Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (24 page)

I went inside the speedboat and caught the lowest rung of the rusty pier ladder. Hawk went past me, outside the speedboat. I looked back as he
disappeared from view and then I took out my gun, and holding it in my right hand I went up the ladder. The man at the far right corner of the Exchange Building saw me as my head and shoulders cleared the floor of the pier, and went for his gun under his shirt. I shot him and he doubled up and dropped forward on the ground. The other two turned toward me.

“Freeze,” I said with a lot of sincerity. I had the GI .357 leveled and moving in a small arc between the two of them. The man closest to me had his hand inside the gym bag. I felt a tremor on the ladder below me. I stepped up onto the pier, the gun still leveled and moving in its little arc. The fallen man by the edge of the building was doubled up, his knees drawn to his chest. He was grunting with pain. There was movement in the left edge of my peripheral vision.

“It’s me, bawse,” Hawk said.

“Never thought it wasn’t,” I said.

Hawk stepped to the man with the gym bag. He took a handful of hair in his left hand and caught the man’s right wrist with his right hand. He eased the hand out of the gym bag.

“Anything in that hand, and you dead,” he said.

The hand came out empty. Hawk kicked the gym bag toward me. He slid his hands over the man’s body, took a big gravity knife out of the man’s right-hand pocket and stepped away. He
turned toward the other man, by the edge of the Exchange Building. He pointed at him.

“You,” Hawk said. “Walk over here, hands on your head.”

The man looked at Hawk and shook his head slightly and shrugged.

Hawk jerked his thumb toward us, and put his hands on top of his head for a moment. The man nodded once and put his hands on his head and walked toward us. I held the gun steady on him. When he reached Hawk, he launched a karate kick with a movement so fast and precise it was almost immediate. Hawk leaned back out of the way and the kick missed. The man landed and spun and launched another kick almost before he’d landed, elevating like a spring.

Hawk caught him.

Hawk got the kicking foot around the ankle with his right hand and locked a handful of T-shirt with his left. He held the man motionless at eye level for a moment then pivoted and threw the man spinning into the harbor.

The man with the gym bag said, “Jesus Christ.”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.” I put my gun back in my holster and picked up the gym bag. It said
NIKE
on it, in white script.

The kicker floundered below in the water, thrashing after the speedboat, which was drifting twenty yards from shore, the captain slumped
facedown in the cockpit. I took off my holster and put it in the bag.

“Take him with us,” I said to Hawk. “Around that way. I’ll meet you at the car.”

Then I headed down the right side of the pier carrying the gym bag. Down the pier I saw a Port Authority cop in a blue baseball cap walking rapidly along with two fishermen behind him.

“Officer,” I yelled, “quick. A man’s been shot.”

The cop broke into a jog, one hand resting on his holstered gun, the other holding the walkie-talkie. As he ran he spoke into it.

“I got him out,” I said. “He’s back there.”

“Stick around,” the cop said. “I’ll want to talk with you.”

He went on past and the two fishermen followed.

“Yes, sir,” I said. I cut through one of the fish-packing bays and walked swiftly to the parking lot. People stared at me, shirtless in my soaked jeans. Hawk was sitting in the backseat with the Oriental man. I got in front, started the car, and we drove away. Halfway down Northern Avenue we saw an ambulance coming with its lights flashing, and behind it, two Boston Police cars.

“Fearsome doings on the fish pier,” I said.

“What’s in the gym bag?” Hawk said.

I fished into it, on the seat beside me, and came
out with a modified shotgun. No shoulder stock, and the barrels sawed off even with the remains of the stock.

“Inscrutable,” Hawk said.

I drove barefooted along Storrow Drive to Soldiers Field Road. I parked in a parking area opposite the Ground Round, not far from Channel 4. Then I turned and rested my right arm on the seat back and smiled at the Oriental man.

“What’s your name,” I said.

“Loo,” he said. “Richie Loo.”

“Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“Where you from?”

“I’m from here,” Richie said. “The two coolies were from Taiwan.”

“Maybe they still are,” I said.

Richie shrugged. “You gut shot one of them,” he said.

I nodded.

We were silent. Bicycles went past along the river. Across the way on the Cambridge side there were joggers. A white cabin cruiser with mahogany trim moved up the river. I looked at Richie Loo. He nodded slightly, as if he’d been in conversation.

