The Professional

by Robert B. Parker

  I nodded.

  “They were together at some sort of fund-raiser cocktail party at The Langham Hotel,” I said. “Twenty people saw them.”

  “Too bad,” Hawk said.

  “You think they’re involved?” Susan said.

  “Ah is just a poor simple bad guy,” Hawk said, “trying to get along. Ask the dee-tective.”

  “Who else is there?” I said.

  “Couldn’t it be a party or parties unknown?” Susan said.

  “Sure,” I said. “But on the assumption of same gun, same shooter, they would need to be connected to both Estelle and Jackson.”

  “They have alibis for both,” Susan said.

  “Rock-solid,” I said. “For both.”

  Susan guzzled nearly a full gram of her martini.

  “Suppose,” I said, “that someone you knew was murdered yesterday evening, and the cops asked you for an alibi.”

  “I washed my hair,” Susan said. “Took a bath, put on some night cream, and got in bed with Pearl and watched a movie on HBO.”

  “And if they asked what movie, and could you remember the plot?”

  “I could tell them that, but the movie has been running all month on my cable system,” Susan said.

  “So Pearl is basically your alibi,” I said.

  “Hawk?” I said.

  “There be a young woman . . .” Hawk said.

  “Of course there was,” I said.

  I drank some of my short scotch and soda.

  “Last night I had a couple of cocktails,” I said. “Made supper, ate it, and watched the first half of the Celtics game before I fell asleep.”

  “So you don’t even have Pearl,” Susan said.

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “So you’re saying that people often don’t have any way to prove where they were of an evening, and these people have two ironclad alibis.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Most people,” Susan said. She looked at Hawk. “Except maybe for the man with the golden lance, here . . .”

  “Black opal,” Hawk said.

  Susan nodded.

  “Except for the man with the black-opal lance,” she said.

  “Most people could go days at a time with no alibi except for whomever they live with.”

  “And,” Hawk said. “If they both under suspicion . . .”

  “The alibi is suspect,” Susan said.

  “Sorta,” I said.

  “You think they hired a third party?” Susan said.

  “Yes.”

  “Both of them?” Susan said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Beth surely could not have escaped such a childhood unscathed,” Susan said.

  “Nobody do,” Hawk said.

  “She had somebody do Jackson,” I said. “She’d get his money.”

  “She have somebody do Estelle,” Susan said. “Beth would get Eisenhower.”

  “She don’t get Jackson’s money until somebody kills him,” Hawk said. “How’d she pay.”

  I looked at him for a moment.

  “Oh,” Hawk said. “Yeah.”

  “What?” Susan said.

  “She started out broke,” I said. “How’d she pay her way this far?”

  Susan was silent for a moment.

  Then she said, “Oh. The, ah, barter system.”

  Our food came, and we ate some. Susan looked at Hawk.

  “Well,” she said.

  Hawk nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said.

  She looked at me.

  “So if it were Beth, and if she were hiring somebody to kill her husband, and Estelle, and taking it out in trade, who would she hire? Who does she know that she could hire?”

  “Eisenhower’s been in jail,” I said. “Husband was on both sides of legitimate. She might know a lot of people, or she might know one who could broker the deal.”

  “She know Zel and Boo,” Hawk said. “She know Tony Marcus.”

  “Ty-Bop?” I said.

  “He don’t freelance,” Hawk said.

  “Not even for love?” Susan said.

  Hawk smiled at her.

  “Ty-Bop don’t know nothing ’bout love.”

  “Junior?” I said.

  “Ain’t a shooter,” Hawk said.

  “Probably knows how,” I said.

  “Maybe. You looking in that direction, I think you got to look at Tony. He tell Ty-Bop to shoot you. Ty-Bop will shoot you. He tell Junior to break your back. Junior will break your back. But gun work is Ty-Bop. And strong-arm is Junior. He don’t ask one to do the other man specialty. And they don’t do anything unless Tony tells them to. It’s a matter of respect.”

  “You understand that?” Susan said to me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But if Tony wanted Ty-Bop to shoot someone for love?”

  “Ty-Bop do it,” Hawk said.

  “Does Tony know about love?” Susan said.

  “Loves his daughter,” Hawk said.

  “So he’s a possibility,” Susan said.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “But if you rule him out, you also rule out Ty-Bop and Junior,” Susan said.

  “Yep.”

  “How about this man Zel?” Susan said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Boo?”

  “Hard to imagine Beth seducing any of these people,” I said.

  “Remember how far she’s come, and how she got here,” Susan said.

  “You’re saying she could?”

  “If she needed to,” Susan said.

  “Could you?” I said.

  “If I needed to,” Susan said.

  “Egad,” I said.

  Chapter57

  TONY MARCUS CAME into my office wearing a double-breasted camel-hair coat and a Borsalino hat. Ty Bop jangled in beside him and stood not quite motionless near the door.

  “Arnold say you wanted to see me,” Tony said.

  He unbuttoned his coat, took his hat off, and put it on my desk, and sat down in front of me.

  “I didn’t know you still made house calls,” I said.

