back...?”
“Now,” I said. “One’s fine.”
“How long will you want, a half or the full hour?”
“Half.” I was thinking of my dwindling supply of cash. No guarantee I could get more tomorrow.
“And have you been here before?”
“No.”
“Well, come to the corner of 51st and Second, you’ll see a Food Emporium, we’re across the street. Just call this number and we’ll tell you where to go.”
This two-call system was apparently standard. I guess it gave the women a chance to peek out the window, see who they were about to let in. Though if what Di had said was right and their customers were all creeps, I couldn’t help wondering what someone had to look like to get turned away. Maybe you actually had to be carrying a bloody knife—or a badge.
Or maybe, I thought, running my hand along my chin, you just have to be unshaven and haggard, with bloodshot eyes, unwashed hair, and clothes you’ve been wearing for two days straight.
I’d have to clean up. And I’d have to rest. Normally that would have meant going home, but tonight it couldn’t, and the next best choice—a hotel—would require handing over a credit card. I might as well just go to the nearest precinct house and turn myself in.
Which left what?
It was cold on the street; maybe that’s what triggered the thought in my mind. Maybe it was just the sort of idea that starts whispering to you when your gas tank finally reaches the big E. I thought, where do I know in the city that’s not far from here, that’s warm, that’s open all night, and where I can sit quietly and not be bothered, all for less than a hundred dollars?
I told myself,
And maybe, I thought, just maybe, I’ll learn something that’ll help me put the blame for Ramos’ death where it belongs.
Keeping an eye out for cops, I turned north, toward Little Korea.
On 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in the shadow of the Empire State Building, the signs in English are the minority. Even the ones that look like they’re in English at first generally turn out to be transliterated Korean when you take a second glance. In the middle of the block there’s a Citibank, an oasis of calming blue in a jumble of swirling neon pictographs and signs promoting all-night table barbecue with larger-than-life photos of
I chose English, and withdrew another $400 in cash. It was the machine’s limit and not far below my account’s, and it would have to hold me.
Every third storefront here was a restaurant; another third were hole-in-the-wall import/export joints whose windows were crammed with Asian DVDs and silver-embroidered dresses. The final third were spas, and I scanned each sign, looking for one that said “Vivacia.” Eventually I found it on a sandwich board propped crosswise at the curb. Looking at the building you’d never have thought it contained anything sanitary, never mind a spa—the outside walls were dingy and the front door led to nothing but a poorly lit hallway with an elevator in the middle and a fire door at the far end. But according to the sign there was a nightclub on one of the building’s five floors, a karaoke bar on another and, at the very top, the best spa in Little Korea. The sign showed a photo of a woman in a towel on a sauna bench. Next to her were the words “Vivacia—men, women, couples—24hrs.”
I pulled the door open, headed for the elevator. A drunk couple spilled out of it a moment later, stumbling and laughing, and I took their place with some misgivings. The elevator was dingier even than the hallway had been, though not quite as dark. I could feel the pounding bass line from the nightclub rise and fall as the elevator approached and passed the third floor.
When the door slid open on five, the difference was stark. The place was lit by flickering candlelight, and all you could hear was the twittering of birds and the sound of a gentle surf piped through hidden speakers. The front desk was staffed by a striking Korean woman in a pale blue t-shirt that hugged her curves, and behind her an S- shaped walkway led to three stone pools with palm fronds artfully arranged around them.
I must have looked awful, but the woman’s expression didn’t show either disdain or concern. She stepped out from behind the desk and extended a hand, which I shook. It weighed about an ounce. “Hello,” she said. “Welcome to Vivacia. Mister...?”
“Smith,” I said. “James Smith.”
“Very good,” she said. “Do you have an appointment, James?”
“No,” I said. “I just thought I’d use the facilities.”
“Of course,” she said. “Have you been here before?”
I shook my head.
“Let me give you a tour.” She reached over to the wall behind her and lifted something off a hook and held it out to me. It was a key on a lanyard. I took it.
She led me toward the walkway and then steered me to the right. A double row of wooden lockers lined one wall behind a pair of couches whose high backs more or less screened the lockers from view. “You’ll change here. You can get a towel and a robe—” she pointed at a stack of each, neatly folded “—and then shower over here.” She walked me up a pair of steps and past the soaking pools. There was one Asian man in the far pool, his head tilted back against the stone, his eyes closed. Dozens of lemons bobbed on the surface of the water.
“You shower here,” the woman said again, pointing at three showerheads in an open, communal area, “then go to the dry sauna...” she aimed a hand at an igloo-like structure across the room, its entrance blocked by the sort of a heavy wooden door you expect to see at the front of a castle in an Errol Flynn movie “... or you can use the steam room.” She indicated a freestanding chamber in the middle of the room. The oddly angled walls of the steam room were made of glass, but all you could see inside were the hazy outlines of figures. The door opened, and a man with a shaved head emerged in a puff of steam, holding his towel closed with one fist.
“You can also lie down in our clay meditation room,” the woman continued. She pointed back toward the front desk, where a large adobe dome loomed. “Take as long as you like. Then, when you’re ready, you can get a massage. Or a body scrub?”
I thought of my bandaged chest and broken rib. “Not tonight. Just the facilities.”
Her face fell, hardened, ever so slightly. “Don’t decide now. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“All right,” I said. “Maybe.”
She held out a hand toward me again, but this time it was palm up and she wasn’t looking to shake. “One hundred dollars,” she said. “Please.”
Julie had said seventy. But I was in no position to argue.
“Of course,” I said, and reached for my pocket.
When I returned to the locker area I was startled to find a couple there, changing. For one thing, I’d figured the wording of the sign on the street was just a dodge to keep the police away—I hadn’t expected that any women actually came here as customers. For another, neither the man nor the woman seemed the slightest bit bashful about my walking in on them undressed. While I opened my locker and hung up my jacket, the man casually wrapped a towel around his waist and his girlfriend—wife?—unfastened her bra and slipped it off her shoulders. They were both quite a bit older than me, he with the short-cropped white hair of a distinguished senator and she with the slightly tight expression of a woman who’s discovered botox or facelifts or both. But they’d both kept in shape, as I could see with slightly off-putting completeness. Maybe it was all the time they spent in spas.
The man nodded to me as they walked past me toward the showers. The woman stopped, turned back, her robe unbelted. “See you in the sauna,” she said. She touched her fingertips to my cheek, patted twice. “But shave first.”
So it was that sort of place.
I wondered how the professionals felt about swingers horning in on their territory. Well, that’s what the hundred dollar door charge was for, I supposed. They got paid even if you provided your own entertainment.
