The Professional

by Robert B. Parker

  “Yeah?”

  “Police,” I said. “I need you to come open a couple doors for me.”

  “Police?” he said.

  “You heard me, now run your ass up here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure, officer, gimme a minute.”

  It took more than a minute, but it was only two or three before he appeared in the entryway and opened the door.

  “You ain’t wearing a uniform,” he said.

  “No shit,” I said.

  “You got a badge or something?”

  I looked at him hard.

  I said, “Ain’t I seen a mug shot of you, pal?”

  “Me? I never done nothing.”

  “That’s your story. Open up apartment one-A pretty goddamned hubba hubba, or I’ll run your ass down to the station for a look-see.”

  “One-A, yeah, sure,” he said, and took out his key ring. “No need to get all worked up.”

  “Move it,” I said. “Or I’ll work you up, you unnerstand that?”

  “Yes, sir, sure thing.”

  He went to Gary’s door and unlocked it. I went in. The super came in behind me a step.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Call nine-one-one,” I said. “Cops and an ambulance.”

  “But you’re a . . .”

  “Call it,” I said.

  Chapter65

  BETH WAS DEAD, I knew that the minute I saw her. Her face was bruised, there was dried blood, and her neck was turned at an odd angle. Gary was unconscious but not dead. He had a big purple bruise on the side of his face at the hairline. But he was breathing pretty steadily, and his pulse wasn’t bad.

  The super, having called 911, stood in the doorway, as if he didn’t dare enter and he didn’t dare leave. It was maybe three minutes before two uniforms came into the room.

  “He says he’s a cop,” he told one of the cops.

  “That right?” the cop said to me.

  He was a thick-necked guy with a red face, and he was showing signs of sitting down too much. His partner was a younger guy, black, with sort of economical movements. The black cop squatted on the floor beside me and felt the pulse in Gary’s neck. He nodded to himself and moved over to Beth.

  “Right,” I said.

  “Show me something,” the cop said.

  “I’m private,” I said.

  “Impersonating an officer?” the red-faced cop said.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Squatting by Beth, the cop felt for her pulse and didn’t find it. He stood.

  “Charlie,” he said. “We seem to have a murder here. Maybe you could postpone the impersonating-an-officer investigation till we solve this.”

  The red-faced cop looked at him a moment, and at me.

  “They dead?” he said.

  “She is. The guy seems like he’ll make it,” the black cop said.

  The red-faced cop walked past me and looked at Beth.

  “Shame,” he said.

  Two paramedics came in.

  “Broad’s dead,” the white cop said. “Work on the other guy?”

  One of the paramedics was a stocky blonde woman.

  “Lemme check,” she said, and crouched beside Beth. The male paramedic started on Gary.

  Charlie walked out into the foyer and began to talk on his radio. The black cop came to me.

  “My name’s Harper,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  I told him.

  “ID?”

  I took out my license and my carry permit. The black cop looked at it.

  “You carrying a weapon now?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’ll hold on to it for a while,” he said.

  I opened my coat so he could see the gun.

  “You can take it out,” Harper said. “Just go easy.”

  I took the gun off my hip and handed it to him. It was a short-barreled .38 revolver. Reliable. Easy to carry.

  “You hit anything with this?” Harper said.

  “Ten, fifteen feet,” I said.

  “All you need,” Harper said, and put the gun in a pocket of his uniform jacket.

  Belson came into the apartment with some crime-scene people and two homicide detectives.

  “This guy,” Charlie said, and looked at his notebook,

  “Spenser. He was impersonating a police officer.”

  Belson glanced at him.

  “We all thought that,” Belson said, “when he was a cop.”

  “Was carrying,” Harper said. “With a permit. I got the piece.”

  “Give it back to him,” Belson said.

  Harper shrugged and handed me my gun.

  Belson looked at the super.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “I’m the superintendent. He told me he was a cop.”

  Belson nodded.

  “Fucking crime wave in here,” he said.

  He nodded at one of the detectives.

  “Get a statement from the super,” he said.

  Then he looked at the paramedics.

  “Woman dead?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” the woman said. “Appears to be blunt-instrument trauma.”

  “Guy?”

  “He’s way out,” she said. “But vital signs are steady. He should come around.”

  “When?”

  The woman shrugged.

  “When he does,” she said.

  “You taking him to City?”

  “We call that Boston Medical Center now,” she said.

  “You taking him there?” Belson said.

  “Yes.”

  Belson turned to Harper and his partner.

  “You two go with him. Make sure nobody tries to finish the job. When he wakes up, call me.”

  “What about her?” the paramedic said.

  “Coroner will take her away. Right now she’s evidence.”

  The medics put Gary on a stretcher, stabilized him, and took him to the ambulance. Charlie and Harper went with them. Belson turned to me.

  “Impersonating a police officer,” Belson said.

  He was looking at the room as he talked to me. He always did that at a crime scene, and when he left, I knew he would have seen everything in the room, and he’d remember it.

