The Professional (10 page)

She smiled.

“You think Chet would kill him? For me?”

I didn’t answer that, either.

“That’s kind of exciting,” Beth said. “Isn’t that kind of fun? Like an old-fashioned movie. You know? Men killing each other over me?”

“It’s probably less fun than it looks,” I said.

“Oh, poo,” she said. “I can handle Chet.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe Gary can’t.”

“So it is Chet?”

“Might be,” I said.

Christmas carols were playing. Many people were carrying packages with Christmas wrapping. It was like being in a commercial. I looked at Beth. I could see the tip of her tongue as she ran it back and forth over her lower lip.

“Well, I’m not backing off,” she said.

“Of course not,” I said. “What’s the most interesting thing about him?”

“Interesting?”

“Unusual, maybe,” I said. “What’s different about him?”

“That’s easy. He is into it all the way.”

“Is he more intense than other men?” I said.

“He is all over you. He gets hold of you, and you better like it, because if you don’t, you’re going to have to do it anyway, you know?”

“Forceful,” I said.

She nodded.

“And you like forceful?” I said.

“Yeahhhh,” she said.

She was breathing fast, now, as if she had just run up stairs. And the tip of her tongue was running fast back and forth across her lower lip. When she spoke her voice sounded a little hoarse.

“You get off on this?” Beth said. “Talking about it?”

“Which do you like best?” I said. “Being with Gary or thinking that someone might try to kill him because of it?”

She put her steepled fingers to her mouth again and pressed and turned her head a little so that she was looking at me from the corners of her eyes.

“Both are nice,” she said.

MY FURTHER RESEARCH into Susan’s theories of the case began the next morning. I called Abigail Larson and asked her if she could stop by my office. She seemed happy to be asked.

She arrived about four in the afternoon dressed to the nines and smelling of martini. She arranged herself in one of my client chairs and crossed her legs. Her skirt was short.

“I thought you were off the case,” she said.

“Mostly because I have no case,” I said. “But I’m a nosy guy, and in my free time I still poke around at it.”

“Well,” she said.

“Can we talk about you and Gary a little?”

“Sure,” she said. “But first, can a girl get a martini around here?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m a full-service gumshoe.”

“Up,” she said. “With olives.”

I went to the little alcove where I had a refrigerator and a small cabinet, and made her a martini. I served it to her in a lowball glass.

“Sorry about the glass,” I said. “I haven’t gotten around yet to specialty glassware.”

“Just so it contains alcohol,” Abigail said.

I went back around my desk and sat. She drank some martini.

“God, that’s good,” she said. “I like a man that can make a good martini.”

“Me, too,” I said.

She didn’t need a drink. She was drunk when she arrived. On the other hand, drunks are often talkative. The martini I gave her was big.

“Could I ask you some stuff about your sex life with Gary?”

“Well, aren’t you quite the voyeur,” she said.

She pronounced “quite” like “quit.”

“It’s an incidental benefit,” I said. “Is there anything about Gary’s behavior during sex that stands out in your memory.”

“Hoo,” she said. “You go right to it, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said.

“Turn you on to talk about it?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s talk about it and see.”

“Men are weird,” she said.

“You bet,” I said. “What was there about him during sex that made him different, unusual, whatever?”

“Like was he big or not?” she said.

“Anything that seemed different from other men,” I said.

“I had a lot other men, ya know,” she said.

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “How was Gary different.”

She uncrossed her legs and slumped a little in the chair while she thought, or tried to. Her legs were straight out in front of her. The short skirt crept up her thighs a little higher.

“John . . . husband . . . just lays there, makes me do all the work, you know?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Gary, he grabs hold of you . . .”

“And does the work?”

“Yes . . . no . . . holds me down, like . . .”

She stopped and looked at me blankly for a moment, then closed her eyes and began to slide slowly out of the chair. I got out around the desk in time to keep her off the floor, although her skirt was up around her waist. I got my arms around her under the arms, and got her up and sort of waltzed her slowly across my office toward the couch. She tried to kiss me as we went, and got the side of my mouth. I got her there and down onto the couch and straightened her legs, and pulled down her skirt.

