“That’s the part that does matter. How. It’s the only part that matters.”
“Honor?” Susan said.
“Yeah,” I said. The waiter came and took the crocks and returned with scrod for Susan and steak for me. We ate a little.
“I am not making fun,” Susan said, “but aren’t you older and wiser than that?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Neither is Rabb. I know what’s killing him. It’s killing me too. The code didn’t work.”
“The code,” Susan said.
“Yeah, jock ethic, honor, code, whatever. It didn’t cover this situation.”
“Can’t it be adjusted?”
“Then it’s not a code anymore. See, being a person is kind of random and arbitrary business. You may have noticed that. And you need to believe in something to keep it from being too random and arbitrary to handle. Some people take religion, or success, or patriotism, or family, but for a lot of guys those things don’t work. A guy like me. I don’t have religion or family, that sort of thing. So you accept some system of order, and you stick to it. For Rabb it’s playing ball.
You give it all you got and you play hurt and you don’t complain and so on and if you’re good you win and the better you are the more you win so the more you win the more you prove you’re good. But for Rabb it’s also taking care of the wife and kid, and the two systems came into conflict. He couldn’t be true to both. And now he’s compromised and he’ll never have the same sense of self he had before.”
“And you, Spenser?”
“Me too, I guess. I don’t know if there is even a name for the system I’ve chosen, but it has to do with honor. And honor is behavior for its own reason. You know?”
“Who has it,” Susan said, “he that died a Wednesday?”
“Yeah, sure, I know that too. But all I have is how I act. It’s the only system I fit into. Whatever the hell I am is based in part on not doing things I don’t think I should do. Or don’t want to do. That’s why I couldn’t last with the cops.
That’s the difference between me and Martin Quirk.”
“Perhaps Quirk has simply chosen a different system,” Susan said.
“Yeah. I think he has. You’re catching on.”
“And,” Susan said, “two moral imperatives in your system are never to allow innocents to be victimized and never to kill people except involuntarily. Perhaps the words aren’t quite the right ones, but that’s the idea, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“And,” she said, “this time you couldn’t obey both those imperatives. You had to violate one.”
I nodded again.
“I understand,” she said.
We ate for a bit in silence.
“I can’t make it better,” she said.
“No,” I said. “You can’t.”
We ate the rest of the entree in silence.
The waiter brought coffee. “You will live a little diminished, won’t you?” she said.
“Well, I got a small sniff of my own mortality. I guess everyone does once in a while. I don’t know if that’s diminishment or not. Maybe it’s got to do with being human.”
She looked at me over her coffee cup. “I think maybe it has to do with that,” she said.
I didn’t feel good, but I felt better. The waiter brought the check.
Outside on Tremont Street, Susan put her arm through mine. It was a warm night and there were stars out.
We walked down toward the Common.
“Spenser,” she said, “you are a classic case for the feminist movement. A captive of the male mystique, and all that.
And I want to say, for God’s sake, you fool, outgrow all that Hemingwayesque nonsense. And yet…” She leaned her head against my shoulder as she spoke. “And yet I’m not sure you’re wrong. I’m not sure but what you are exactly what you ought to be. What I am sure of is I’d care for you less if killing those people didn’t bother you.”
At Park Street we crossed to the Common and walked down the long walk toward the Public Garden. The swan boats were docked for the night. We crossed Arlington onto Marlborough Street and turned in at my apartment. We went up in silence. Her arm still through mine. I opened the door and she went in ahead of me. Inside the door, with the lights still out, I put my arms around her and said, “Suze, I think I can work you into my system.”
“Enough with the love talk,” she said. “Off with the clothes.”
The End
About the Author
ROBERT B. PARKER is the author of twenty-three books. Since his first Spenser novel, The Godwulf Manuscript, he has had numerous bestsellers, including Pale Kings and Princes, Crimson Joy, Valediction, A Catskill Eagle and Taming a SeaHorse; Poodle Springs, his best-selling collaboration with Raymond Chandler; and the more recent Stardust and Playmates. Mr. Parker currently lives in Boston with his wife, Joan.