The Professional - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,17

my life.”

“Regina?” I said.

“I feel the same way,” she said.

I leaned back in my chair. Pearl snored gently on the couch.

“Then fess up,” I said.

“You mean tell everyone?” Regina said. “No! No, no, no!”

“Tell the truth,” I said. “And you’ve taken away his every weapon.”

“It would destroy my candidacy,” Clifford said.

“Maybe,” I said. “Say it did. You’d still have your life.”

“No, Clifford,” Regina said. “I won’t let you do this to us.”

“Would you lose your income?” I said.

“I inherited a considerable estate from my father,” he said.

“Essentially, I manage it.”

“So your job is safe.”

He smiled faintly again.

“Yes,” he said.

I spread my hands and turned both palms up.

“The truth will set you free,” I said.

“No,” Regina said. “I won’t have you do this. We’ve wanted this for all of our marriage. You cannot give it up now that it’s so close.”

I looked at him.

“She’s right,” he said. “I can’t give it up. Not now. For both our sakes.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Can’t you think of anything to do?” Regina said.

I looked at Pearl. She was asleep upside down with her feet draped over the back of the couch and her head hanging off. She appeared not to have thought of anything, either.

“Not yet,” I said.

Chapter19

I SEE IT ALL THE TIME in my patients,” Susan said. “There is a way to save themselves and they won’t take it. Can’t take it.”

We had a table by the window at Sorellina. Susan was sipping a martini, up with olives. I had a Dewar’s and soda. I was sipping, too. It was just that my sips were much bigger than Susan’s.

“Hell,” I said. “If their fears are realized, he’ll lose the nomination anyway.”

“It’s too bad,” Susan said. “They seem to have achieved a life many people wish they could have. They have, apparently, a stable, loving relationship and sex lives that fulfill them.”

“So they say.”

“You don’t believe them?” Susan said.

“I don’t believe them or not believe them,” I said. “We’ll see.”

“Well, say they are telling the truth,” Susan said. “They’re together. They have enough money.”

“Yep.”

“The American dream,” Susan said. “Or one version of it.”

“Yep.”

“But because it’s a variation on the traditional dream,” Susan said, “this man has the power to destroy them.”

“It’s a power they’ve given him,” I said.

“What would you do?” Susan said.

“I’d call a press conference. Tell everybody everything, and if they didn’t like it they could vote for my opponent.”

“But you wouldn’t run for political office anyway,” Susan said.

“ ‘If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve,’ ” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“How about you?”

“Would I confess to save the life we have?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Absolutely.”

“And should we live separate sexual lives?” I said.

“Do you want to?” Susan said.

“No.”

“Me, either,” Susan said.

“So let’s not,” I said.

“Okay.”

She picked up her menu. I had a large sip of my scotch, which emptied the glass. I asked our waiter for more.

“I been reading Gary Eisenhower’s folder,” I said. “I got it from Quirk. He was blackmailing a woman named Clarice Richardson. They’d had an affair, same MO, pictures, audiotapes.”

“Married with a rich husband?” Susan said.

“Married,” I said. “But not to a rich man. She was the president of a small liberal-arts college in Hartland. I think it’s all women.”

“Outside of Springfield?” Susan said.

“Yeah. She was afraid she’d lose her husband, for whom she cared. And her job, for which she cared.”

“I think I’ll have the raw tuna,” Susan said.

“But she didn’t have enough money to keep making her payments.”

“So she went to the police?” Susan said.

“And Gary did three in Shirley.”

Susan had put her menu down.

“So what happened to her?” Susan said.

“I thought you and I could go out to Hartland and find out.”

“You and I?”

“Yeah.”

“Will we visit the Basketball Hall of Fame?” Susan said.

“Sure.”

“How about the Springfield Armory?” Susan said.

“Absolutely.”

“Anything else?”

“When we weren’t investigating, and sightseeing,” I said, “we could frolic naked in our motel room.”

Susan stared at me for a while.

“I am a nice Jewish girl from Swampscott,” she said. “I have a Ph.D. from Harvard. Do you seriously think I would wish to frolic naked in a motel room outside of Springfield?”

“How about Chicopee?” I said.

Susan looked at me in silence for a moment while she took another sip of her martini. The she nodded her head slowly and smiled.

“Springfield it is,” she said.

Her smile was like sunrise.

Chapter20

SPRINGFIELD IS A CITY of about 150,000 on the Connecticut River in Western Mass, near the Connecticut line. Hartland is a small town about fifteen miles upriver. We checked in to the William Pynchon Motel on