Then I went back to my desk and got out a yellow pad and made a couple of notes. So far I had learned several things. Abigail Larson was a boozer. Her husband was not a sexual athlete. She bought lingerie at La Perla. None of which seemed very useful. But it was all I was going to get today. I couldn’t think of anything else to do but sit with her until she woke up. Which eventually she did. But she didn’t feel chatty. And I sent her home in a cab.

IN THE NEXT couple of days I talked with the rest of the gang of four and learned more than I ever wanted to know about having sex with Gary Eisenhower.

“It was like a rape fantasy sometimes,” Nancy said.

“And you didn’t mind?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I’ve told you what I’m like.”

“So you enjoyed the fantasy,” I said.

She was silent a moment. Then, in a small voice, she said, “Yes.”

Later I talked with Susan about it.

“None of that seems very enlightening,” she said.

“Not to me. I was hoping it would to you.”

Susan shook her head.

“About the rape fantasy thing?” I said.

“That was Nancy Sinclair?”

“Yeah.”

“I suspect that tells us more about Nancy than it does about Gary,” Susan said.

“Maybe he is just what he seems to be,” I said.

“A happy-go-lucky cockhound?” Susan said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you ever come across somebody like that in your business?”

“People who are what they seem to be,” Susan said, “generally don’t seek psychotherapy.”

“Good point,” I said. “But as far as I can see, this is one of those instances when the cigar is just a cigar.”

“Maybe you should talk to Clarice Richardson again,” Susan said.

“Because she’s smart enough to understand what she may have experienced,” I said.

“Yes.”

Susan was between patients. I was sitting in her office, across the desk from her. I was silent for a little while. I eyed the couch against the wall to my right.

“Anybody actually lie down on that thing?” I said.

“I believe you and I have,” Susan said.

“I mean for therapy.”

“You and I have,” Susan said.

“Not that kind of therapy,” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “It is kind of a cliché, but some people find it very helpful.”

I nodded. Neither of us spoke for a little while.

Then I said, “I can’t do it by phone.”

“No need,” Susan said. “I’m sure she’ll see you.”

“Care for another trip to Hartland?” I said.

“No,” Susan said.

“Two hours out, two hours back,” I said.

“An easy day trip,” Susan said.

“What about the naked frolic in the Hartland motel?”

“Nothing to stop you,” Susan said.

“By myself?”

“Whatever floats your boat . . . snookums.”

CLARICE RICHARDSON CAME around her desk and shook my hand when I entered her office.

“Come in,” she said. “Sit down. I’m glad to see you.”

I looked around.

“No campus cop this time,” I said.

“You’ve charmed me into submission,” she said.

“Happens all the time,” I said.

“I assume you are still chasing Goran,” she said.

“I’m trying to figure him out,” I said.

Clarice smiled.

“You, too,” she said.

“You mentioned when we talked last that when you were intimate, he seemed very strong.”

“Yes,” she said.

She smiled and looked away from me out at the now wintry landscape of her college.

“I attributed it to passion,” she said.

“Susan suggested that it hints of sadism,” I said.

“And she thought you should ask me about that?”

“She thinks you’re the only one intelligent enough to understand your experience.”

Clarice nodded.

“But not intelligent enough to have avoided it.”

“Nobody gets out of here alive,” I said.

She nodded.

“I didn’t think of it at the time, but perhaps there was something . . . I’m not sure sadistic is exactly right . . . but vengeful, perhaps.”

I nodded.

“Can you give me an example?” I said.

She blushed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I made this bed, so to speak. If I have to lie in it, I have to lie in it.”

I might not have chosen that metaphor. But maybe if I felt guilty . . .

“He would say things,” she said. “When he was . . . in me, he would say things like ‘Got you now, don’t I?’ ”

“Say it often?” I said.

“Things like that,” she said.

“You think he had some animosity toward women?” I said.

