Tunnel Vision

46

The kid was climbing the social ladder. A two-hour stop-off at the Taj and a chauffeured limo. Roman never graduated from college, but even he knew that students didn’t meet with their professors in the fanciest hotel in town.

Nor did the kid strike him as a high roller. He had unremarkable clothes, lived in a university-owned apartment, and took his bike or public transportation everywhere.

Unless it was the foxy girlfriend. She had arrived separately but came out of the hotel with him, all decked out in shiny green. The Town Car was waiting for them. Maybe it was a wedding. Maybe some other kind of celebration. But it didn’t look like a date, coming separately like that.

Roman had parked just down Arlington Street, so he followed the Town Car for Storrow Drive and westward until it crossed over the Larz Anderson Bridge to Harvard Square. The limo pulled up in front of her place on Harvard Street, and the two of them got out and went into her three-decker.

Roman checked his BlackBerry for the time. Five hours of surveillance, and all he had learned was that the kid and the girl had attended some fancy event and then shacked up at her place. A friggin’ waste of time, he thought as he looked at the small screen.

Or maybe not.