The Boxer and the Spy

by Robert B. Parker

  “Uh-huh,” Terry said.

  They stood in the dark looking at the house.

  “I feel like a peeping Tom,” Terry said.

  “I know,” Abby said. “It’s kind of exciting, though.”

  “No lights on upstairs,” Terry said.

  “If they’re having an affair,” Abby said, “they wouldn’t go right upstairs, for heaven’s sake.”

  “What would they do?”

  “Have cocktails or something, in the living room.”

  “You think?” Terry said.

  “That’s where the lights are on,” Abby said.

  “How do you know it’s the living room?”

  “‘Cause I know,” Abby said. “Want to peek in?”

  “I guess,” Terry said.

  They walked carefully in the shadow of the shrubs to the back window, where the light was on, and looked in.

  “Ohmigod,” Abby whispered.

  She stepped quickly away from the window.

  “They’re ...” she said. “Are they ... ?”

  “They are,” Terry whispered.

  “For god’s sake stop looking,” Abby said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s too embarrassing,” Abby whispered. “What if they catch us?”

  “I think we caught them,” Terry said.

  “I mean it, Terry,” Abby said. “I want to go.”

  She pulled at his arm.

  “Wow!” Terry said. “Look at that.”

  “No,” Abby said.

  She pulled harder at his arm.

  “I want to go,” Abby said.

  “Okay,” Terry said.

  They walked silently away through the dark shrubs to the street. As they walked beneath the streetlights, it seemed very bright to them.

  “Mr. Bullard and Mrs. Trent,” Terry said.

  “I know,” Abby said.

  “I wonder what it means?” Terry said.

  “She’s the head of the town selectmen,” Abby said.

  “And they’re connected,” Terry said.

  “So to speak,” Abby said.

  Terry grinned at her.

  “Give you any ideas?” he said.

  “You and I will never do anything that looks anything like that,” she said.

  “I think that’s what it looks like,” Terry said.

  “Well, we don’t look like that.”

  “I guess not,” Terry said.

  They continued on, in and out of the light circles spread by the streetlamps.

  “Plus,” Terry said. “I woulda taken my socks off.”

  “Ohhh,” Abby said.

  She punched him in the arm, not hard ... and began to giggle.

  CHAPTER 29

  If that ever gets out, Mrs. Trent won’t be governor,” Terry said.

  “I know, but what does that have to do with Jason?” Abby said.

  “Maybe nothing,” Terry said. “Wouldn’t help Bullard’s career, either, if this got around.”

  They were sitting on the Wall. Across the street, on the town common, two squirrels chased each other around a tree trunk.

  “What should we do?” Abby said.

  “I think we should focus on him and her for a while,” Terry said.

  “Because they’re having an affair?”

  “Yeah. If they’re doing that, what else might they be doing?”

  “He’s married,” Abby said. “Right?”

  “Yeah. I saw her once at school, I forget what she was doing there.”

  “What’s she like?” Abby said.

  “Mrs. Bullard? She looks like someone who would marry Mr. Bullard.”

  “Oh dear,” Abby said. “Are we going to tell anybody?”

  “Oh it’s too good to keep quiet,” Terry said.

  “No,” Abby said. “We shouldn’t tell.”

  “No?”

  “Because it’s too good to keep quiet. We tell Tank or Suzi or somebody and it’ll be all over town.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It’s bad if they haven’t done anything else bad,” Abby said. “I mean maybe they’re both unhappily married, you know, and they’ve found each other. I mean maybe they’re in love.”

  Terry nodded for a time.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We can always use it if we need to.”

  “You’re not very romantic,” Abby said.

  “Am too,” Terry said.

  “Not about Mr. Bullard and Mrs. Trent.”

  “No,” Terry said. “Not about them.”

  “Would you have stayed and watched if I hadn’t been there?” Abby said.

  “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  “It was sex,” Terry said. “And I’m a guy. I wanted to watch her.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Sure,” Terry said. “You weren’t interested?”

  “I’m interested in sex, I guess,” Abby said. “But not like that. I want, you know, I want some feeling in it, something romantic. I’m a girl.”

  “They might have had feeling in it,” Terry said.

  “But I didn‘t,” Abby said.

  “Not all girls are like that.”

  “No,” Abby said. “I know. Suzi’s already hooking up. Lotta girls.”

  “But not you,” Terry said.

  “I won’t hook up just to hook up,” Abby said.

  “Because you need to be in love?”

  “I guess,” Abby said. “I need to feel something. It needs to matter.”

  “More than just the fun of it?”

  “Yes,” Abby said. “If it were only about fun, for me, it wouldn’t be fun. Does that make any sense?”

  “Not the kind of sense I wish it did,” Terry said.

  “I know.”

  “You feel something for me?” Terry said.

  “Yes.”

  “I matter,” Terry said.

  Abby nodded.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But?”

  “Not yet,” Abby said.

  “Not yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” Abby said. “I just know that you and I are about more than just fun.”

