The Professional (11 page)

I washed my empty glass and put it away. I put a steak on the kitchen grill. In a sauté pan, I cooked onions, peppers, mushrooms, and a handful of frozen corn with olive oil, rosemary, and a splash of sherry. I had some herbed biscuits left from Sunday when Susan and I had breakfast. I warmed them in the oven and when everything was ready, I ate.

And drank some beer.

THE FIRST TWO PEOPLE I saw when I went into Buddy Fox’s were Ty-Bop and Junior. Ty-Bop was a skinny kid, strung out on something. He did the gun work. Junior was the size of Des Moines but meaner. He did the muscle work.

“Junior,” I said. “How’s it going with Weight Watchers?”

“You looking to see Tony?” Junior said.

Ty-Bop stared at me as he jittered against the back wall of the restaurant, listening to his iPod. He showed no sign of recognition, although he’d seen me probably a hundred times. His eyes were empty. His face was empty. He shot at what Tony told him to shoot at and, as best as I could tell, had no other interests except controlled substances and whatever music he was listening to. I don’t think I’d ever heard him speak. But he could shoot. He might have been as good as Vinnie, maybe even Chollo, who was the best I’d ever seen.

“Wait here,” Junior said.

He went past the bar and down a hall. Ty-Bop looked at me blankly. I grinned at him.

“How are things, Ty-Bop?” I said.

He jived a little and his head might have moved, but it was probably to the music.

“Listening to a different drummer?” I said.

Ty-Bop’s expression didn’t change.

“Good,” I said. “I like an upbeat approach.”

The room showed little sign that the South End had undergone considerable social change in the last twenty years. I was still the only white face in the room. Junior returned and jerked his head at me. I gave Ty-Bop a friendly thumbs-up and followed Junior past the bar. He was so big he could barely fit into the hallway, and both of us were too much. He stepped aside and gestured for me to walk past him.

“You know the door,” he said.

“Like my own,” I said, and walked on down the hall.

Tony’s office was small and without much in the way of ostentation. Tony was in there with Arnold, who was his driver. Arnold didn’t shoot as well as Ty-Bop or muscle as well as Junior. But he was a nice combination of both skills, and he had a little class. He was handsome as hell. And dressed great.

“Arnold,” I said.

“Spenser.”

Arnold was sitting on a straight chair, turned around so he could rest his forearms on the chair back. Tony was behind his desk. A little soft around the neck and jawline. But very dignified-looking, with a scatter of gray in his short hair, and none in his carefully trimmed mustache. As always, he was dressed up. Dark suit, white shirt, maroon silk tie and pocket hankie. He was smoking a long, thin cigar.

“Tony,” I said. “Do you color your mustache?”

Tony Marcus smiled.

“Actually, motherfucker,” he said, “I color my whole body. In real life, I’m a honkie.”

“Nope,” I said. “No white guy can say ‘motherfucker’ like you do.”

Tony nodded.

“Whaddya want?” he said.

“Need a favor,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Tony said. “Been hoping some wiseass snow cone would come in and ask for a favor.”

“You want me to pat him down?” Arnold said to Tony.

“No need,” Tony said.

“He’s got a gun,” Arnold said. “I can tell the way his coat hangs.”

Tony looked at Arnold.

“You done work with him, you think we need to worry ’bout the gun?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Tony said, and turned to me, and raised his eyebrows.

“Know a guy named Chet Jackson?” I said.

“Who wants to know?” Tony said.

“That would be me,” I said. “I look like some kind of bicycle messenger?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“He’s a danger to someone I sort of represent,” I said.

“And you can’t stop him?”

“Not without killing somebody,” I said.

“So?” Tony said.

“Not my style,” I said.

“So have Hawk do it for you,” Tony said.

“Also not my style.”

“But it your style to come ask me,” Tony said. “A simple African-American trying to get along in a flounder-belly world?”

“Exactly,” I said.

Tony smiled.

“I know Chet Jackson,” he said.

“You have any clout with him?”

“I might,” Tony said. “Pretty much got clout wherever I need it.”

“So much for the simple African-American,” I said.

Tony smiled again.

“You knew that was bullshit when you heard it,” he said. “I don’t know if I owe you anything or not. But you done me some favors.”

