The Professional

For Emma, who arrived; and for Gracie, who left.

I HAD JUST FINISHED a job for an interesting woman named Nan Sartin, and was happily making out my bill to her, when a woman came in who promised to be equally interesting.

It was a bright October morning when she walked into my office carrying a briefcase. She was a big woman, not fat, but strong-looking and very graceful. Her hair was silver, and her face was young enough to make me assume that the silver was premature. She was wearing a dark blue suit with a long jacket and a short skirt.

I said, “Hello.”

She said, “My name is Elizabeth Shaw. Please call me Elizabeth. I’m an attorney, and I represent a group of women who need your help.”

She took a business card from her briefcase and placed it on my desk. It said she was a partner in the law firm Shaw and Cartwright, and that they had offices on Milk Street.

I said, “Okay.”

“You are Spenser,” she said.

“I am he,” I said.

“I specialize in wills and trusts,” she said. “I know little about criminal law.”

I nodded.

“But I went to law school with Rita Fiore,” she said.

So the silver hair was premature.

“Ahh,” I said.

She smiled.

“Ahh, indeed,” she said. “So I told Rita my story, and she suggested I tell it to you.”

“Please do,” I said.

Elizabeth Shaw looked at the large picture of Susan that sat on my file drawer near the coffeemaker.

“Is that your wife?” she said.

“Sort of,” I said.

“How can she be ‘sort of’?” Elizabeth said.

“We’re not married,” I said.

“But?”

“But we’ve been together a considerable time,” I said.

“And you love her,” Elizabeth said.

“I do.”

“And she loves you.”

“She does.”

“Then why don’t you get married?” Elizabeth said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

She stared at me. I smiled pleasantly. She frowned a little.

“Was there anything else?” I said.

She smiled suddenly. It was a good look for her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I was trying to find out a little about your attitude toward women and marriage.”

“I try to develop my attitudes on a case-by-case basis,” I said.

She nodded, thinking about it.

“Rita says there’s no one better if the going gets rough.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How about if the going isn’t rough?” Elizabeth said.

“There’s still no one better,” I said.

“Rita mentioned that you didn’t lack for confidence.”

“Would you want someone who did?” I said.

I must have passed some kind of initial screening. She shifted in her chair slightly.

“Everything I tell you,” she said, “must, of course, remain entirely confidential.”

“Sure.”

She looked at Susan’s picture again.

“That’s a very beautiful woman,” she said.

“She is,” I said.

She shifted again in her chair.

“I have a client, a woman, married, with a substantial trust fund, given to her by her husband as a wedding present. We manage the trust for her, and over the years she and I have become friendly.”

“He gave her a trust fund for a present?”

Elizabeth smiled.

“The rich are very different,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “They have more money.”

“Well,” she said. “A literate detective.”

“But self-effacing.”

She smiled again.

“My client’s name is Abigail Larson,” Elizabeth said. “She is considerably younger than her husband.”

“How considerably?”

“He’s sixty-eight. She’s thirty-one.”

“Aha,” I said.

“ ‘Aha’?”

“I’m jumping to a conclusion,” I said.

“Sadly, the conclusion is correct. She had an affair.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said.

“You disapprove?” Elizabeth said.

“I guess it’s probably better if people can be faithful to each other,” I said.

“She’s not a bad woman,” Elizabeth said.

“Affairs aren’t usually about good and bad,” I said.

“What do you think they’re about?”

“Need,” I said.

Elizabeth sat back a little in her chair.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said.

“Hell,” I said. “I’m not what I expected. What would you like me to do?”

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m still testing you.”

“Maybe you could test my ability to listen to what you want,” I said.

She smiled at me.

“Yes,” she said. “In brief, the man she had the affair with took her for some money and ditched her.”

“How much?” I said.

“Actually, just enough to hurt her feelings. Restaurants, hotels, car rentals, a small gift now and then.”

“And?” I said.

“That was it,” Elizabeth said, “for a while. Then one day she saw him, in a restaurant, with a woman whom she knew casually.”

“Nest prospecting,” I said.

“Apparently,” Elizabeth said. “Anyway, she talked to the woman the next day to tell her a little about her experience with this guy. . . .”

“Whose name is?” I said.

“Gary Eisenhower,” Elizabeth said.

“Gary Eisenhower?” I said.

Elizabeth shrugged.

“That’s what he tells them,” she said.

“Them?”

“The two women talked, and then they networked, and one thing led to another, and in ways too boring to detail here, they discovered that he had exploited four of them, often simultaneously, over the past ten years.”

“Have you met this guy?”

“No.”

“Well, if you do,” I said, “be careful.”

“I think I’ll be all right,” she said.

“So the seduced and abandoned have joined forces?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And what do they want?”

“They’d like to see him castrated, I’m sure, but that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

“They came to me as a group because I was the only lawyer that any of them knew, and we agreed that pursuing him for the money would cause them embarrassment. Their husbands would find out. It might make a great tabloid story. So they agreed to move on, sadder but wiser, so to speak.”

“But,” I said.

“But he has returned. He has contacted each of them. He says he has proof positive of each adultery and will expose them to their husbands and the world if they don’t pay him.”

“What kind of evidence?” I said.

“They thought they were being discreet,” Elizabeth said. “These women are not stupid, nor, I guess, inexperienced.”

“No letters,” I said. “No e-mails, no messages on answering machines.”