  “In the neighborhood,” Tony said. “Going to have lunch with my daughter.”

  “Give her my best,” I said.

  “Sure,” Tony said. “What you want?”

  “You know Chet Jackson got whacked,” I said.

  Tony nodded.

  “Couple days ago a woman named Estelle Gallagher got clipped with the same gun killed Jackson,” I said.

  Tony nodded.

  “You keep track,” I said.

  “I do,” Tony said.

  “They’re both connected with Gary Eisenhower,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ty-Bop was studying the picture of Pearl that stood on top of a file cabinet just to the left of Susan’s. I would have studied Susan had I been he, but Ty-Bop was mysterious.

  “And Beth Jackson,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You had any dealings with them since Jackson’s office?” I said.

  “You think one of them done the killings?” Tony said.

  “They both have solid alibis,” I said. “For both killings.”

  Tony smoothed his mustache with his left hand and nodded.

  “Remarkable,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said.

  “So you figured one or both contracted it out,” Tony said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “And you figure who they know might do it?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you thought of me,” Tony said.

  “One possibility,” I said.

  Tony sat back in his chair and smoothed his mustache again. After a while he smiled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We talked.”

  “How’d she get hold of you?”

  “She called,” Tony said. “Talk with Arnold.”

  “How’d
she know where to call?” I said.

  “Her husband had a number,” he said.

  “So the cops must have stopped by,” I said.

  “They did,” Tony said. “I’m used to cops. Didn’t tell them nothing. They didn’t know nothing. They went away.”

  “What did Beth want?”

  “She say she saw me in her husband’s office that day and she thought I was very ‘interesting.’ ” Tony grinned. “Say she want to see me.”

  “And?”

  “And I say sure,” Tony said.

  “So you did,” I said.

  “Yep. Fucked her about sixteen times.”

  “Nice for you,” I said.

  Tony grinned.

  “She enthusiastic,” he said.

  “But you didn’t elope,” I said.

  “Nope, after we been fucking for a week or so, she say she need a favor.”

  “I’m shocked,” I said.

  “Yeah, I was surprised it took a week,” Tony said. “Said she wanted somebody to ace her old man and could I help.”

  “And you said?”

  “No.”

  “How’d she take that?”

  “Not well. She say after all we meant to each other. And I say, ‘I got nothing against your old man.’ And she said, ‘But don’t you love me?’ And I say no. And we go on like that. And finally I have Arnold take her out and drive her home.”

  “Give her a referral?”

  “Hell, no,” Tony said. “I put some people down, will again. But I did it ’cause it needed to be done. Not ’cause some broad bops me for a week.”

  “She have any other candidates?” I said.

  “To pull the trigger for her?” Tony said. “There must have been one.”

  “But you have no idea?” I said.

  “None.”

  “You have any sense that Eisenhower was involved?”

  “Nope.”

  “Or that he wasn’t?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  I nodded. We were quiet. Ty-Bop had stopped looking at the picture of Pearl and was now, as best I could determine, looking at nothing I could identify. Tony picked up his hat, put it on, stood, and buttoned up his coat.

  “You owe me,” he said.

  “But who keeps track,” I said.

  “Me,” Tony said.

  He nodded at Ty-Bop, who went out of the office first. Tony followed. They didn’t close the door behind them. But that was okay. It created sort of a welcoming image. I was a friendly guy. Might be good for business.

  Chapter58

  VINNIE MORRIS WAS a middle-sized ordinary-looking guy who could shoot the tail off a buffalo nickel from fifty yards. We weren’t exactly friends, but I’d known him since he walked behind Joe Broz, and while he wasn’t all that much fun, he was good at what he did. He kept his word. And he didn’t say much.

  We were in my car, parked at a hydrant on Beacon Street beside the Public Garden, across the street from where Beth lived with Gary Eisenhower.

  “Her name’s Beth Jackson,” I said. “We’ll sit here and watch. If she comes out and gets in a car, we’ll tail her. If she comes out and starts walking, you’ll tail her.”

  “’Cause she knows you,” Vinnie said.

  “Yes.”

  Vinnie nodded.

  “And that’s it?” he said. “You want me to follow this broad around, tell you what I see?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t have to clip her?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I don’t like to clip no broad, I don’t have to,” Vinnie said.

  “You won’t have to,” I said.

  He looked at her picture.

  “Nice head,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “How long we gonna do this?” Vinnie said.

  “Don’t know.”

  “She takes a car and I just ride around with you,” Vinnie said.

  “Correct,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You care why we’re tailing her?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  One of Vinnie’s great charms was that he had no interest in any information he didn’t need. We sat with Beth for several days. Mostly she walked. So mostly I stayed in the car and Vinnie hoofed it.

  “She goes to Newbury Street,” Vinnie said. “Meets different broads. They shop. They have lunch. Today it was in the café at Louis.”

  “Must be an adventure for you,” I said.

  “Yeah. I thought Louis was a men’s store.”

  “All genders,” I said.

  “You buy stuff there?”

  “Don’t have my size,” I said.

