Robert Parker: The Professional

“There must be some connection among the women and with him,” I said.

“Do you have a thought?” Susan said. “On what it might be?”

“No,” I said.

“But you will,” she said.

“I will,” I said.

“These women don’t know each other?”

“They do now,” I said. “But they didn’t originally, except a couple of them.”

“So what they have in common seems to be,” Susan said, and smiled, “Gary Eisenhower.”

“And rich older husbands,” I said.

“And perhaps some evidence of promiscuity,” Susan said. “I mean, every young wife doesn’t cheat on her husband. Why did he think these women would?”

“Maybe they are the result of an exhaustive elimination process,” I said.

“Despite what I’ve said, it may be optimistic to think it requires an exhaustive process,” Susan said.

“So lovely, and yet so cynical,” I said.

“My line of work,” she said. “The success rate is not always startling.”

“Hell,” I said. “Neither is mine.”

“I suppose, though,” Susan said, “that we are both optimists in some sense. We believe that things can be made better.”

“And sometimes we’re right,” I said.

“That’s part of the payoff, isn’t it,” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said. “Plus, of course, the fee.”

ABIGAIL LARSONhad seemed the most lively of my four clients. So I tried her first. She lived in Louisburg Square. But she wanted to meet at the bar at the Taj. Which was once the Ritz-Carlton. But the Ritz had opened a new location up on the other side of the Common, and the name moved up there.

Except for the unfortunate name, the Taj hadn’t changed anything. So the bar was still good, and the view from a window table of the Public Garden across Arlington Street was still very good. It was ten to four in the afternoon, on a Thursday, and I had snared us a window table. Abigail was twenty minutes late, but I had been trained by Susan, who was always late except when it mattered. And I remained calm.

I stood when she came in. The bartender waved at her, and two waiters came to say hello as she came toward my table. She put out her hand. I shook it, one of the waiters held her chair, and she sat. She ordered a lemon-drop martini and smiled at me.

“You’re drinking beer?”

“I am,” I said.

“I get so full if I drink enough beer to get tipsy,” she said. The smile continued. “A martini does the job on much less volume.”

“I’m hoping not to get tipsy,” I said.

“What fun is that?” she said.

Gary Eisenhower must have been delighted when he met her. She did everything but hand out business cards to let you know that she fooled around.

“Tell me about Gary,” I said.

“I thought we already did that, in Shaw’s office,” she said.

Her lemon-drop martini arrived. She sampled it with pleasure.

“Smoothes out a day,” she said.

I drank a little beer.

“I was hoping just sort of informally for some reminiscences,” I said. “You know, how did you meet? Where did you go? What did you do?”

“What did we do?”

“Other than that,” I said.

“You got something against ‘that’?” she said.

“No,” I said. “You can tell me about ‘that,’ too, if you like.”

She smiled at me.

“Maybe I will,” she said.

I waited.

“Actually,” she said, and took in some more of her lemon drop, “I met him here.”

She glanced around the room, looking for a waiter, spotted one, and nodded. He smiled and went to the bar.

“I come here quite often,” she said.

“I suspected as much,” I said.

“Often I go to my gym, in the late afternoon, and afterward I shower and change and meet my girlfriends for a cocktail.”

“Replenish those electrolytes,” I said.

“What?” she said.

I shook my head and smiled.

“Just musing out loud,” I said.

“Anyway,” she said. “I’d see him at the bar sometimes, and after two or three times, he’d smile and nod as I came in, and I’d do the same. One day I came in alone and sat at a table, and he was at the bar. I smiled at him and nodded, and he picked up his drink and walked over and asked if he could join me… God, he was handsome.”

She drank some more of her lemon drop. She took small, ladylike swallows. She didn’t guzzle, but she was persistent.

“And he was very charming,” I said.

“And sexy and fun,” she said. “And we both had a couple of cocktails, and talked, and one thing led to another…”

“And,” I said, “I’ll bet he had a room in the hotel.”

She looked at me for a moment as if I’d just performed necromancy.

“Yes,” she said, “he did. And…” She shrugged.

“What’s a girl to do,” I said.

She nodded slowly, looking at the depleted surface of her lemon drop.

“I know now he was using me,” she said. “But God, he was good.”

She stopped staring into the martini and finished it.

“What gym do you go to?” I said.

“Pinnacle Fitness,” she said.

“The big flossy thing on Tremont?” I said.

“You know it?” she said.

“I was there once with a client,” I said.

Another lemon-drop martini arrived.

“Do you work out?”

“Some,” I said.

“You look very fit,” she said.

“You, too,” I said.

Mistake.

She smiled again and her face flushed slightly.

“You should see me with my clothes off,” she said.

“Probably should,” I said.

She smiled again and her face flushed a little more.

“Do you have a room upstairs?” she said.

“Sadly, no,” I said.

“I could probably get us one,” she said.

“It’s a kind offer,” I said. “But no, thank you.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“But?”

“But I’m in love with Susan Silverman, and we’ve agreed on monogamy.”

“My goodness,” Abigail said.

“I know,” I said. “Makes me kind of boring, but there it is.”

“What a waste,” she said.

“Everyone says that.”

I drank another swallow of beer.

“When did the money stuff come up?” I said.

“Not right away. He paid for everything the first time we were together, here. I don’t think he took any money from me for, oh, I’d say at least a year, year and a half. Then he said there was some waterfront property in Chatham, which was way underpriced, and he knew he could buy it, we could go there and spend time, and later when the market rose, he’d sell it for a nice profit.”

“But all his money was tied up, and he didn’t want to cash in a CD because of the penalties,” I said. “So maybe you could lend him the down payment and you’d get it back with interest when the house was sold.”

“That’s almost exactly right,” she said. “How did you know?”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” I said. “You ever see the house?”

“Yes, we spent several weekends there.”

“And your husband?”

“He thought I was with my girlfriends,” Abigail said. “You know. He used to call it a sisterhood retreat.”

“Your husband doesn’t know,” I said.

“God, no, that’s the big reason we hired you.”

“No suspicions? Then or now?”

“None. He’s very busy and very important. Tell you the truth,” she said, “I don’t think it occurs to him that it could happen.”

“You are intimate?”

“Sure. John’s not in the very best shape, and he gets tired at night, and, you know, he’s sixty-eight.”

“So your intimacy is not as frequent as it might be,” I said.

“Or as long-lasting, or as… ah, enthusiastic.”