“This is speculation.” His tone was even. Not accusatory.
“Yes. But I couldn’t find anything in the Gothic Quarter. Kira loves to dance. Bring her to a club, spike her drink while she’s dancing, she’d be easier to move.”
Even as she outlined the possibility Rebecca wondered if Kira would leave her drink unguarded. Something didn’t fit.
“Or she went in a car with them on her own.”
“She would have texted first.”
Though thanks to the possibility of a fake app, that logic no longer held. If Jacques had stolen Kira’s phone and then let her use his, maybe she would have sent Rebecca or Tony the text and gotten into a car without being forced.
But Rebecca just didn’t see it. Kira and Jacques and the unknown woman had left The Mansion before midnight. By Barcelona standards, the night had just been getting started. Kira would have wanted—expected, even—to stay out, not to go home with Jacques. Especially since nothing in their body language from the video at The Mansion suggested she was about to hook up with him. Which meant another club. And all these clubs were walking distance from The Mansion, especially on a nice summer night, the Mediterranean waves rippling against the beach. Kira would have wondered why Jacques insisted on driving. She was smart enough to know that getting into a car was inherently dangerous. Scream on the street, you could be almost sure someone would hear. Scream from a back seat, you could be almost sure no one would.
Under those circumstances, Kira wouldn’t have just sent a text before getting in a car, she would have waited for an answer. Of course, Jacques could have anticipated that possibility and loaded a fake response onto his phone.
But what if Kira recognized the return message was off, it didn’t sound like Becks or Tony? And the more she handled the phone, the more likely she would notice something was wrong with it. Jacques would want to keep her relaxed. Again, the best way to do that would be to take her to another bar or club.
Rebecca was prepared to explain all this to Xili, though she didn’t particularly want to. Some detectives liked cases without obvious answers, pulling a suspect from thin air, Sherlock Holmes–style. The butler. In the pantry. With an icicle that melted afterward. They liked speculation, to borrow Xili’s word.
Not Rebecca. She was methodical by nature. Give her a target, and no matter how hard finding evidence on him might be, she would. Cases like the Border Bandit’s, cases she might never solve no matter how hard she worked—those bugged her even more than they did most cops.
Xili looked at her like he wanted to press the point, but he didn’t.
“Let’s see what they have for us.”
* * *
But they had nothing.
Not at Opium. Or Carpe Diem. Or Pacha. All high-end clubs clustered within a few hundred feet.
In each, the managers respected Xili, or his badge, enough to act polite. They promised to put up Kira’s “Missing” poster in the back-of-the-house break rooms. They offered to let Rebecca check surveillance footage, a step—as they probably guessed—she didn’t have time to take without hard evidence that Kira had come through their doors.
Meanwhile, the bouncers and bartenders glanced at Kira’s picture long enough to seem interested before shaking their heads, nope, never seen her, good luck, adios. Rebecca believed them. But she also knew they’d wipe the question from their minds as soon as she left. They viewed this missing American girl as a chore, nothing else.
And after seeing the beachfront clubs, Rebecca couldn’t help thinking they were wrong for a kidnap scheme. Not just because they weren’t Kira’s scene, too fancy and expensive and Eurotrashy. After all, Kira didn’t know anything about Barcelona. She would have deferred to Jacques.
The more serious issue was that the big 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 un
til 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 Eixample.”
“Let’s stick closer to the Quarter, walking distance,” Rebecca said.
Her dissent seemed to surprise Xili. “You have an idea?”
“I don’t know the place but I bet you do. Big enough to dance but smaller than these places. Maybe a more underground feel. No restaurants, no fancy website. Not so many cameras. Meant to intimidate outsiders a little. The place the locals go, and go late, so short lines at midnight.”
“You think he’s from Barcelona, this man?”
“No, but he knows the city. And I promise, if it doesn’t work, we’ll do it your way.”
Xili drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. Finally, he nodded.
“Maybe I know a place. In Born-Ribera.” The neighborhood between Poblenou and the Gothic Quarter. It had the same narrow medieval streets as the Quarter, but fewer bars, more fancy boutiques. “I don’t think it’s open now, but let’s see if anyone’s there.”
Minutes later Xili turned into an alley behind a brick warehouse.
“This one opened last year but they keep it quiet. Changed the name already. I think they even put up bad reviews on TripAdvisor to scare away the tourists.”
“What’s it called?”
“Helado.”
* * *
He led them around the building. The front door was locked. Xili rapped on it, hard and peremptory.
“Get lost,” someone inside shouted in Spanish.
“Policia!”
A minute later the door opened, revealing a tall woman, her pupils dilated in a way that suggested opiates.
“Your name?”
“Flor. Yours?”
Xili flashed his badge. “I’m looking for a young woman who may have visited last night.”
Rebecca held up a copy of the poster, and even before the woman said anything Rebecca saw the recognition in her drug-wounded eyes.
“We get a lot of people.”
Xili glanced at Rebecca. She saw he’d picked up the flash too. He stepped closer to Flor, an old but effective cop trick, I’m gonna violate your space, put you on the defensive. “Is anyone else here?”
She shook her head.
Xili pointed at the camera watching the door. “You don’t mind if we look at the video then?” He pushed by, wordlessly forcing Flor to decide, Do I stop you or move along?
She moved along.
* * *
The space inside held a sunken dance floor and a long bar. The room was nearly dark, a cathedral between services.
“Any other cameras?” Xili said.
“Just behind the bar.”
“Show us.”
Rebecca silently admired the way he’d taken control. Flor led them to an unmarked door beside the bar. The office was small and battered, nothing corporate, no energy drinks here. A baggie of grayish-white powder and a razor blade on the desk.
“Put it away,” Xili said. “I don’t care.”
Flor stuffed the bag in her pocket.