  “Got my size,” Vinnie said.

  “See anything you like?” I said.

  “Most of it looks kinda funny,” Vinnie said.

  “That’s called stylish,” I said.

  “Not by me,” Vinnie said.

  “She spot you?”

  Vinnie stared at me.

  “Nobody spots me, I don’t want to be spotted,” Vinnie said.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said.

  We did that for most of a week, with Vinnie doing all the legwork and me twaddling in the car. On a white, dripping, above-freezing Friday in late February, I called it quits.

  “You stick with her till I call you off,” I said to Vinnie. “Or you can’t stand it anymore. You don’t need me. She’s obviously a walking girl.”

  “I won’t get sick of it,” Vinnie said. “I like looking at her ass.”

  “Motivation is good,” I said.

  Vinnie got out of the car, and I drove home.

  Chapter59

  GARY EISENHOWER came to see me. I was in my office with my feet up, listening to some Anita O’Day songs on my office computer and thinking lightly.

  “Who’s the broad singing,” Gary said when he came in.

  “Anita O’Day,” I said.

  “I need to talk,” he said.

  I turned Anita off and swiveled my full attention to him.

  “Go,” I said.

  He sat in one of my client chairs.

  “I . . .”

  He shifted a little and crossed one leg over the other.

  “I . . . I feel really bad,” he said. “About Estelle.”

  I nodded.

  “And I . . . I . . . I got no one else to talk to about it,” he said.

  “Happy to be the one,” I said.

  “I mean, I been with Estelle for, like, ten years,” Gary said.

  “Long time,” I said.

  “I . . . I cared about her.”

  “Through all the philandering” I said.

  “Sure, I told you. She liked it, too. We were in that together.”

  I nodded.

  “For crissake, who would want to kill Estelle,” Gary said.

  I shook my head. I wanted to go where he wanted to. I suspected he was circling it. He shifted in his chair and crossed his legs in the other direction. He tapped out a little drumbeat on his thighs for a moment.

  “The thing is,” he said. “The thing that kills me is . . . did I do something to cause this?”

  I looked interested.

  “I mean,” he said, “did I, like . . . did I bring her into contact with someone who would kill her?”

  I waited. He didn’t say anything else. I waited some more. He interlocked his fingers and worked his hands back and forth. Clarice Richardson had been wrong, I thought. Gary was not devoid of something like a moral or ethical sense. Whatever it quite was, it was nagging at him now. He looked at me. The sense had apparently taken him as far as it was going to. Probably wasn’t a very robust sense to begin with.

  “I mean, why would someone kill her?” he said again.

  “Money,” I said. “Love and the stuff that goes with it.”

  “What stuff?” he said.

  “Passion, jealousy, and hate,” I said.

  “Estelle didn’t like Beth living with us,” Gary said.
>
  I nodded.

  “I mean, she did at first,” he said. “You know, she liked the money, and the truth of it is, she liked the three-way for a while.”

  “And you said you liked it okay,” I said.

  He smiled briefly, and for a moment the old Gary shone through.

  “Hell,” he said. “I like everything.”

  “Beth like the three-way?” I said.

  He looked startled.

  “Beth?” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She never said she didn’t,” he said.

  “So why didn’t Estelle like Beth living there?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Gary said. “I mean, women are a pretty weird species.”

  “One of the two weirdest,” I said.

  Gary looked blank. Then he kind of shook it off.

  “Anyway, Estelle started saying stuff like Beth was getting too bossy, and how we couldn’t get any privacy.”

  “She say that to Beth?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gary said. “She said it to me quite a bit toward the end. But I never heard her talk to Beth about it.”

  “You say anything to Beth?” I said.

  “Me? No. I learned a long time ago to stay out of a catfight.”

  “You think Beth might have killed Estelle so she could have you to herself?” I said.

  “We was at the big Community Servings event, at the Langham,” Gary said. “Cops told us when she died. Beth couldn’ta done it.”

  He said it too fast. Like he’d rehearsed it.

  “The Hotel Langham affair your idea?” I said.

  “Me? No. Beth wanted to go. Said she knew a lotta people went to it. Said she wanted them to see her boyfriend.”

  “You say anything about being Estelle’s boyfriend?”

  “Hell,” Gary said. And there was no bravado in his voice.

  “I’m everybody’s boyfriend.”

  “And Estelle’s dead,” I said.

  Gary didn’t speak. He nodded his head slowly, and as he did, tears began to well in his eyes.

  Chapter60

  HAWK CAME TO MY PLACE to babysit Pearl, and Susan went with me to New York for fun. We stopped for a tongue sandwich at Rein’s deli on the way down. I made several amusing tongue remarks while we ate, which Susan said were disgusting. That night we stayed uptown at The Carlyle, had dinner at Café Boulud, and went to bed before midnight.

  I was prepared for several hours of wild abandon when I got into bed. But by the time Susan got through with her nocturnal ablutions, I had nodded off. I woke up in the morning with Susan’s head on my chest. I shifted a little so I could look at her. She opened her eyes and we looked at each other. She moved a little so we were facing.