And I make no apologies… except for the gratuitous pigeon.

Robert Brown Parker was born in 1932 in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he met Joan, his future wife, when they were children. They began dating while both attended Colby College and were married in 1956. They separated in 1982 but reconciled two years later and celebrated their golden anniversary in the autumn of 2006. They have two sons, David and Daniel. Parker received his doctorate from Boston University in 1971 with a thesis on the private eyes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald.

Generally regarded as next in succession after the three icons mentioned above, as the great writer of the hard-boiled private-detective novel, Parker has averaged nearly two books a year for more than three decades. In addition to his Spenser series, which served as the basis for the popular television series Spenser: For Hire in the 1980s, he has written several books each about Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, two with Philip Marlowe as the protagonist, and such stand-alone novels as All Our Yesterdays, Wilderness, and Double Play. His fourth novel, Promised Land, won an Edgar^® as best novel of 1977. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master for lifetime achievement in 2002.

Susan and I sat at a table in the Charles Square courtyard, having a drink in the late afternoon with Susan’s friend Amy Trent. It was one of those days in late June. The temperature was about 78. There were maybe three white clouds in the sky. The quiet breeze that drifted in from the river smelled fresher than I knew it to be.

“I’m trying to write a book,” Amy said. “The working title is Men Who Dare, a series of profiles of men who are strong and tough and do dangerous work. Mountain climbers, Navy Seals, policemen, firemen.”

“Amy needs a sample profile to submit with her proposal, in hopes of getting a contract and an advance,” Susan said. “I said you’d be perfect.”

“Amy’s looking for sexual splendor as well?” I said.

Amy smiled.

“Always,” she said. “Will you talk with me?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay, I have a bunch of questions written down,” Amy said. “You can answer them, dismiss them, respond to a question I didn’t ask, anything you want, I’m interested in what you’re like. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Susan, feel free to jump in any time,” Amy said. “You know him better than anyone.”

“Don’t rat me out,” I said, “about the sexual splendor.”

“Our secret,” Susan said.

Amy took a notebook out of her book bag and opened it. She was a professor at Harvard and, faced with that limitation, not bad looking. If she had dressed better, done her hair better, improved on her makeup, and worn more stylish glasses, she might have been good-looking… but then the faculty senate would probably have required her to wear a scarlet A on her dress.

She studied her notebook for a moment. I looked at Susan. She smiled. Zing went the strings of my heart. Then Amy took out a small tape recorder and put it on the table.

“Okay?” she said.

“Sure.”

She turned the recorder on.

“Okay,” Amy said. “Just to warm up a little. Why are you such a wise guy?”

“It’s a gift,” I said.

Susan frowned at me.

“If you’re going to do this,” Susan said, “you have to do it.”

“You didn’t tell me I had to be serious,” I said.

“Well, you do.”

Amy waited. She had a lot of kinetic intensity about her, but she knew how to keep it in check. I nodded.

“I seem to have an unavoidable capacity for seeing a thing and seeing beyond it at the same time.”

“Would you say that you have a heightened sense of irony?” Amy asked.

“I probably wouldn’t say it, but it’s probably true.”

“It is also,” Susan said, “a distancing technique. It keeps people and events from getting too close.”

“Except you,” I said.

She smiled again.

“Except me.”

“Besides Susan, are there things that can get through that ironic barrier?” Amy said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Because?”

“Because if they did,” I said, “I couldn’t do what I do.”

“But if you refuse to care… ” Amy said.

“I don’t refuse to care,” I said. “I refuse to let it control me.”

“How do you do that?”

“It’s a matter of perspective.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s a line from Auden,” I said. “‘The torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.’”

“A poem,” Amy said.

“‘Musée des Beaux Arts.’”

“Life goes on,” she said.

“Something like that,” I said. “Though not for everyone.”

“And you find that consoling?”

“I find it instructive.”

“Perspective,” Amy said.

I nodded.

Amy wasn’t reading her questions now. She seemed interested.

“In such a world,” she said, “do you have any absolutes?”

I nodded at Susan.

“Her,” I said.

“Love,” Amy said.

I shook my head.

“Her,” I said.

Amy frowned. Then she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I see.”

One point for Harvard. The waitress came by, and I had another beer and Susan had another white wine. Amy had more iced tea.

“So why do you do it?” she asked.

“What I do?”

“Yes.”

“Because I can.”

“That simple?”

“I’m pretty simple,” I said.

Amy looked at Susan. Susan smiled.

“He is,” Susan said. “And he isn’t. That will show itself if you talk with him enough. But I warn you, he’s almost never one thing.”

Amy nodded and braced herself with another slug of iced tea.

“So you do what you do because you can,” Amy said. “You’re good at it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you like it?”

“Most of the time,” I said. “It allows me to live life on my own terms.”

“Aren’t there other jobs?” Amy said. “Ones that allow you to do that and don’t require you to carry a gun?”

“Not that many,” I said. “And almost none at which I’d be any good.”

“You say you want to live life on your own terms; what are they?”

“The terms?”

“Yes.”

I thought about it. As the afternoon moved along, more people were coming in for a drink. Maybe several. It was a relatively glamorous crowd for Cambridge. Few if any ankle-length skirts or sandals with socks. I looked at Susan.

“What are my terms?” I asked her.

“He’s being cute,” Susan said to Amy. “He understands himself very well, but he wants me to say it.”

“It’s pretty hard for me not to be cute,” I said.

Susan rolled her eyes slightly.

“He can learn, but he can’t be taught,” Susan said. “He can find his way, but he can’t take direction. He will do very difficult and dangerous things, but he cannot be ordered to do them. Voluntarily, he’s generous and compassionate and quite kind. But he cannot be compelled to it.”

“Autonomous,” Amy said.

“To a pathological extreme,” Susan said.

Amy checked her tape recorder. It appeared to be doing what it was supposed to.

“Can you get him to do things he doesn’t want to do?” Amy asked Susan.

“I’m doing this interview,” I said.

Neither of them paid me any attention.

“Up to a point,” Susan said.

“What is the point?” Amy said.

“I can’t change him,” Susan said. “I cannot make him cease to be who he is.”

“Would you want to?”

“I would prefer he didn’t risk his life,” Susan said. “In a sense he’s risking mine as well.”

“Because?” Amy said.

“I cannot imagine a life without him in it.”

“Do you try to change that?”

“No. It’s part of what he is,” Susan said. “He would not be him if he didn’t do what he does. And it’s the him he is that I cannot imagine life without.”