“Cast your bread upon the waters,” I said.

“Sure,” Tony said. “Tell me a story.”

I told him as much as he needed to know. Tony listened without interrupting while he smoked his cigar. When I was done, he put the cigar out in a big glass ashtray on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

“What the fuck,” he said, “are you doing mixed up in crap like that?”

“I ask myself that from time to time,” I said. “But I’m a romantic, Tony. You know that.”

“Whatever that means,” he said.

We sat. Tony got out a new cigar and trimmed it and lit it, and got it going evenly, turning the cigar barrel slowly in the flame of Arnold’s lighter.

“So how you want to do this?” he said.

ACCORDING TO his police folder, Goran Pappas had graduated in the top quarter of his Richdale High School class and gone on to Wickton College on a basketball scholarship.

Wickton was a small liberal-arts college just across the New Hampshire line, south of Jaffrey. I spent the next day there and worked my way slowly through a host of reticent academics to arrive late in the day in the office of the director of counseling services. According to the plaque on her desk, her name was Mary Brown, Ph.D.

“Dr. Brown,” I said. “My name is Spenser. I’m a detective. I’ve been wandering your campus all day and am in desperate need of counseling.”

She was a sturdy woman with gray hair and rimless glasses. “I can see why you would,” she said. “Please sit down.”

I did.

“I’m trying to learn about a man who attended this college. Everyone who would know agrees he did. But no one will tell me much about him.”

“Because they don’t know much?” she said.

“Because they don’t know, or think it’s confidential, or don’t like detectives.”

“Surely that couldn’t be it,” she said.

“I was being self-effacing,” I said.

“I have been here for more than thirty years,” she said. “Perhaps I can help. What is the man’s name?”

“Goran Pappas,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. The rimless glasses were strong, and they seemed to enlarge her eyes as she looked at me through them.

“I remember him,” she said.

“What can you tell me?” I said.

She smiled.

“What can you tell me?” she said.

“About anything you want to know,” I said.

“Then do so,” she said.

I told her everything I thought she’d want to hear, omitting only the names, except for Goran. When I was through she sat for a time, frowning.

“My goodness,” she said. “And what is it you are trying to accomplish?”

“To right the unrightable wrong, I suppose,” I said.

“I understand the allusion,” she said. “But specifically, what do you hope to accomplish?”

“I feel a little silly saying it. But . . . right now everything is coming out badly for pretty much everyone involved, except maybe the college president. . . . I’d like to make everything come out okay.”

She looked at me silently through the distorting rimless lenses for a time and then reached up and tilted them lower on her nose and looked over them at me.

“My God,” she said.

I shrugged and gave her my sheepish smile. She seemed stable enough to risk the sheepish smile. Less stable women were known to undress when I did the sheepish smile. I was right. She remained calm.

“How can I check on you?” she said.

“If I could borrow a sheet of paper,” I said.

She gave me one. And I wrote down the names and phone numbers and recited them as I wrote.

“Captain Healy, homicide commander, Mass state cops,” I said. “Martin Quirk, homicide commander, Boston police. FBI man named Epstein, AIC in Boston.”

“AIC?”

“Agent-in-charge,” I said. “And Susan Silverman, Ph.D., who’s a psychotherapist in Cambridge.”

I handed her the paper.

“In the interest of full disclosure,” I said. “Dr. Silverman is my honey bun.”

“ ‘Honey bun,’ ” Mary said.

“Girl of my dreams,” I said.

“I’ll get back to you, Mr. Spenser,” Mary said.

I WASN’T SURE WHO HAD TOLD what lies to accomplish it. But we were all assembled when Hawk brought Gary Eisenhower into Chet Jackson’s office. Chet was at his desk. Tony was in a chair across from Chet, with Junior and Ty-Bop leaning against the wall in the back of the room; Beth sat on the couch near him. Zel and Boo leaned on the wall near Chet, looking at Junior and Ty-Bop. I stood near the door.

When he got inside the room, Gary paused and looked around.

“Hot damn,” he said, and walked across the room and sat beside Beth on the couch.

“’S happening, Beth?” he said, and patted her on the thigh.

She smiled brightly.

“Okay,” Chet said. “You put this together, Tony. Talk to us.” Tony looked around the office.

“Lotta firepower in here,” he said.

