a damned car. This city, seems like everybody else does.
SEVEN
The Jag would have been a lousy tail car. Too conspicuous, I told myself, scrunched behind the wheel of another aged Ford cab. The bucket seat in Sam’s car would have put me instantly to sleep, and the heating unit that kept it toasty under your butt, who needed it? The musky smell would have made me nostalgic and I didn’t need that either. The Spartan chill of Gloria’s cab would keep me alert. If I kept the roof lights off outside the city limits, the cab, in the dark of night, would look like any other car.
Right.
Tailing a citizen does not require the same virtuosity as playing the violin, but if it did, I flatter myself I’d be the Isaac Stern of tailing, or at least a concert-master in a decent orchestra. I’m good at waiting. I can amuse myself for hours, tuning my mind to a guitar riff I want to master, wandering through an intricacy of fingering possibilities while my eyes search for movement in the darkness.
There was the possibility I’d lose him: a one-person tail is always risky, but Jessica Franklin hadn’t let my warning deflect her determination to hire me. If I lost him, she’d insisted, I’d have a place, her place on Pomeroy Street in Allston, to wait and pick him up again.And if he didn’t show at her place, didn’t sleep in the right bed, then she’d know.
So the job was a simple tail, period, full stop, finish. She didn’t want even a cursory background check done on her Ken. I’d recommended one, the whole megillah, tracing the prospective groom back to the day of his birth, making sure he’d done what he said he’d done, lived where he’d said he’d lived, worked where he’d said he’d worked. But no, if the man didn’t commit adultery tonight, my client was willing to spend the rest of her life with him.
How trusting. How quaint.
I’d run through the arguments: This isn’t smalltown America anymore and many less-than-decent people have figured that out. The anonymity of cities lets the cons start over, re-create themselves from scratch. They’re not saddled with their father’s reputation or their mother’s; nobody knows who their family is, so it’s easy as pie to be whoever somebody believes them to be. Private investigators fill the role the family used to take in matchmaking, and why not? Somebody ought to do it. We’re nosy Aunt Bessie with a nephew at Amherst who never met your Ken on campus all those years he said he was there. So, does Ken really have that master’s degree? Was he really born in North Dakota in 1985? Is his dad a big shot in import/export or doing time at Walpole? Most folks are honest, but alas, crooks don’t come with FDA warning labels tattooed across their foreheads.
I glanced for the twenty-seventh time at the photo the bride-to-be had reluctantly parted with, a five-by-seven that told me some of what she saw in the guy. He was a handsome devil, maybe a little too handsome for his own good. Sandy hair, wide eyes, well-shaped freckled nose, nice smile. Good-looking guys; I don’tknow, do they really tell more lies? Is there scientific proof? Did my client’s desire to have him tailed imply that she felt insecure in the relationship, suspected that, behind her back, people were wondering what a guy like that saw in her, asking why he hadn’t hooked up with some supermodel-type instead? I decided to have Roz run the basics on the man, no matter whether Kenny-boy slept at home or not.
The rain started at 7:38. Just what I needed. Jessica had guaranteed that she and the boyfriend would exit the restaurant by the front door at a quarter to eight. The attendant would bring up Ken’s Volvo, which he’d have previously left with valet parking. The Volvo S60 was a plus, a distinctive silhouette with oddly shaped taillights, a relatively easy car to track.
I’d filled up on gas, checked the oil and the wiper blades. The cab was old, but the engine was sound; it didn’t
SEVEN
The Jag would have been a lousy tail car. Too conspicuous, I told myself, scrunched behind the wheel of another aged Ford cab. The bucket seat in Sam’s car would have put me instantly to sleep, and the heating unit that kept it toasty under your butt, who needed it? The musky smell would have made me nostalgic and I didn’t need that either. The Spartan chill of Gloria’s cab would keep me alert. If I kept the roof lights off outside the city limits, the cab, in the dark of night, would look like any other car.
Right.
Tailing a citizen does not require the same virtuosity as playing the violin, but if it did, I flatter myself I’d be the Isaac Stern of tailing, or at least a concert-master in a decent orchestra. I’m good at waiting. I can amuse myself for hours, tuning my mind to a guitar riff I want to master, wandering through an intricacy of fingering possibilities while my eyes search for movement in the darkness.
There was the possibility I’d lose him: a one-person tail is always risky, but Jessica Franklin hadn’t let my warning deflect her determination to hire me. If I lost him, she’d insisted, I’d have a place, her place on Pomeroy Street in Allston, to wait and pick him up again.And if he didn’t show at her place, didn’t sleep in the right bed, then she’d know.
So the job was a simple tail, period, full stop, finish. She didn’t want even a cursory background check done on her Ken. I’d recommended one, the whole megillah, tracing the prospective groom back to the day of his birth, making sure he’d done what he said he’d done, lived where he’d said he’d lived, worked where he’d said he’d worked. But no, if the man didn’t commit adultery tonight, my client was willing to spend the rest of her life with him.
How trusting. How quaint.
I’d run through the arguments: This isn’t smalltown America anymore and many less-than-decent people have figured that out. The anonymity of cities lets the cons start over, re-create themselves from scratch. They’re not saddled with their father’s reputation or their mother’s; nobody knows who their family is, so it’s easy as pie to be whoever somebody believes them to be. Private investigators fill the role the family used to take in matchmaking, and why not? Somebody ought to do it. We’re nosy Aunt Bessie with a nephew at Amherst who never met your Ken on campus all those years he said he was there. So, does Ken really have that master’s degree? Was he really born in North Dakota in 1985? Is his dad a big shot in import/export or doing time at Walpole? Most folks are honest, but alas, crooks don’t come with FDA warning labels tattooed across their foreheads.
I glanced for the twenty-seventh time at the photo the bride-to-be had reluctantly parted with, a five-by-seven that told me some of what she saw in the guy. He was a handsome devil, maybe a little too handsome for his own good. Sandy hair, wide eyes, well-shaped freckled nose, nice smile. Good-looking guys; I don’tknow, do they really tell more lies? Is there scientific proof? Did my client’s desire to have him tailed imply that she felt insecure in the relationship, suspected that, behind her back, people were wondering what a guy like that saw in her, asking why he hadn’t hooked up with some supermodel-type instead? I decided to have Roz run the basics on the man, no matter whether Kenny-boy slept at home or not.
The rain started at 7:38. Just what I needed. Jessica had guaranteed that she and the boyfriend would exit the restaurant by the front door at a quarter to eight. The attendant would bring up Ken’s Volvo, which he’d have previously left with valet parking. The Volvo S60 was a plus, a distinctive silhouette with oddly shaped taillights, a relatively easy car to track.
I’d filled up on gas, checked the oil and the wiper blades. The cab was old, but the engine was sound; it didn’t
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