Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (6 page)

“We won’t ever tell anyone,” Meg said. She was leaning forward with her hands squeezed together in her lap. “Honest to God we won’t.”

Fay reached over and touched Meg’s clenched hands. “What do you mean,” she said.

She rested her hand on the double clenched fist in Meg’s lap. She patted it slightly.

“Will Leo blame you?” I said.

“Oh holy God,” Meg said. She began to rock slightly, her hands still clenched. Fay continued to pat.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Fay said. She was quiet while she thought about it. Meg slipped her hands from under Fay’s comforting pat and pressed them against her mouth.

“Jesus,” she said in a choked voice. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

“He might think we were in on it,” Fay said. “He’ll pretty sure know that we told you about the collection. And getting hassled in front of two of his girls will … He’ll take it out on us even if he doesn’t blame us.”

“If you have to get out of here,” I said, “you got someplace to go?”

Fay looked at me without speaking for maybe thirty seconds. Then she said, “Neither one of us is Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t you pack up and be ready to leave.”

Meg had stopped murmuring
Jesus
. Her clasped hands were still pressed against her mouth. But she had stopped rocking and she looked up at
Hawk and me over the tops of her hands. Then she turned and looked at Fay.

Fay smiled at her very slightly. “Come on,” Fay said. “We’ll pack.”

The two women went back down the corridor to the bedroom. Hawk was still looking out the window. As he stared down at Mission Street he was singing softly, “Good-bye, Leo, we hate to see you go.”

“It’s really something about you black guys,” I said. “You got so much soul.”

Hawk turned from the window and grinned. “Born to sing, honey,” he said. “Born to boogie.”

Leo came knocking at the door promptly at five. Hawk and I stood out of sight from the front door and Fay let them in.

“Hello, Leo,” she said. “Allie, come on in.”

A soft voice murmured so that it was barely audible. “You girls have a good week?”

The door closed and the two men came into view. Hawk and I pointed guns at them. Leo looked at us, and back at Fay. He was a large man with neat graying hair. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and a full Brooks Brothers costume. Striped shirt, knit tie, Harris tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, wing-tipped Scotch brogues. Behind him Allie looked like he’d grown up watching Victor Mature movies. He was wavy-haired and heavy-lidded and wore a dark shirt with a white tie. The collar of his leather jacket was turned up and a cigarette smoked in the corner of his mouth. Behind me I heard Hawk snort.

Leo looked at us, and back at Fay. Meg stood against the far wall by the kitchen.

“You lousy bitch. You set me up,” Leo said in his mumbly voice. He was carrying a briefcase. Not
the neat square attaché kind, but a big scuffed satchely one.

I said to the women, “Go get your luggage.”

Meg started to speak and Fay took her arm and said, “Shhh,” and they went back down the hall.

Leo looked at me. There was sweat on his upper lip. His eyes were moist and bright.

“I’m going to fry their ass,” he said.

Hawk said, “No point talking.”

“No,” I said. I bit my back teeth hard together and shot Leo. He went back a couple of feet and fell.

Allie had his hand under his jacket when Hawk shot him. Allie fell on top of Leo, his legs sprawled toward the kitchen. I picked up the briefcase and took it to the counter and opened it. The smell of the shooting was strong in the room and the sound of it seemed to ring in the silence. I opened the briefcase. It was full of money. Hawk had taken Leo’s wallet out and Allie’s and was going through them.

“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.

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 trembling 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.