Chet nodded.

“Hawk,” Tony said. “Spenser. My friends, your goons. Lotta force.”

I could tell that Boo felt dissed by being called a goon. But he didn’t speak. Zel seemed uninterested.

“So?” Chet said.

“I hope there’s no need for force,” Tony said.

“To do what?” Chet said.

“To resolve our problem.”

“Our problem? What problem do you and me have?” Chet said.

Tony looked around the room. He took out a cigar, trimmed it, lit it, got it going, took in some smoke, and exhaled.

“We don’t have to get too explicit here,” he said. “But you and I do business in the same territory, and we got an agreement in place that allows us to do that without, you know, rubbing up against each other.”

Chet nodded without saying anything.

“That gonna end,” Tony said, “’less you straighten out your love life.”

“My love life,” Chet said.

Tony took an inhale on his cigar and took it from his mouth, held it up in front of him, and exhaled so that he looked at the glowing end of the cigar through the smoke.

“Specifically, Mr., ah, Eisenhower,” Tony said. “I want him left alone.”

“What the hell do you care?” Chet said.

“Don’t matter why,” Tony said. “Only matter that I do.”

“And if I tell you to go to hell?” Chet said.

“You’re out of business,” Tony said.

Everyone was quiet. Beth looked bright-eyed and excited as she watched the back-and-forth between her husband and Tony Marcus. Gary Eisenhower looked sort of amused, but he nearly always looked amused. Maybe because he was always amused. The damned cigar kept being a cigar.

“You think you can put me out of business?” Chet said.

“I know I can,” Tony said. “And so do you.”

Chet nodded slowly.

“You and Spenser rig this deal?” Chet said.

“Don’t matter who rigged it,” Tony said. “It rigged. Take it or leave it.”

“He a friend of yours?” Chet said.

I knew he was stalling while he tried to think it through.

“He sent me up once,” Tony said. “So no, we ain’t friends. But he done me some favors, too.”

Everyone was quiet.

Then Boo said, “Mr. Jackson, you want me to take one of these clowns apart, you just say so.”

Tony turned and looked at him with mild amusement. Zel shook his head sadly and stepped away from Boo, his gaze fixed on Ty-Bop, who was still nodding to whatever music he was hearing in the spheres, but he was as focused on Zel, and Zel was on him.

“Boo took too many to the head,” Zel said, “when he was fighting.”

“Screw you, Zel,” Boo said. “We ain’t hired to let people push our boss around.”

Beth’s eyes seemed even brighter, and I noticed her tongue moving along her lower lip again. Tony was incredulous.

“You think you gonna take Junior apart?” Tony said, tilting his head in Junior’s direction. It was an easy tilt, because Junior occupied most of the room.

“Anybody in the room,” Boo said.

His eyes still steady on Ty-Bop, Zel shook his head sadly.

“Boo,” he said softly.

“You heard me,” Boo said.

Behind his desk, Chet looked blankly at the scene. He very likely had no idea what he was supposed to do.

Boo was staring at Junior.

“How ’bout you, boy? You want to try me?”

Junior looked at Tony. Tony nodded. Junior smiled.

I said, “How ’bout me, Boo?”

And he turned toward me.

“You, wiseass?” he said. “Be a pleasure.”

I slipped out of my jacket. Boo came at me in his fighter’s stance. He threw a left hook to start, and I saw right away why his face was so marked up. He dropped his hands when he punched. I blocked his hook with my right and put a hard jab onto his nose. It didn’t faze him. He kept coming. He faked a left and tried an overhand right. I took it on my forearm and nailed him with a right cross, and he went down. He got right back up, but his eyes were a little unfocused, and his hands were at his waist. I hit him with my right forearm and then torqued back and hit him with the side of my right fist. He went down again. He tried to get up and made it to his knees, and wobbled there on all fours. Zel squatted beside him.

“Nine, ten, and out,” he said to Boo. “Fight’s over.”

Boo stayed where he was, his head hanging. Some stubborn vestige of pride that he wouldn’t let go and be flat on the floor. Zel stayed with him.

“Come on, big guy,” Zel said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Boo made a faint gesture with his head that was probably an affirmative, and Zel got an arm around him and helped him up. Boo was more out than in, but his feet moved.