“Show me the video.”
The images were grainier than the ones at the other clubs, but they were good enough.
Twelve eighteen a.m. And Kira walked through the front door.
Wilkerson caught Rebecca’s eye, nodded, You were right. And yet she felt neither surprise nor triumph. Found you. Found you found you. Only she hadn’t. Not yet. In fact, seeing Kira this way was almost maddening. Jacques wore the big-billed baseball cap with the PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN logo she’d seen before to hide his eyes. The woman with them was clowning, hugging his back, in a way that obscured her face. Rebecca wanted to scream a warning at the screen, into the past, Don’t you get it, K?
Xili stopped the playback, pointed to the screen. “Her. Do you remember her?”
“Not really.”
If Flor cared, she was doing a good job hiding her feelings.
“We need to watch the video from inside too, talk to the bouncers. But first let’s see when she left.” Xili clicked Play on the video again.
“Better go faster,” Flor said. “We didn’t close until six a.m.”
Trial and error showed that 8x fast-forward was the highest possible speed where they could be sure they wouldn’t miss anyone walking out. Even at that setting, watching the feed took almost forty-five minutes.
But Kira never appeared again. Neither did the others. Not for a single frame. However they’d left this club, it wasn’t through the front door.
“You have a fire exit?” Rebecca said.
“In back.”
“It has an alarm?”
“Yes.”
“Camera?”
“I told you, the only cameras are the front door and the bar.”
“Let’s see,” Xili said.
* * *
The fire door had an alarm bar, as Flor had promised. But a wire hung from the cracked plastic housing that held the base of the bar. Xili pressed it. No alarm. He pushed open the door, revealing the alley and his sedan.
“It was working,” Flor said.
Rebecca stepped into the warm evening air. Nine p.m., but the sky was still more blue than black. The sweet smell of charcoal-grilled meat wafted from somewhere close.
Kill the alarm. Drug her, bring her out, put her in a car. No security cameras on the back door, no cameras in the alley. No one sees.
Except maybe someone had. A five-story gray stone apartment building overlooked the alley. Time for shoe-leather cop work, knocking on doors. Curtains covered most windows, but here and there the glass was uncovered.
“Detective. Rob.”
She nodded at the windows.
“Think anyone was awake?”
“At one a.m.?” Xili said. “In Barcelona? Everyone was awake.”
* * *
An hour later they had their answer.
Courtesy of a lady of a certain age who lived in an immaculate two-room apartment on the third floor. Unlike the club managers she was happy to talk. In fact she seemed thrilled to see Xili’s badge. When Xili asked her name, she said, Everyone calls me the Queen.
The Queen was tiny, no more than five feet, her skin papery and pale, her hands trembling, Parkinsonian. But her eyes were awake. Rebecca sensed she’d be reliable. She led them to her bedroom. A plain wooden chair sat by the window that overlooked the alley. The back door to Helado was barely forty feet away.
She looked at Rebecca. “I want to talk to her. By myself.”
“Yell if she gets rowdy,” Xili said. He and Wilkerson walked out.
“I like to look,” the Queen said. “The television gets boring. I see boys and girls in the back. Or boys, you know, with other boys.”
“Does anyone see you?” Rebecca said in Spanish.
“I keep the light out.”
“What about last night?”
The Queen turned out the lights, sat, stared at the empty alley. As if to reenact the moment.
“There was a dog. An ugly dog and I watched him catch a rat.” She glanced at Rebecca. “This was around midnight. Is that what you meant?”
Let her have her fun, tease you, she’ll get there.
“Anything else?”
“Later, a car came. Stopped by the door. Then two men came out of that door, with two girls. The men held one of them. Like she’d had too much drink.”
Close now. “Do you remember, could she walk at all?”
“It looked to me, if they let her go she’d fall. Her head—” the Queen tilted her own head, rag-doll style.
So they’d drugged her. “Then?”
“They put her in the car, the back, and got in on each side. No talking. Quiet as mice. The other girl got into the front. Then they drove off. Only a few seconds. If I hadn’t been watching I wouldn’t have seen.”
If I hadn’t been watching I wouldn’t have seen. Yogi Berra couldn’t have said
it better. “Do you remember the car?”
“Black.”
“Small? Medium? Big?”
“Not so big, they were stuffed inside.”
“Do you know what kind?”
“I don’t know about cars,” the Queen said primly. “Maybe a Toyota.”
Maybe meant definitely.
“Did anyone get out before they came?”
“No. The driver stayed inside. A man, but I couldn’t see anything about him.”
Rebecca handed her the poster of Kira.
The Queen held it in her shaking hands. “Yes, yes, her. The one they carried. Your daughter, yes?”
The Mossos should hire you. Now maybe the most important question of all.
“Do you know when this was?”
“Maybe after one, before one thirty. Does that help?”
Rebecca put her hands on the Queen’s thin shoulders, felt the fluttering pulse beneath. “It might.”
And by it might Rebecca meant You have no idea how much.
Because the Queen had given the Mossos what they needed to lock down the search. The alley didn’t have cameras. But with the timing and the basic vehicle information, the police could look for cameras on the streets close to the alley.
A black sedan, most likely a Toyota, heading to the alley around 1 a.m., leaving a few minutes later.
A clear picture of the car and its passengers would be handy. But the license plate would be the real prize. They’d find it. Surveillance cameras were everywhere these days. They only needed one. And the plate would give them a whole new set of leads to chase.
21
Somewhere in Spain
The white glow where the plywood met the window frame was gone.
And the closet was as dark as anywhere Kira had ever been, a man-made cave, so lightless that the air around her was almost liquid. Black was not a color but a shade, with gradients. Kira hadn’t known until now. Another lesson courtesy of Jacques and the gang.
The Power Couple Page 18
