Free The Boxer and the Spy by Robert B. Parker Page B

shrugged.
    “Boxing be mostly about training,” he said. “Remember what I tol’ you about the three thousand punches. Time you get in the ring, you might be scared, but you trained so much, you sort of can’t think ‘bout running.”
    “But what if you do run?”
    “Then you need to do another business,” George said. “Nothing wrong with that. Boxing ain’t exactly normal anyway. You know, it ain’t normal to get into a thing where you and somebody else try to beat each other unconscious. Don’t mean you a coward or anything if you can’t do it.”
    George paused and framed his words and smiled.
    “Probably just mean you too normal for boxing.”
    “Aren’t some fighters scared?”
    “Sure,” George said. “And you can be a pretty good fighter even if you scared. Technique take you a long way. But it don’t take you all the way.”
    “What does that?” Terry said.
    “Heart,” George said.
    “Heart?”
    “Heart make you get up when it be much easier to stay down,” George said. “Make you go out for the next round when you can’t hardly see and you not sure where you are. We don’t know yet, you got heart. But I’m thinking you might.”
    Neither of them spoke. George seemed to have gone someplace out of the little gym across from the Coffee Café in the fancy town. Someplace Terry had never been. Then he came back and smiled at Terry.
    “Maybe just another word for not normal,” he said.

CHAPTER 27
    I t was a warm Saturday morning and they were sitting on the rocks near the ocean, looking at what Abby called her spy chart.
    “These are all the people we’ve seen him with in a month,” Abby said. “And the places he saw them.”
    “That whole list?” Terry said.
    “Yes,” Abby said. “But they’re in order of frequency. That’s what the numbers in parentheses mean. See, he’s seen Kip Carter All-American twelve times. He’s seen Mr. Malcolm the construction teacher ten times, and so on.”
    “So the end of the list doesn’t probably mean much.”
    “Probably not,” Abby said. “But I put them in. Just in case.”
    “Damn,” Terry said. “You’ve been putting in a lot of work.”
    Abby nodded.
    “And these are the places we’ve seen him go,” she said, “where he just went there and we didn’t really see him with anybody.”
    “Like the supermarket,” Terry said.
    “Exactly.”
    “Or the Trent house. You don’t know who he sees there?”
    “Carly never knows,” Abby said.
    “But he’s been there, what, eight times?”
    “That Carly has seen.”
    “And Carly can’t tell if it’s Mr. or Mrs. or both?”
    “No. Carly thinks it might be hanky-panky, but he doesn’t know.”
    “Carly thinks everything is hanky-panky,” Terry said. “It’s kind of hard to imagine.”
    “I could imagine her,” Abby said. “You even said once she was kind of hot.”
    “With him?” Terry said. “That’s what I can’t imagine.”
    “God no,” Abby said. “I can’t imagine him doing it with anybody.”
    “And don’t want to,” Terry said.
    “Grown-ups do have affairs, though,” Abby said.
    “But Bullard is married.”
    “Married grown-ups do have affairs, though,” Abby said.
    Terry nodded, looking at the way the light glanced off the moving ocean.
    “I guess we need to find out,” he said.
    “You think it’s important?”
    “I think we don’t know, so we need to find out.”
    “Yes,” Abby said. “That’s the right way to think.”
    Terry looked at the list again.
    “Wow,” he said. “You been doing this, like, full time.”
    “Pretty much,” Abby said.
    “How you gonna stay on the honor roll?” he said.
    “Oh, phoo,” she said. “You don’t have to do much to make honor roll.”
    Terry laughed.
    “You got that right,” he said. “Tank made it this term.”
    “I rest my case,” Abby said.
    Terry was still studying the list.
    “Okay,” Terry said. “He’s seen Kip Carter the most and Mr. Malcolm the next most.”
    “That we