When I was through for the day, I took the elevator down and went out onto Tremont Street. The guy in the overcoat was sitting on a bench across the street at the edge of the Common, reading a newspaper, digesting his smoothie. He fit the physical description of Gary Eisenhower, as best I could tell. But the beard and the sunglasses made it a little hard to judge the face from this distance. If only his loins were blacked out with Magic Marker.
I crossed with the light and headed on down across the Common. Overcoat fell in behind me, at a distance. Even if I hadn’t started thinking about him in the health club lobby, I would have made him when he started tailing me. His elaborate lack of interest in me was classic overacting. We crossed Charles Street to the Public Garden. It was late afternoon and already dark in the Back Bay. The Public Garden was full of people walking away from work. I angled left through the Public Garden, crossed at Arlington, and went up Boylston Street toward my office. The guy in the overcoat trailed along. I went in the Boylston Street entrance of my building and walked up a flight to my office. Overcoat lingered outside.
In my office I took off my leather jacket, put on my baseball hat and a black raincoat, and went down the back stairs, into the alley, and out onto Berkeley to the corner of Boylston. Overcoat was where I thought he’d be, in the lobby of my building, looking at the tenant directory.
I crossed Boylston Street and stood looking in the window of a Starbucks coffee shop. In the reflection I saw him come out of the building. He headed across Boylston on Berkeley Street toward the river. I tailed him down Berkeley, across Newbury, across Commonwealth Ave, to Beacon Street. He turned right, crossed Arlington, and turned into a low apartment building on the river side of Beacon Street, where it was still flat before Beacon Hill began to rise toward the State House. I stood across the street behind the black iron fence where it turned the corner at Arlington Street. In another minute or so, the lights went on in the second-floor front.
It was raining lightly; there was a mild wind. I felt like a real private eye, standing in the dark, in the city, with my collar pulled up and my hat pulled down. After a while, I walked across to the doorway of the apartment building and read the names under the doorbells. The second floor was E. Herzog.
I lived only a couple of blocks from E. Herzog, so I turned back into the light rain and walked home.
Gee whiz, I thought, who can you trust.
Chapter11
I TAILED HIM for the next couple of days. I thought it might make some sense to see if I could learn anything. And in truth, I was probably showing off a little. When he’d try to tail me, I spotted him at once. I was behind him for the rest of the week and he never knew it. I couldn’t wait to tell Susan.
The next day, Wednesday, I called Martin Quirk and asked him if he could run the names Gary Eisenhower and E. Herzog for me.
“You want me to come by and iron yours shirts, too?”
“I know you,” I said. “You’d use too much starch.”
“I find anything,” Quirk said, “I’ll let you know.”
I spent the rest of Wednesday hanging around Newbury Street, where Gary shopped with a woman I didn’t know in a series of shops that didn’t have my size. Thursday was spent mostly in the lobby of The Langham Hotel, where Gary spent the afternoon in a room with one woman, and much of the evening in the same room with a different woman. Neither was a client.
Friday I spent the morning outside a boutique hotel near the State House, while Gary spent it in the hotel with a date, not one of my clients. Gary didn’t let a lot of grass grow, I had to give him that.
Friday afternoon he did some shopping in Copley Place. I didn’t like Copley Place. It was a large mall in the middle of the city, with a lot of marble and high-end shops, anchored at either end by a large hotel. One could come to the hotel and shop in the mall, and never go outside. The drawback was that inside the mall you had no way to know if you were in Chicago, or Houston, or East Lansing, Michigan.
Gary seemed to like it okay. He bought a cashmere topcoat and a twelve-thousand-dollar suit, and a pair of imported shoes, the price of which I didn’t catch. Then he went to one of the hotel bars and had drinks with Estelle, the friendly trainer. They spoke at length and quite intensely, and laughed quite often, and when he left her he kissed her good-bye. Then, carrying his purchases, he headed out of Copley Place and on down Boylston Street.
I drifted along behind him as he walked down Boylston from Copley Place. There was a lot of foot traffic in the late afternoon, and I closed it up a little. He turned at Arlington Street, as I had expected, but then he crossed into the Public Garden and walked toward the little bridge that arched over the Swan Boats. Halfway across the bridge he stopped and leaned on the railing and looked down at the still water. The romantic devil just liked to be on the bridge. I understood that. I did, too. The Swan Boats were in dry dock for the winter. But the pond hadn’t been drained yet. When I reached him I stopped and leaned on the bridge railing, too. He kept staring at the water.
I said, “Gary Eisenhower, I presume?”
He looked up as if he was startled. Then he began to smile.
“Goddamn,” he said. “You’re pretty good.”
“Everyone says so.”
“How’d you know it was me?” he said.
“Got a picture,” I said.
“How the hell . . . ?”
“A woman took it while you were sleeping.”
“Damn,” he said. “Probably used one of those phone cameras.”