“Yes.”

“Hidden cameras, hidden tape recorders?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I guess he was planning on shaking them down all along.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Sometimes people like to keep a record. Allows them to revisit these special moments, when things are slow.”

“So,” Elizabeth said, “maybe shaking them down was an afterthought?”

“Maybe,” I said. “They don’t want to pay.”

“Don’t want to, and can’t. Their husbands control all of the substantial money.”

“So you want me to make him cease and desist, without causing a stir,” I said.

“Can you?” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

I MET THE FOUR WOMEN in a bigger conference room than we needed at Shaw and Cartwright. Elizabeth Shaw sat at one side of the table. The women sat two apiece on each side of her. I sat across from them.

Elizabeth introduced them.

“Abigail Larson, Beth Jackson, Regina Hartley, Nancy Sinclair.”

They each had a small notepad in front of them. And a ballpoint pen. Doubtless provided by the firm. They all smiled at me. All of the smiles displayed white, even teeth. They were all extremely well dressed. They all had very good haircuts. They all looked in shape. None looked older than thirty-five. It is easier to be good-looking when you’re thirty-five, and even easier if you’re rich. Though Elizabeth Shaw, who was probably neither, was holding her own. I smiled back at all of them.

No one said anything. They all looked at Elizabeth. “Perhaps you could tell us a little about yourself,” Elizabeth said to me.

“I used to be a cop, now I’m a private detective,” I said.

“Do you have a gun?” Regina said.

“I do.”

“Have you ever shot anyone?” she said.

“I have.”

“Could you tell us about that?” she said.

“No.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” Regina said.

She had very black hair, which she wore in bangs over her forehead. Her eyes were large and made to seem larger by her eye makeup. She had on a simple print dress that had probably cost more than Liechtenstein, and her skin was evenly tanned, which in October, in Boston, meant she had either traveled to warmer climes or used an excellent bronzer.

“If we’re going to hire you, I think we should be able to ask you questions,” Abigail said.

I think she was trying to sound stern, but her voice was too small for stern.

“You can ask anything you want,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I have to answer.”

“Well, how are we supposed to decide,” she said.

“Me telling you about shooting somebody won’t help.” Abigail was blonde, with a short haircut that had probably cost as much as Regina’s little dress. Her eyes were blue. She looked tan.

“I just think it would be so interesting,” she said. “I mean, I bet nobody here even knows anyone who has shot someone.”

“I am hopeful that I won’t have to shoot anyone on this job,” I said.

Abigail said, “I wouldn’t actually mind if you shot the bastard.”

“No,” Beth said. “I don’t think any of us would mind.” Both Beth and Abigail were blonde. In fact, everyone at the table was blonde except Regina, and me, and Elizabeth. Maybe they did have more fun.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

All the women looked at Abigail. She shrugged.

“He’s one slick item,” she said. “He’s handsome, charming, fun to be with, wears clothes beautifully, and he’s very sexy, the sonovabitch.”

“So far, except for sonovabitch,” I said, “we could be talking about me.”

The women all looked at me without response.

“So much for lighthearted,” I said. “Can you give me anything more substantive? Like where he lives?”

“I . . .” Abigail paused. “I don’t actually know.”

“Who does,” I said.

They all looked at one another and discovered that none of them knew. It startled them.

“Okay,” I said. “Where did you get together?”

“We’d meet for cocktails,” Abigail said. “Or drinks and dinner in, like, suburban restaurants. At least that’s what he and I did.”

All the other women nodded. That’s what they did, too.

“And where did you, ah, consummate your relationship,” I said.

Spenser, the soul of delicacy.

“I, for one, am not going to discuss that,” Regina said.

“Oh, for crissake, Reggie,” Abigail said. “How the hell did he get the goods on you?”

She looked at me.

“We were all bopping our brains out with him,” she said.

“With me it was usually in a motel along 128.”

“Sometimes we’d go away for a weekend,” Beth said. “Maine, the Cape, New York City.”

Beth had a small, attractive overbite, and wore sunglasses that probably cost more than Abigail’s haircut.

“Did you go often to the same motels?” I said.

“I did,” Abigail said. “There was one near the Burlington Mall we went to four, five times.”

“The one with the little fountain in the lobby?” Regina said.

All of them had been there. He had several favorites that all of them had been to. They showed no geographic pattern.

“And no one has an address for him,” I said.

No one did.

“Or a phone number?”

They had phone numbers, but they weren’t the same numbers.

“I’ll make a prediction,” I said. “These will all turn out to be prepaid disposable cell phones.”

“Which means?” Elizabeth said.

“That we won’t know who the owner was or where he lived.”

“It sounds as if he didn’t ever want us to be able to find him,” Regina said.

“Be my guess,” I said.

“Then . . . that means . . . that means he was never, ever sincere, even at the start,” she said.

This guy was really good, I thought. Even after he started blackmailing them, there was still the hope for something.

“Probably not,” I said.

“So how can you ever find him?” Abigail said.

“It’s not as hopeless as it sounds,” I said. “Each of you has been with him, quite often. We’ll talk, each of you and me. One of you, maybe more than one, will remember something.”

“Do you really think you can find him?” Abigail said.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I’m very resourceful,” I said.

“Can you be more specific?” Abigail said.

“No,” I said.

“If you do find him,” Regina said, “what will you do?”

I grinned at her.

“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.