  “Yes,” Terry said. “I know that too.”

  “We’re not very old, we have time,” Abby said.

  “We’re old enough to know something about each other,” Terry said.

  “Yes.”

  “We are sure about each other,” Terry said.

  “Yes, we are.”

  They looked at each other and then Terry smiled.

  “So, sooner or later?” he said.

  Abby smiled at him and put her hand on his forearm.

  “Sooner or later,” Abby said.

  CHAPTER 30

  Okay,“ George said. ”You’re fighting two guys.”

  They were at the heavy bag.

  “You do left jab, right cross, left hook on the bag, you pivot on me, keep your right foot planted, and throw the same punches at me and pivot back.”

  George grinned.

  “Just in case the guy didn’t go down,” he said.

  “Hard to believe,” Terry said.

  “Okay,” George said. “First on the heavy bag, then on me.”

  Terry hit the bag, left-right, left hook, turning into each punch with his hip.

  “Now me,” George said.

  He held the mitts up.

  “Like basketball,” George said. “Keep your pivot foot.”

  They worked on the doubling up for a while.

  Then George said, “Excellent. Take a seat.”

  Terry slumped onto the chair. George began to help him off with the gloves.

  “I need to sort something out, George,” Terry said as his breathing settled.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You said that having heart was maybe being abnormal,” Terry said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Talk to me more about that,” Terry said.

  “Your brea
thing get back to normal pretty quick now, you notice that?” George said.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m starting to get in shape.”

  George nodded.

  “You are,” he said.

  Terry waited. He knew George had heard the question. He walked over to the shelf and put Terry’s big gloves on the top shelf.

  “Heart got something to do with courage, and something to do with being cruel,” George said.

  He turned and came back.

  “You got to be willing to bash somebody in the face, maybe somebody you don’t even know. You gotta do more than be willing to, you got to want to bash him in the face as hard and as often as you can until you win.”

  “That’s cruel,” Terry said.

  “Probably is,” George said. “And you got to want to do that while he trying to do the same thing to you.”

  “That’s maybe the courage part?” Terry said.

  George thought about it.

  “It is,” he said after a while. “But you also got to have the courage to be cruel.”

  “You don’t seem cruel, George.”

  “Just when I fight,” George said. “Got to be able to control the cruel part. It control you and you ain’t a good fighter, and you ain’t a good man.”

  “Does it bother you being cruel?”

  “Not when I fighting,” George said. “Ain’t a matter of right and wrong anymore. You thought it was wrong, you shouldn’t be doing it. You decided it was right to fight and right to win when you stepped into the ring. Now you got to do the things you got to do to get there.”

  “So if you’re trying to do the right thing, you might need to be cruel to do it,” Terry said.

  George stared thoughtfully at Terry for a moment. Then he nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “If we talking ‘bout fighting.”

  “We are,” Terry said. “Sort of.”

  CHAPTER 31

  In the early evening, while there was still light, they sat on a stone outcropping on the building site and looked at the nearly finished house. The house was closed in. The windows and doors were in. The front door had a large No Trespassing sign on it. There was still landscaping to be done, and painting, and who knew what inside. But they could see it was a nice house.

  “Said in the news today that she’s probably gonna win the election,” Abby said.

  “Trent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unless we blab,” Terry said.

  “Why would you do that?” Abby said. “Just ‘cause you saw her with Bullard? That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be governor.”

  “We don’t know what it means,” Terry said. “Yet.”

  “No,” Abby said. “And until we do, we have no right to ruin anybody’s life.”

  “I know,” Terry said.

  “Besides, we’d have to tell we were peeking in their window.”

  “We could say it was me,” Terry said. “We wouldn’t have to mention you.”

  “And they’d both deny it,” Abby said. “They’d tell everybody you’re a troublemaker.”

  “But you’re not,” Terry said.

  “No, I’m a good girl. Honor roll. Never in trouble.”

  “So if we tell, it needs to be both of us,” Terry said.

  “I think so.”

  Terry nodded.

  “We’ll keep our mouths shut for the moment, I guess.”

  “They’re both pretty interested in this project,” Abby said. “They each come here three, four times a week. Sometimes they’re both here. Sometimes one, sometimes the other.”

  “I thought this was conservation land,” Terry said.

  “So?”

  “So I think that means you aren’t supposed to build on it.”

  “Probably okay if it’s a school project,” Abby said.

  “So what happens to the house when it’s built?” Terry said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither.”

  “It would be nice to know,” Abby said.

  “Depends on who you ask, I guess,” Terry said. “I got in trouble asking about steroids.”

  “I know,” Abby said.

  “It’s frustrating as hell,” Terry said. “We’re pretty sure that Jason didn’t commit suicide. We’re pretty sure that there’s something going on with Bullard, and Trent and Kip Carter. There’s something going on with this house.”

  “We’re sure something’s going on between Trent and Bullard,” Abby said.

  “And that’s all we know,” Terry said. “We can’t prove anything except that, and who knows if anyone will believe us.”

