Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (5 page)

“But we did lie about the names,” I said. “You had to know sometime.”

Meg said, “What do you want?”

“One last time,” I said. “When does your pimp collect?”

“Mondays and Fridays.” Meg had olive skin, which made you wonder about the blond hair. She swallowed hard as if her throat was tight. “What are you going to do?”

“Today’s Thursday,” I said. Hawk nodded. “Day and a half resting up, talking to these ladies, and the pimp comes along with a pocket full of cash.”

“You can’t rob Leo,” Fay said.

“Pimps good to rob,” Hawk said gently. “They got money, and they ain’t likely to call the cops. And mostly they deserve it.”

“Leo’s bad,” Meg said. “Leo’s really bad. He set one of the girls on fire once.”

“We not one of the girls,” Hawk said.

“What are you going to do to us,” Fay said.

“Nothing,” I said. “We will just stay here for a day or two and then be gone.”

“And what the hell do we do,” Fay said, “while you’re sitting around in here? We got a living to make.”

“You’ll have to take a short vacation,” I said. “You can do anything you want except use the phone or leave the apartment.”

“How long,” Meg said.

“Couple of days,” I said. “No more.”

“I’m not staying cooped up in here with you two mugs for a couple of days,” Fay said.

Hawk looked at her for a moment and said, “Shhh.”

Fay stopped as she was about to speak.

Meg said, “We don’t want any trouble. You guys want to fuck us?”

I said, “No. Take a rest for a couple of days.”

Meg looked at me and her eyes widened. “You don’t?”

Hawk said, “He speaking for himself. He in love.”

“It’s not natural,” Meg said.

“It natural for him,” Hawk said.

“Tell me about Leo,” I said. “Does he come alone?”

Fay shook her head. “We got nothing to do with this, mister.”

“Fay,” I said, “you have everything to do with this. I am looking for a woman, and I am going to find her. I’ll do anything I need to do, and that
includes hurting a couple of innocent whores. Does Leo come alone?”

“No,” Meg said. Fay didn’t speak, her lips were pressed together. “He has Allie with him,” Meg said. “Allie’s his bodyguard.”

Meg didn’t look at Fay.

“Does Leo carry a piece?” I said.

Meg shook her head. “I don’t know. I know Allie does. But I don’t know about Leo.”

“What time does he come?”

“Five,” Meg said. “He comes exactly at five in the afternoon, every time.”

“Does he collect other places first?”

Meg shrugged. Hawk said, “Probably, evening is heavy work time for the girls, he probably collects during the day.”

“And stops here last,” I said.

“With the day’s receipts,” Hawk said. “How nice.”

There was a bath and two bedrooms down the short corridor. I sent the women down to one of the bedrooms. Hawk leaned in the doorway of the corridor to see that they stayed in the bedroom, and I called New York City Information and got the number for Rachel Wallace.

“She the writer that got kidnapped on you?” Hawk said.

I was dialing 212. I nodded.

“Maybe she don’t feel too helpful toward you,” Hawk said.

The phone was ringing. “I got her back, didn’t I?”

“That would help,” Hawk said.

Rachel Wallace answered.

I said, “Spenser’s the name, heterosexuality is my game.”

Rachel Wallace said, “How good to know you haven’t aged. How are you?”

“Bad,” I said. “I need help.”

“You need help?”

“Yes,” I said, and told her.

“I can get there by evening,” she said.

“No,” I said, “thank you. There’s nothing, right now, for you to do out here. What I need is research. I want to know everything I can know about Jerry Costigan and his kid.”

“What’s the kid’s name?”

“Russell. I don’t know whether Jerry is the old man’s real name or short for Gerald or Jerome or whatever.”

“It’s all right,” Rachel Wallace said. “I’ll find it. It’s a little after noon in New York. I’ll go down to the public library, I should have something for you by suppertime. Can I call you?”

“Yes,” I said, “call me here.” I gave her the number. “Helping me is against the law,” I said. “Probably makes you an accessory after.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll call you about nine tonight, your time.”

“I’ll be here,” I said and hung up.

“She the lesbian,” Hawk said. “I saw her on the tube once.”

“Lesbian, feminist, gay-rights activist, probably opposes racism too,” I said.