“I never felt it,” she said. “But in the circumstance, I was not at my most analytic, I fear.”

“None of us is,” I said. “Why do you suppose he had an affair with you?”

Clarice smiled.

“He found me attractive?” she said.

“Almost certainly,” I said.

“And available,” Clarice said.

“Were you wearing your wedding ring?” I said.

“I was,” Clarice said.

“Even though you were, ah, trolling?”

“Maybe I was ambivalent,” she said. “Maybe I didn’t want to admit to myself I was trolling. Maybe I didn’t want to look like an old maid.”

“Fat chance,” I said.

She smiled faintly.

“Thank you,” she said.

“So he knew you were married,” I said.

“But not to wealth,” she said.

“Maybe the wealth was an afterthought.”

She nodded.

“The thing is,” Clarice said, “in an odd way, Eric and I owe this man a great deal. If I had not been with him, and if he had not tried to blackmail me, I don’t think either Eric or I would have found the strength to get help with our problems . . . nor to solve them.”

“But you did,” I said.

“Yes.”

I stood.

“I won’t bother you again,” I said.

And I left.

I TALKED WITH SUSAN on the phone for nearly an hour before we hung up. It was dark outside. My apartment was nearly still. There was a fire going, and the hiss of the logs supplied the only sound. I sat at my kitchen counter with a scotch and soda in a tall glass, with a lot of ice.

Was I involved in this thing because it resonated with me and Susan a long time ago? It had happened to me before. I didn’t think I was, but I had learned enough to know that motivation, including my own, was often murky.

I sipped my scotch and looked at the fire.

One of my problems was trying to figure out which side I was on. I wasn’t even sure how I wanted things to turn out. I had some sympathy for the women in the case, more for some than for others. I kind of liked Gary. The cuckolded husbands deserved some sympathy, but maybe some blame, or at least some of them.

I drank the rest of my scotch and made another drink.

I wasn’t exactly sure what real crime had been committed. I didn’t want Regina and Clifford Hartley’s complicated but functioning marriage to be destroyed. I thought it would be a shame if Nancy went on through life thinking her sexuality was a sickness. Abigail was a drunk. Beth was . . . I didn’t know what Beth was, but it wasn’t good.

But there was something wrong with the whole setup. Everything kept turning out not to be quite what it started out seeming to be. There was a lot of bottled-up stuff lying around, and Boo and Zel were rattling around like loose ball bearings. So why did I care? One reason was that no one else had hired me to do anything, and I like to work. It might have had to do with me being stubborn.

I drank some scotch. It was clarifying. People always claimed it was a bad sign if you started drinking alone. I always thought to sit quietly and alone and drink a little now and then was valuable. Especially if you have a fire to look at. What was it Churchill said? “I have taken more from alcohol than alcohol has ever taken from me.” Something like that. Good enough for Winnie, I thought, good enough for me.

I took my glass to my front window and looked down at Marl-borough Street. The lights in the brick and brownstone buildings seemed very homey. Outside it was dark and cold. Inside was light and warmth. There were people living there together, some of them happily, some not.

Sometimes I thought that Susan was the only thing in life that I cared about. But I knew that if it were actually so, it would destroy us. We both needed to work. We had to do things. Making moon eyes at Susan was not a sufficient career. It was cases like the one I was on that reminded me now and then that I could care about other things.

There was more sex in this case than I’d seen in a while, but none of it seemed connected to love. I realized as I looked out my window at the still city street that one of the things I was looking for in this mess was something grounded in love. Maybe the Hartleys, in their odd and bearded marriage, might be driven by love. Maybe not. Clarice Richardson’s reformation and triumph might have been grounded in love. But it could have been grounded in guilt, and survival . . . and courage.

“Good for you, Clarice,” I said. “Either way.”

As I drank my final scotch, I decided that I had two things to do next. One, I had to defuse Chet Jackson, and second, I had to find out a little more about Gary Eisenhower, aka Goran Pappas. Having a plan made me feel decisive, or maybe it was the three scotches.