The Professional

“Boo’s always with me,” Zel said.

“I’d swear that gun you took from Boo was a forty,” I said.

Zel took it out and looked at it.

“Nice call,” he said. “S-and-W forty-caliber.”

“Yours?” I said.

“They’re all mine,” Zel said. “I don’t want Boo carrying no gun.”

“How many you got?” I said.

“Six,” Zel said.

“All of them clean as this one?” I said.

“I keep them clean,” Zel said.

“Tools of the trade,” I said.

“Sure,” he said.

I looked at the door to the room where Boo was sulking. “Too bad Boo never learned to keep his hands up,” I said.

“Everybody tried,” Zel said. “But when the fight started, he could never remember. Even before he got hit, Boo wasn’t the brightest guy you’d meet.”

I nodded. We sat again.

“I hear anything useful,” Zel said, “I’ll give you a shout.”

“Please do,” I said.

Chapter 49

I SAT WITH ESTELLE at the café counter in Pi

“Are you working on the murder case?” she said.

“I am.”

Estelle was wearing the tight black sweats and the tight white tank top that was apparently the Pi

“Who hired you?”

“I’m working on spec,” I said.

She looked at me as if I might be odd.

“Do the police have a suspect?” she said.

“No.”

“Have they had any success tracking the note?” she said. “You know, fingerprints? What machine it was written on? Kind of paper?”

“You’ve been watching those crime-scene shows,” I said. “Haven’t you.”

She smiled.

“Especially the one with David Caruso.” She glanced at me sideways. “He’s hot.”

“Hotter than myself?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Of course.”

She must have had a thing for slim, handsome guys. How shallow.

“It was written on a computer,” I said. “Printed out on paper you can buy at any Staples. No fingerprints that mean anything.”

“ ‘Mean anything’?”

“Well, yours are on it, and Gary’s and Beth’s, and mine,” I said. “That’s because we handled it. There are no unaccounted-for prints.”

“Oh.”

She thought about it for a while.

Then she said, “So how do you solve a crime like this?” “You don’t always,” I said.

“But, I mean, how would you even go about it?” she said. “There’s, like, no clues.”

“You talk to people,” I said. “You ask them questions. You listen to their answers. You compare what they said to what other people have said. You try to assess body language. You try to listen for tone.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” Estelle said.

“Yes.”

“How am I doing?” she said.

“You’re not telling me anything, but it is sort of enjoyable to study your body language.”

“Enjoyable?”

“It’s a dandy body,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You don’t really think I did it?” she said.

“I don’t think,” I said. “I just ask questions and listen to answers and study bodies.”

“I’ll bet you think,” Estelle said.

“Mostly about sex and baseball,” I said. “How’s Beth?”

“I am not interested in baseball,” she said, and looked at me sideways again.

“Good to know,” I said. “How’s Beth?”

Estelle’s face became serious.

“Poor thing,” Estelle said. “She’s devastated.”

I nodded.

“Devastated,” I said.

“Yes, to have your husband murdered?” Estelle said. “You don’t think that’s devastating?”

“Never had a husband,” I said.

“She’s staying with us for a while,” Estelle said.

“ ‘Us’?”

“Me and Gary,” Estelle said.

“You and Gary and Beth,” I said.

“You have a problem with that?”

I shook my head.

“Not my problem,” I said.

She frowned, though it seemed to me that she was careful that it be a pretty frown.

“It’s nobody’s problem,” she said. “Unless you’re some kind of mossback puritan.”

“Goddamn,” I said. “You’ve seen through my disguise.”

Chapter 50

BETH AND GARY and Estelle?” Susan said.

We were having coffee in her kitchen on a Monday morning, before she went to work.

“So it seems,” I said.

Susan was in her understated tailored suit, working attire that did its best to conceal the fact that she was gorgeous. Her makeup was quiet; her hair was neat. She wore very little jewelry. And she remained gorgeous.

“If I weren’t a sophisticated psychotherapist with advanced degrees from Harvard, I might be faintly shocked,” she said.

“They didn’t do three-ways in Swampscott?” I said.

“When I was in high school,” Susan said, “I doubt that anyone in town knew what a three-way was.”

“We’re not in high school anymore, Toto,” I said.

“Did they know in Laramie?” Susan said. “When you were a kid?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Truly?” Susan said.

“Two heifers and a seed bull,” I said.

“I sometimes forget you’re a man of the West,” Susan said.

“Howdy.”

Susan smiled. She was eating half of a whole-wheat bagel. I settled for several ci

“Could you perform in a three-way?” Susan said.

“Two women and me?”

“For instance,” Susan said.

“Maybe,” I said. “You?”

“No,” Susan said. “How about two men and a woman?”

“No,” I said.

“Me, either,” Susan said.

“So,” I said. “Lucky we found each other.”

She smiled.

“It has been my experience that at least one member of a threesome is uncomfortable with the deal,” Susan said.

“So why do it?” I said.

“To please one, or both, of the other partners,” Susan said. “To convince oneself of one’s liberation and ope

“Vive la prudery,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“You think it can sometimes work?” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “I think people can often successfully be in a functioning relationship with two other people. You know, that sort of traditional European thing. Husband, wife, and husband’s mistress… or wife’s lover… or all of the above.”

“Ménage à trois?” I said.

Susan shrugged.

“That seems to be Gary and the girls,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I would have more hope for it if there was some separation,” she said.

“Gary lives with one and visits the other?” I said.

“Or all three live separately,” Susan said. “Despite what people say, and even believe, if they are genuinely invested in someone, it is more difficult to share that person with another than they expect.”

“So it works better if you don’t have to have your nose rubbed in it, so to speak,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s healthy?” I said.

“Healthy is harder to pin down than it seems,” Susan said.

She had slid into her professional mode-probably the suit.

“I know a number of people who maintain a happy and productive life with two partners, not under the same roof.”

“Think it’ll work for Gary and friends?” I said.

“There’s something exploitive going on there, I think,” Susan said.

“I think so, too,” I said. “So?”

“No,” Susan said.

“Think we should try it?”

“Who would the other guy be?” Susan said.

“Woman,” I said.

“We can’t even decide who’d have the extra lover,” Susan said.

I nodded.

“How about neither?” I said.

Susan sipped her coffee, and put down her cup, and carefully blotted her lips with her napkin. The she looked at me and smiled widely. I put my right hand up, and she high-fived me.

“There you go,” she said.