clubs presented practical problems for a would-be kidnapper. Kira and Jacques and his mysterious female friend had left The Mansion around midnight and would have needed a few minutes to reach their next stop. But after midnight these places all had lines. Skipping them meant putting a four-figure charge on a credit card for a VIP table with bottle service. The clubs noticed VIPs. Jacques wouldn’t have wanted to be noticed. He wouldn’t have wanted to stand on line either, and risk being remembered.
Plus, the big clubs were run like banks with million-watt sound systems. Cameras in every corner. Bouncers watching the dance floor. Alarms at every fire exit, so no one could sneak in without paying. They were crowded and loud, so Jacques could have spiked Kira’s drink. But afterward he would have had to drag Kira out without anyone noticing she couldn’t walk.
* * *
After two hours, they exhausted the beachfront. Xili drove them to Razzmatazz, in Poblenou, the city’s old industrial district, northeast of the Gothic Quarter. Razzmatazz was more democratic, not as expensive as clubs like Opium, Xili said. More college students, fewer minor aristocrats.
“You know the scene.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Xili said. “Razzmatazz, I remember when it opened, I was still in high school. Some others are even older. The first big one, Otto Zutz, my parents met there.”
Rebecca couldn’t think of anything similar back home. How could a nightclub, a place designed to make anyone over thirty feel hopelessly old, survive a generation? Her first year at Wesleyan she’d driven to New York to go to clubs like Limelight, places all the Manhattan kids knew and she’d only read about. An effort to be cool that was both desperate and half-hearted. In her heart Rebecca feared she was going mainly so she could tell herself later that she had. Back in the day I partied in the East Village at 3 a.m. One night she’d wound up at Save the Robots, a legendary after-hours joint; a cute skinny boy had offered her coke and she’d practically run away.
But Save the Robots and Limelight were long gone, turned into fancy gyms or boutiques selling thousand-dollar sweaters. New places had replaced them, and for all Rebecca knew, another generation of places had replaced those. The only fixture was Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Your parents?” she said. “Really?”
“In some ways the clubs capture Barcelona perfectly. The most modern city in Spain. But Spain isn’t a very modern country.” He turned right, stopped beside a huge building with a sign that screamed RAZZMATAZZ in giant capital letters. “Most nights it doesn’t open until midnight, one a.m. But on Sundays they have evening shows.”
Indeed, two bouncers stood outside, and as they walked up Rebecca could faintly hear a muffled sound check. But she already felt this place was wrong. It would have had even longer lines than the oceanfront clubs. It would skew younger too, and these days younger women were prone to protest if they saw a woman who seemed helpless and being moved without her consent. One noisy rape-crisis-center advocate would screw up everything for Jacques.
Plus, Razzmatazz was an even longer walk from the Gothic Quarter than the oceanfront clubs were. Maybe half an hour, which Rebecca guessed would be at the outer limits of what Kira would accept, even on a nice night, even with a guy she liked. She would have felt Rebecca’s midnight deadline slipping away, would have realized she was going farther from the apartment in Eixample. After a few minutes walking, she would have wanted to pick a club and dance.
Speculation, speculation, speculation. Where, then? Or would they have to go back to the Gothic Quarter, start again, casing every bar? The idea made her cringe.
“Take this one,” she said to Xili. “I need to think.” Xili flashed his badge to the bouncers and disappeared inside, Wilkerson a step behind.
Somehow Rebecca had pictured Barcelona as a quaint town before she arrived. In reality it stretched for miles along the water, dense with apartment buildings, not much wasted space. The city had almost two million residents, its suburbs three million more. Plus, hundreds of thousands of tourists during the summer.
Rebecca believed Jacques knew this city, even if he wasn’t from here. Knew where to bring Kira. A place that would lower her defenses. Where?
She sorted combinations until Xili and Wilkerson emerged from the club. She could tell they’d struck out again even before they spoke.
“Next Otto’s,” Xili said. “Then work our way down through