“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 what?” Jarrell exclaimed. “Never mind. Okay, first off, I asked around about Mary Meyer. The thing with the president seems to have been over for a while, so I think she’s fine.”
“And secondly?”
“She’s at Song’s.”
“Mary Meyer is at a brothel?”
“No, you idiot. The girl. Haverman.”
“What? How do you know?”
“Your description of her was very … memorable.” There was a leer in Jarrell’s voice, and BC found himself wondering if Jarrell had done more than look.
“What’s she doing there? Is she a prisoner?”
“As far as I can tell, she’s working.”
“As …?”
“It’s a brothel, BC.” Again the audible leer. BC was glad Jarrell was doing this over the phone, or he was sure he’d’ve slugged him.
“Why would she do something like that?”
“I’m a spy, not a prosecutor. I don’t need motive. Just facts. But don’t try anything stupid.”
“Stupid?”
“Don’t try to rescue her, BC. You’ll just get the both of you killed.”
“Mr. Gamin?” Song prompted.
“I was thinking something Latin. Or not quite Latin.”
“Not quite Latin?”
BC didn’t want to be too clear, for fear of seeming too obvious.
“I like Latin features—dark hair, petite frame, curvaceous figure.”
“Are you a lover or a dressmaker?”
BC hoped the room was dark enough to conceal his blush.
“I like the look. I just don’t go for the Latin temperament. Especially in a girl. It’s a little unrefined for my taste. Too forward for a Mississippi boy like me.”
“You prefer something more submissive.”
“I think I would say quiet. Respectful.”
“Quiet.” The word seemed to strike a chord with Song.
“Like Natalie Wood,” BC said, not quite sure where the name came from. “In Splendor in the Grass. But before …”
“Before she was ruined.” Song nodded. “You shouldn’t be so coy, Mr. Gamin. There are no taboos here.”
“Must be the Southerner in me, Miss Song. We speak delicately of ladyfolk back home, even when they’re professionals.”
“Nancy is not to everyone’s taste,” Song continued, ignoring him, “but her devotees are quite passionate about her charms. That leaves only one remaining detail.”
“I assume you mean the money.”
Song offered him a slight smile. “We speak as delicately of such matters around here as you do of girls, Mr. Gamin.”
“In case the walls have ears?”
Song didn’t answer, and BC reached for his new wallet—a gorgeous billfold made from butter-soft caramel-colored leather. It was stuffed with hundreds, and he counted out thirteen as though they were singles, handed them over with a smile.
“Momma always said you get what you pay for.”
“Trust me,” Song said, “even your mother will agree you’re getting your money’s worth.” She pressed a button and BC heard the door open behind him. “Chul-moo will take you up.”
She didn’t offer him change, and BC didn’t ask for it.
The town house was four stories tall, and Naz’s room—if Nancy was in fact Miss Haverman—was on the top floor. BC’s heart sank with each ascending flight. How was he going to get her out of here? Because he knew that’s what he was here to do. Melchior could wait, and Chandler, too. He touched the ruby ring in his pocket, imagining the glow in Naz’s dark eyes when he slipped it on her finger.
But he was getting ahead of himself. There were other questions to address first, not least of which was how Naz had ended up actually working in Song’s establishment. Jarrell hadn’t made it sound like a place where the girls were forced to do anything. Indeed, he’d suggested that competition to get into Song’s was fierce, given that two or three years here could set a girl up for life. The fact that Naz would volunteer for such a fate so quickly after her experiences in Boston and Millbrook didn’t speak promisingly of her stability. The only thing harder than getting a girl out of this place would be getting a girl out of this place who didn’t want to leave.
On the top floor, Chul-moo paused in front of a closed maple door varnished to mirror sheen. His knuckles rapped on the wood with surprising delicacy, and then he turned the latch, opening the door a quarter inch. He stared at BC as the detective walked into the room, his expression inscrutable yet somehow mocking at the same time. Then the door closed between them, and BC was alone in a small but opulent sitting room furnished with French country antiques upholstered in dove gray damask. Through a silk-curtained archway he glimpsed the foot of a bed that, from the hand-stitched lace border of its bed skirt to the delicate embroidery on the bedspread, was the model of feminine chastity.
A deep wingback chair was angled so that all he could see was a soft wave of dark hair, the supple length of a single silk-covered calf.
“Come in, Mr. Gamin,” a female voice said, as soft as Song’s had been hard, as far removed from the frantic screaming at Millbrook as it was from the revolution Timothy Leary said had taken her parents. Yet it was unmistakably her.