“I don’t know nothing about you,” he said. “I work for a guy here who works for a guy in Hong
Kong who owes a favor. The Hong Kong guy sent the two goons over and I met them. They don’t speak English. We’re supposed to kill you. I’m supposed to guide and interpret and be backup, but they’re supposed to do it.”

“Who you work for,” I said.

Richie Loo shook his head. “Won’t do you any good. You want to know who wants you killed. Connection’s too complicated. Guy I work for don’t even know.”

“I know who wanted it done,” I said. “I want to know where he is.”

“Same answer,” Richie said. “Won’t do you no good.”

“Tell me who you work for,” I said. “It’s a start.”

Richie shook his head. “Can’t do that. I tell you stuff, I’m dead. Maybe you’ll kill me if I don’t. But they’ll kill me if I do, and they’ll do it slower.”

More silence. The traffic hum was steady behind us on Soldiers Field Road. Back toward the bend in the river, two kids were playing Frisbee with a golden retriever, the dog tearing off after the disk and sometimes catching it in the air.

“Get out,” I said.

Richie Loo got out of the car.

“Close the door,” I said.

He did. I put the car in gear and backed out and drove away.

We were in two connecting rooms in the Holiday Inn on Blossom Street, back of Mass General Hospital. Belson was sitting in an armchair with his feet up on the bed watching a Popeye cartoon when Susan let us in. She raised her eyebrows at our half-naked wetness.

“What did they say at the desk,” she said.

“Came straight up,” I said. “Quirk gave us the room number.”

Rachel Wallace came out of the adjoining bedroom.

“Did you learn anything?” she said.

“Don’t swim in Boston Harbor,” I said.

“Was it a trap?” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“And you’re all right?”

“Yes.”

“We packed,” Susan said. “For all of us.”

“You suggesting I change?”

“And shower,” Susan said. “You smell like a fish.”

Hawk took our two handguns and the sawed-off from the gym bag. Popeye sent Bluto spinning into outer space, and Belson looked over.

“Do I see an illegally modified weapon,” he said.

“No,” Hawk said.

“I didn’t think I did,” Belson said. He stood up. “You folks going to be all right for a while by yourselves?”

“Who knows we’re here besides you and Quirk?”

“Nobody.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” I said.

“What do I tell Ives?”

“Tell him you don’t know,” I said.

“Lie?” Belson said. “To the representatives of a federal agency?”

“Yes,” I said.

“My pleasure,” Belson said.

“Tell Ives I’ll call him.”

Belson nodded. “Better clean those pieces,” he said. “Salt water will raise hell with them.”

He took Susan’s hand and squeezed it. She kissed him on the cheek. He said, “Ms. Wallace.”

Rachel Wallace said, “Thank you, Sergeant,” and Belson went out.

Hawk and I showered and put on clean clothes. Then I called Ives.

“Where the hell are you,” he said.

“Shangri-la,” I said. “Somebody in your organization is talking.”

“Impossible,” Ives said.

“Some people knew where we were, knew we
had reason to look for Costigan, knew the phone number at the safe house.”

“Perhaps the maiden has made some phone calls,” Ives said.

“Her name is Ms. Silverman,” I said. “If you call her maiden again I am going to put you in the hospital. Also if you call me Lochinvar. Some asshole in your asshole operation is on Costigan’s string.”

“Your threats don’t scare me,” Ives said. “And I can’t run an operation like this without keeping track of the agents.”

“My threats should scare you, and you will have to learn to run this operation without keeping track of us. We’ll find Costigan, and we’ll kill him like we said we would. But we’ll do it without telling you where we are. Because you will probably run it live on the
Today
show.”

I hung up.

Hawk had broken down the two .357’s and was wiping them down with baby oil.

“Ives ain’t happy ’bout us going underground,” he said.

“I think that’s right,” I said.

“We need him to get off the hook in California,” Hawk said.

“We’ll do what he wants done,” I said. “And he’s too far into this to pull out now.”

“ ’Cause we’d blow the whistle on him?”

“Yes.”

Hawk nodded. “So we on our own,” he said.

“Who better,” I said.

Rachel Wallace was sitting on the bed with her briefcase open beside her on the bed.

