“Caution, the Surgeon General has determined that Eliza Gunn is dangerous to your health.”
‘A big guy like you, complaining,’ she said. ‘You should be ashamed.’
‘There’s three times as much of me to get cold,’ he growled.
George Gentry was over six feet tall, and his weight ranged between two-twenty and two-fifty, depending on how well he was eating. Eliza Gunn was barely five feet and weighed ninety-eight pounds, no matter what the ate. Mutt and Jeff, freezing their onions in a doorway because Eliza had a hunch.
‘How come James always gets the car and I always get the Street?’
‘He drives better than you do.’
‘I’ll be goddamned!’
‘Now, Georgie—’
‘Don’t gimme any of that sweet-talkin’ shit.’
‘Trust me, Georgie-boy. My instincts are going crazy. All my Systems are on go.’
‘The last time this happened,’ George said ruefully, ‘I had four Mafia torpedoes baby-sitting me while I shot your exclusive interview with Tomatoes What’sisname.’
‘Garganzola.’
‘Hell, his name isn’t Garganzola. Tomatoes Garganzola sounds like something off a Mexican menu. I thought at any minute you were gonna ask the wrong question and we were all gonna end up in the foundation of some bridge somewhere.’
‘But I didn’t. Besides, Tomatoes was cute.’
‘Right. The DA’s after him, the Feds are after him, everybody but the goddamn Marine Corps was on his ass, for every felony on the books — and you, fer Chrissakes, think he’s cute.’
‘It won us an Emmy, Georgie.’
‘I work for wages, not glory.’
‘Oh, bullshit.’
And George started to laugh. He always laughed at her profanity. It was like hearing a child cuss.
She ignored the cold, watching the office building through binoculars.
‘If we had—’ he began.
‘George!’
‘Hunh?’
‘There she is,’ Eliza said.
‘Lemme see.’
She handed him the binoculars. ‘Coming out of the bank building, in the mink jacket.’
‘How about the blond hair?’
She took the glasses and zeroed in on the Delaney woman
— tall, over five-ten, and stacked. Eliza checked her out again, especially the legs, the walk: It was Ellen Delaney, all right. She was positive. ‘It’s a wig. Look at the coat. I’d know that mink anywhere. She was wearing it the day Caldwell disappeared. Must have cost ten thou at least.’
‘You know how many mink jackets there are in the city of Boston?’
‘Not like that one. That’s a sweetie-pi e mink, George.’
The woman, holding her jacket closed with gloved hands, started up Foster toward Congress.
‘That’s just the kind of coat the head of the biggest bank in Boston would give his honey,’ she said, still watching.
‘Now what?’ George asked.
‘She’s hoofing it toward Congress,’ Eliza said. ‘Gimme the walkie-talkie. I’ll follow her; you go back to the car with James and stand by, just in case she decides to make her move.’
‘Which you’re convinced she will.’
‘Sooner or later. She’s a lady in love, George, and I know how a woman in love thinks. She’s going to want to see her man.’
She grabbed the walkie-talkie and took off on the run, her short legs propelling her along the snow- swept Street, her short black hair dancing dervishly in the wind. George walked around the corner to Eliza’s car, a dark green Olds whose front end looked as though it might have been used, on more than one occasion, as a battering ram. He climbed in and flicked off the radio.
‘You’re not gonna believe it,’ George said to the sound man, ‘but she actually spotted the Delaney woman.’
‘Oh, I believe it,’ James said and laughed. ‘I been wrong too often not to believe it.’
‘You know how she spotted her?’
‘Tell me.’
