Robert Parker: The Professional

I nodded.

“Where you going?” I said.

“Away,” Zel said.

“Happening place,” I said.

He stood. I sat. Neither of us spoke.

Finally he said, “Boo’s dead.”

I nodded.

“You do it?” I said.

“Yeah,” Zel said.

“Means he won’t have to do time,” I said.

“He come home in the afternoon, sort of all jeeped up, you know. Talking real fast, not sitting down, and I told him you’d been there, and what you said about him and Beth. And he’s listening, but he’s sort of walking around like before a fight, you know? He’s moving his shoulders, bouncing a little on his toes. Moving his fists like he’s warming up.”

I nodded.

“So I ask him, did he do it?” Zel said.

“And he stops everything, stands there like a statue, and looks at me. ‘Yeah,’ he tells me. ‘I done her.’ ”

I took in some air.

“And I ask him, ‘Why?’ ” Zel said. “And he tells me she’s a lying bitch and didn’t mean nothing she told him, and she just said what she said and done what she done so he’d do stuff for her.”

“Like kill her husband and Estelle,” I said.

Zel nodded.

“He was right,” I said.

“Yeah,” Zel said. “So I say to him he’s been up all night and he needs some rest, and why don’t he go to bed for a while. Boo don’t sleep well, and I give him sleeping pills sometimes when he needs them. So I gave him a couple and say go lie on your bed.”

“So he goes,” I said.

“Yeah, but it takes a little while. He’s going on about he’s glad he done it, and he’s gonna kill anybody comes for him. And I tell him go to sleep, and when he wakes up we’ll figure everything out.”

Zel’s voice was flat. For all the affect in it, he could have been reading a laundry list.

“And Boo’s getting sleepy now, from the pills, so he goes in and lies on his bed. I go in with him, and he says to me, ‘You’re with me on this, Zel.’ And I say, ‘All the way, Boo, like always.’ And he nods and closes his eyes. I go out, and in about a half-hour I go back in. He’s asleep… lying on his side… and I shot him in the back of the head… and wiped down the gun and left it on the bed… Same gun killed Jackson and Estelle.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah, I never let Boo own a gun.”

“You know he took it to do the shooting?”

“Yeah,” Zel said. “I showed him how to shoot it.”

“Can it be traced to you?” I said.

“No.”

“So,” I said. “Why you telling me this.”

“Boo’s pretty hard to like,” Zel said. “You treated him as good as you could.”

I nodded.

“You gonna tell the cops about me?” Zel said.

“No,” I said.

Zel stood silently. He looked past me out the window. Then he turned and walked to my door, and opened it, and stopped and looked back at me.

“Now you know,” Zel said, and went out.

I looked at the empty doorway for a while, then I took a big breath, and picked up the phone, and called Quirk.

Robert B. Parker began writing in 1971 while teaching at Boston 's Northeastern University. Now as the author of nearly 50 books, he is acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction and was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America (2002). His novels featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser have earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim. The Spenser character inspired the television series Spenser: For Hire and a number of made-for-television films. He and his wife, Joan, live in the Boston area.