the end he brought his hand up sharp at BC’s inseam, let it sit there a moment longer than BC was comfortable with. He looked up at BC with a little smile on his face.
“No weapon,” he said, standing up. “Suit nice though.”
“Thanks,” BC said. “I had to sell my momma’s house to pay for it.”
“Security consists of three men,” Jarrell told him. “The majordomo will answer the door. Lee Chul-moo. Don’t let the baby face fool you. Song picked him up off the street in Korea. He’s supposed to be versed in all those kung fu–sumo wrestling maneuvers.”
“Kung fu is Chinese. Sumo is Japanese.”
“Let’s just say that he can rip your legs off and beat you to death with them. Once past the front vestibule, you’ll see a staircase directly ahead of you. There’s a security booth in the room below it. It’s manned by a single guard who monitors the closed-circuit cameras installed in each of the guest rooms. For the past couple of years it’s been a guy named Garrison Davis. He’s more of a gadget geek than Chul-moo, but you can expect he’ll be packing. No one knows where the third man is stationed, but you don’t need to worry about it. If you catch a glimpse of him, chances are it’ll be the last thing you ever see. And then of course there’s Song.”
Chul-moo led BC past a large parlor to the end of the hall, where he knocked on a closed door. The door opened on a small office. The parlor-height ceilings were taller than the room was deep, and a single coffin-shaped window, heavily draped, added to the cloistered feeling. A series of framed sketches depicted Victorian women holding little frilly dogs in their laps. The rest of the furniture was similarly proper—female but not feminine, cool but not cold—without a hint of the Eastern, let alone the harem. Just like the woman sitting at the small escritoire.
“Song does a lot of business with the intelligence community. Because your entree is coming from me, she’ll immediately have a scenario in mind, namely, that I’m going to try to blackmail you into performing services for the Company. I suggest a munitions cover—bullets perhaps, or handguns. Nothing too fancy, but something the Company might be interested in acquiring at a discount. So in addition to the money she takes from you, she’ll be looking at a substantially larger payment when she sells me the copies of the film footage of you and one of her girls. That said, she can smell bullshit a mile away. She wouldn’t have gotten where she is otherwise. You’re a young, good-looking man and, as far as she knows, quite wealthy. Obviously you don’t need to resort to prostitutes. In order for you to gain her trust, you’re going to have to convince her that you’re not just another pussy-hound. You’re a connoisseur of tail. You’ve had the starlets, the debutantes. Now you want the kind of girls you can’t get back home in Georgia or Ole Miss or wherever you decide to hail from. The kind of girls who do the kinds of things that, well, no respectable girl would do.”
“Things—”
“Choose your kink,” Jarrell said with a wicked gleam in his eye. “And if I were you, I’d seal the deal, if you know what I mean. You’re forking over twelve hundred and fifty dollars. Might as well get your money’s worth. And believe me, Song’s girls are worth it.”
Because she was Asian, and because she ran a bordello, BC had pictured something a little more exotic. A kabuki girl or whatever they were called. A geisha. A dragon lady. Instead he found himself facing a demure, almost prim woman in a dun-colored herringbone suit lightened only by a bit of pale fur at the end of the three-quarter-length sleeves. Her black bouffant was the spitting image of the First Lady’s, and she’d shadowed her eyes in such a way as to minimize their epicanthic fold. Her accent was similarly Americanized, her vowels as flat as a Midwesterner’s, her consonants as firm as her handshake.
“Mr. Gamin.” Song didn’t stand, but let her hand rest in BC’s for a moment, not limply but delicately: the clothes offered a masculine front, the handshake gave a feminine finish. BC felt weak in the knees. “Please, have a seat.”
BC did his best not to plop into one of the spindly cane chairs opposite the desk. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Some small talk perhaps. Questions about his background. But Song was all business.
“Tell me what you like in a girl.”
An image filled BC’s mind: his mother, inspecting his appearance before she let him leave the house each morning, from the time he went to kindergarten all the way through his first days at the Bureau. A sharp, calcified nail would repart his hair ever so slightly to the left or right of where he’d combed it, and her cold fingers would smooth it off his forehead. He knew she didn’t mean to seem critical, that it was just her way of finding an excuse to touch her son. But still, he had to fight off a shiver as he remembered the chill of her fingers running over his scalp.
“Warm hands,” he said quickly, then threw in a bit of a smirk, hoping that would make the comment seem more lascivious.
Song waved his words away with an impeccably manicured hand. Though he’d shaken it less than a minute ago, BC couldn’t remember whether it had been cold or warm. He guessed that it could be either, depending on her inclination. Something told him it would be frigid for him.
“Be more specific. All of our girls have a uniform body temperature.”
An image of Naz filled BC’s mind. Her eyes flashed in his. Deep, dark, full of fear, but also fiercely protective, as she hovered over Chandler’s delirious body in the Millbrook cottage.
“I’ve always liked a girl with dark eyes,” he said, his shyness only half feigned. “Dark hair. Dark … skin.”
“Exotic or domestic,” Song said, as though she were referring to automobiles or beers.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite take your meaning.”
“Something like me,” Song said, with the slightest hint of mockery in her voice—as if the man on the far side of the desk could aspire to a woman like her. “Or something like your ancestors owned?”
Jarrell had called him yesterday.
“Jesus Christ, it took me forever to track you down.”
“I’m sorry, I sold my house to pay for those suits.”
“You
“And secondly?”
“She’s at Song’s.”
