Read Online Five Classic Spenser Mysteries by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online

sap out of his pocket and hit Rocky at the base of the skull with it. Rocky’s legs went limp and folded beneath him and he fell the way a building implodes from a wrecker’s blast. Bob heard the thud and turned from the monitors, his hand going toward the pearl-handled gun onhis hip. He stopped half turned and stared at the small unwinking eye of the .25 an inch from him. Hawk stepped across Rocky’s prone position and sapped Bob. Bob lurched forward off the stool and took a staggering step and Hawk hit him again and he pitched forward, toward the monitor panels. I caught him before he hit them and guided him onto the floor.
    “Twice?” I said.
    “It’s an unfamiliar blackjack,” Hawk said. “Ain’t got the feel quite right.”
    I looked at the monitors. There was nothing on them except the still lawn and the two guards slowly making their intersecting circles of the house, appearing on one screen then another as they moved. I looked around the security room. There were some canvas-backed director’s chairs and a Formica-topped table with a Mr. Coffee machine on it and some mugs lined up on a shelf beyond it. There were newspapers scattered around and a cardboard box that donuts had come in. On the wall opposite the entrance there were two doors. The first was locked. The second opened into a full bath. On Bob’s belt was a set of keys hanging from a belt loop by one of those slip-catch hooks with a ring on it. Hawk was squatting beside Bob looking at Bob’s gun.
    “Ruger .357 Max, single-action,” Hawk said.“Man must be expecting a rhinoceros to charge in here. Got the grip customized, too.”
    “Keys,” I said.
    Hawk unsnapped them and tossed them to me.
    “Better kill them,” Hawk said. “You got that knife. Better cut their throats. Leaving people around like leaving a bomb ticking,” Hawk said.
    “We killed the pimp and his gunny.”
    “He’d have killed the two whores,” Hawk said. “Like you said, we got them into it. We got them out.”
    I shrugged.
    “These dudes will kill us, if they can,” Hawk said.
    “If they can,” I said.
    “If they do what happens to Susan?” Hawk said.
    I shook my head and started sorting through the keys to open the second door.
    “You spent your life in a mean business, babe, trying not to be mean. And so far you got away with it mostly. But there’s stuff on the line that never been on the line before.”
    I found the right key for the last door.
    “I know,” I said.
    “Gimme the knife,” Hawk said.
    “No.” I turned from the door. “Letting you do it is like doing it, only worse. It’s doing it and pretending I didn’t.”
    “We after Susan,” Hawk said. “That makes thisyour show. But I ain’t along on this just ’cause I care about you.”
    There was no sound in the room except a faint hum from the TV monitors that only underscored the silence.
    “I know,” I said. “I know that. It’s the way I know you’re human.”
    “She make both of us human, babe,” Hawk said. “I don’t want to lose her much more than you do.”
    I unlocked the door. Beyond it there were stairs.
    “Let’s go up there,” I said. “See if Costigan can help us find her.”

CHAPTER 13
    We found Jerry Costigan sitting in a black leather barcalounger by his fireplace reading a thick book by Karl Von Clausewitz. The fireplace was burning low and looked just right for roasting an ox. The room was air-conditioned. Above the fireplace were crossed broadswords and below them a family crest with lions rampant and all of that. There was a Latin inscription and the name COSTIGAN on a scroll across the bottom. The walls rose, punctuated with marble buttresses, into the darkness. The vaulted ceiling was lost in darkness. Spaced along the front wall between the leaded-glass windows that rose nearly as high as the ceiling were full-size suits of armor. On a table beside the Barcalounger was a decanter of what looked like port, a wedge of Stilton cheese and some fruit,