out on both of you,” Quirk said.

“Figures.”

It was late morning by now. The diner was starting
to fill with people for lunch. The waitress glared at us as she passed, but she was too busy now to stop and stare at the check.

I looked at Hawk.

Hawk said to Ives, “I don’t give a fuck about the emerging nations, or the needs of my government. I don’t give a fuck whether Jerry Costigan dies or he doesn’t or gets rich or pays his back taxes. I am interested in getting Susan Silverman away from him and his kid. You help with that and I’m happy to put the state of California away for you, if you want.”

Quirk said, “What happened to the superfly accent?”

Hawk grinned. “Sometimes ah forgets.”

Ives looked at me. “You agree with your friend?”

“He said it very well.”

“We help you chercher la femme, and you dispense Costigan.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you fix the arrest warrants,” Quirk said.

McKinnon said, “Whose fucking side you on in this, Marty?”

“It’s a fabric they know how to weave,” Quirk said.

“No problem with the charges,” Ives said. “What will you need to find the girl.”

“Woman,” I said. “She’s a grown woman.”

Ives laughed briefly and shook his head quickly. “Whatever. What do you see us doing for you?”

“Guns,” I said. “Money, access to my apartment. Intelligence.”

“What kind of intelligence,” Ives said.

“Whatever you have. Addresses, locations, phone numbers, habits, acquaintances, favorite color. Everything you have.”

“Most of that is a walk in the spring rain,” Ives said.

“We will need a place,” I said. “In case Susan tries to reach me. We need a place to stay with a phone where Paul can reach me.”

“You think she might escape on her own?” Ives said.

“I’m not sure she’s exactly a captive,” I said.

“Well, what the hell is she,” Ives said.

“We’ll see,” I said.

“She walks out of the woods on her own,” Ives said, “you’ve still got the murder raps and all that other garnish.”

“We say we’ll do it, we’ll do it,” I said.

Ives looked at Quirk. Quirk nodded.

“Roger,” Ives said. “We’ll set you up with a safe house, a phone, currency and weapons. It’ll take a day or so. Once we’ve set it up, I can have some people come by and brief you. Meanwhile, where can I reach you?”

“Quirk will know,” I said.

Ives was silent for a moment, then he shrugged. “Right,” he said. “I need you I’ll give Lieutenant Quirk a jingle.” He reached inside his coat and came out with a business card. “You need me, call me.” The card said simply Elliot Ives, and a Cambridge phone number. I put it in my wallet.

Ives picked up the check, looked at it, put four ones down on top of it, and took a small notebook out of his coat pocket. He entered the amount in his notebook.

“We’ll be in touch before the weekend,” Ives said. “I think we’re going to be very happy together.” He stood up and put the notebook in his coat pocket. “But remember one thing. I am not your wife. Don’t try to fuck me.”

“You sweet-talking bastard,” Hawk said, and we went out of the diner.

They put us in an apartment on Main Street in Charlestown, just out of City Square. It was on the second floor of a recycled brick building. There was a living room and kitchen across the front and two bedrooms and a bath across the back. If you looked out the front window you could see the Charlestown down ramp from the Mystic River Bridge. The kitchen was stocked with food. There was beer in the refrigerator and fresh linen on the beds. There were new tooth-brushes in the bathroom. Hawk and I stayed there for two days drinking beer, doing push-ups and watching cable television before Ives came with another guy to brief us. The other guy looked like Buddy Holly.