A Catskill Eagle
By
Robert B. Parker
Copyright © 1985
For Joan
“And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than the other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”
HERMAN MELVILLE,
CHAPTER 1
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.
I have no time. Hawk is in jail in Mill River, California. You must get him out. I need help too: Hawk will explain. Things are awful, but I love you.
Susan
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 eeland 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
I said, “Hawk’s in jail in a small town called Miller south of San Francisco. I want you to get a lawyer in there now.”
“At twenty minutes of fucking one?” Haller
“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?”
