Robert Parker - The Professional

Susan came with me for a guest workout one day. Everything she wore to work out in fit her exactly and matched perfectly. Her thick, dark hair was held in place by what must have been a designer headband. And her makeup was impeccable. She’d been doing a lot of power yoga lately, which made her even stronger and more supple than she already was. A lot of people looked at her.

“My,” Susan said, as she looked around Pinnacle Fitness. “You fit in here like a rhinoceros at a petting zoo.”

“I’m undercover,” I said, “disguised as a thug.”

“It’s very convincing,” Susan said. “You’re waiting for Gary Whosis to show up?”

“Yes.”

“How long do you plan to wait?”

“I have a six-month membership,” I said.

“You are a stubborn boy,” she said.

“I am.”

“Maybe I can help,” she said. “Show me the picture again.”

“It’s still censored,” I said.

“How too bad,” Susan said.

We worked out as long as we could stand to and then went to change. When I came dressed from the shower, through the front window of the gym I saw Zel and Boo come into the club lobby. I went out.

“Looking for somebody?” I said.

“Same as you,” Zel said.

Behind him, Boo was giving me the deadeye stare that was supposed to freeze my blood in my veins.

I said, “How ya doin’, Boo?”

“Fuck you,” he said.

I nodded.

“You looking for Gary Eisenhower?” I said to Zel.

“Yep.”

“But you don’t know what he looks like,” I said. “So actually you swung by to see if I’d made any progress.”

“Yep,” Zel said.

“I haven’t,” I said.

“You know what he looks like?” Zel said.

“No,” I said.

“The hell you don’t,” Zel said. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know.”

I shrugged.

“How about it, Zel,” Boo said. “Lemme go with him a little.”

Zel ignored him.

“We’re after the same thing,” Zel said. “Don’t see why we can’t cooperate.”

“What’s Boo after?” I said.

“Boo wants what I want,” Zel said.

“And you want?”

“What Chet tells me,” Zel said.

“Too many levels of command for me,” I said. “I think I’ll mosey along on this by myself.”

“Don’t mind if we mosey on along behind you,” Zel said.

“Nope.”

“What if you did mind?” Boo said. “What you gonna do?”

“Let’s wait until I mind,” I said.

Boo wanted so badly to prove he was tougher than I was that I felt almost bad for him.

“Two things, Boo,” Zel said. “One, it ain’t time for you to do your thing. And two, I ain’t so sure you can do it with him.”

“Like hell,” Boo said.

“Listen to Zel,” I said to Boo.

“See you around,” Zel said.

He jerked his head toward the elevator. Boo was still giving me the stare.

“Boo,” Zel said quietly. “We’re leaving.”

He walked to the elevator and pushed the button. Boo stared at me. The elevator arrived and the door slid open.

“Boo,” Zel said. “Now!”

Boo turned and went to the elevator. Zel followed him in. The door slid shut. I looked back toward the health club. Susan, showered, made up, coiffed, and in street clothes, was standing inside the big window holding a two-and-a-half-pound dumbbell. I went back inside the club.

“What was your plan?” I said.

“The ugly guy you were having a stare-off with,” Susan said.

“If things unraveled, I was going to run out and hit him with the dumbbell.”

“Appropriate choice of weapon,” I said.

“For either one of you,” Susan said.

I crooked my arm for her to take.

“Buy you a drink, Wonder Woman?” I said.

She took my arm.

“Maybe two,” she said.

I WENT EVERY DAYto Pinnacle Fitness. I had to be careful. If I improved my body further, the paparazzi would begin following me. So I worked out sparingly and spent a lot of time watching the snugly dressed young women, looking for exercise tips. I was in my second week at Pinnacle when one of the female trainers walked up to me and put her hand out.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Estelle. Can I help you with your training?”

We shook hands. She had shiny black hair, worn long and straight. There was something faintly Asian-Pacific about her appearance, though it was too faint to tell me what.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t think anyone can.”

She smiled warmly.

“I don’t believe that,” she said. “If you need anything, please let me know.”

I said, “Okay, Estelle.”

Since I’d joined no one had spoken to me like that. Why now? I glanced through the front window at the lobby. Across the lobby at the snack bar, a man wearing an ankle-length black overcoat was sipping a smoothie, the healthy devil. He had a short beard and aviator-style sunglasses, and a bright blue silk scarf hanging open around his neck. He didn’t seem to be paying attention. Estelle paid me no more attention, either. When he finished his smoothie, the guy in the overcoat left. Sleuthing makes you suspicious. The guy hadn’t been in the club. Had he really come up to the top floor of the building to drink a smoothie?

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.