tabletop candles. Twin spotlights, high up at the back of the room, sent down shafts that cut through the darkness and met at a single point onstage.
Where the shafts of light intersected, a young woman—very young, Favor thought, no more than nineteen or twenty—was slowly, dramatically, stripping off a chartreuse gown, to the accompaniment of an overwrought American power ballad from the eighties. He couldn’t remember the name.
To his left, along the back wall of the room, were about ten large glass windows, each with a door beside it. Favor guessed that these were the private rooms. On some, the doors were closed and red velvet curtains were drawn. Occupied.
As the song reached its last few bars, the gown fell to the floor and the young woman stepped out of it and walked to the edge of the stage. She stood there for two or three seconds before the stage went dark. Favor could just make out her outline as she gathered the gown and hurried off.
A couple of minutes later, another young woman came out, another gown. While this one danced, the other came out from behind the stage. The floor manager led her to one of the private rooms, where someone shut the door and drew the curtains.
Favor watched for a few minutes, then paid his check and got up to leave. He walked around the back of the club toward the private rooms, went in one, and looked around. Plush couches, pile carpet.
He walked out to the lobby.
“Okay, now the massage,” he said, and again the greeter smiled and nodded as if Favor had just made a choice even wiser than before.
Favor walked down the polished marble stairs to a reception desk. Beside the desk was the big fishbowl display window that Mendonza had described. At least three dozen women, dressed in short white sleeveless dresses, sat on tiered benches behind the glass.
The receptionist asked Favor to choose a room. She pointed to a large placard on the wall, showing different room types and their prices.
Favor told her that he was a newcomer. Could he please look at some of the rooms?
She said, “Why don’t you choose a girl? Let her show you around.”
Favor knew he was supposed to go to the fishbowl and examine the women. He was no prude, but something about this bothered him. Fishbowl. He had eaten at seafood restaurants in Hong Kong where you pick your meal from a live tank and watch it taken off to be prepared. This was uncomfortably similar, selecting a woman for sex like choosing a grouper to be grilled.
But he had to get back into those rooms, and he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself. He took one step over to the glass, glanced in. The women were wearing number tags pinned to their bodice.
He said, “Sixty-three.” It was the first number he saw. The receptionist spoke into a microphone at the desk and called out the number, and a pretty young woman climbed off one of the benches and came out from around the side.
“Give this gentleman a tour,” the receptionist said, and the young woman led him through a set of doors to a hall.
She was about twenty-five, slim and pretty. Her name was Patricia, she said: she pronounced it PuhTREESia. She showed him into one room and another in turn, all those that weren’t in use.
Favor glanced around each room. He knew exactly what he was looking for. As they moved down the hall he tried to imagine the layout of the place, where they stood in reference to the club floor above.
He pointed to a room down the hall.
“Can we look at that one?” he asked.
A flicker of hesitation passed over Patricia’s face, as if she sensed that something beyond the ordinary was happening here. Smart, Favor thought. He knew that most men, given the chance to be alone in a room with Patricia, wouldn’t be too picky about the room. But she seemed to dismiss it, and took Favor down the hall and into the room.
It was the biggest and most lavish so far, a large room in a jungle motif, faux leopard-skin wall coverings and potted plants, with a glass wall at one end that looked onto a large shower and whirlpool bath.
Favor looked around and saw what he needed.
“Sir, this is the Ultimate VIP Safari Suite. It’s our most exclusive room. You wish to see another?”