“Perhaps we should begin,” she said, “by learning a bit more about our adversary.”

“Can we eat and drink while we do it?” I said.

“Certainly.”

I ordered some sandwiches and beer from room service, and Hawk reassembled and loaded one of the newly cleaned .357’s and stood just inside the door in the other room when the waiter came. I paid him in cash and he went away.

“Whose name we under,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “Frank simply brought us here and opened the door with a key.”

“We’ll move on soon, anyway,” I said.

I reassembled the other handgun and loaded it.

“We got money left?” Hawk said.

“About run out,” I said.

“Gonna need money,” Hawk said. “Airfare, cars, food, lodging, champagne.”

“I know a man who has some,” I said. “I’ll ask him.”

“Hugh Dixon,” Hawk said.

“The man whose wife and daughter were killed in London?” Susan said.

“He said if I ever needed help to ask him. I think this is the time.”

“Sho nuff is,” Hawk said.

I ate half a club sandwich. Rachel Wallace got her notes in order and began to talk.

“To begin with you’ll have to accept some things,” she said. “For instance, you’ll have to accept the limits of research. I have accumulated a lot of facts about Jerry Costigan, but he remains, in the way that you are probably most interested in, an enigma wrapped in a mystery.”

“Nice phrase,” I said.

“I did not originate it,” she said, “as you well know. Why Costigan is as he is, and therefore, how you will best be able to bring him down, is beyond my skills. Perhaps Susan can help in that area.”

Susan nodded. She was sipping a Miller Lite. She ate her club sandwich by taking off the top slice of bread and nibbling on the ingredients one at a time. I could eat a brontosaurus in the time it took her to eat a club sandwich that way.

“His holdings are large and various, but his current interest lies primarily in international commerce in arms. He seems without politics in this, selling arms and equipment to all shades of the political spectrum, without regard to their position vis-à-vis the United States.”

“A citizen of the world,” I said.

Hawk drank some Heineken from the bottle. “Wendell Willkie,” he said.

“More than that,” Rachel Wallace said. “He supplies not only arms and equipment, but personnel. He maintains a corps of trained mercenaries, for example the group you encountered in Connecticut, and supplies them as well as materiel to whomever.”

“Rent-a-troop?” I said.

“In a sense,” Rachel Wallace said, “but it’s more interesting than that. As far as I can tell, and obviously I am interpreting data here, and may sometimes misinterpret, he uses some of his personnel to foment, and then sustain, conflict, thus creating a market for his product.”

Hawk and I looked at each other. Hawk nodded his head. “Elegant,” he said.

“Good old Yankee know-how,” I said.

“As I say, Costigan seems to favor no position in this. He will sell arms to rebels, to governments suppressing rebels, to oligarchies, communists, democracies and dictatorships, people yearning to breathe free, people eager to prevent it. He often supplies both sides, and sometimes supplies personnel to both sides. He operates through a number of differently named companies. His sole interest appears to be creating a market for his product.”

“This make sense to you, Suze?” I said.

“So far. I never knew too much about Jerry’s business.”

“Anything to add,” I said.

“Let Rachel finish, then I’ll offer whatever I can. If I hear anything I know to be wrong, I’ll say.”

“Okay.” I looked at Rachel Wallace. She swallowed a bite of a chicken salad sandwich. She poured some Lite beer in her glass, about two inches, and sipped some.

“In his pursuit of profit and power, Costigan seems entirely amoral. Each has a salutary effect on the other. The more profit he makes the more powerful he becomes, the more powerful he becomes the more profit he makes. All evidence suggests that he is wealthy beyond calculation. He has no need to pursue either profit or power. He seems to pursue them because”—she made an I-give-up gesture with both hands—“because they are there.”

“Maybe there’s a point where if you don’t pursue it, you lose it,” I said.

“Perhaps,” Rachel Wallace said. She finished her two inches of Lite beer. “And perhaps the process has become a purpose in itself.”

She poured another inch of beer into her glass and took another bite of her chicken sandwich. We waited while she chewed and swallowed. Susan sat motionless, her club sandwich disordered and half
eaten on her plate. She looked quietly at Rachel Wallace with the same inwardness that she’d maintained since I’d found her in Connecticut.