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"Rooster, can I ask you a question?"
"Shoot, Stu. You don't mind if it's Stu, do you?"
"Not at all." Valentine liked using false names in the Kurian Zone. One more curtain between David Valentine and the vast darkness of the Kurian night. "Why the kindling up in Mister Moyo's office? My head porter has a nicer rig."
Rooster glanced up at the ceiling. "Affectation. He started out as a diesel mechanic. When they made him yard supervisor he got an office. It had that junk in it. To him, that first desk meant he made it. I don't mind-he gave me the previous director's outfit for my office. Solid mahogany and half a herd of leather."
"Do you intend to be the next director?"
"Almost there already. I run the day-to-day stuff, he gets the headaches. Personally, I like having him between me and them."
Valentine wanted to ask more about the day-to-day stuff, but they reached the box.
About a dozen people, not counting a food server and an impossibly beautiful young man tending bar, already lounged in the box. The wedge-shaped room was divided into a set of plush-looking seats arranged stadium-style and an entertainment area. A hot tub filled with ice prickled with the necks of beer bottles and sparkling wines. Harder liquors filled up a backlit case behind the bar.
A pair of televisions at each corner held scheduling information. "Closed-circuit TV," Rooster said. "Most of the skyboxes are wired. We've got a camera snafu so there won't be close-ups tonight. Getting replacement electronics takes practically forever."
Valentine looked over the attendees. One of the men had the look of an athlete, as big as one of the Razors' Bears, but his velvet skin had a far healthier sheen and only a neatly closed scar or two. Men and women in well-cut summer cottons were listening to the sportsman. Two obvious party girls eyed him hungrily from the bar.
Rooster introduced Valentine as a "hotel owner from Florida."
The box looked out over the three-ring circus at the center of the arena through tinted-glass windows. Valentine looked out on Moyo's entertainments.
The layout was familiar to anyone who had seen a circus. A hard wooden track, black with wheel marks, surrounded three platforms. The two on either end were more or less stages-one had a band on it at the moment, furiously working their guitars and drums-and the one in the center was an oversized boxing ring shaped like a hexagon.
Two decks for the audience, a lower and an upper, held a few thousand spectators. Valentine saw motion in the upper deck to his right, just beneath the ring of skyboxes.
"Admission is free," Rooster explained. "Some of the bookmakers own skyboxes. If you bet heavy with them you can sit up here."
Valentine caught motion in the upper deck, not sure of what he was seeing for a moment. Yes, that definitely was a woman's head of hair bobbing in an audience member's lap.
"I've heard of seat service, but that's taking it to a new level," Valentine said.
Rooster laughed. "Some of the cheaper gals work the BJ deck. They're supposed to be selling beer and peanuts and stuff too, but a lot just carry around a single packet or can. Lazy bitches."
"Outrageous," Valentine said. He looked up at the gridwork above. And froze.
The lighting gantries had Reapers in them.
Valentine counted three. One sat in a defunct scoreboard, occasionally peering from a hole like an owl. Another hung upside down from a lighting walkway, deep in shadow, neck gruesomely twisted so it could watch events below. A third perched in a high, dark corner.
"They always here?" Valentine asked. He didn't want to point, but Rooster was sharp enough to follow his eyes.
"Oh, yeah. That dark box, there and there; you have a couple more in each of those. Memphis' own version of closed-circuit TV. They never bother anyone." He lowered his voice. "Sometimes a contestant gets badly hurt. The injuries end up being fatal."
"Then why do they fight?" Valentine asked.
"Look at Rod Lightning's finger back there. Nice little brass ring and a riverside house. He trains cage fighters now. Sight of beetles bother you?"
"Not unless they're looking at me," Valentine answered, honestly enough.
Moyo arrived with a small entourage of river and rail men. Valentine took an inconspicuous seat and watched events below. Something called a "bumfight" began, involving a half-dozen shambling, shabby-looking men clocking each other with two-by-fours. It ended with two still upright and the blood in the hexagon being scrubbed by washerwomen while a blond singer warbled from the stage near Moyo's box. He only had one brief conversation with Moyo.
"How do you like the Midway?" Moyo seemed positively bubbly; perhaps having another report over and done took a weight off-
"Better organized, and a lot less dangerous, than New Orleans," Valentine said. "There's nothing on the Gulf Coast like this."
"You checked out the inventory yet?"
