Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty-Five

It was time to celebrate! The war was over. Starkey, Harris and Griffin ordered obscenely large, very rare Porterhouse steaks topped with jumbo shrimp at Spark's restaurant on West Forty-sixth Street in Manhattan. For anyone with wads of the green stuff, there was no better place to get happy in a hurry than in New York City.

“Three years, but it's finally over,” said Harris, and raised a glass of cognac, his fourth after-dinner drink of the evening.

“Unless our mysterious benefactor changes his mind,” cautioned Starkey. “It could happen. One more hit. Or maybe a complication that we didn't plan on. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't party tonight.”

Brownley Harris finished his cheesecake and dabbed his mouth with a cloth napkin. Tomorrow we go home to Rocky Mount. The good life. That's not so terrible bad. We're finally out of the game, undefeated and unscored on. Nobody can touch us now."

Warren Griffin just grinned. He was pretty well plowed.

They all were, except Starkey, who said, “But tonight, we party. We damn well deserve it. Just like the old days, Saigon and Bangkok, Hong Kong. The night is young, and we're full of mischief, piss and vinegar. ”He leaned in close to his friends. “I want to rape and pillage tonight. It's our right.”

After they left the restaurant, the three friends strolled to East Fifty-second, between First and York. The brown-stone they stopped at was a walk-up that had seen better days. Four stories. No doorman. Starkey knew it as "Asia House'.

He rang the front buzzer and waited for the intercom. He had been here before.

A woman answered in a sultry voice. “Hi. May I have your code please, gentlemen.”

Starkey gave it in Vietnamese. Silver. Mercedes Eleven.

They were buzzed inside. “Xin moi len lau. Cac em dang cho,” the voice said in Vietnamese. The ladies are waiting, and they are stunning.

“So are we. ”Thomas Starkey said, and laughed.

Starkey, Harris and Griffin climbed the flight of red-carpeted stairs. As they reached the first landing, a plain gray door opened.

An Asian girl, slender and young, no more than eighteen, and gorgeous, stood legs akimbo in the doorway. She had on a black bra and matching panties, thigh-high stockings, sling backs with high-heels.

“Hi there,” she said in English,“ I'm Kym. Welcome. You very good-looking men. This will be fun for us, too.”

“You're very beautiful, Kym,”Starkey said in Vietnamese.

“And your English is flawless.” He then pulled out a revolver and pointed it between the girl's eyes. “Don't say another word or you die. Right here, right now, Kym. Your blood all over the carpet and those walls.”

He shoved the girl into a living room, where three other girls were seated on two small couches. They were also young, Asian, very pretty. They wore silk negligees, lavender, red and pink, with color-coordinated high-heels and stockings. Victoria's Secret.

“Don't speak, ladies. Not a word,” Starkey said, and pointed his gun at one then the other.

“Shhh,” Brownley Harris held a finger to his lips. “Nobody gets hurt. We don't want that either. Trust me, my little Asian dolls.”

Starkey threw open the door at the rear of the living room. He surprised an older woman, probably the voice over the intercom, as well as a husky bouncer in gym shorts and black tee-shirt with CRUNCH stenciled on it. They were greedily eating Chinese food out of cardboard containers.

“Nobody gets hurt,” Starkey said in Vietnamese as he shut the door behind him. “Hands up high.”

The man and woman slowly raised their hands, and Starkey shot them dead with the silenced revolver. He wandered over to some high-tech equipment and calmly removed a tape. The surveillance camera at the front entrance had recorded their arrival, of course.

Starkey left the slumped, bloody bodies and returned to the living room. The party had begun without him. Brownley Harris was kissing and fondling the pretty

young girl who had answered the door. He had lifted Kym up and held her tiny mouth pressed against his. She was too frightened to resist.

“May cai nay moi dem lai nhieu ky niem,” Starkey said, and smiled at his friends, but also at the women.

Memories are made of this.