The Professional (8 page)

“And did things change?” I said.

“Sexually it didn’t, until it stopped,” she said. “Three months after we met, he showed me his pictures. He played his audiotapes.”

She stopped and sat silently for a moment, looking at nothing. I opened my mouth. Susan shook her head. I closed my mouth.

“After a time,” Clarice said, “he wanted money or he said he would ruin me. He was pleasant about it, just a simple business transaction, didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends, or”—she shook her head—“lovers.”

“Did you have money?” I said.

“Not enough,” she said. “He wanted me to embezzle from the college.”

“And you wouldn’t,” I said.

She shook her head.

“I had cheated enough,” she said. “I went to the police.”

“In Hartland?”

She smiled.

“No,” she said. “State police. They asked me to wear a listening device. I did, and they arrested him. There was some sort of justice, I think, in that. Like hoisting him upon his own petard.”

“Then what?” I said.

“Then I told my husband,” Clarice said. “And the college, and finally, at an open meeting, the students.”

“My God,” Susan said.

“I had bared pretty much everything else to a con man. I guessed I could bare my soul to the people I loved,” Clarice said.

“And they forgave you,” Susan said.

“My husband said it was time to get help . . . for both of us. I agreed. I offered to resign from the college. They suggested instead that I take a leave of absence while my husband and I worked on things.”

“And the students?” Susan said.

Clarice smiled with some warmth.

“I have found that girls of that age are both more and less judgmental than others,” she said. “Some were astounded that a woman over forty could have an explicitly sexual affair. Some were titillated by it. A large number, I think, sort of shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, you slept around. Doesn’t everybody?’ No one required me to wear a scarlet letter.”

“How did Gary Astor take it?” I said.

“He was really very nice about it. When the detectives were taking him away, he grinned at me and said, ‘For a good-looking broad, you got a lot of spine, Richie.’ That’s what he called me. He said Clarice was too European.”

“And he did three in Shirley.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever hear from him?” I said.

She flushed a little.

“His first year in prison he sent me flowers on my birthday,” she said. “I never acknowledged them.”

“Nothing since?”

“He wrote me a letter saying good-bye, that it had been fun while it lasted, that he’d always remember, ah, certain moments we’d had, and he wished me well.”

“Anything else?” I said.

“No,” she said. “He’s a very pleasant man, I think. But he seems to have absolutely no moral or ethical sense. It’s like someone with no sense of humor. There’s nothing really to say about it, except that it isn’t there.”

“You ever miss him?” Susan said.

“I never want to see him again,” Clarice said.

“And your marriage is stable?” Susan said.

“Eric and I spent two years in psychotherapy. Each with our own therapist. You remember Mr. Hemingway’s remark?” she said.

“It heals stronger at the break,” I said.

“You’re a reader, Mr. Spenser?” she said.

“Susan helps me with the big words,” I said.

Clarice smiled, with even more warmth in it.

“In retrospect, the entire incident was salvation for Eric and me. Each of us has come to terms with our demons. And we both had demons.”

“A troubled marriage,” Susan said, “nearly always has at least two.”

“Has any of this been useful, Mr. Spenser?”

“It’s been worth hearing,” I said.

“But useful?”

“Gotta think about it,” I said. “If any of my victims were willing, would you talk with them?”

She smiled again. This time with not only warmth but humor.

“The sisterhood is strong,” she said.

“I’ll take that,” I said, “for a yes.”

She nodded.

“You may,” she said.

IT WAS MORNING, and we were in the car, drinking coffee, driving south on Route 91 heading for the Mass Pike. I was enjoying a donut.

“Sure you don’t want one?” I said. “Cinnamon, my fave.”

“Ick,” Susan said.

“The naked frolic in a motel outside of Springfield seemed to go better than you thought it would,” I said.

“A moment of weakness,” Susan said.

“You think there’s anything in the fact that what Clarice remembers best about her and Gary’s sex life is how strong and forceful he was?”

“You think he might be a little vengeful?” Susan said.

“Something like that,” I said. “I mean, even Hawk agrees that there’s a limit to the number of women you can have sex with.”

