To the left across a lawn was a long, low building that might actually contain a bowling alley. A third, squarish, hulking structure seemed more warehouse, except I watched a man and woman, arms entwined, disappear into it, passing two women in halter tops and tight dresses shimmying out. There’s not a city in the world that doesn’t provide a location for the rich and the violent to meet on the common ground of dissolution. In Kabul it had been a converted warlord’s mansion; in Baghdad, an underground bunker once used to store arms, now a bar, whorehouse, casino.
Is Rooster even here? I thought as I felt rough hands move up my thighs and into my crotch and squeeze.
The guard stepped back, and a sickle moon appeared. I followed the slope of ground — gravel path and manicured lawn — toward the buildings and black river. At night it seemed clean. It would look filthy in daylight.
The note that Rooster shoved in my pocket said he would be here with the Indian.
On the curving river was a long dock and outboard boats tethered to pylons like horses. Approaching running lights meant more customers were arriving. Hip-hop music blasted from the warehouse. This place was an Amazon version of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, offering an evening of heightened sensation: gambling, cocaine, a blood fight or a sirloin steak.
Pick a building and look for Rooster. The fine restaurant is a less likely destination for a miner. The whorehouse will be more likely. I hope Anasasio isn’t here.
Behind me, the gate swung open and a vehicle drove in, its left headlight flickering. Whoever had followed me had access here without being frisked. To get the best view of who got out, I bent to tie my shoelace in a shadow, to see two people exit the vehicle and walk toward the main house/restaurant, arm in arm.
One small, a woman. One a large man. I bet it’s the people from the hotel.
The woman’s hair fell below the shoulder. She walked on her toes, light. I saw no camera, but she had a large shoulder bag. The man towered over her in a tropical floral shirt that fell loose over his hip, where, if he was armed, would be his weapon. They were looking around, so I ducked into the “bowling alley” door.
Holy shit, I thought, walking in to the crash of pins.
It was a real bowling alley, all right, but nothing like the twenty-lane Bowlmor that I used to go to in high school. No cluster of preening eighteen-year-old football players or giggling cheerleaders, eating burgers. No retirees from Sunny Acres. No Tuesday night ladies’ league, shrieking with glee at a strike or pounding the polished floor at a gutter ball. No Red Sox game on TV.
Keep moving. Find Rooster.
This bowling alley might have been designed by Hieronymus Bosch. In one lane were a dozen roaring miners, in flip-flop sandals, throwing gutter balls two at a time and snorting cocaine. In another, three women in halter tops drank beer, while a man sprawled on the floor, passed out. Mirrored spheres rotated on the ceiling. Red and emerald lights crisscrossed the faces of a mob by the bar, downing cachaça or drinking from long-necked beer bottles. In lane nine, two middle-aged couples bowled and chatted as if none of the other stuff was going on. Suburb meets hell.
I didn’t see Rooster, but I spotted four Federal Police, in unbuttoned uniforms, bowling in lane two, and guzzling beer from bottles. One man was the officer who had grilled me when Eddie disappeared.
There was no Rooster in the men’s room, or in a long hallway where I passed a room inside of which I glimpsed men playing cards, and another housing a man with a hand scale at a small table, weighing gold dust while a guard looked on and two grungy-looking men never took their eyes off the scale. Miners changing gold for cash.
No Rooster in the bar area, where the TV showed a CNN news alert from the U.S.: Miami shootout with terrorists. Normally that would have stopped me, but not tonight.
Outside again, the moon was sickle shaped, misty, and anemic. I heard macaws scream in the trees lining the path, and the moans of a couple enjoying themselves in the bushes. The river smelled of diesel fuel. I saw, upriver, the public wharf from where ferries left to head north, where Rooster claimed that Eddie had disappeared.
“Joe! Is that you? Joe! My good friend!”
Anasasio, coming up behind me, was grinning.
“You changed your mind! You came!”
He was drunk, showered, scented with cologne, and wearing a white button-up guayabera over chocolate-colored trousers. A gold watch now, instead of silver. He threw his arm around me, breath more alcohol than carbon dioxide, but then he frowned. He was the last thing I needed here.
“How did you find this place, Joe?”
“You said Rondon Street, so I asked the taxi driver if there was a good spot there to have fun.”
“Ah! Smart! Now we find you a sexy woman!”
I didn’t want a woman and I didn’t want Rooster spotting me with Anasasio, but I allowed him to steer me into the warehouse building, and a carpeted room where a half dozen women in bikinis lounged on stuffed couches, did their nails, or watched TV. The room smelled of perfume and mildew. The women managed to smile like they meant it. A range of female faces regarded us; middle-aged and painted to very pretty to much too young.
“What do you prefer, Joe? Blond? Vigorous?”
The women were as provocative as a menu in a Chinese restaurant. Frank Sinatra’s voice sounded over wall speakers. “These little town blues…” A long hallway beyond beaded curtains probably led to bedrooms. A fat guard stood in a corner and made eye contact with Anasasio, and they both nodded. They were pals. Great.
“The bill is on me,” Anasasio said. “My treat. Choose.”
“The small brunette on the left.”
“You have a good eye, Joe! I have had her many times, and she is vigorous!”
Anasasio threw his arm around a blonde in a one-piece bathing suit that accented her large breasts. Her high heels made her six inches taller than he. She stiffened at his touch, and I noted that the other women looked relieved that he’d not chosen them. Anasasio steered the blonde down the hall, behind me. He winked as he disappeared into the next room, leaving me with the small brunette.
What if Rooster isn’t here at all? What if I misread the play on that boat, and the miners and Anasasio work together? What if the next person to disappear is me? Lure him to a whorehouse. Get his clothes off…
“I am Agatha,” the brunette said in our “room,” unhooking her halter top, revealing small, pert breasts. The cubicle lacked a window, offered a single bed, smelled clean, and featured a ski poster of TELLURIDE, COLORADO! No matter where you are, everyone wants to be somewhere else.
“You are shy?” she said, at a sink in the wall, waving me over, soaping up her hands. Her bikini bottom remained on.
“You speak English?”
“I just did, didn’t I?” Amused, she tested the hot water on her wrist. She was pretty: violet eyes, pink lip gloss, no mascara, musical voice. She held out a terry washcloth. “Come. I will clean you.”
Rooster’s instructions had been to meet thirty minutes ago. But he’d not told me there were three buildings. I stopped her hand before she could touch my zipper. I kept my voice low as a shriek of feigned female delight erupted from behind the thin wall, Anasasio’s room. I whispered that I did not want her to tell Anasasio what I was about to say, it was embarrassing, and she smiled, understanding.