Robert Parker - The Professional

Gee whiz, I thought, who can you trust .

I TAILED HIMfor 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.

WE WALKED OVERto 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 drank 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.”