The Nervous System by Nathan Larson Read Free Book Online Page B

of poor quality.
    Timestamp has events taking place between two fifteen and two thirty-five p.m., and there are Korean Hangul characters indicating Room C on the lower corner of the stills. The photos date back twenty-one years.
    Yeah, I both read and speak Korean dialects, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. See, I told ya. Fucked up, right?
    For the most part the male has his back to the camera, but the accompanying documentation has this activity taking place in a brothel on East 53rd Street. Identifies the seventeen-year-old female as a Korean national named Song Ji-Won, a.k.a. Jackie, Sunny, or Kiki Oda, known also to profess to be Japanese. Born outside Seoul.
    The male is ID’d as U.S. Senator Clarence Howard, age forty-one at the time of the report I’m reading. I know all this background jazz, but a primer:
    First African American member of the Republican Party to have been elected senator in New York, largely on the strength of his relationship with a funky mix of mainstream politicians, going further back to more peripheral figures, Harlem king-making preachers, etc. Plus the support of the predominately white establishment in the boroughs and upstate. Et cetera.
    Howard straddled several very different worlds, and cantered on down to D.C.
    A socio-psychopath, deft compartmentalizer, and a born politician.
    This story, the whorehouse, etc., is only interesting because Howard came into full bloom on an old-school “family values”–style platform, viciously antigay, antiabortion, anti-Muslim, antiunion, pro-gun, yada yada.
    Prior to 2/14, the big man was busy aligning himself with the post–Tea Party folks (after their much ballyhooed splinter and the RNC riots/multiple shootings) who had recently surged into power. He was a loud supporter of the actions against New Persia (sorry, the Islamic Republic of Shariaistan), one of the last gasps for our threadbare military overseas.
    And perhaps most significantly, Howard was the prime mover in the antiunion contingent that emerged to combat the evolution of domestic workers’ groups. Or “domestic terrorists,” in the parlance of the senator’s kind.
    He and his ilk stood unapologetically responsible for events that followed, such as the Valentine’s Occurrence of February 14. That’s just my own vibration.
    And, of course, the man’s wife of thirty-five years is herself a ferocious force, archconservative socialite/heiress and fundraising genius Senator Kathleen Howard née Koch.
    Her command of basic English and her understanding of history and function of government were so deeply compromised that nobody took her seriously. Nobody took her seriously as the schools commissioner for the State of North Dakota. Nobody took her seriously as the mayor of Bismarck. And when she ran for state representative, well …
    But Kathleen was nice with a slogan, had cash to burn, and her hair was never less than white-lady perfect. So it goes.
    First husband-and-wife team with a hardcore agenda, just body-checking motherfuckers on the floor of the Senate.
    The very picture of modern, media-friendly American political extremism. Modern, modern, modern, and biracial at that; the union of a golden Son of Harlem with blueblood corn-fed Midwestern stock proved a powerful one. Something for everybody, like.
    A loose photograph slips out of the file, depicting a girl I assume to be Song Ji-Won. It’s a still from a security camera, high-resolution this time, cropped so I’m only really able to see her and no context.
    Song is laughing, her hand blurred slightly in midgesture. Maybe eighteen to twenty-one years old, wearing a gray waist-length fur. Black or very dark red nail polish. She’s a stunner, vibes extreme confidence. Looks smart, and like she’s enjoying herself.
    I slide this photo into my inner breast pocket.
    NYPD file. Dated eighteen years back.
    Crime scene photos, an industrial barrel bearing the stencil