It had been four days since they started following Ellen Delaney, making like the FBI, changing cars twice a day, keeping in touch on CB Channel 11. So far, it had been a waste of time. But by now George knew better than to bitch. The minute he did, the Delaney dame would o something dumb. And they would score. It always turned out that way. Eliza had strange instincts, but they worked. So he kept his mouth shut and turned the collar of his jacket up a little higher and pulled his head down into it. ‘I’m catching pneumonia,’ he said. ‘Somebody ought to put a sticker on your butt, It should say:
“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.’
‘The mink coat.’
James laughed again. ‘Neat,’ he said, ‘if she’s right.’
Five more minutes in that goddamn doorway, I woulda been in intensive care.’
Eliza followed the tall woman in the mink coat along Foster to Salem to Congress. The woman entered a drugstore and went straight to the prescription counter in -the rear.
Eliza crossed the street, looking at the posters in front of a theatre, her back to the store. ‘This is E.G., you reading me?’ she said into the walkie-talkie.
‘Gotcha,’ George answered.
‘Salem and Congress, across from the Rexall drugstore. Get in close.’
‘On the way.’
Ellen Delaney got a package, signed the slip and came out. She started up Congress again, then suddenly veered across the street to Eliza’s side, flagged a cab, jumped in and headed back down Congress in the opposite direction.
‘Oh, shit!’ Eliza said to herself.
The green Olds appeared seconds later and she jumped in. ‘U-turn! She’s in the Yellow Cab heading back that way,’ she yelled.
James swung the Olds in a tight turn, cut in front of a truck, almost went up on the curb, and screeched off after the taxi. ‘Is she on to us?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ said Eliza, ‘she’s just seen too many James Bond movies,’
‘They’re headin’ for the tunnel,’ James said.
‘Shit, Caldwell wouldn’t be caught dead in North Boston,’ George answered.
‘That’s probably what he hopes everybody thinks,’ Eliza said. They followed the cab through the tunnel and out into the north side. It moved slowly, weaving through the trucks and vans that choked the narrow streets of the market section.
‘That slowed her down,’ James said.
The cab turned into a quiet street of restored town houses and stopped. The woman got out, looked around and went inside one of the houses.
‘He’s in there. Betcha a week’s salary.’
‘Instinct again, Gunn?’ George said sceptically.
‘Guessing,’ she said. ‘We’ve been on her for — what, four days now? Caldwell’s a diabetic. I’m betting she just picked up his insulin for the week.’
‘Wanna cruise down past the place?’ James asked.
‘Let’s just cool it and see what happens. I don’t see her Mercedes anywhere.’
‘Lemme see the glasses a minute,’ George said, and began to appraise the street. He focused on the house she had entered.
‘It’s got a garage built in,’ he said.
‘So much for the missing Mercedes.’
‘Where’s the equipment’?’ Eliza asked.
‘Back seat on the floor, in case we need it fast.’
‘Good.’
‘If he’s in there, he’s not coming Out,’ George said. ‘We’re dealing with a sports freak, George, he jogs five miles a day,’ Eliza said. ‘How long can he stay holed up without coming up for air?’
‘If he’s in there,’ George said.
‘Yeah,’ said James, ‘and if he is, what’s to say he hasn’t been jogging every morning? Nobody’s looking for him over here.’
‘Well,’ George said, ‘at least it’s someplace new. We sure know all her other haunts.’
‘I got that feeling,’ Eliza said.
Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty. Thirty. Nothing. George casually checked out the street again through the binoculars.
James said, ‘Mooney’s gonna have all our asses if we don’t come up with something, soon. Four days following this maybe girl friend around.’