Robert Parker - The Professional

“Chet Jackson,” he said, and put out his hand.

He had a big chin and short black hair with a lot of gray showing. The hair was receding from his forehead. His face was unlined. He smelled of very good cologne. His grip was strong. He had on a blue suit with a blue-and-white striped tie against a gleaming white shirt. There was a white handkerchief in his breast pocket.

I sat. He sat.

“Coffee?” he said. “Tea? water? Something stronger?”

“No, thanks.”

Chet nodded decisively.

“Okay,” he said. “What can you tell me about Gary Eisenhower?”

“He’s blackmailing a number of women,” I said. “They asked me to find him and make him stop.”

“Have you found him?”

“No.”

“But you’ve been looking for him at Pinnacle Fitness,” Chet said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Thought I might find him there,” I said.

“What made you think that?”

“Probably,” I said, “same thing that made you go there.”

“What makes you think I went there?”

“I’m a trained investigator,” I said. “One day I ask about Eisenhower there, next day Zel and Boo come around.”

“Who are these women who employed you?”

I shook my head.

“I am a man of considerable leverage,” Chet said.

“How nice for you,” I said.

“And I don’t like flippant,” Chet said.

“What a shame,” I said.

Chet swiveled in his chair and with his back to me looked out his window at his view. After a suitable pause he swiveled back and looked hard at me.

“I want to know who you represent,” he said. “And I want to know what led you to Pinnacle.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “That’s pretty much what I want to learn from you.”

We sat silently then, looking at each other. Then Chet smiled at me.

“You’re not scared of me, are you?” he said.

“I’m trying to be,” I said.

Chet leaned back in his chair a little and laughed. “Goddamn it,” he said. “I like your style.”

“That’s grand,” I said.

We sat again.

I looked around the office.

“What do you do for a living?” I said.

“I make money,” Chet said.

“How?” I said.

“Little of this,” Chet said. “Little of that.”

“Folks that employ people like Zel and Boo,” I said, “and make their money by doing a little of this, a little of that, most of those folks have offices in the back of billiard parlors.”

“I played football at Harvard,” Chet said.

“Wow,” I said.

Chet was rubbing his chin with the palm of his left hand. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to take a chance on you.”

He nodded at the picture of Beth on the credenza.

“That’s my wife,” he said. “Beth. I think she’s been involved with Eisenhower.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Can you confirm or deny that?” Chet said.

“Nope.”

“Is she one of your clients?”

I shook my head.

“You wouldn’t tell me if she was,” Chet said. “Would you?”

I shook my head.

“Can you tell me anything?”

“I figured Gary had a plan ahead of time,” I said. “All the women I represent have a common pattern. Young, older husbands of significant wealth. And all of them belonged to Pinnacle Fitness.”

Chet nodded.

“Beth belongs,” he said.

I nodded. He stopped rubbing his chin and massaged his forehead with both hands for a minute. Then he put his hands flat on his desktop and leaned a little toward me.

“I’m a tough guy,” he said. “I make a lot of money in a lot of different ways, and none of the ways is easy.”

I nodded.

“I don’t mind that,” he said. “I don’t care too much about too many things. People get in my way, I don’t mind moving them out of the way.”

I nodded.

“But this is hard,” he said.

I was sick of nodding, so I just waited.

“And the reason it’s hard is that I made a mistake.”

He paused and looked at the back of his hands on the desktop, and breathed a couple of times.

“I let myself love Beth,” he said.

“Opens you up a little,” I said. “Doesn’t it.”

“Chink in the armor,” he said. “But there it is. I’m fifty-eight. She’s thirty. I’m in good shape and all. But I’m almost twice her age.”

I went back to nodding.

“We were fine until I began to get a sense that she might be seeing somebody else. No real evidence, little stuff, mostly sort of a feeling. I guess if your wife is cheating on you, at some level, you know.”

“If you let yourself,” I said.

“After a while I let myself,” he said. “I put Zel on her, see what he could find out.”

“She doesn’t know Zel?” I said.

“No. She doesn’t know anything to do with my business.”

“Makes it easier,” I said.

“Zel’s good at things,” Chet said. “He tailed her and found out that she was seeing somebody and what his name was.” Chet shook his head. “If that’s his real name.”

“And you started looking into places she might have met him,” I said.

“Zel did, yeah. Health club, country club, restaurants, couple of stores on Newbury Street.”

“And he didn’t find Eisenhower,” I said. “But he established an, ah, relationship with various people to report if anything about Eisenhower surfaced. So when I showed up at Pinnacle Fitness, asking about him…”

“We heard about it,” Chet said. “And I asked Zel to check it out with you.”

“What’s your plan if you find Gary Eisenhower.”

“I’ll have him in for a talk,” Chet said.

“How far will you go?” I said.

“Do you mean will I kill him?” Chet said. “I don’t think that would get me where I want to get.”

“Which is?”

“With Beth, and nobody else.”

“And if you aced him, she’d suspect.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Chet said.

“You’re not the only aggrieved husband,” I said.

“But you’d be suspicious, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Have you spoken to your wife about any of this?”

“No.”

“Might be a good thing,” I said.

“Might be,” he said.

“But?”

“But I can’t,” he said. “I simply goddamn can’t.”

I nodded.

“The best moments in my life,” I said, “have come because I loved somebody.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“And the worst,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

I SAT IN THEclient-membership offices with a young woman named Courtney and signed up for a six-month membership at Pinnacle Fitness. I didn’t see Margi from the client-services office. Though Courtney could have been Margi with a change of makeup. Then the client-training director took me to the client-training office to assess me physically. He took my blood pressure and pulse. He weighed me. And pronounced me fit. He turned me over to a personal trainer, an in-shape young man named Luke, who offered to help me learn the various pieces of equipment. I declined.

“I’ve worked out a lot,” I said. “I’ll be okay on my own.”

Luke nodded.

“I kind of figured that,” he said. “You need anything, give me a shout.”

I got a locker and a padlock. I didn’t really need one, except for the gun. I hated wearing a gun while working out. So I changed into some sweats and left the gun in the locker. If Margi spotted me from the client-services office and rushed me, I might be able to run for it.

I was limited in my workouts by the fact that I could use only equipment near the front window, where I could watch for Gary Eisenhower entering the lobby. Who kept not showing up every day.