“Because if you
“Coincidental?” The man waggled his cigar like Groucho Marx. “Maybe even suspicious? Or just too good to be true? Who knows, maybe the Company sent someone to follow you up to Millbrook?”
BC opened his mouth, then closed it. This wasn’t proof that the man was CIA, after all. He could still be the director’s stool pigeon. He’d heard stranger rumors about his boss.
“So tell me, Beau.” BC’s companion was clearly enjoying his indecision. “What’d the director tell you about Project Orpheus? I’m guessing from your choice of reading material that he either told you nothing at all, or, even more likely, he told you
“The
“C’mon, Beau, I’m trying to help you out. Restore your faith in your employer. You don’t think the director’d send an agent of the prestigious Counterintelligence Program all the way up to New York State to check out a bit of science fiction, do you? There’s got to be something else involved, right?
BC did his best to remain impassive, even as he turned the page so violently he nearly ripped it. If this guy didn’t work for the director, he had a bug in his office.
“Lemme save you the trouble of guessing. It’s not Mr. Forrestal Director Hoover’s worried about. It’s Jack Kennedy.”
Despite himself, BC giggled. “What, does he nip up there for the weekend in Marine One?”
“Gosh, that’d be fun, wouldn’t it, albeit a misallocation of taxpayer dollars. But the truth is the president of the United States of America doesn’t have to travel four hundred miles to get his fix. One of his girlfriends brings it to him. Now, how do you think the public would react if they found out, one, that the president has a squeeze on the side, two, that she’s supplying him with a drug that has the potential to render the leader of the free world susceptible to mind control, and, three, that said drug is being tested by the Central Intelligence Agency—an organization that just happened to put together a private little war in Cuba a few years back that almost launched World War Three?” The man puffed on his cigar. “I mean, certain people might get a little worked up about that, don’t you think? If not John Q. Public, then maybe Barry Goldwater or Nelson Rockefeller?”
BC could only stare at the man. One heard stories, of course. Rumors. Marilyn Monroe. But who wouldn’t sleep with Marilyn Monroe? Even Jackie couldn’t hold that against him.
“You seem skeptical, so let me give you a few more details. A few years back the Company tasked several agents with recruiting prostitutes as part of a project called Ultra. In exchange for not going to jail, the girls slipped their johns whatever drug the Company was investigating—LSD, psilocybin, what have you—and the supervising agent recorded the results on a movie camera. Ultra’s pretty much fizzled out by now, but the practice lives on in Orpheus. Only this time it’s not just hookers. See, the field agent in charge is one of those prep school boys, an entitled East Coast establishment prick, and just for kicks he shares his wares with his society friends, one of whom is Mary Meyer.” The man paused to puff on his cigar. “She’s the president’s squeeze,” he said, “in case you didn’t put all that together.”
BC continued to stare at the man. Finally he laughed. “You’re your own worst enemy. Don’t you know the first rule of lying: keep it simple, and keep it short.”
“That’s two rules,” the man said. “And I ain’t lying.” All the mirth had vanished from his voice.
“I mean, good Lord. Isn’t Mary Meyer Cord Meyer’s
“Ex-wife.”
“The man’s number three or four at the—”
“At the good ol’ C-I-of-A.” The man’s smile was not so much triumphant as vindictive. “Yes sir, Special Agent Query. You are the president’s harem boy. You are John F. Kennedy’s
BC didn’t know what was behind the anger on the man’s face, but he knew it was a lot older than this train ride, and, despite the heat in the car, he felt a sudden chill on his sweat-dampened spine. He reached for his drink, took a big swallow before he remembered what it was. He wasn’t a teetotaler, but he could count the number of alcoholic beverages he’d consumed on the fingers of one hand, and the rum entered him like a furnace blast. In a matter of seconds he felt sweat on his forehead, under his arms, trickling down the small of his back into the little gap where the waistband of his underwear (which had indeed been marked “Querrey,” so that the Negro laundress his mother had used for more than twenty years wouldn’t give her son’s jockey shorts to someone else) pulled away from the cleft of his buttocks.
The thought of perspiration pooling in his underwear made BC sweat even harder, and the thought of his own buttocks made him blush like a high schooler pantsed in front of the whole school. He desperately wanted something cold to drink, but the only thing in front of him was a glass of warm rum. He looked at it, then looked at the man across from him, who was following BC’s internal debate as if he could read his mind. Fuck it, BC thought, although he didn’t think the word “fuck.” He didn’t think the word “it” either, since just thinking the word “it” doesn’t make a lot of sense. He didn’t think. He just reached for the glass and drank it all down.
The man across the table looked at BC for a moment, then, without taking his eyes from BC’s, put his cigar out on the cover of BC’s novel.
“My oh my. This is going to be a fun ride, ain’t it?”
It wasn’t.
New York, NY
November 4, 1963
Five minutes outside Pennsylvania Station, BC excused himself to use the lavatory. As he stepped out of the W.C., he noticed the Negro conductor farther up the car, pulling ticket stubs from the tops of