“Don’t sound to me like a good American,” Hawk said.

I got up and walked to the window and looked out at the Post Office Building across Mission.

“We got a couple of things to do after we roust Leo,” I said. “We go see Dr. Hilliard and we visit Jerry Costigan.”

“Who Dr. Hilliard?” Hawk said.

“A name on Susan’s calendar. Probably a shrink.”

“And where we find Jerry Costigan?”

“He must be in Mill River. I think Rachel Wallace will find his address. If she doesn’t we’ll just go down and ask.”

“Be good to get back to old Mill River,” Hawk said.

The phone book told me that Dr. Dorothy Hilliard had offices on Russian Hill, and the noon news told me that an “exhaustive manhunt” for me and Hawk had now spread throughout the Bay area.

“Exhaustive,” Hawk said.

“No stone unturned,” I said.

“Did you really kill that guy?” Meg said.

“Yes,” Hawk said. “It was the best thing for him.”

Fay was not talking.

For lunch we had peanut butter sandwiches and instant coffee. The peanut butter was Skippy. The bread was pale white.

“This is revolting,” I said.

“We don’t usually eat here,” Meg said.

“I can see why,” I said. I ate three sandwiches.

After lunch Hawk took a shower and then had a nap. I watched the women. At suppertime Meg said, “We got no more peanut butter.”

For supper we had white toast and Kraft strawberry jam and some white jug wine. The evening news rehashed most of what the noon and morning news had said. They still had me fifteen pounds
too heavy. After the news we watched an animal program and then something called
Trauma Center
.

“Another day of this,” Hawk said, “and I turn myself in to the Mill River cops.”

At nine Rachel Wallace called.

“Jerry Costigan, his baptismal name, lives at something called The Keep in Mill River. The Keep is located off Costigan Drive, which in turn connects to Mill River Boulevard.”

“I know where Mill River Boulevard is,” I said.

“Good. Costigan inherited a small trucking firm from his father in 1948. It is the basis of what is now Transpan. They still do trucking, but have diversified into air freight, agriculture, hotels, television stations, and the sale of arms and munitions. Costigan occasionally dabbles in show business, investing in motion pictures, for instance. At one time he owned part of a record company and is currently involved through Russell in producing rock music videos. The company appears to be privately owned and controlled entirely by the Costigan family. Jerry is president and chairman. Russell is executive vice-president. Grace Costigan, Jerry’s wife and Russell’s mother, is listed as treasurer. They have offices in most cities.”

“What do you know about them personally?”

“About Jerry, almost nothing. He’s reclusive. He has contributed money to conservative and anticommunist
organizations. He was investigated once by a House committee looking into labor racketeering. No conclusions were reached. He was linked to illegal arms dealing in the Middle East and Africa. No charges were ever brought. He is probably one of the three or four wealthiest men in the country. He was born in 1923, and has been married to the same woman since 1944. Russell was born in 1945. Attended Berkeley but didn’t graduate. During the Vietnam war he was a naval air cadet but washed out of the training and was discharged for a health disorder which none of my sources were able to specify. Most of this is old newspaper clippings and
Who’s Who
-type entries. The discharge was honorable. In 1970 he married a woman named Tyler Smithson. There were two children, Heather, born 1971, and Jason, born 1972. I have no address. There is no record of a divorce. Russell often represents his father in public. Transpan maintains an office in Washington, D.C., and Russell spends a fair amount of time there. He’s not registered as a lobbyist, but one of his principal duties for some years was to influence government action on behalf of the family business. Now that he is executive vice-president—it’s a new post, by the way, no one seems to have filled it before him—he is less often in Washington. But he still gets there regularly. The business keeps a suite at the L’Enfant Plaza. Russell has been arrested
several times for minor things. Public drunkenness. Driving while impaired. Possession of a Class D substance. He’s been party to several altercations arising, apparently, out of disputes in public places where liquor is served. None of these arrests resulted in anything but a quick trip downtown by one of the company lawyers, and they didn’t get much press coverage. Only an unusually gifted researcher would have even found mention of these things.”

“But self-effacing,” I said.

“Yes. That is about all I have. The only other thing is that neither father nor son seems to have taken a vigorous public position on women’s issues.”

