Robert Parker - The Professional

“Now I feel old,” Quirk said.

“This is a pretty cool guy,” I said. “He knows what he’s doing, and he doesn’t seem to scare.”

“Like you and me,” Quirk said.

“Yeah, but he’s better-looking,” I said.

“Than you and me?” Quirk said. “How is that possible?”

SUSAN AND Imade love on Sunday morning at her place with the bedroom door closed and Pearl grumbling unhappily outside it. When we were through, Susan whisked the covers up over us, as she always did, and we lay quietly on the bed for a while.

“You know, don’t you,” Susan said, “that I was a cheerleader at Swampscott High School?”

“I do know that,” I said.

Susan flipped the covers back and rolled out of bed, and stood naked beside it.

“Sis-boom-bah,” she said, and jumped into the air and kicked her heels back.

“Is that in honor of my performance?” I said.

“Ours,” she said. “And us.”

I nodded.

“Sis-boom-bah,” I said.

Susan opened the bedroom door and Pearl bounded in, jumped on the bed, turned around maybe fifteen times, and flopped down where Susan had been. I looked at her. Then I looked at Susan.

“There’s a definite difference,” I said.

“ Pearl was never a cheerleader,” Susan said.

We showered and dressed, which took me considerably less time than it took Susan. She was just snapping her bra when I headed for the kitchen to start breakfast. Pearl stayed where she was.

By the time I had made my whole-wheat blackberry pancakes and put them on the plates, she came out with her face on and her clothes in place. It was weekend informal, a scoop-neck black T-shirt, jeans, and loafers. But everything fit her so perfectly and she was so beautiful that I felt the same rush of amazement and triumph I always felt in moments like these.

She sat at the table and sipped her orange juice. I put the pot of coffee on the table and sat across from her and looked at her. She looked back at me, and finished her orange juice, and said something that sounded like “hum,” which I knew to be positive. I drank some orange juice and poured us some coffee. Pearl sat attentively beside the table. I would have been quite willing to discuss the particulars of what Susan and I had just done together, but I knew it violated some inward standard of privacy that she maintained. Sex is good; talking about it afterward is not good. So I shut up. Shutting up rarely leads to anything bad.

“I was thinking about your person,” she said.

“You’re my person,” I said.

“No, no, I mean the Gary Eisenhower person. Did you tell me he has sex every day?”

“Seems to,” I said.

“With people he doesn’t love,” she said.

“That’s my impression,” I said.

“What do you think of that?” she said.

“Sounds great,” I said. “But, present company excluded, of course, it is really an adolescent fantasy, which, humor aside, most adult men would get bored with.”

“Would you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“With me?” she said.

“Never been tested.”

“Do you think we make love enough?” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said. “And very high quality.”

She nodded and took a small bite of pancake.

“Yum,” she said. “Blackberries.”

“Did I pass?” I said.

“Pass?”

“The little quiz you just gave me,” I said. “Did I pass?”

She smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “But I was actually thinking about Gary Whosis.”

“You think he wouldn’t pass?”

“I think if he does in fact have sex with as many women as often as he does, that there’s something more than simple pleasure.”

“That would be true of us,” I said.

“That our sex life is about more than simple pleasure?”

“Yes.”

“True, and what is it?”

I grinned at her.

“Love?”

“That would be my guess,” Susan said.

I grinned at her.

“Sis-boom-bah!” I said.

WE WERE ALLin the conference room again, me, Elizabeth Shaw, and the gang of four, as Gary had named them.

“His real name is Goran Pappas,” I said. “He also uses the name Elliot Herzog. He lives on Beacon Street, just before it climbs the hill. He’s done time for swindling. He appears to have preselected you, using information provided him by a woman at the health club. There appear to be other women in his life beyond you four.”

“His name is Goran?” Regina said.

“He uses the nickname Gary,” I said.

“Gary Pappas?” she said.

“How’d you find all this out?” Abigail Larson said.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

“No, really, how do you know?” Abigail said.

I looked inscrutable.

“Vee haf our vays,” I said.

“It seems to me our next question,” Elizabeth said, “is now that we have him located, what steps can we take to contain him?”

The women looked at one another. Then they all looked at me.

“What should we do?” Nancy said.

“He’s a blackmailer,” I said. “We could arrest him.”

“Would we have to testify?” Nancy said.

“Yes.”

Abigail looked at Elizabeth.

“Is that true?”

“You’re the victims,” Elizabeth said. “You’d have to make the complaint. You’d have to testify in court, if the case went there. We could probably keep it fairly low-key, with luck.”

“But my husband would have to know,” Nancy said.

“Very likely,” Elizabeth said.

“Then I won’t do it,” Nancy said.

I looked around the room. All of the women were shaking their heads.

“Couldn’t you just make him stop?” Regina said. “You know, beat him up or something?”

“Several things against that,” I said. “One, I don’t like doing it. Two, it’s illegal. Three, I believe that if I did, he’d blow the whistle on you.”

“Blow the whistle?” Abigail said.

“Send evidence of your infidelity to your husbands,” I said.

Everybody sat. No one said anything. Everybody looked at one another.

Finally Regina said in a very soft voice, “Could you kill him?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you know someone who would?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Could you get him to do it?”

“No,” I said.

“But why?” Regina said.

“That’s enough,” Elizabeth said. “There will be no more talk of that nature from any of you, if you wish me to continue as your attorney.”

Everyone was quiet, as if they’d been chastised by the teacher.

“I could try to arrange some kind of payoff,” I said.

“He wants so much,” Beth said.

“How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars a month,” Beth said.

“From each of you?”

The other women nodded.

“I have access to some money of my own. Chet is very generous,” Beth said. “But I can’t keep paying out that kind of money without eventually having to turn to him.”

The other women nodded in agreement.

“Can you come up with one big payoff?” I said. “I might be able to persuade him to take it and move on, rather than have me on his case all the time.”

“I can’t without Chet knowing,” Beth said.

“Me, either,” Abigail said.

The two others shook their heads. I looked at Elizabeth.

“Counselor?” I said.

“I’m a trust lawyer,” she said. “I don’t know what we should do.”

I stood up.

“Good luck,” I said.

Nobody said anything, but they all looked at me mournfully as I moved toward the door. I shrugged.

“Can’t win ’em all,” I said.