Robert Parker - The Widening Gyre

She nodded. The schoolgirls were quite small in the distance now. She shook her head.

"When I was a little girl there was a song my father used to sing to me," she said. "One line in it was 'Stay away from college boys, when you're on a spree/Take good care of yourself, you belong to me.' " She sang the line over again and her voice was a little shaky. The streetlights had gone on and in the gleam of the one nearest us I could see the brightness of tears on her face.

"Nothing is irredeemable," I said.

"I don't even know why I do it," she said. "Neither does Ellie. There's some thrill to it, but mostly it's humiliating. The boys are crude and stupid. Afterward I feel like… like something that's been passed around."

"That's part of its charm," I said.

The schoolgirls turned a corner, far down the street, and disappeared. Cynthia looked at me. Her face was wet.

"Charm?"

"Sure. You're acting out a lot of stuff that I'm not qualified to analyze, but you've found a way to do it and build in your own punishment."

She stared at me for a long time. "You think I need a shrink?"

I shrugged. "What you're doing doesn't seem to please you. Maybe a shrink. Maybe a divorce? Maybe a boyfriend on the side? Maybe a job?"

"I think psychology is a lot of crap," she said.

"Okay by me," I said. "All I'm saying is that if you're unhappy, there are other solutions besides balling a bunch of dim-witted college kids."

She nodded slowly. "I've got to go in," she said. "My husband will be home."

"I'll keep you out of it," I said. "I might ask you to write out a statement of what you told me that I could show to a private person. But I probably won't need it."

I took the picture of her from my shirt pocket and gave it to her. "It's the only one I took that shows your face," I said.

She took it. "Do you think there's videotape?"

"If there is, I'll take care of it," I said.

"Why do this for me?"

"I'm doing it for the person I represent," I said. "Costs me nothing to include you."

"And Ellie?"

"Sure."

She got out of the car and stood for a moment on the sidewalk. I got out on my side and leaned my forearms on the roof and looked at her.

"It's really odd," she said. "I don't even know your name and you know things about me that I've never told anyone."

"As they used to say in the movies, your secret is safe with me."

She took a step toward her house and hesitated; she looked back at me. "Is it going to be all right?"

"Sure," I said. "But stay away from college boys, when you're on a spree."

She nodded and took two more steps and stopped again.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome."

She reached her front steps and turned at her front door and looked at me.

"Mrs. Knox." I said. "For what it's worth, I think you're quite beautiful."

She stayed motionless at her door for a moment, looking back at me. Then she opened it and went in.

I spent most of the next day calling on people that Gerry Broz had called on in the aftermath of the great blizzard. I'd made note of the addresses and now I went visiting- Georgetown in the morning, Capitol hill in the afternoon. Some people weren't home, many of the people that were home wouldn't talk with me, but I made progress. Enough.

My approach was open and honest. Like my face.

"This is off the record," I told an elegant young woman in a town house on Fourth Street. "I'm doing work for a government agency. I won't mention the name, but it's a three-letter agency."

She stood in her open door in a silk lounging outfit and nodded. Her hair was black with a good-looking sprinkle of premature silver.

"You don't have to even give your name, and you're free to deny anything you say. I'm looking for background only."

She nodded again. Her dark eyes were enlarged by an enormous pair of glasses with jade-green rims.

"There is a young man who sells cocaine to you, and to many of your neighbors, good people, not criminals. He is covertly connected," I said, "to a foreign power with interests antithetical to those of the United States."

"I don't know anything about it," she said.

I shook my head impatiently, but friendly. "No, no. We don't care about the cocaine. I'll snort a little myself on weekends. We've got bigger fish to fry."

"What do you want?" she said.

"The name he's using," I said. "We haven't been able to establish his cover name, and we don't want to risk tipping him to our interest. All I want from you is his name."

She frowned. I was wearing my suit and a clean shirt and trying like hell to look like someone who had gone to Yale and worked now for a three-letter government agency. I smiled sincerely, encouragingly. You can trust your government.

"You needn't admit anything about any proscribed substance," I said. "Merely a name."

"I…" She shook her head.

"I guess all of us are cynical now," I said. "I guess that there's no point talking about duty, about patriotism. I guess it's too late for that kind of talk. But I must say that you have a chance here, at no cost to yourself, to do your country a service."

I looked directly at her, standing straight.

"Gerry Broz," she said. "That's the name he uses here."

"Thank you very much," I said. "We will not bother you again. You have my word." I put out my hand, she took it. We shook, and I went on down Fourth Street to where I'd parked the car.

I replayed that scene maybe twenty times that day. In two other instances I got the name. Everyone else told me to beat it. Whatever happened to duty, honor, country? But I had enough. None of it would stand up in court, but I wasn't going to court. I was building evidence for a different forum.

At the sixteenth house I picked up a tail. It wasn't amateurish, but it wasn't Bulldog Drummond either. Two guys in jackets and ties, driving a dark blue Chevy sedan with District plates on it. One of them wore sunglasses. They stayed behind me for the rest of the afternoon. They followed me back to the Hay Adams. When I gave my car to the doorman they moved on down Sixteenth Street, and when I came out half an hour later showered and reshaved and damned near preppy in my Harris tweed jacket, they were gone.

I guessed that someone I'd talked to had called Gerry Broz and Gerry had called someone and they had sent out two employees to take a look. Unless they were even clumsier than their tail job suggested, they'd be able to get my name by tracing the plate numbers to the car rental company. Then they'd check at the hotel and establish that I stayed there.

Then they'd call in and report to whoever sent them and whoever sent them would probably call Gerry and then they'd decide what to do about it. There wasn't much for me to do but go about my business. At least I had stirred up some activity. I'd worry about their next move when they made it. Readiness is all.

My business at the moment was to pick Susan up at work and drive her out Wisconsin Avenue to the Mazza Mall in Chevy Chase. I picked her up at 5:30. She was standing out front in the early evening. Looking at her made me wonder if some of her patients got better just by staring.

"A deal is a deal," I said. "I shop with you tonight, and Saturday you go with me to the National Gallery."

"Yes," she said, "but no big sighs and stifled yawns while I'm in here. I need to concentrate completely."

"And when it's over we eat and drink," I said.

"Shopping is never over," Susan said. "It is merely suspended."

The Mazza Mall was Rodeo Drive compressed and three stories high. The architecture was L.A., or maybe Dallas, opulent with a big Neiman-Marcus branch anchoring one end of the building. Susan had a charge at Neiman-Marcus and headed directly there. To say that Susan shopped would be like saying that sharks eat. It was disciplined frenzy. While she was at it I kept close watch on the clientele, which was multinational and very stylish and almost entirely female. By actual count, women in the Mazza Mall preferred pants to skirts by a four to one margin and preferred the pants very snug over the backside in nearly every case.