The mama-san lit up when they stepped through, yen signs flashing in her eyes with every bat of her thick fake lashes. She was a beautiful woman, soft and feminine with genuine warmth that said she’d known the mark a long time.

She led them to a table in the far back of a room that, like the hostess club Munroe had visited the night before, was lit with mood and ambience. Here, waist-high walls at intersecting angles were topped with tea lights, adding a touch of the dramatic and providing a greater sense of privacy, and off to the side was a small dance floor, where two couples swayed to piped-in music.

The portly man sat and Munroe took her place opposite him, eyeing the hostesses, a mixture of foreign and local, all of them stunning. The mama-san lingered beside the mark, head dipping in rhythm to words Munroe couldn’t hear, body and face saying Yes and I agree and Of course.

One of the foreign women, wearing a gold-sequined dress that hardly reached her thighs, blond and petite and with baby blue eyes recognizably dulled by drugs or alcohol, sauntered over and slid onto the sofa bench beside the portly man, snuggling up as if she’d been waiting for a longtime lover.

The mark reacted to his plaything like a cat to sun or a puppy to fingers behind the ear, and paused just long enough to reach for his wallet. He retrieved a business card, thick and heavy, and presented it to Munroe with a flourish of ceremony. Business cards, treated as reverently by the receiver as one would treat the giver, left Munroe fishing for her pocket.

She presented one of Bradford’s cards while an open bottle of Glenfiddich, ice, and glasses arrived from the bar, carried on a silver tray by a young woman in very high heels and a barely there dress.

The blonde reached for the bottle of whisky and the mama-san stood. Full of polite apology, she encouraged Munroe to take a space of her own at a table made available across the room.

“Go, go,” the portly man said in English, waving Munroe on magnanimously. Munroe bowed her thanks and followed the mama-san and, in what had to be a prearranged collusion, a tall pale brunette reached the table at nearly the same time.

Munroe slid into the quasi-booth formed by the bank of sofas and low table and smiled at a woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty.

She sat beside Munroe and, in Japanese that was fluid in the way practiced lines were fluid, said, “I am Gabi, please allow me to request for you a drink.”

“I drink what you drink,” Munroe said, and then she repeated the sentence in Russian. The language was a guess, the closest she could offer the foreign accent from within her repertoire, and she’d not been far off. Gabi’s eyes widened and her mouth opened just slightly, and she stumbled through placing an order with the bar girl who’d already arrived, perfectly timed, at their table.

When the liquor came and the drinking began, Munroe learned that her hostess was Lithuanian. Her Russian wasn’t fluent, but the conversation flowed far better than it would have in Japanese or English, and when the ice had been broken and Gabi had relaxed, Munroe slid a picture of Bradford onto the table. “He’s my friend,” she said. “I’m trying to find him, I’ve heard he’s been here.”

Gabi leaned forward, picked up the picture, then moved it closer to a nearby candle and examined it more closely. She handed it back with a nod that might as well have said You’d better put that away.

Munroe tucked the photo into her wallet.

Gabi traced a finger across Munroe’s hand and managed to both flirt and pout in the same breath. “He has been here, but not with me,” she said, and she leaned back slow and sultry, each muscle tensed with the perfection of a stage performer fully aware of how every movement was watched by someone, somewhere. Gabi looked down the room toward the front, closer to the door, and kept on looking until Munroe followed her gaze.

“You see the red dress?” Gabi said.

Red dress was an understatement.

Munroe turned back to the drinks and said, “I see the dress,” although what she’d seen were long legs that kept on going forever, stopped by clingy red material topped out with a chest that had to have been enhanced. And long blond hair that flowed in coifed waves over bare shoulders, which were attached to elegant arms and hands pouring drinks at a table with three Japanese men.

“That is Alina,” Gabi said. “She was at the table with your friend.”

An elegant Filipina approached and Gabi said, “You know how it works?”

Munroe shook her head. “Tell me.”

“You want me to stay? You want a new hostess?”

“Stay,” Munroe said, “and when the red dress gets free, I want her here.”

Gabi smiled, waved the other girl away. “Give me some minutes,” she said, “I will make sure you get what you want.”

They chatted more, small talk to fill the time, and then Gabi slid out to the floor, only slightly stable on platform shoes, and she wandered out of sight, either to the mama-san or the master, it was hard to know.

Munroe was an hour in and a hundred and fifty dollars lighter when the red dress showed up. Munroe patted the seat and invited her to sit, just a bit too happy, as if she was a little too affected by the booze.

Alina smiled and offered more of the same coy, playful fawning that permeated the air, but no amount of sensuality could hide the bored indifference that punctuated every move.

She was older than Gabi, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six.

“Twenty-seven,” Alina said, and showed no surprise at Munroe having engaged her in her own language.

Presumably, Gabi had spread the word.

Alina answered the next question before Munroe could ask, as if this was a litany she endured with all new customers and pulling off the exchange without descending into condescension or implied snark would take effort. “I’ve been in Japan for four years,” she said. She took the tiniest sip of the drink Munroe had bought her and then added, “I can speak enough Japanese to get by.”

“I’m looking for a friend,” Munroe said. “I was told you’ve seen him. I’m hoping you would tell me what you know of him.”

“I’ve seen him,” Alina said.

“You don’t want to look at the picture?”

“There’s no need. Any one of us would recognize him if he came back.”

“He came here often?”

“Three times, I think.” Alina shrugged. “Do you smoke?”

Munroe shook her head. Three nights accounted for each of Bradford’s unexplained absences according to the notes on his calendar.

Alina sighed, dropping the pretense that Munroe had come for any other reason than information. Time was time, and she got paid either way. “Another hour and I go home,” she said, and lit the cigarette, leaning back into the sofa and crossing her long legs. She inhaled and then let out the smoke toward the ceiling.

Munroe said, “Tell me about my friend.”

Chin raised, cigarette balanced between two fingers, Alina traced her eyes over Munroe’s face. Munroe knew the look; she’d seen it on strippers and fortune-tellers and politicians—those who’d so finely perfected the ratio between bullshit and charm that people believed what they heard and willingly opened their wallets for more.

“I tell you about him,” she said, “and in exchange you tell me about you: one for one.”

Munroe picked up her drink and ran the glass between her palms.

In a few words the woman had said she believed Munroe had something she wanted and she’d hold the information about Bradford hostage to get it.