“Amazing,” I said. “They sure seem like they’d be feminists.”

“I can continue, in fact I will continue to dig into this. I’m a wonderful researcher. I’ll get more. But more will take time. Is there anything specific you want me to look for?”

I said, “I also need the names and addresses of everyone connected with Costigan, Costigan Junior, and Transpan.”

“Everyone is quite a large number,” Rachel Wallace said.

“I’m looking for Susan,” I said.

“Yes,” Rachel Wallace said. “I’ll be as complete as possible. There will be decisions necessary as to
whom I research first and whom I put off. If I can’t reach you I will have to make those decisions.”

“You know what I’m after,” I said. “Do what you think is best.”

“And when you get what you’re after,” Rachel Wallace said, “when you find her. Then what?”

“We’ll worry about that when I’ve found her. Right now finding her is all.”

“That’s how you’re dealing with it,” Rachel Wallace said. “It’s a thing to be done. A task to be accomplished.”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t think about anything but how to do it best.”

“Yes.”

“And you will try very hard not to feel anything at all.”

“Yes.”

“You’re bound to feel things,” Rachel Wallace said.

“Nobody’s perfect,” I said.

“Hold that thought,” she said. “Call me when you can.”

Friday there was nothing to eat. We drank instant coffee and moved around each other in the apartment and stared out the window.

“It’s not right,” Meg said. “You can’t starve us.”

“You’ll eat tonight,” I said. “Seven more hours.”

“I’m hungry,” Meg said. “Let me go out and get something. I won’t tell. I could go get us some sandwiches and stuff.”

“No,” I said. “Wait until tonight.”

“Been a long time,” Hawk said, “since I ate good.”

“Me too,” I said. “But I’ve been sleeping badly.”

We stood at the window looking down on Mission Street. I watched the women. Not so chic down here. Overweight more often. Stretch pants that fit too tight. More of them carrying groceries and almost nobody with a shopping bag from Gump’s. Young black women, elegant very often, no matter what they wore. And chicano girls with thick long hair. Women holding on to the arms of men as they walked. Tired women, alone.

“Hard doing nothing,” Hawk said.

“Waiting is doing something,” I said.

Hawk shrugged. “Hard waiting,” he said. “Hard to not think while you’re waiting.”

“I’m thinking about how to find her,” I said. “That’s all.”

Hawk said, “Umm.”

The two women were watching television. A game show hooted and shrieked behind us.

“Sartre claimed that hell is other people,” I said.

“He never saw no TV game show,” Hawk said.

People went in and out of a pizza shop across the street. Most bought it by the slice and came out and ate it as they walked on. I envied them.

“Leo as bad as the two babes say he is,” Hawk said softly, “might be better to kill him.”

“He’ll take it out on them?”

“Maybe,” Hawk said. “Can you do it?”

“Have to,” I said.

We looked out the window some more.

“You’re fucked,” Hawk said. “You got too many rules. Against the rules to blow Leo away cold-blooded like. And against the rules to let him burn those whores.” He smiled happily.

“We exploited those whores,” I said.

“So we got to fan Leo,” Hawk said.

“We kill him,” I said, “we’ll have to kill the bodyguard. That leaves the women with two stiffs to explain.”

“If they stay,” Hawk said.

I turned and said to the two women, “You own this place or rent?”

Meg said, “We rent from Leo.”

Hawk laughed. “Old Leo got it every way.”

“You sign a lease?” I said.

Fay laughed without any hint of amusement. Meg shook her head.

“Slick,” I said to Hawk. “Leo owns property, puts his whores in it, they pay him rent, use it for commerce, and split their earnings. Leo gets a nice double dip.”

“Also means if these babes leave no one know they were here,” Hawk said.

“Yes. They’re not profitable, or whatever, he can move them out, move in two more.”

Fay was watching us as we talked.

“Why do you want to know that stuff,” Fay said. It was the first thing she’d said since yesterday.

“Better to know than not to know,” I said.

“You’re thinking of killing us,” Fay said.

“Oh my God,” Meg said and turned toward Fay, forsaking the game show.

“You want to know if we can be traced. You want to know who knows we’re here.”

“How do you think Leo will react to getting tossed in this apartment?” I said.