The Professional (21 page)

“Same with the broad,” Quirk said. “Apparently, she was punched to death.”

“So you’re looking for a guy knows how to punch,” I said.

“You know how to punch,” Quirk said.

“I do,” I said. “On the other hand, so do you.”

Quirk smiled slightly.

“And it wasn’t either of us,” Quirk said.

“No,” I said.

“I figure,” Quirk said, “guy didn’t set out to kill anyone. Even guys who can fight don’t normally set out to kill somebody with their hands.”

“You figure he’d have brought a weapon,” I said.

“I do.”

I nodded.

“Confident guy,” Quirk said. “Kicks in the door on some broad’s apartment where she lives with her boyfriend, and apparently doesn’t even bring a weapon.”

“Or too mad to think,” I said.

“What would he be so mad about?”

“What are they usually so mad about?” I said.

“Crime of passion?” Quirk said.

“Lot of that going around,” I said.

Quirk nodded. He finished his coffee and got up and poured himself some more. He added sugar and condensed milk and took it back to his chair.

“Frank thinks you’re not giving us everything,” Quirk said.

“How unkind of Frank,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” Quirk said. “You giving us everything?”

I drank some coffee and leaned back a little in my chair.

“You and me?” I said.

“You see anybody else here?” Quirk said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not giving you everything.”

“You know who killed her, don’t you,” Quirk said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you’re holding that back why?” Quirk said.

“I’m not quite sure. But I won’t tell you yet.”

“I’m not sure the law lets you decide that,” Quirk said.

“Sure,” I said. “I know. You can bust me for interfering with an investigation, or some such, and take me downtown, and Rita Fiore will be along in an hour or so to get me out.”

“You might be a little worse for wear,” Quirk said.

“I might,” I said.

“But we wouldn’t have learned anything,” Quirk said.

“True.”

“When you gonna tell me?” Quirk said.

“Soon,” I said.

Quirk nodded slowly.

“I known you a long time,” Quirk said. “You are what you are.”

I shrugged.

“Killer gets away,” Quirk said, “because you stalled me, I’ll come down on you as hard as I can.”

“Which is quite hard,” I said.

Quirk nodded.

“It is,” he said, and stood and left my office.

I swiveled my chair around and looked out my window. It was bright and cold. Baseball was little more than a month away. The windows in the high-rises across the street were blank today, reflecting the morning light so that I couldn’t see through any of them.

It seemed simple enough. Boo had killed three people. I knew it. I tell Quirk. Quirk busts him. Case closed.

So why not?

I don’t know.

I sat and looked up at the blue sky and across at the blank windows for a long time. A woman I’d once cared about had worked in anadvertising agency over there. Sometimes, when the sun came at them from a different angle, I could see through the windows across the street and watch her moving about her office. Agency was gone now. Maybe the whole building was gone, replaced by a new one. It was hard to remember.

I WAS STILL LOOKING at the blank windows and the hard, blue sky an hour later when the door opened behind me. I turned my chair. It was Zel. He closed the door behind him and came to my desk and stood. He didn’t take his coat off.

“I’m leaving town,” he said.

I nodded.

“Where you going?” I said.

“Away,” Zel said.

“Happening place,” I said.

He stood. I sat. Neither of us spoke.

Finally he said, “Boo’s dead.”

I nodded.

“You do it?” I said.

“Yeah,” Zel said.

“Means he won’t have to do time,” I said.

“He come home in the afternoon, sort of all jeeped up, you know. Talking real fast, not sitting down, and I told him you’d been there, and what you said about him and Beth. And he’s listening, but he’s sort of walking around like before a fight, you know? He’s moving his shoulders, bouncing a little on his toes. Moving his fists like he’s warming up.”

I nodded.

“So I ask him, did he do it?” Zel said.

“And he stops everything, stands there like a statue, and looks at me. ‘Yeah,’ he tells me. ‘I done her.’ ”

I took in some air.

“And I ask him, ‘Why?’ ” Zel said. “And he tells me she’s a lying bitch and didn’t mean nothing she told him, and she just said what she said and done what she done so he’d do stuff for her.”

“Like kill her husband and Estelle,” I said.

Zel nodded.

“He was right,” I said.

“Yeah,” Zel said. “So I say to him he’s been up all night and he needs some rest, and why don’t he go to bed for a while. Boo don’t sleep well, and I give him sleeping pills sometimes when he needs them. So I gave him a couple and say go lie on your bed.”

“So he goes,” I said.

“Yeah, but it takes a little while. He’s going on about he’s glad he done it, and he’s gonna kill anybody comes for him. And I tell him go to sleep, and when he wakes up we’ll figure everything out.”

Zel’s voice was flat. For all the affect in it, he could have been reading a laundry list.

“And Boo’s getting sleepy now, from the pills, so he goes in and lies on his bed. I go in with him, and he says to me, ‘You’re with me on this, Zel.’ And I say, ‘All the way, Boo, like always.’ And he nods and closes his eyes. I go out, and in about a half-hour I go back in. He’s asleep . . . lying on his side . . . and I shot him in the back of the head . . . and wiped down the gun and left it on the bed. . . . Same gun killed Jackson and Estelle.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah, I never let Boo own a gun.”

“You know he took it to do the shooting?”

“Yeah,” Zel said. “I showed him how to shoot it.”

“Can it be traced to you?” I said.

“No.”

“So,” I said. “Why you telling me this.”

“Boo’s pretty hard to like,” Zel said. “You treated him as good as you could.”

I nodded.

“You gonna tell the cops about me?” Zel said.

“No,” I said.

Zel stood silently. He looked past me out the window. Then he turned and walked to my door, and opened it, and stopped and looked back at me.

“Now you know,” Zel said, and went out.

I looked at the empty doorway for a while, then I took a big breath, and picked up the phone, and called Quirk.