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HIM for 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.

Chapter12

    WE WALKED OVER to 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