  “Mea culpa,” I said.

  “How many times you done that now,” Belson said, “since I knew you?”

  “Sixty-three times, I think.”

  Belson nodded, still slowly absorbing the room.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said.

  Chapter66

  I DON’T KNOW QUITE why I left Boo out of it, but I did. When Gary woke up he’d tell them what happened, and they’d come for Boo. I wanted a little time to get there first. I didn’t quite know why I wanted to get there first. I left Vinnie out, too—professional courtesy. I said that I’d been watching her place and seen somebody suspicious-looking come out of the building. So I’d called on my cell and got no answer. The rest of it I told as it happened.

  I don’t think Frank bought it all, he came at it from a few different directions, but my story didn’t change and Frank let it go. He knew I hadn’t done it. And he knew that sooner or later, he and I were working the same side of the street.

  Mostly.

  I got to JP a little before midnight. There was a light on in the window of the second-floor apartment that Boo shared with Zel. I rang the bell. After a minute Zel came to the door, and looked out and saw it was me, and opened the door.

  “Trouble?” he said.

  “Where’s Boo?” I said.

  “He ain’t here, ain’t been home all day.”

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  Zel nodded and stepped aside. He closed the door behind me and preceded me up the dim stairway. He had a gun in his right hip pocket.

  In the kitchen, we sat on opposite sides of the table, under a single naked bulb.

  “What?” Zel said.

  I looked around the apartment. It wasn’t much. Two bedr
ooms, a bath, and a kitchen. The doors to all the other rooms were open to the kitchen. There was no sign of Boo.

  “Boo killed Beth Jackson tonight,” I said. “Beat her to death.”

  Zel didn’t move. He didn’t change his expression.

  “Cops know she’s dead, but they don’t know yet that it was Boo.”

  Zel nodded slightly.

  “But you do,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But they’ll know soon enough. Boo left an eyewitness alive.”

  Zel shook his head sadly.

  “Poor dumb bastard,” Zel said.

  “Gary Eisenhower,” I said. “He was unconscious when we found him, but when he wakes up, he’ll pretty sure be mentioning Boo’s name.”

  Zel nodded.

  “So why are you here,” Zel said.

  I paused. The room wasn’t much, but it was neat. No dirty dishes, no crumbs on the table. The refrigerator was old and made a lot of noise. Otherwise, there was no sound anywhere, and no sense that there was anyone alive in the building but me and Zel under the one-hundred-watt bulb.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just figured I oughta talk with you before the cops came to get him.”

  “Boo won’t want to go,” Zel said.

  “They’ll come in large numbers,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Zel said. “They do that.”

  He got up and got two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and gave me one and sat down again.

  “You know why he killed her?” I said.

  “I got an idea,” Zel said.

  I nodded.

  “Here’s my theory,” I said. “See what you think.”

  Zel nodded.

  “I figure she came on to him,” I said.

  Zel turned the beer bottle on the tabletop and didn’t say anything.

  “I figure she came on to him so she could get him to kill her husband,” I said.

  “Why’d she want him dead?” Zel said, watching the bottle as he turned it slowly, as if turning it just right was as important as anything he was going to do this day.

  “So she’d get his money,” I said. “And be with Gary Eisenhower.”

  “And why Boo?” Zel said.

  “She didn’t know anybody else,” I said. “She tried Tony Marcus, didn’t work.”

  “She thought it would?” Zel said.

  “She had a lot of faith in sex,” I said.

  Zel nodded and stopped twirling his bottle long enough to drink some beer.

  “So Boo goes for it and pops Jackson,” I said. “And she gets his dough and moves in with Gary and Estelle.”

  “Three of them,” Zel said.

  “Yep. I guess Estelle kind of liked the idea.”

  Zel shrugged.

  “But it didn’t work,” I said. “Pretty soon Beth wants all of Gary, and Estelle don’t like it.”

  Zel was twirling his bottle again. He hadn’t drunk much of his beer. I hadn’t drunk any of mine.

  “So,” I said. “Beth calls in Boo, and with the same gun he used on Jackson, he pops Estelle for her.”

  “Dumb,” Zel said, and shook his head sadly. “Dumb.”

  “So there’s Beth, thanks to Boo, right where she wants to be. Money, Gary”—I raised my hands—“what could be better.”

  Zel drank some beer.

  “But . . .”

  Zel nodded.

  “But Boo thinks that he’s done her these two huge favors,” I said. “So she’s supposed to love him.”

  “Boo never been with any women but whores, I think,” Zel said.

  “And Beth thinks that since she bopped him several times, she’s done him several huge favors,” I said, “and wants no more to do with him.”

  Zel nodded. His beer was gone. He got up and got another one from the refrigerator, looked at my bottle, saw that it was full, and sat down.

  “They had a confrontation a week or so ago,” I said. “He tries to talk with her, she shoves him and runs inside. Middle of the day, Boo stands for a while and walks away.”

  “You was following him?” Zel said.

  I shook my head.

