Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

It was nearly midnight and I was just getting home from detecting. I had followed an embezzler around on a warm day in early summer trying to observe him spending his ill-gotten gain. The best I’d been able to do was catch him eating a veal cutlet sandwich in a sub shop in Danvers Square across from Security National Bank. It wasn’t much, but it was as close as you could get to sin in Danvers.

I got a Steinlager from the refrigerator and opened it and sat at the counter to read my mail. There was a check from a client, a consumer protection letter from the phone company, the threat of a field collection from the electric company, and a letter from Susan.

The letter said:

And no matter how many times I read it, that’s all it said. It was postmarked San Jose.

I drank some beer. A drop of condensation made a shimmery track down the side of the green bottle. Steinlager, New Zealand, the label said. Probably some corruption between the Dutch
Zeeland
and the English
Sealand
. Language worked funny. I got off the stool very carefully and went slowly and got my atlas and looked up Mill River, California. It was south of San Francisco. Population 10,753. I drank another swallow of beer. Then I went to the phone and dialed. Vince Haller answered on the fifth ring. I said it was me.

He said, “Jesus Christ, it’s twenty minutes of one.”

I said, “Hawk’s in jail in a small town called Mill River south of San Francisco. I want you to get a lawyer in there now.”

“At twenty minutes of fucking one?” Haller said.

“Susan’s in trouble too. I’m going out in the morning. I want to hear from the lawyer before I go.”

“What kind of trouble?” Haller said.

“I don’t know. Hawk knows. Get the lawyer down there right now.”

“Okay, I’ll call a firm we know in San Francisco. They can roust one of their junior partners out and send him down, it’s only about quarter of ten out there.”

“I want to hear from him as soon as he’s seen Hawk.”

Haller said, “You okay?”

I said, “Get going, Vince,” and hung up.

I got another beer and read Susan’s letter again. It said the same thing. I sat at the counter beside the phone and looked at my apartment.

Bookcases on either side of the front window. A working fireplace. Living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. A shotgun, a rifle, and three handguns.

“I’ve been here too long,” I said. I didn’t like the way I sounded in the empty room. I got up and walked to the front window and looked down at Marlborough Street. Nothing was happening down there. I went back to the counter and drank some more beer. Good to keep busy.

The phone rang at four twelve in the morning. My second bottle of beer had gone flat on the counter, half finished, and I was lying on my back on the couch with my hands behind my head looking at my ceiling. I answered the phone before the third ring.

At the other end, a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Spenser?”

I said yes.

She said, “This is Paula Goldman, I’m an attorney with Stein, Faye and Corbett in San Francisco and I was asked to call you.”

“Have you seen Hawk?” I said.

“Yes. He’s in jail, in Mill River, California, on a charge of murder and assault. There’s no bail, and no realistic hope of any.”

“Who’d he kill?”

“He is accused of killing a man named Emmett Colder, who works as a security consultant for a man named Russell Costigan. There are also several accounts of assault on other security personnel and several police officers. He is apparently difficult to subdue.”

“Yes,” I said.

“He admits he killed Colder, and assaulted the various others, but says he was set up, says it was self-defense.”

“Can you make a case?”

“On the facts, maybe. But the problem is that Russell Costigan’s father is Jerry Costigan.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“You know Jerry Costigan.”

“I know who he is. He owns many things.”

“Yes.” Paula Goldman’s voice was firm and unhesitant. “And one of the things he owns is Mill River, California.”

“So he doesn’t have much chance,” I said, “if he gets to trial.”

“If he gets to trial, he’s a gone goose.”

I was quiet for a minute, listening to the little transcontinental noises on the open line.

“Did he say anything about Susan Silverman?” I said.

“He said he’d come out at her request, and that they’d been waiting for him. The interview was conducted under close scrutiny and was given very grudgingly. Stein, Faye and Corbett is a major law firm in the Bay area. We have a lot of clout. If we’d had less, there might have been no interview at all.”

“That’s all you know?”

“That’s all I know.”

“What are his chances of beating this thing?”

“None.”

“Because it’s an iron-solid case?”

“Yes, it’s iron solid, but he also broke three of Russell Costigan’s front teeth. That’s like beating up Huey Long’s kid in his home parish in Louisiana in 1935.”