“And Hawk has tested the limits,” Susan said.

“He has,” I said. “You said once that there might be something more than sex and money in this deal.”

“What could be more than sex and money?” Susan said.

“Pathology?” I said.

“Hey, I do the shrink stuff here,” Susan said.

“And?”

“Might be,” Susan said. “Worth looking into, I suppose.”

“And how would I look into that?” I said.

“Talk to some of his other partners.”

“Oh,” I said.

I finished my donut and got another one out of the bag. Susan ate some grapes she’d brought with her from home.

“You think things really do heal stronger at the break?” I said.

“It’s a nice metaphor,” Susan said. “When a broken bone heals, there is often additional bone mass.”

“So bones may in fact heal stronger at the break,” I said.

“Maybe,” Susan said.

“Think that holds in other things?” I said.

“Some things,” she said. “Sometimes.”

“There are very few absolutes in the therapist’s canon,” I said.

“Very few,” Susan said. “Although, I guess, understanding the truth about yourself is important.”

“You think they got there?”

“Clarice and her husband? Probably,” Susan said. “No one gets there all the way. But they seem close. If she’s accurate. I assume they addressed the causes of the break, understood them, and were tough enough to change.”

“She was tough enough,” I said, “not to knuckle under to Gary Eisenhower.”

Susan smiled.

“You like that name, don’t you?” Susan said.

“I do. If I adopt an alias, I may use it.”

“Gee,” Susan said. “You look just like a Gary Eisenhower, too.”

“And from there it’s an easy leap to Cary Grant,” I said.

“Easy,” Susan said. “Of course, guilt helped.”

“Clarice?”

“Uh-huh.”

“As in she was tough enough to confess publicly because she felt she deserved the public humiliation?” I said.

“As in exactly that,” Susan said. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“Lucky thing,” I said. “If I weren’t, I probably wouldn’t be able to feed myself.”

“I’d feed you,” Susan said.

“I know you would,” I said. “But, guilt or whatever, it all worked for her. She kept her husband, her job, her children’s regard.”

“And her self,” Susan said.

Occasionally as we drove we could see the Connecticut River flowing south beside us, heading for Long Island Sound. The year had gone too far into November for there to be much leaf color left. Here and there a yellow leaf, or none, or few, but mostly spare grayness, hinting of cold rain.

“So are you saying,” I said, “that Gary’s current victims in the gang of four haven’t got enough guilt?”

“A little guilt is not always a bad thing,” Susan said.

“And you a psychotherapist,” I said.

“I’m also Jewish,” she said.

“I think that’s a tautology,” I said.

“Oy,” Susan said.

“You think I should start berating them,” I said. “Make them feel more guilty?”

“I don’t know if it would work,” Susan said. “But I suspect it’s not your style.”

We came to the pike and headed east. I had one of those toll transponders that allow you to zip through the fast lane unhesitatingly. It made me feel special.

“It is interesting, though, that none of them feels guilty enough for your scenario to work.”

“It would suggest something about their marriages,” Susan said.

“And about them,” I said. “Some of them feel they’d be ruined if this all came out. One couple, the husband is gay, for instance, and in line for a big job. He and his wife are close. She knows, of course, and they remain friends, with a, necessarily, open marriage.”

“You don’t think that such fears beset Clarice Richardson?” Susan said.

“And they are not illegitimate fears,” I said. “She was lucky to be in a situation where decency could prevail.”

“That, too, would probably influence her,” Susan said.

“The recognition of those circumstances, and the hope that decency would prevail,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe I could get them to see you professionally, and you could berate them.”

“Until they felt guilty enough to cure themselves?”

“Exactly,” I said. “How would that fly at the Psychoanalytic Institute?”

“Banishment, I think,” she said. “It is, however, not a position I’m prepared to take.”

“Is there a position you are prepared to take?” I said.

Susan smiled her fallen-angel smile. One of my favorites.

“How about prone, big boy?” she said.

“Shall I stop on the roadside?” I said.

Susan smiled.

“No,” she said.

