Rachel Wallace took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “Specifically I have the address of his wife.”
“Not ex-wife,” I said.
“As far as I can find out they are not divorced,” Rachel Wallace said.
“Where’s she live?”
“Chicago, Lake Shore Drive.” She gave me the address, tearing the page from her notebook.
“What else?” I said.
“About the wife? Nothing else. I’ve already told you her name, Tyler Smithson. The two children live with her. She doesn’t seem to work, though I’m not sure. Microfilm can take you only so far.”
“What else do you have on any of the Costigans?”
“Transpan had labor problems at one time. There was a matter before the NLRB stemming from problems at a manufacturing site in Connecticut. I have only a secondhand reference to it yet, but I’ll track it down. Once it gets into the government process it’s just a matter of time.”
I sipped a little more Scotch. The glass was empty. Hawk poured a little Scotch into my glass and took Rachel Wallace’s glass and got more ice and poured Scotch into it and brought it back. She smiled at him.
“Thank you,” she said. She was looking at him almost as he had looked at her. Then she looked at me and back at Hawk.
“He commands loyalty,” she said, “doesn’t he?”
“Spenser?” Hawk said.
“Yes,” Rachel Wallace said. “Here you are, and here I am.” She drank some of her Scotch. “Remarkable,” she said.
Hawk poured some champagne into his glass and drank half of it. He didn’t sip champagne, he drank it as if he was thirsty.
“I in jail in California, he come and got me out,” Hawk said. “Turn it around, I do the same thing. But that ain’t it. You see a black guy and a white guy working on something, you think the black guy helping the white guy. Lawzy me, Marse Spenser, let me lie down in front of dis heah truck fo‘ ya’ll.”
Rachel Wallace was still, looking very intently at Hawk.
“He dead,” Hawk said, “and I be doing exactly the same thing. Susan need help, I help her.”
Rachel Wallace looked down into her Scotch for a moment, then back up at Hawk, and her gaze was steady.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I treated you as his side kick.”
“That’s right.”
“I can’t undo it,” she said, “but I won’t do it again.”
“That’s progress.”
Rachel Wallace drank the rest of her Scotch. She reached for the bottle and Hawk beat her to it.
“Allow me,” he said.
“Chicago in the morning?” I said to Hawk.
“First thing,” he said.
“That leaves the rest of the day open,” Rachel Wallace said. “Shall we get drunk?”
“We’d be fools not to,” I said.
CHAPTER 25
TYLER SMITHSON’S APARTMENT WAS ON THE lake front near the point where W. Goethe Street joins the Drive. The march of high Gold Coast apartment buildings along the water was splendid to look at in the late summer sunshine, standing at the near north edge of Chicago. In other times Susan and I had come here and walked through Lincoln Park and hung around the zoo, holding hands and looking at the lions. We’d have dinner at Le Perroquet and go back to the Park Hyatt and make love in an elegant room with dark green walls.
The doorman called up to Tyler Smithson from the lobby phone.
“Gentleman named Spenser,” he said into the phone. “Says it is in reference to Russell Costigan.” He nodded his head at me and hung up the phone. He was wearing a black uniform with red trim, his round pale face was freshly shaved, and he smelled of cologne.
“Penthouse,” he said. “Elevator is straight back.”
The elevator was lined with beige leather. It went up silently and I stepped out into a small foyer. The walls were papered with something that looked like red velvet and might have been. There was a skylight above and a thick gray carpet below and straight ahead a raised panel door painted ivory and gilded around the perimeter of each panel. I rang the bell and smiled winningly at the peephole in the door. Just a friendly guy, come to visit, cut up a few touches about old Russell, easygoing, charming, welcome everywhere. The door opened. I widened my smile. It deepened the dimples in my cheeks and drove women wild.
“Hello,” I said.
“Mr. Spenser?”
“Yes.” Tyler Smithson Costigan was tall and slender with pale skin and blond hair cut in a Dutch-boy. She was wearing a pink shirt with a round collar, open at the neck, and a green plaid skirt with a pin in it.