“Yep.”
He grinned wider.
“Fucking technology,” he said. “Want to go someplace and have a drink and talk about things?”
“We’d be fools not to,” I said.
Chapter12
WE WALKED OVER to the Four Seasons and got a table in The Bristol Lounge. Gary ordered a “Maker’s Mark, rocks, water back.” I had a beer. Gary put his shopping bags on the floor beside him and unbuttoned his overcoat but didn’t take it off. Under the coat he had on a coffee-colored coarse-weave turtleneck sweater. He took a long swallow of his bourbon when it arrived, and sipped a little water.
“Oh, Momma,” he said. “Nothing like it when you need it.”
“Or even when you don’t,” I said.
“You got that right,” he said.
He looked around.
“Nice room,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
“One of the places I bring them,” he said.
“Nothing but the best,” I said. “You ever pay?”
He grinned at me and sipped more bourbon.
“Not often,” he said.
He stirred the remaining bourbon and ice with his forefinger for a moment.
“Nice gig,” he said. “I hope we can work something out. I’d hate to give it up.”
“Tell me about the gig,” I said.
“You probably got most of it figured out,” he said.
“Tell me anyway,” I said. “I’m much dumber than I seem.” Gary leaned back in his chair and laughed hard.
“Aren’t we all,” he said.
He drank the rest of his bourbon, spotted the waitress, pointed to the glass. She nodded and looked at me. I shook my head.
“Okay,” Gary said. “I’m good with women, you know? They like me. For a while I used that to get a lot of tail.”
“Good to have a hobby,” I said.
He grinned.
“That’s what it was at first, a hobby,” he said. “But I like a lot of action.”
“And you believe in diversity,” I said.
“I do,” he said. “And that makes the hobby get kind of expensive.”
“Lot of wining and dining before you even get to the hobby part,” I said.
“Pretty much at first,” Gary said. “After you sort of get established it gets cheaper, you know? You cut out the wining and dining, get right to the hobby.”
I nodded. The waitress came with Gary’s drink. It made him happy. He dra
nk some of it.
“But one day,” I said, “it occurred to you that you might be able to turn the hobby into a living.”
He pointed to me.
“Exactly,” he said. “You sure you’re not smart?”
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“I think you’re too modest,” Gary said.
“That, too,” I said. “So how did you do the blackmail?”
“Hey, dude, what a terrible word,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “How did you go about professionalizing your hobby?”
“First time I tried it,” Gary said, “I rented a motel room for a couple days. I got some software in my computer that allows pictures to be taken through the screen. I set it up focused on the bed, so it looked like it was just on the table, where I’d been typing or something. And I set it to go off every few seconds. As backup, I put a tape recorder under the bed. So when the action started I made sure the positions were right for pictures and sound. It worked. And as time went along, I refined it. Got a tiny video camera, set it up in the corner of the room. In a shadow. Taped sight and sound.”
Gary sipped some bourbon. As he swallowed, he held the glass up in front of him and gave it a little kiss.
“In some ways, the sound is better than the pictures,” he said.
“But harder to identify,” I said.
“Yeah. That’s why you need the pictures. But the stuff they said . . .” He shook his head. “You know how a lot of women say stuff during sex?”
“I recall something about that,” I said.
“You married?” Gary said.
“No, but I’m with the girl of my dreams,” I said.
“Girl of your dreams?” Gary said.
“Uh-huh.”
“She say stuff?”
I didn’t say anything.
Gary shrugged.
“À chacun son goût,” he said.
“Oui,” I said.
He grinned.
“Anyway, I got some excellent action,” he said. “Some of it pretty kinky.”
I nodded.
“You want to hear about it?” Gary said.
“Another time,” I said.
“You got a problem with kinky, Spense?”
“Not among consenting adults,” I said. “And don’t call me Spense.”
“Oh, sure, apologize,” he said. “Anyway, it was duck soup. So I started doing it regular. I made sure the women were married and had money, preferably married to older rich men, so they might be looking for action but would never want to give up the husband and his money.”
“Estelle help you with that?” I said.
“Boy, you don’t miss much,” Gary said. “How’d you know that?”
“She fingered me for you,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah.”
“She’d have access to the membership records,” I said.
“She does,” Gary said. “She knows what we’re looking for.”
“Many failures?” I said.
“Now and then,” Gary said. “Not as often as you’d think.”
He was a very handsome man. Six feet tall, maybe a little more, wide shoulders, narrow hips, good color, dressed like a male model.
“She doesn’t mind you having sex with all these women?” I said.
“I think she likes it,” he said.
I nodded.
“So how often do you practice your, ah, profession,” I said.
“It’s still a hobby, too,” Gary said. “I do it every day.”
“Why?” I said.
“Why?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“’Cause I can, for crissake.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s nice to like your work.”