WHEN GARY EISENHOWER came into my office on a rainy Monday morning, he had a purple bruise on his right cheekbone and a swollen upper lip. He moved stiffly to one of my chairs and eased himself into it. When he spoke he sounded like his teeth were clenched.

“I need a gun,” he said.

“I would guess that you do,” I said.

“I’m a convicted felon,” he said. “I can’t just buy one.”

“Also true.”

“Can you give me one?”

“Probably not,” I said. “Who beat you up?”

He made a slight movement with his lips, which, if it hadn’t hurt, might have turned into a smile.

“How’d you know?” he said.

“I’m a trained detective,” I said.

“Couple guys came around, tole me to stay away from Beth Jackson.”

“You’re still seeing her?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Even though she hired me to put you out of business?” I said.

“Yeah,” Gary said.

“She your mole in the gang of four?” I said.

“How’d you know there was a mole?”

“You knew who hired me,” I said.

He shook his head and winced.

“And—” I said.

“You’re a trained detective,” Gary said.

“You tell them to take a hike?” I said.

“The two guys?” he said. “No, I said, ‘Sure thing.’ ”

“But?”

He started to shrug and remembered that everything hurt and stopped in mid-shrug.

“But she kept coming around and”—again the try at a smile—“what’s a boy to do?”

“So they caught you again and decided to get your attention,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“One of the guys slim and dark, sort of quiet?” I said.

“Yeah, Zel, he said his name was. The one poured it on me was some kind of ex-pug. He had a funny name, too, but I’m a little hazy about some of the details.”

“Boo,” I said.

“Yeah,” Gary said. “Boo. He liked his work.”

“So now what?” I said.

“I took my beating, but I’m not going away.”

“So you’ll see Beth again?”

“Absolutely.”

“You care that much about her?”

“I like to fuck her,” Gary said.

“She’s not your only option,” I said.

“I told you before, I’m tougher than I seem,” Gary said. “I been punched around before. But I’ll fuck who I want to fuck, and no one tells me who that can be.”

“My God,” I said, “a principled position.”

“So I need a gun.”

I shook my head.

“Can’t give you a gun,” I said. “But maybe I can take Zel and Boo off your back.”

“You?”

“Yep.”

“How you going to do that?” Gary said.

“Sweet reason,” I said.

“ ‘Sweet reason’?” Gary said. “You being funny?”

“I hope so,” I said.

“How quick can you do this?”

“Pretty soon. In the meantime ask Beth to, ah, lay off, at least for a few days,” I said.

“What are you going to do,” Gary said.

“Talk to some people, arrange a few things, call in some favors,” I said.

“Who you gonna talk to?” he said.

“I have friends in low places,” I said. “Can you keep it in your pants for a few days while I save your life?”

Gary nodded.

“Why you doing this for me?” he said.

“Damned if I know,” I said.

BETH IS STILL SEEING EISENHOWER,” I said to Chet Jackson.

He sat across his desk from me, looking as hard-polished and expensive as he had last time.

“You think?” he said.

“It’s why you sent Zel and Boo to see him,” I said.

“They went to see him?” Chet said.

The view through the picture window behind him was still marvelous, but I’d seen it before. It was what I’d always thought about paying for a view. After a day or two you don’t even notice it.

“Boo beat him up,” I said.

“What a shame,” Chet said.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” I said.

“And you think I’ve got something to do with it?”

I said, “Let’s not screw around with this, Chet. I want you to call them off.”

“And let that sonovabitch continue to bang my wife?” Chet said.

“That’s a question to take up with the bangee,” I said. “Not the banger.”

The lines around Chet’s mouth deepened. I could hear Susan’s voice in my brain: “Banger” and “bangee” are sexist distinctions, the voice said, implying aggression on the one side and passivity on the other.

I know. I know. I can’t think of everything. Then I heard her laugh.

“That’s probably true,” he said.

“But?”

“But I can’t,” he said.

I nodded.

“Because you love her,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Chet,” I said. “This is not between you and Gary Eisenhower. This is between you and your wife. The problem won’t be resolved by beating up Gary Eisenhower. It won’t be resolved if you kill him.”