The Professional - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,14

that work for you?” Quirk said.

“It didn’t,” I said.

“Disappointing,” Quirk said.

“Makes me feel old,” I said.

“Want me to stop by and have a talk with him?” Quirk said. “Unofficially?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t think he’d care,” I said.

“About the homicide commander?” Quirk said.

“I don’t think cops worry him,” I said.

“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?”

Chapter15

SUSAN AND I made 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.

Chapter16

WE WERE ALL in 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?”