The Professional by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

considerably less time than it took Susan. She was just snapping her bra when I headed for the kitchen to start breakfast. Pearl stayed where she was.
    By the time I had made my whole-wheat blackberry pancakes and put them on the plates, she came out with her face on and her clothes in place. It was weekend informal, a scoop-neck black T-shirt, jeans, and loafers. But everything fit her so perfectly and she was so beautiful that I felt the same rush of amazement and triumph I always felt in moments like these.
    She sat at the table and sipped her orange juice. I put the pot of coffee on the table and sat across from her and looked at her. She looked back at me, and finished her orange juice, and said something that sounded like “hum,” which I knew to be positive. I drank some orange juice and poured us some coffee. Pearl sat attentively beside the table. I would have been quite willing to discuss the particulars of what Susan and I had just done together, but I knew it violated some inward standard of privacy that she maintained. Sex is good; talking about it afterward is not good. So I shut up. Shutting up rarely leads to anything bad.
    “I was thinking about your person,” she said.
    “You’re my person,” I said.
    “No, no, I mean the Gary Eisenhower person. Did you tell me he has sex every day?”
    “Seems to,” I said.
    “With people he doesn’t love,” she said.
    “That’s my impression,” I said.
    “What do you think of that?” she said.
    “Sounds great,” I said. “But, present company excluded, of course, it is really an adolescent fantasy, which, humor aside, most adult men would get bored with.”
    “Would you?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “With me?” she said.
    “Never been tested.”
    “Do you think we make love enough?” Susan said.
    “Yes,” I said. “And very high quality.”
    She nodded and took a small bite of pancake.
    “Yum,” she said. “Blackberries.”
    “Did I pass?” I said.
    “Pass?”
    “The little quiz you just gave me,” I said. “Did I pass?”
    She smiled.
    “Yes,” she said. “But I was actually thinking about Gary Whosis.”
    “You think he wouldn’t pass?”
    “I think if he does in fact have sex with as many women as often as he does, that there’s something more than simple pleasure.”
    “That would be true of us,” I said.
    “That our sex life is about more than simple pleasure?”
    “Yes.”
    “True, and what is it?”
    I grinned at her.
    “Love?”
    “That would be my guess,” Susan said.
    I grinned at her.
    “Sis-boom-bah!” I said.

Chapter16

    WE WERE ALL in the conference room again, me, Elizabeth Shaw, and the gang of four, as Gary had named them.
    “His real name is Goran Pappas,” I said. “He also uses the name Elliot Herzog. He lives on Beacon Street, just before it climbs the hill. He’s done time for swindling. He appears to have preselected you, using information provided him by a woman at the health club. There appear to be other women in his life beyond you four.”
    “His name is Goran?” Regina said.
    “He uses the nickname Gary,” I said.
    “Gary Pappas?” she said.
    “How’d you find all this out?” Abigail Larson said.
    “Amazing, isn’t it?”
    “No, really, how do you know?” Abigail said.
    I looked inscrutable.
    “Vee haf our vays,” I said.
    “It seems to me our next question,” Elizabeth said, “is now that we have him located, what steps can we take to contain him?”
    The women looked at one another. Then they all looked at me.
    “What should we do?” Nancy said.
    “He’s a blackmailer,” I said. “We could arrest him.”
    “Would we have to testify?” Nancy said.
    “Yes.”
    Abigail looked at Elizabeth.
    “Is that true?”
    “You’re the victims,” Elizabeth said. “You’d have to make the complaint. You’d have to testify in court, if the case went there. We could probably keep it fairly low-key, with luck.”
    “But my husband would have to know,” Nancy