The Professional Part 2

"Step at a time," I said.

"But how will you make him leave us alone?" she said. "You look like you could beat him up. Will you beat him up?"

"Soon as I find him," I said.

Reggie seemed satisfied.

Chapter 3.

SUSAN AND I were having drinks before dinner in the South End at a slick new restaurant called Rocca. Susan was sipping a Cosmopolitan. I was moving more quickly on a Dewar's and soda.

"It's sort of an elaborate scam," Susan said. "Isn't it?"

"Kind of," I said. "But he gets a double dip out of it."

"s.e.x and money?" Susan said.

"Yep. With an a.s.sortment of handsome women."

"All of whom," Susan said, "are married to older men."

"Rich older men," I said.

"Doesn't mean none of them love their husbands," Susan said.

"No, it doesn't," I said. "But none of the women love their husbands enough to stay faithful."

"Often it's not a matter of love," Susan said.

"I know."

"Still," Susan said, "he chose wisely."

"Which suggests it's not random," I said.

My scotch was gone. I looked around for a waiter, and found one, and asked for more. A handsome, well-dressed man walked past our table with a group of people. The handsome man stopped.

"Susan," he said. "h.e.l.lo."

"Joe," Susan said. "What a treat."

She introduced us.

"Joseph Abboud?" I said. "The clothes guy."

"The clothes guy," he said.

"You got anything off the rack would fit me?" I said.

Abboud looked at me silently for a moment and smiled.

"G.o.d, I hope not," he said.

We laughed. Abboud moved on after his group. I drank my second scotch. We looked at the menu. The waitress took our order.

"Is that how you're going to find him?" Susan said. "That it's not random?"

"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."

"h.e.l.l," 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."

Chapter 4.

ABIGAIL LARSON had 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 h.e.l.lo 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 c.o.c.ktail."

"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. . . . G.o.d, 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 s.e.xy and fun," she said. "And we both had a couple of c.o.c.ktails, 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 G.o.d, he was good."

She stopped staring into the martini and finished it.

"What gym do you go to?" I said.