Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [52]
A hundred and fifty dollars an hour, plus the O’Neal’s bar tab, seemed steep for the honor of tipping a drink with an attractive girl.
“You don’t have to pay. I’ll say you didn’t show.” She said it, then was instantly flustered and embarrassed.
Hudson was certain she hadn’t been doing this kind of work very long. Sometimes it happened to young actresses, to up-and-coming New York models.
“I like you. I don’t think I understand you, but I like you,” she said.
They looked into one another’s eyes, and it was as if they were all alone in the hectic, buzzing barroom. Hudson could feel a desire for her growing again.
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek—he kissed her as gently as he had ever kissed anyone. He had the desire to get close, to try and open up a little with her.
“Tell me something about yourself. Just one small thing…. It doesn’t have to be anything important.”
She smiled again, actually seeming to be enjoying herself.
“All right. Sometimes I’m too impulsive. I shouldn’t be offering you what’s commonly called a freebie. I could be fired. Now tell me something about yourself.”
“I don’t even have enough money to pay this bar tab,” Hudson said and laughed.
Billie Bogan started to laugh. “You really don’t?”
“Really. Now tell me one true fact. Anything, just something true.”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “I have two older sisters back in Birmingham. Back in England.”
“They’re both married. Successfully married. And your mother won’t let you forget it,” Hudson said with a smile.
“No. They’re both married all right. Right on the button there. That’s what you do if you’re a sensible girl in Birmingham. But neither marriage is successful. And, yes, my mother won’t let me forget. I’m still single.”
Hudson continued to smile. He sipped his beer, cautiously watching her brown eyes, her lips slightly wet with wine. He found himself wondering what was going on inside her head.
She laughed out loud, but nicely. “I’m completely losing it! I don’t believe what I’m doing. I really don’t believe this.”
“Having a drink of white wine? At midday? Not that unusual in New York.”
“I think I have to go. I really should go. I have to call and tell them you didn’t keep your appointment.”
“That’s a problem. If you did that, they wouldn’t let me see you again. I’d get a reputation as somebody completely unreliable. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“No, I guess we wouldn’t. But I really have to go.”
“Well, that’s not acceptable to me. No. Just hold on a minute.”
Hudson reached inside his weatherbeaten overcoat. He placed three fifty-dollar bills on the bar.
“Billie what? Tell me your last name at least.”
“You can’t afford this. Please. It really isn’t a good idea.”
“Billie what?”
She looked as if she’d been slapped, as if someone in her lower-middle-class English family had caught her at this escort work in New York. She hesitated, then finally spoke up again.
“It’s Billie Bogan. Like the poet, Louise Bogan … ‘Now that I have your face by heart, I look’…”
“You look extremely beautiful to me.”
David Hudson hadn’t felt this way in fifteen years. It was inconvenient and the timing was terrible—but there it was.
Feeling—where there had been none for so many years. Intense feeling. And warning signals that were going off everywhere, all at once.
Chapter 37
THE MORNING OF December 9 was a gloomy day in Washington. Even the stark, bare trees seemed to be gasping for light and life.
A second emergency meeting was held at the White House for members of the National Security Council and other officials associated with the Green Band inquiries.
As he waited patiently for the President to arrive, Carroll was thinking about pain.
It was hard for him not to. His right arm, which was cradled in bandages and a temporary sling, would flare up every now and again. He’d flinch and curse before he had time to remind himself he was lucky just to be alive. Despite the codeine number 4 he’d swallowed since Paris,