"Excuse me?"
I shook my head.
"My mouth sometimes operates independent of my brain," I said.
She smiled brightly.
"For a little while after we prayed together, it seemed almost as if it had worked. . . ."
"But?" I said.
She shook her head.
"It didn"t," she said.
Her blush had faded. She seemed now to be having an easy conversation with a casual acquaintance about a perfectly pleasant subject. No wonder the praying had worked for a while.
"But what I need you to understand," she said, "is that I love my husband. And he loves me. To find out about me would just kill him."
"I"ll try to prevent that," I said.
"Have you made any progress?" she said.
"Not much. Do you ever work out at Pinnacle Fitness?"
She nodded.
"Yes," she said. "I have a membership. Why do you ask?"
"Just looking for a pattern," I said.
"Do you have a picture of him?" she said.
"No."
"I do," she said.
"May I see it?" I said.
"I took it when he was asleep," she said, "with the camera in my telephone."
"He doesn"t know?" I said.
"No."
She took an envelope from her purse.
"It"s a bit salacious," she said.
"Me, too," I said, and put my hand out.
She smiled brightly again and handed me the envelope. I opened it. In the envelope was a computer printout of a digital photograph of a naked man lying on his back on a bed in what was probably a motel room. It was not my kind of salacious. And even if it had been, Nancy had edited out the groin area with a Magic Marker.
Decorum.
Chapter 6.
ALL OF MY CLIENTS were members of Pinnacle Fitness. Which was a pattern. Which gave me something to do. Of course they might also have gone to the same gynecologist, or belonged to the same square-dance club. But a pattern was a pattern. And it was better than having nothing to do. So I walked over to Tremont Street and took a look.
The club was on the top of a newish building across Tremont Street from the Common. Until I was a grown man, I had never even been in any place as glossy as Pinnacle Fitness. It was a monument to the fitness illusion that somehow working out was fun and glamorous. I thought about the gyms where I"d trained as a kid, when I was a fighter. I had started in Boston at Henry Cimoli"s decrepit dump on the waterfront, when the waterfront was decrepit. Henry used to say the location was perfect for screening out the frauds, because only a legitimate tough guy would dare to go down there. Then the waterfront yuppified and so did Henry, and when I went there now I felt sort of misanthropic for not wearing spandex. But there are things that can"t be compromised. I refused to dress up to work out.
The lobby of Pinnacle Fitness had sofas and coffee tables and a snack bar where you could get juices and smoothies and tofu sandwiches on seven-grain bread. It was probably not a good place to get a linguica sandwich. I went to the front desk.
"Gary Eisenhower here?" I said.
The young woman at the front desk had a blond ponytail and very white teeth. She was wearing a white polo shirt with the club logo on it and black satin workout pants.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"Gary Eisenhower," I said. "Is he here?"
"Does he work here?"
"I don"t know," I said.
She frowned cutely.
"I don"t believe we have anyone by that name working here," she said.
"Oh," I said. "Good. So he"s a member, then?"
"I, ah, I don"t recognize the name," she said.
"Could you look him up for me?" I said.
"I . . . I"m sure the client-services manager can help you," the young woman said. "That"s her office right there."
The client-services manager had an open-door policy. I knocked on the open door and she turned in her swivel chair and smiled at me radiantly and stood. She, too, had a blond ponytail and very white teeth. But she was wearing a white top and a black skirt. The skirt was short, and there was a lot of in-shape leg showing between the hem and the top of her black boots.
"Hi, I"m Margi," she said. "How can I help you?"
"I"m looking for Gary Eisenhower," I said.
"Is he a member here?" Margi said.
"That"s what I was going to ask you," I said.
"Why do you wish to know?" Margi said.
"I"d like to get in touch with him," I said.
"It is club policy, sir, not to give out member information."
"Something illicit going on here?" I said.
"Of course not," Margi said. "It is simply that we respect our members" privacy."
"Me, too," I said. "So he is a member?"
Margi was getting brisker by the minute; no wonder she made client-services manager.
"I didn"t say that, sir."
"Of course not," I said. "But if he"s not a member, then there"s no privacy issue, is there."
"Of course not," Margi said. "May I ask why you are interested?"
"So what you can do is check your membership records, and if he is not a member, you can tell me."
She frowned. The reasoning had become too convoluted for her. I thought her frown was even perkier than the one I"d seen at the front desk. But I feared that she would never advance beyond client services.
"Are you some kind of policeman or something?" she said.
"I am," I said.
I used to be a policeman, and "or something" covers a lot.
"I don"t mean to give you grief, Margi. Just check. If he"s not a member, tell me and I"ll move on," I said.
I was interested as well as to what she"d do if he was a member.
She looked at me, still frowning, giving it as much thought as she was able. Then she heaved a big sigh and turned to her computer.
"Eisenhower," she said. "Does that start with an I?"
"E," I said, and spelled it for her.
She clicked at her computer for a little while, and then I could see her face relax.
"We have no one by that name as a member," she said.
She could have been lying to get rid of me. But I didn"t think she was smart enough to fake the look of relief when she didn"t find him. I thanked her.
"Could I buy you a linguica sandwich?" I said.
She looked horrified.
"On Portuguese sweet bread?" I said.
"No," she said, and smiled at me brightly. "But thanks for asking."
Chapter 7.
IT WAS NEARLY NOVEMBER. Baseball season was over. And the wind off the Charles River was beginning to have an edge. I was at my desk, with my feet up, thinking about pattern, when two men came in without knocking and closed the door behind them. I opened the right-hand drawer on my desk. The bigger of the two was bald, with biceps that strained against the sleeves of a shiny leather jacket. The other guy was slim and dark, with deep-set eyes and graceful hands.
"Lemme guess," I said. "You"re George, and you"re Lenny."
The muscular guy looked at the slim guy.
"He"s being a wisea.s.s," the dark, slim guy said.
"Maybe he should stop," the muscle guy said.
There was scar tissue around his eyes, and his nose was flat and thick.
"You used to be a fighter?" I said to him.
"Yeah."
"You any good?"
"I look like I was any good?" he said.
"No," I said.
"Do a lot better outside the ring," he said.
The slim, dark guy said, "Shut up, Boo."
" "Boo"?" I said.
The dark, slim guy looked at me.