  “Plus we have to fess up that we were spying on them,” Abby said. “And then we might have to explain why and tell about our spy network and ... Terry, a lot of people could get in trouble.”

  Terry nodded.

  It was beginning to get dark. They stood and walked back out the dirt road from the construction site. As they went, Terry noticed some Day-Glo orange painted stakes in the ground along the road.

  “Look at the stakes,” he said to Abby.

  “What are they for?” Abby said.

  “It looks like they’re marking out where to build other houses.”

  “On conservation land?”

  “I guess,” Terry said.

  CHAPTER 32

  Abby asked Nancy Fortin the next day, and Nancy Fortin asked around among the other kids in the technical arts curriculum. But nobody knew what happened to the project houses after they were built.

  “If I was you,” Nancy said, “I’d go down to the tech arts office and talk to Mr. Malcolm. He’s the house master.”

  So Abby went to the technical arts office and asked for Mr. Malcolm.

  He was in.

  “So,” he said. “Miss Hall, what is your interest in technical arts?”

  “It’s really just curiosity, Mr. Malcolm. I was walking in the woods last night with my dog, and I saw that house that your department is building, and I thought, Wow! I got to find out about this.”

  “Why are you interested?”

  “Well,” Abby said, “it’s so fabulous. I mean that kids are building something like that.”

  Mr. Malcolm smiled and nodded. He was lean and had short gray hair and a sort of healthy outdoor look.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re very proud of the program. It’s one of the few full-scale construction programs in the state.”

  “I’m sorry I sound so stupid,” Abby said. “But have you built many?”

  “No,” Malcolm said. “It’s a new program. Mr. Bullard brought me in to run it.”

  “And you know about construction?”

  “Yes,” he said, and smiled at her. “I have been a contractor for more than thirty years. I’m able to hire a lot of my subcontractors on a per diem basis to serve as instructors in various phases.”

  “You mean like plumbers for the plumbing part and electrical guys for the electricity part?”

  Malcolm nodded happily.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Normally skilled tradesmen aren’t available to teach, because, quite frankly, they make too much doing what they do to give it up for teaching. But if I can hire them between jobs and pay them well, but not for very long, we can get expert faculty in all phases of the construction without huge costs.”

  “Wow, again!” Abby said. “Is that your idea?”

  “Well, I have a part in it. Because of my long experience, I know a great many subs ... subcontractors,” he said. “But the plan originated, I believe, with Mr. Bullard. Mrs. Trent, when she was chair of the school committee, and more recently, as chairperson of the selectmen, has been very supportive.”

  “Is somebody who’s gone through this program ready to work when he graduates?” Abby said.

  She was leaning forward, her eyes wide, giving every evidence of being totally fascinated.

  “Absolutely,” Mr. Malcolm said. “They’ve had hands-on training from experts. Incidentally it’s not just he anymore.
It could be she, you know.”

  “And do you help them get jobs?” Abby said.

  “In cooperation with the guidance office,” Mr. Malcolm said. “Plus, I have so many contacts in the building business that I can be quite helpful in a more informal way.”

  Abby appeared entranced.

  “Fabulous,” she said. “What a fabulous program.”

  Mr. Malcolm smiled at her enthusiasm.

  “It’s been a dream project of mine for many years,” he said. “And now that I don’t have to devote so much time to my own business, I have the chance to see the dream come true.”

  “That’s really great,” Abby said. “What do you do with the house when it’s finished?”

  “Finished?” Malcolm said.

  “Yes, it’s so great ... really fabulous.... Do you do something special?”

  “We ... ah ... You’ll have talk to Mr. Bullard about that.”

  “Mr. Bullard?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Malcolm said. “He would be the one to ask.”

  Abby frowned in a cute way and looked puzzled.

  “Don’t you know?” Abby said.

  “Mr. Bullard would be the one to ask about that,” Mr. Malcolm said, and looked at his watch.

  Abby considered that option.

  I don’t think so.

  CHAPTER 33

  You going into a fight,” George said. ”You know what you trying to do. You got a plan. You need to stay with the plan. Worst thing you can do is get one on the nose and get mad and go crazy and can the plan.”

  Terry had the big gloves off and was finishing up on the speed bag, which, as George said, was mostly for show. It was somewhat useful for hand-eye coordination, Terry knew, and it was kind of an aerobic workout.

  “What if the plan isn’t working?” he asked.

  “Then you come up with another one. What you don’t do is just get mad and start whaling away,” George said. “That ain’t no plan and it will get you hurt.”

  “Didn’t you ever get mad?”

  “You get mad, you use it for energy,” George said. “You control it and channel it. Otherwise you lose your technique, and you don’t stay over your feet, and you let yourself get off balance and overextended and you get your clock cleaned and your ticket punched pretty quick.”

  “What if the other guy is mad too?” Terry said.

  “Then the control is gone,” George said. “Then it just a brawl and a lucky punch win it.”