  “Had a guy on her,” I said.

  “So you been thinking about her for a while,” Zel said.

  “Yes.”

  “Was the guy watching tonight?” Zel said.

  “Was through for the night,” I said. “And having a drink in the Taj bar. When he comes out, he sees Boo heading away from Gary’s apartment and calls me.”

  “And you figure Boo went over there, kicked in the door, decked her boyfriend, and beat her to death?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Why tonight?” Zel said.

  I shrugged.

  “Love unrequited,” I said. “The pressure built. He drink?”

  “Some,” Zel said. “I tried to keep him from drinking much, but he’s hard to control.”

  “Bad when he’s drunk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will he come back here?” I said.

  “Sooner or later,” Zel said. “Except I can shoot, I ain’t much, and Boo’s less. But we been together a long time.”

  “He’s killed three people,” I said.

  “He can’t do no time,” Zel said. “I tole you that.”

  “I can’t let him walk around loose,” I said.

  Zel looked at his beer bottle for a moment.

  “I know,” he said.

  We sat for a moment. Then I stood.

  “Thanks for the beer,” I said.

  And I left.

  Chapter67

  BOO CAME HOME about two-thirty this afternoon,” I said to Susan.

  “You have someone watching?” she said.

  “Vinnie,” I said. “And Hawk. Vinnie’s there now.”

  We were in Susan’s living room, upstairs from her office. Susan usually had a glass of wine after her last patient, and when I could, I liked to join her. In honor of that, Susan had stocked some Sam Adams Winter Ale, which I was especially fond of, and I was having some while she sipped her wine.

  “Did Gary wake up yet?” Susan said.

  “He’s coming around, Belson says. But he’s still foggy.”

  “What are you going to do about Boo?” Susan said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t want to turn him in,” Susan said.

  “He’s not right in the head,” I said.

  “And Beth exploited him,” Susan said.

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t let him go,” Susan said.

  “I know.”

  “So,” Susan said. “Basically you’re stalling.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “What do you hope will happen?” Susan said.

  “Mostly I’m hoping you’ll stop asking me about it,” I said.

  Susan looked at me silently for a moment.

  Then she said, “Wow. This is really bothering you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  Susan stood and went to the kitchen. She got a second bottle of Winter Ale from the refrigerator, popped the cap, brought the bottle back, and set it on the coffee table in front of me. Then she kissed me on the top of the head and went back and sat down on the couch. Pearl, who was sleeping at the other end of the couch with her head hanging over the arm, raised her head up for a minute and looked at Susan, saw that there was no food forthcoming, and put her head back down.

  “We won’t talk about Boo,” Susan said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “But we could talk about Beth and Estelle and Gary,” Susan said. “And their circle.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “In one way or another, they all earned what happened to them,” Susan said.

  “None of them earned getting murdered,” I said.

  “Does anyone?” Susan said.

  “Sometimes, maybe,” I said. “I don’t want to g
eneralize.”

  “No,” Susan said. “You almost never do. But at the heart of all this is their own behavior.”

  “Especially Gary,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Boys just want to have fun,” I said.

  “This boy exploited the pathologies of women,” Susan said.

  “And it caught up with him,” I said.

  “Pathologies are pathologies,” Susan said. “They don’t go away when you’re through using them.”

  I nodded.

  “Thing is,” I said. “He probably had no intention that any of this would happen.”

  “No,” Susan said. “Probably not. He’s just careless. And he went around spreading his careless good times.”

  “And making money at it.”

  “Yes, that makes it a little worse,” Susan said. “But I suspect that was just a nice side effect.”

  “Like a guy likes to go to the track,” I said. “He likes to hang around the paddock when the horses come out. He likes to look at them. Likes to handicap. Likes to watch them run. And if he happens to win some money, even better.”

  “But if he doesn’t win, he still goes to the track,” Susan said.

  “Yes.”

  “Fun-loving Gary,” Susan said.

  “And three people are dead,” I said.

  Susan smiled sadly.

  “And what do you think of your blue-eyed boy now?” she said.

  Chapter68

  I SPENT THE NIGHT with Susan, which improved my frame of mind, as it always did. She had early clients, so I was in my office at eight thirty-five the next morning. Neither Hawk nor Vinnie had seen any sign of Boo since he’d arrived home yesterday.

  I was pouring my second cup of coffee when Quirk came into my office and shut the door behind him.

  “Coffee?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Quirk said.

  He took off his overcoat and folded it carefully over the arm of Pearl’s sofa, then came and sat in a chair opposite my desk. I gave him a cup of coffee and went around my desk and sat down.

  “Gary Eisenhower’s awake,” Quirk said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He don’t remember a thing,” Quirk said.

  “Who hit him?” I said. “Nothing?”

  “He remembers the front doorbell,” Quirk said, “and opening the door.”

  “That’s it?”

  “So far,” Quirk said. “Doctors tell me it may come, may not. I guess he took a couple good shots to the head and probably hit the back of his head when he fell.”