Shift: A Novel

Washington, DC

November 14, 1963

Naz led BC in a slow two-step around the sitting room. She’d put a record on the turntable, and quiet jazz wafted from hidden speakers, but her fingernails bit into BC’s shoulders like an eagle’s talons, as though she wanted to rip him apart.

“Don’t you understand?” she hissed into his chest. “That man will kill him.”

“His name is Melchior,” BC whispered into the dark waves of Naz’s hair, “and I don’t think he will. Chandler’s too special.”

“I’ve thought this through,” Naz insisted. “The only way he can get Chandler to obey him is if he threatens me. But if I escape—if Chandler finds out I’ve escaped—he’ll refuse to do what Melchior tells him to. And then Melchior will kill him.”

“But how would Chandler find out you got away? Melchior would never tell him.”

“Trust me. Chandler will find out.”

Naz’s tone discouraged further questioning, but BC knew what she was referring to. The reason he was here. The reason Chandler had been taken in the first place. Orpheus.

“Melchior’s no amateur. Neither are the people he works for. They’ll experiment on Chandler till they find out how his power works, how they can duplicate it. Once they’ve created willing subjects, they’ll dispose of him. Believe me, you risk more for Chandler, as well as yourself, by waiting.”

“There are risks no matter what we do. That’s what happens when these people start to meddle in your lives. Believe me when I tell you, it will be easier for Chandler to find me than for me to find him.”

“I spoke to Dr. Leary, Miss Haverman,” BC whispered. “I know about Persia. About your parents and Mr. Haverman and the way Eddie Logan blackmailed you into giving people LSD. But you can get away from them. You can take them down, if you go public with your story, rather than try to beat them at their own game.”

Naz gasped, and had to bury her face in BC’s chest to conceal it. He felt her breath through the mercerized Egyptian cotton of his shirt. For a long moment there was just the soft croon of a saxophone, the cool thump of an upright bass. Then Naz stepped back from BC, holding on to his hands, and offered him a full view of her body.

“This way, Mr. Gamin.”

BC instinctively went toward the door, but she pulled him in the direction of the bed.

“Miss—Nancy?” BC did his best to keep the confusion off his face.

Naz walked backward into the bedroom, leading BC as though he were a toddler.

“The camera is directly behind me,” she whispered. “In the clock on the mantel. You’re going to take your jacket off, then your shirt, then your pants. Toss them any which way. Then take my dress off me, and toss it over the clock.”

“Why—”

“If you covered the camera with the first thing you took off, it would look too convenient. And please. Try to look lustful rather than constipated.”

She released his hands and twirled across the floor as lightly as a music-box ballerina. Her beauty made it easier. Her beauty and her laughter and the way the dress spun away from her when she moved, only to settle all the more tightly over her curves when she stilled. BC almost believed she really was trying to arouse him. When he licked his lips, he wasn’t acting.

He loosened the button on his jacket, let it fall from his shoulders, and tossed it across the room (he couldn’t bring himself to toss it on the floor, however, and aimed for the wingback chair instead). Naz shimmied forward to loosen his tie, then pulled it off his neck as she shimmied backward. She ran the silk over her cheek and tossed it aside.

The look on her face was pure, the sexual energy palpable from five feet away. BC’s fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. He’d never undressed in front of a woman besides his mother, and not even that since he was three years old and his mother taught him that his private parts included everything between his neck and his knees. The only thing that made it possible was the look on Naz’s face. The parted lips, the open stare. It was obvious that this beautiful creature knew everything he didn’t. That she could give him the things he’d always been too embarrassed to ask for.

His shirt slipped from his shoulders. He flicked it with his wrist and it glided like an owl for a few feet before pouncing on one of his shoes. He didn’t remember kicking the shoe off, but there it was. He kicked the other one off now. Italian leather, hand-stitched, with hard soles that thumped on the floors like drumsticks. They’d cost him the equivalent of a month’s salary, and here he was tossing them off like sweaty sneakers.

It seemed necessary to remove his belt before he took off his pants. It slid out of the loops like a snake from its hole, the thin silver buckle glinting like a flickering tongue. Then the buttons of his fly. There were five of them, and he undid them all. Naz’s eyes never left his, yet somehow he felt that her attention was focused on his groin, slowly coming into view.

Naz nodded. BC let go of his pants and they fell like a stage curtain. He felt the cool air of the room on his legs, felt the hair horripilate from calves to the nape of his neck.

For the first time another look entered Naz’s eyes.

“Beau?” she whispered—she was using his alias, but what he heard was Melchior’s mocking “Beau” on the train between DC and New York, and the disjunction enflamed BC. He took Naz by her bare, cool, thin shoulders, pressed her against his body in an embrace that was equal parts lust and power and contempt. He smashed her lips with his own, forced his tongue into her mouth. For a moment there was nothing, and then she was kissing him back, pulling him to her as hard as he was pulling her to him, and that’s all there was for a minute or a lifetime, BC had no idea, until Naz’s hands loosened on his shoulders, her mouth softened, her tongue retreated. Her sudden lassitude seemed to infect him, and he let go of her in confusion. Her eyes were looking down, at his feet, a pair of half-inflated circus balloons in their gaudy silk socks, at his crotch, equally painted in bright silk boxers, and equally flaccid.

“I—I didn’t know.”

BC wanted to hit her then, to wipe the look of pity off her face, but he wanted to hit himself even more. Wanted to turn and run from the room with his clothes clutched to his chest like a spurned lover. But it wasn’t Naz who had rejected him. It was he who had rejected Naz. At any rate, his body had. His body, which never failed him in any other situation—be it boxing or gathering evidence at a crime scene or holding up a suit of clothes and making them look like a man—this body had rejected Naz’s flesh like a finicky cat turning up its nose at a saucer of cream. Before he could do anything, though, Naz turned around. Oh, she was a consummate professional. She could make the bones of her skull and shoulders seem as soft and alluring as her cheeks, her lips, her breasts. But even BC knew it was all just for show now.

“If you would help me with my zipper, Mr. Gamin.”

It could have been the zipper on a body bag for all the tenderness BC showed. The violet fabric parted, revealing the white silk desert of her slip. Naz turned, steadied herself with one hand on his implacable shoulder, and stepped out of the dress, which BC held by both collar and hem, as though it were a flag that couldn’t touch the ground.

She was clothed only in her slip and stockings now. BC held the dress in his arms for a moment more, then, without looking, he tossed it over the camera.

In a flash Naz was on him.

“I’m going to press the trouble button.” The coldness of her hiss shocked him, but it also brought him back to his senses. “They’re supposed to send up both men. Chul-moo, the majordomo, and Garrison, who works—”

“The surveillance booth,” BC finished for her. “And the third man?”

“I didn’t know there was a third man.”

BC scanned the room, then, still in his skivvies, headed toward the bed.

“What are you—”

A faint crack cut Naz off as BC wrested the ball off the top of one of the bedposts. He tossed it to Naz, then wrenched off a second for himself. It was about the size of a croquet ball and made of solid walnut, but using it would mean getting close to Chul-moo’s sinewy arms, not to mention Garrison’s gun. That left the mysterious third man, if he showed himself. And Song, of course.

“I don’t know if I can hit a woman,” BC said to Naz.

“Leave her to me,” Naz said. Her knuckles were so white around the ball that BC was surprised it didn’t shatter in her grasp.