Some of the tired-looking women sitting outside the bar glanced up at him and quickly looked away. Most were Chinese, and he recalled stories of how, after train service began, entire brothels had relocated from eastern cities to serve the burgeoning Lhasa tourist traffic. He was surprised, however, at the number of Tibetan women he saw, and he recalled other tales of how for centuries practices of polyandry had deprived many country women of husbands, and they had gravitated to night work in Lhasa. Early chronicles had even reported that the short-lived Sixth Dalai Lama had been so obsessed with the brothels of seventeenth-century Lhasa that he had never taken his final monastic vows.

He fought a sudden impulse to flee and stepped into the alley to summon the courage to go inside. As two patrolling Public Security officers walked by on the street, he reminded himself that a female knob officer from Lhasa had been seeking him.

A teenage boy on a delivery bicycle approached the building from the shadows, and Shan stopped him. For a handful of coins, he bought the boy’s cap, then on impulse he showed the boy the card. “Gymnast,” the boy said. “Sure, everyone knows her. It’s because she can bend in amazing ways. She works here sometimes as a dancer. That’s what people call her, the gymnast.”

“And this?” Shan asked, pointing to the handwritten line that said: 75 curry 2.

The boy shook his head. “No Curry Road, if that’s what you mean.”

“What about a name from India?” Shan asked.

The boy laughed. “You mean like it was someone’s idea of a joke, or one of those codes.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing behind him, then pointed to an alley leading to another street beyond the neon-lit corridor. “Bombay Road, back there, or Delhi Pass, the block ahead of us. Maybe Number Seventy-Five, second floor?”

Shan found an empty cardboard box marked Adult Toys in four languages, hoisted it on his shoulder, and ventured back into the brightly lit street. Delhi Pass proved to be a utility road lined with small warehouses and the loading docks for the bars and clubs that faced busier streets. Bombay Road, though a narrow cobblestone track that was little wider than an alley, proved more promising. Its old tenements were in various states of disrepair but many appeared to be occupied. Shan found a shadowed alcove and watched Number Seventy-Five for a quarter-hour, until a blond woman in a miniskirt raced past him and up the stairs of the building. As she put a key in the door of the second-floor apartment, he darted up the stairs then stepped in behind her and pushed the door shut behind them. As she turned with a surprised gasp, he saw that she was not a Westerner but a Chinese woman trying to look Western, with blond hair and a tight silk blouse.