Four Blind Mice

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’re very good-looking men. This will be fun for us too.”
    “You’re very beautiful too, 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, pointing his gun at one then another.
    “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 a black T-shirt and gym shorts that had 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 cái này moi dem lai nhieu ky niem,” Starkey said, and smiled at his friends but also at the women.
    Memories are made of this.

Chapter 66
    THEY HAD DONE this many times before, and not just in New York. They’d “celebrated” victories in Hong Kong, Saigon, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, even London. It had all started in South Vietnam when they were just boys in their teens and early twenties, when the war was on and the madness was everywhere around them. Starkey called it “blood lust.”
    The four Asian girls were terrified, and that was the thrill for Starkey. He totally got off on the look of fear in their eyes. Starkey believed that all men did, though few would admit it.
    “BFn tao muGn liên hoan!” he shouted.
    We want to party now!
    “Chi liên hoan, the thôi.”
    It’s a celebration.
    Starkey found out the girls’ names: Kym, Lan, Susie, and Hoa. They were pretty, but Kym was truly beautiful. A slender body with small breasts, delicate features — the best of a complicated heritage that could be Chinese, French, and Indian.
    Harris found bottles of scotch and champagne in a small kitchen. He passed the hootch around and made the girls drink too.
    The alcohol calmed them, but Kym kept asking about the owner. Occasionally the bell rang downstairs. Kym’s English was the best, so she was told to say that the girls were busy for the night — a private party. “Come back another time, please. Thank you.”
    Griffin took two of the girls upstairs to another floor. Starkey and Harris looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Starkey kept an ear cocked once Griffin was upstairs. At least he’d left two pretty ones for Brownley and him. Kym and Lan.
    Starkey asked Kym to dance. Her eyes were gleaming slants of dark purple. Except for her three-inch heels, Kym was naked now. An old song by the Yardbirds played on the radio. As he danced, Starkey remembered that Vietnamese women had a thing about their height, at least when they were around American men. Or maybe it was American men who had a thing about height? Or length?
    Harris was speaking in English to Lan. He handed her a bottle of champagne. “Drink,” he said. “No, drink it down there, babe.”
    The girl understood, either the words or lewd gestures. She