Free Dance with the Dragon by David Hagberg

After the first week he invites you over to his table for some champagne, and finally he takes you to his bed.”
    She put down her spoon and dabbed the cloth napkin to her lips, a sudden wild, even insane expression coming into her eyes, as if she’d just remembered something that was so surreal she didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
    “It took ten days,” she began. “I did as Louis told me, and let the general seduce me. He would have expected the honey trap otherwise. I was supposed to play hard to get.” She shrugged. “And it worked. He was the perfect gentleman, at first.”
    “Did he know who your father was?” McGarvey asked.
    “There was no reason for him to know. But I tell you that I was plenty scared at first.”
    “You did wind up in his bed after all,” Perry said.
    Shahrzad looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Yes,” she said. “At first I just sat with him, drank champagne, and watched the shows. Then sometimes we would dance. And it was great, he really knew what he was doing.”
    “Were the other women with him at the club?” McGarvey asked.
    She nodded. “At first, but one night he came alone, and he never brought them back.”
    “Did you ever see them again?” Perry asked. “Could you identify them?”
    “Sure. They were part of his crowd at the house. And at the compound.”
    “We’ll get to that,” McGarvey said. “You had sex with the general. Was it at the club? Did he pay you?”
    “We went to one of the rooms in back and I danced for him. This time he asked me to do the raqs sharqi.”
    “That’s the traditional belly dance,” Perry interrupted unnecessarily.
    McGarvey let it go.
    Shahrzad nodded. “When I was finished he took my costume off and laid me down on the cushions.” She was looking inward, the almost maniacal expression on her face again. “It was hot in that place, but I was shivering. I didn’t know what to expect.”
    “Oh I think you did—” Perry said, but this time McGarvey cut him off.
    “Shut up.”
    Perry was startled, but he held his silence.
    “He got undressed then, and I almost laughed at him.” Shahrzad was blushing. “He wasn’t a man … down there. He was just a boy. He couldn’t get it up, and I didn’t know what to do.” She looked up at McGarvey, willing him to understand her predicament. “He had seen me completely naked onstage before, I had just done the dance, and I was lying on the cushions waiting for him.” She shook her head. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “Continue.”
    “That was all,” she said.
    “You didn’t have sex with him?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    “What in heaven’s name is that supposed to mean?” Perry blurted.
    Shahrzad turned to him, acutely embarrassed that she needed to practically draw him a picture. “He lay on top of me, did a couple of bumps, and came on my thigh.”
    Perry looked away, embarrassed. “Oh,” he said in a small voice.
    “What was Liu’s attitude afterward?” McGarvey asked. “Was he embarrassed?”
    “That was the scary part,” Shahrzad said. “He was mad as hell for a couple of minutes, maybe less. I don’t know for sure. But I do know that I thought he was going to kill me.”
    “Did he hit you?” McGarvey said.
    “No. In fact when he calmed down he made some little jokes while I was cleaning up and getting dressed. And before I left he gave me five hundred dollars, which he said I could keep for myself, he would take care of the Doll. And he said that he was busy tomorrow, but that he would see me on Friday.”
    “The next day you went to the market, left a white chalk mark by the telephone, and met Louis in the park,” McGarvey said. “Did you tell him about the money?”
    “That wasn’t important—”
    “It must have given you some satisfaction,” Perry suggested. “Here it was, two men paying you, with one of them promising to get you to the States. You were on the fast track to get everything you’d