Chapter13
GARY WAS ON HIS THIRD bourbon. But it was going in much more slowly, and he showed little effect from the first two. I had my second beer.
“So where do we stand?” Gary said.
“What’s the E stand for,” I said.
“E?”
“As in E. Herzog.”
Gary looked at me for a long moment.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
I waited.
After a while, Gary grinned at me.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re smart. That dumb stuff is just a ploy.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But what I’ve done so far doesn’t prove anything.”
“You think?” he said.
“Your big mistake was trying to tail me. If you hadn’t made it, I would have had a much harder time finding you.”
“You spotted me following you the other day and turned it around and followed me.”
“Yep.”
Gary shook his head.
“Amateurs and professionals, huh?”
“What’s the E stand for?” I said.
“Elliot,” he said.
“Is Elliot Herzog your real name?” I said.
Again, Gary grinned at me.
“One of them,” he said.
I nodded.
“So what are your plans,” I said, “for the ladies who employed me?”
He smiled.
“Abigail, Beth, Nancy, Regina,” he said. “The gang of four.”
“Are they the only ones with whom you are at the moment practicing your profession?”
“Not hardly,” Gary said.
“Maybe you should plan to stick with them,” I said. “And leave my gang alone.”
He picked up a butter knife and tapped a little beat on the table with it while he looked at me.
“I got no reason to change my plans,” he said.
“I’m supposed to give you a reason,” I said.
He shrugged.
“What are you gonna do?” he said. “These ladies are willing to pay because they don’t want their husbands to know. That hasn’t changed. None of them will press charges. If you tell the cops or whatever, every one of them will deny that they ever had anything to do with me.”
“I could keep punching your lights out,” I said, “until we reach an agreement.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I have a sense that it might not be your style. But say it was. If you did it once, okay, I’m sore for a few days. I might be tougher than you think I am. And when I felt better, I’d get hold of your employers and they’d call you off, for fear I’d expose them.”
“And if they didn’t?” I said.
“I’d expose them,” he said. “They’re not the only fish in my creel, you know?”
“I don’t seem to terrify you,” I said.
“I been living this life for a long time,” he said. “I’m pretty light on my feet.”
“And the cops don’t terrify you,” I said.
“Nothing much does,” he said. “You got the tab on this?”
“Sure,” I said. “Expense account.”
“Sort of like me,” he said, and stood up.
“See you around,” he said.
“Yep,” I said.
He picked up his shopping bags and strolled out of the lounge. I watched him go and smiled. I kind of liked him. I picked up his butter knife by the blade and slipped it into my coat pocket. Then I paid the bill, tipped handsomely, and strolled out of the lounge, too.
Chapter14
GOT SIX E. HERZOGS,” Quirk said to me. “None of them named Elliot. Got no Gary Eisenhowers.”
“There’s a surprise,” I said.
We were having lunch at Locke-Ober.
“How come you know everybody?” I said.
“Been coming here a long time, most of them are politicians or lawyers.”
“That you met in your work,” I said.
“Yep,” Quirk said.
He grinned.
“Arrested some of them,” he said.
“Not enough,” I said.
“Everybody got arrested that should get arrested,” Quirk said, “we wouldn’t have no place to put them.”
“How about the butter kn
ife?” I said.
Quirk nodded.
“There were prints on the butter knife,” he said. “Yours were on the blade, and there were two others.”
“One would be whoever set the table,” I said.
“Young woman named Lucille Malinkowski,” Quirk said.
“Why have you got her prints on file?”
“Don’t know, nothing criminal. Maybe she was in the army, maybe she has a gun license, maybe she used to work someplace where she had to have clearance. I didn’t know you’d care.”
“And the other one?
“Belongs to a guy named Goran Pappas,” Quirk said.
“ ‘Goran’?”
“Aka Gary Pappas,” Quirk said.
“Why is Gary in the system,” I said.
“He did three in MCI-Shirley for swindling,” Quirk said.
“From a woman?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What’d Gary look like?” I said.
“Six feet one inch, one hundred seventy pounds, dark hair, brown eyes, even features, age thirty-eight at the time of his arrest.”
“Which was?”
“In 2002,” Quirk said.
He produced a computer printout of Gary Pappas’s mug shot. It was Gary Eisenhower.
“Anybody want him now for anything?” I said.
“He’s not in the system,” Quirk said. “Course, the system’s imperfect.”
“It is?” I said. “How did that happen?”
Quirk didn’t bother to answer.
“You want to discuss Gary with me?” he said.
“He’s blackmailing a bunch of women,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Quirk said.
I told him most of it, leaving out the names.
“Not a bad gig,” Quirk said. “Banging good-looking women every day, getting money for it.”
“It might get boring,” I said.
Quirk looked at me.
“Or not,” I said.
Quirk nodded.
“So they hired you to make him stop,” Quirk said.
The Professional Page 4
