The Borzoi Killings Read Online Free PDF

created: the used glasses smeared with lipstick and greasy fingerprints, desiccated lemon and lime peels, plundered dishes and plates with the remnants of food, empty bottles of wine and champagne, ashtrays blackened with cigarette and cigar butts and stumps of joints. Juan’s job was to guide weakened guests, debilitated by alcohol, drugs, or endless cocktail chatter, outside where the still-quick valets retrieved their cars. Juan was also, Brad told him, gently to persuade the remaining guests to come to the realization that the party was winding down. The objective was to be finished before dawn.
     
     
    As the cleaning went on, Juan walked by one of the college girls (slim, fully developed, yet seemingly new to the world as if freshly minted). He overheard her talking to a boy with blond streaks in his hair who was almost as slim and attractive as she was. She held in her hands a book whose bright, arresting cover bore a drawing of what Juan recognized as the United States Capitol Building. Just below the image of the Capitol the name “Hank Rawls” was printed in slightly raised, iridescent letters.
    The girl was laughing, rolling her eyes as she said to the boy, “Another new novel by Senator Rawls. There’s life after, like, runs for President. Did you, like, know that he once ran for President, you know? Like, that was until he got his picture taken on a sail boat with a girl. Like who was not his wife. They were naked. Like, end of campaign, end of Senate, beginning of a writer’s life.”
    “No shit,” the boy said.
    “No. Like it really did happen.”
    “Must have been before we were born, you know.”
    “Or maybe when you were like in kindergarten at Collegiate and I, you know, was in first grade at freakin’ Brearley.”
    The girl noticed Juan and lifted her right hand, waving him toward them. As Juan and the boy stood on either side of her fragrant body, they looked at a full-page color picture of Senator Rawls, with his halo of sandy hair and the taut smile lines that made him resemble Clint Eastwood, but gentler, more refined.
    The girl read aloud: “A graduate of Choate, Princeton, and Stanford Law School, Hank Rawls served in the United States Senate from Wyoming for two terms. After leaving the Senate, he returned to his Wyoming ranch. He is the author of four previous best-selling novels, all New York Times bestsellers. Congressional Privilege is his fifth novel. He has also performed in several recent major films directed by Ang Lee and Sofia Coppola. He lives in Wyoming and Washington. He has three grown children.”
    Juan heard the boy laugh. “The Senator might live in Wyoming, but his spurs are like buried right here in East Hampton.”
    The nubile girl closed the book and held it aloft before giving it to Juan. Although he couldn’t read English, Juan loved to touch and feel the school books Mariana’s children brought home from the Bridgehampton elementary school. He drew his index finger over the printing of Hank Rawls’s name on the cover; it was like touching braille. Then he put the book on a glass table and wandered away from them. He understood the meaning of the words The Senator’s spurs are buried right here in East Hampton . He was disoriented. He now knew Joan Richardson was Hank Rawls’s lover. This disturbed him. He felt a wave of hurt and jealousy.
    Juan searched through three rooms for Brad. There were still men and women all over the place—rooms, hallways, even in bathrooms with open doors. In one of the airy, high-ceilinged rooms he saw Brad, a happy man, seated on a sofa. Joan Richardson wasn’t in the room. But there were several other men and women listening to Brad’s slow, deliberate, slightly Southern-accented voice. Juan stopped behind the sofa. Brad’s right hand rested on the wrist of another man, who had the broad shoulders and neck muscles of an athlete. Like many of the young men at this Independence Day party, he also had blond streaks in his