been so easy and seamless. With the death of the Old Man, the end of days had arrived. He had none of Batt's loyalty to contend with.
Still, it didn't do to take anyone for granted, which is why Kendall met him here occasionally. They would take a steam, then shower, climb into their civvies, and go to dinner at one of several grungy barbecue joints Kendall knew in the southeast section of the district.
These places were no more than shacks. They were mainly the pit out back, where the pitmaster lovingly smoked his cuts of meat-ribs, brisket, burnt ends, sweet and hot sausages, sometimes a whole hog-for hours on end. The old, scarred wooden picnic tables, topped with four or five sauces of varying ingredients and heat, were a kind of afterthought. Most folk had their meat wrapped up to take out. Not Kendall and Feir. They sat at a table, eating and drinking beer, while the bones piled up along with the wadded-up napkins and the slices of white bread so soft, they disintegrated under a few drops of sauce.
Now and again Feir stopped eating to impart to Kendall some bit of fact or scuttlebutt currently going around the CI offices. Kendall noted these with his steel-trap military mind, occasionally asking questions to help Feir clarify or amplify a point, especially when it came to the movements of Veronica Hart and Soraya Moore.
Afterward, they drove to an old abandoned library for the main event. The Renaissance-style building had been bought at fire sale prices by Drew Davis, a local businessman familiar in SE but otherwise unknown within the district, which was precisely how he liked it. He was one of those people savvy enough to fly under the Metro police radar. Not so simple a matter in SE, because like almost everyone else who lived there he was black. Unlike most of those around him, he had friends in high places. This was mainly due to the place he ran, The Glass Slipper.
To all intents and purposes it was a legit music club, and an extremely successful one to boot, attracting many big-name R amp;B acts. But in the back was the real business: a high-end cathouse that specialized in women of color. To those in the know, any flavor of color, which in this case meant ethnicity, could be procured at The Glass Slipper. Rates were steep but nobody seemed to mind, partly because Drew Davis paid his girls well.
Kendall had frequented this cathouse since his senior year in college. He'd come with a bunch of well-connected buddies one night as a hoot. Didn't want to but they'd dared him, and he knew how much he'd be ridiculed if he failed to take them up on it. Ironically he stayed, over the years having developed a taste for, as he put it, walking on the wild side. At first he told himself that the attraction was purely physical. Then he realized he liked being there; no one bothered him, no one made fun of him. Later, his continued interest was a reaction to his role as outsider when it came to working with the power junkies like Luther LaValle. Christ, even the fallen Ron Batt had been a member of Skull amp; Bones at Yale. Well, The Glass Slipper is my Skull amp; Bones, Kendall thought as he was ushered into the back room. This was as clandestine, as outr泄 as things got inside the Beltway. It was Kendall's own little hideaway, a life that was his alone. Not even Luther knew about The Glass Slipper. It felt good to have a secret from LaValle.
Kendall and Feir sat in purple velvet chairs-the color of royalty, as Kendall pointed out-and were treated to a soft parade of women of all sizes and colors. Kendall chose Imani, one of his favorites, Feir a dusky-skinned Eurasian woman who was part Indian.
They retired to spacious rooms, furnished like bedrooms in European villas, with four-poster beds, tons of chintz, velvet, swags, drapes. There Kendall watched as, in one astonishing shimmy, Imani slid out of her chocolate silk spaghetti-strap dress. She wore nothing underneath. The lamplight burnished her dark skin.
Then she opened her arms and, with a deep-felt groan, General Richard P. Kendall melted into the sinuous river of her flawless body.
The moment Bourne felt his air supply cut off, he levered himself up off the front bench seat, arching his back so that he could put first one foot, then the other on