This time it was Song who opened the door quietly, obsequiously even, as if she were the servant, the room’s occupant the mistress. Nancy sat at her dressing table, her hair and makeup perfect, as if she’d been expecting the call.
“I just wanted to check in on you.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Nancy pointed to a plate of ginger cookies. “Chul-moo came by earlier.”
Song stared at the girl. What was it about her? She was lovely, no doubt about that. But Song trafficked in some of the most beautiful girls in the world and was unfazed by looks. No, there was something special about this girl. Something that made you want to soothe her. Protect her. Give her whatever she wanted. She was bewitching.
“I wanted to know if you’d thought further about your offer this morning.”
“What is there to think about?”
“You’re here as my guest. You don’t have to work for your keep.”
“I’m here as your prisoner,” Nancy said, and even though there wasn’t any acrimony in her voice, it still stabbed Song like a spear of ice in the guts. “But that’s neither here nor there. Seducing people is simply what I do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Nancy said, and there was that curious helplessness again. Song wanted to wrap her arms around the girl—and the last person she’d hugged had been her brother’s murdered body. She knew she should refuse Nancy’s request. But she also wanted to know what would happen if she said yes.
“You’re Persian, no?”
Nancy nodded.
“Do you happen to speak Arabic by any chance?”
“Some. It’s rusty, though.”
“I have an Iraqi gentleman coming in tomorrow. I’m sure he’d appreciate not having to bring a translator into the room.”
Naz looked at herself in the mirror. She brought the brush to her hair, then put it down again—a tacit acknowledgment that the face that looked back at her was already perfect.
“He won’t be disappointed,” she said quietly.
“No,” Song mused. “For some reason, I don’t think he will be.”
Washington, DC
November 14, 1963
It was almost true: clothes make the man. Just as the maid in the Department of Justice Building had taken a clean-cut white fellow in a soiled uniform ten sizes too big for an electrician, so did the residents of Dupont Circle take BC for one of them: a man of the world, of power, influence, prospects—and sexual needs.
He paused before the double doors of the Newport Place town house: a sheet of plate glass sandwiched between an ornately curved wrought-iron scroll without and golden gossamer curtains within. The curtains were just thick enough to obscure the view inside but still thin enough to allow a globe of soft yellow light to illuminate the porch, whose upper landing was shaded by a delicate tangle of wisteria. And there, reflected in the gold-backed sheet of glass, stood the new, improved BC Querrey. Beauregard Gamin, at your service, ma’am.
Or, rather, madam.
“Song won’t be fooled by cheap imitations,” Jarrell had told BC. “You go to her house, you wear bespoke or nothing at all.” He’d given BC the name of a tailor on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. Told him to order two suits, one in a simple charcoal twill, the other in a shiny black. “Tell him to widen the lapels a bit on the charcoal, cut the trousers a little loose in the ankle—say, 1960, 1961 at the latest. You want it to look like you’ve had it for a while. The black should be mod—one-inch lapels, stovepipe legs. The jacket should fall just above the bottom of your ass and the trouser cuffs should expose a good inch of sock when you’re standing up. Trust me, Song’s business is appearances. She’ll notice.”
BC had regarded the disheveled man delivering such specific sartorial advice with more than a bit of skepticism. “How much is this going to cost?”
“The suits are going to run about a hundred each,” Jarrell said, and BC fought back a gasp. “But first-timers at Song’s have to pay a cool grand just for the privilege of saddling up. After that it’s two hundred and fifty dollars a ride.” He’d looked BC up and down in his thrift store costume. “You can put your hands on that kind of cash?”
For some reason an image of Gerry Burton flashed in BC’s mind.
“I’ll get it somewhere.”
An Asian boy answered the door. He wore a plain black suit, not quite livery, and despite the fact that it fit him loosely, and that he couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, he still managed to project an aura of barely contained strength and menace.
He neither spoke nor stood aside, just looked at BC as if he were stripping off the newly minted threads and seeing the naked, quaking man beneath.
BC took a moment to hear his grandmother’s rolling drawl in his mind. Then:
“Good evening, sir. Is there any chance Madam Song is at home on such a beautiful night?”
The majordomo continued to stare at him blankly. Finally, after BC was about to repeat the pass phrase, he moved aside. BC took a step forward, only to be stopped by an arm that, however thin, still felt as hard as an iron bar. The boy flicked BC’s arms away from his side, and nimble, pincer-strong fingers squeezed each limb from wrist to shoulder, patted the outside of his jacket, then reached inside. BC felt the boy’s hands on his chest, his ribs, his waist.
“The only man who usually touches me this way is my tailor,” BC drawled.
The boy used his foot to nudge BC’s legs apart, knelt down and gave each leg the same thorough going over. At
