Robert Parker - The Professional

“She’s kind of scary,” Susan said.

“Yeah, she’s big,” I said. “But for simple ferocity, I like your chances.”

The secretary stood and said, “President Richardson will see you now.”

CLARICE RICHARDSONstood when we came in. I had no real idea what a standard-issue college president looked like, but I was pretty sure Clarice Richardson wasn’t it. She had to be in her early fifties, but she looked ten years younger. She had the kind of patrician face that you see around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill, and sandy hair cut short. She was wearing a cropped black leather jacket over a pencil skirt, black hose, and black boots with two-and-a-half-inch heels. She wore very little jewelry, except for a wedding ring, and her makeup was understated but expert. Especially expert around the eyes. She had big eyes, like Susan, and she crackled with a warm, intelligent sexuality that would call to you across a crowded cocktail party. She wasn’t quite Susan, but together in a relatively small room, Susan didn’t overpower her.

The big female cop stood against the wall behind and to my right of Clarice’s big modern desk. There was a modern credenza in the bay behind the desk, in front of the big picture window. On it were pictures of a gray-haired man with a beard, two young women, and a white bull terrier.

“Mr. Spenser?” Clarice said.

“Yes, ma’am, and this is my associate, Dr. Silverman.”

If you have it, you may as well flaunt it.

“Susan,” Susan said.

“Really,” Clarice said. “Doctor of what, Susan?”

“I have a Ph.D. in psychology,” Susan said. “I’m a therapist.”

“Where did you do your doctorate?”

“Harvard,” Susan said.

“Really? I did, too,” Clarice said. “In history. When were you there?”

Susan told her. Clarice shook her head.

“I was there before you,” she said.

“But we’re both really smart,” Susan said.

Clarice smiled.

“We must be,” she said, and looked at me. “Because you said you wished to discuss a very charged subject, I have taken the liberty of asking Officer Wysocki to join us.”

Officer Wysocki nodded. I nodded back. I had the strong impression she didn’t like me.

“May I speak freely?” I said. “President Richardson.”

“You may,” said Clarice. “And please, call me Clarice.”

“I’m a private detective,” I said. “In Boston. I was employed recently by a group of women to locate a man who is blackmailing them. He was using the name Gary Eisenhower, but his real name as far as I can tell is Goran Pappas.”

“Susan works with you?”

“Susan is with me,” I said. “I thought she might be helpful in our conversation. And in truth, when she’s not around, I miss her.”

Clarice nodded. I looked at the photographs on the credenza.

“Your husband?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Your daughters?”

“Yes, and our dog, Cannon. The girls used to call him Cannon Ball, but we shortened it to Cannon.”

“And you’re all together?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you are still the president of this college,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So standing up to Pappas may have cost you a lot, but it didn’t cost you everything,” I said.

“In fact,” she said. “It saved everything.”

“Good,” I said. “Can you tell me about it?”

Clarice looked at Susan.

“He seems an unusual private detective,” she said. “Something of a romantic. Should I trust him?”

“Not if you have something you don’t want him to know,” Susan said.

“Did he bring you along, and tell me he’d miss you if he didn’t, to impress me? So I would, so to speak, lower my guard. Or was he sincere?”

“Both,” Susan said. “He is romantic. He understands things. And we love one another. But he is also the hardest man I have ever met, when he thinks it’s necessary, and I guess you should know that, too.”

“Suze,” I said. “I didn’t bring you along to blow my cover.”

Clarice smiled.

“I’m sorry to discuss you like this, as if you were a wall sconce,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand. Harvard girls.”

“Exactly,” Clarice said.

“Pappas has a hold on a number of people, such as he had on you,” I said. “I’m trying to figure how to get them loose.”

“Tell the truth,” Clarice said.

“They won’t.”

Clarice nodded.

“It is idle to tell them they should,” she said, and looked at Susan. “Is it not, Dr. Silverman?”

“It is,” Susan said.

“So if you can tell me what you can about your experience with Pappas,” I said, “maybe it’ll help.”

She nodded.

“Trudy,” she said to the big cop. “It’s okay, you can go. I’ll be fine.”

“I can wait outside, Clarice,” Trudy said.

“No, thank you, Trudy. Go ahead.”

Trudy nodded and looked at me hard and left. Clarice watched her go and then turned in her chair toward me and crossed her legs.

“How shall we begin,” she said.

I fought off the urge to say “Start at the beginning .”

Instead I said, “Tell it any way that makes sense to you.”

She leaned back a little in her chair and looked for a moment at the pictures on her credenza, and took in a long breath and let it out, and said, “Okay.”

MY HUSBAND’S NAME IS ERIC,”she said. “Eric Richardson. I met him in graduate school. We’ve been married for twenty-five years. He is a professor of history at this college.”

As she talked I could look past the family pictures and out onto the campus. The day was overcast. No students were in sight. The maple trees had shed their leaves for the season and looked sort of spectral.

“About seven years ago,” Clarice said, “for reasons not relevant to this discussion, Eric and I became estranged. We didn’t actually separate. But we separated emotionally. I know we loved one another through the whole time, but we also hated each other.”

She looked at Susan. Susan nodded.

“The girls were away at school, and we were”-she paused and glanced out the window-“here.”

“Not a lot of options here,” I said. “If it isn’t working at home.”

“No,” Clarice said. “Though we both sought them.”

“And Goran Pappas was one?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was calling himself Gary Astor at the time.”

“Gary Astor,” I said.

She smiled without much pleasure.

“I know,” she said. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“In retrospect,” I said.

She held her smile for a moment.

“I was at an alumnae function in Albany,” she said, “when I met him in the hotel bar. He was, of course, charming.”

She paused again and looked out at the gray campus.

“And I, of course, was starved for charm,” she said. “He was relaxed, he was funny, he obviously thought I was wonderful, and sexy, and amazing. We talked all evening and went our separate ways. But we agreed to have drinks the next night, and we did, and then we went to my room.”

We were silent for a time. Until Susan spoke.

“And so it began,” she said.

Clarice nodded.

“We began to meet regularly at a hotel in Springfield,” she said. “Near the Civic Center. It was quite lovely for several months… except for the guilt.”

Susan nodded.

“And your husband?” Susan said.

“Eric is,” Clarice said, “or he was at that time, the kind of man who tends to hunch his shoulders, and lower his head, and wait for the storm to pass.”

“So no solace there,” Susan said.