1 Chapter 1

Prologue

Jacksonville, FL

SHE STUDIED HER face carefully in the mirror, applying little finishing touches here and there to her makeup. Satisfied, she stood and took one last look. Hmm, overage, check; overweight, check; over made-up, check; over accessorized, check; overdressed, definitely. Fuck it, she thought, that’s what fifty-year-old drag queens are supposed to look like. Out there in the spotlights, the audiences ate it up.

One of the perks of being the top-billed performer on any given evening at the club was a private dressing room—the other “girls” had to share a room that wasn’t much bigger than this one. The other perk was that she only had to do one show—the late show, the idea being to keep the customers buying drinks as long as possible while they waited for the headline attraction.

Her reverie was interrupted by a knock on the dressing room door, and a voice on the other side of the door said, “Five minutes.” She flipped a feather boa around her neck and did a last-minute check of every aspect of her appearance before walking down the hallway to the stage. After a couple of minutes, the emcee said, “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Madame Dixie.”

The music began, and she marched out on the stage, twirling her boa. She’d long ago learned to sew a couple of tiny lead weights to the end of the boa. They were, for all practical purposes, invisible, but they were just heavy enough to allow the boa to arc gracefully through the air. Over the years it had become a trademark of her performances. It was, after all, Friday night, and she was, after all, the headline performer of the evening.

The music changed, and she launched into the first of the three numbers she would do back-to-back. At the end, she took a final bow and headed to the dressing room. It’s a good thing that’s over, she thought.I’m sweating like a pig, and my mascara is probably running.

In the dressing room, she discovered a man sitting at her dressing table.

“Who the fuck are you?” she said.

“Nobody.”

“What do you want?”

“Tell me what you did with my little brother,” he said.

“I don’t know your brother,” she said, starting to get annoyed.

“Sure you do, you’ve been fucking him for months.”

“Honey,” she said, “I’ve been a total bottom for thirty years, and I don’t fuck anybody. God knows, these days, nobody wants to fuck me.”

“Somebody’s been fucking him, and I thought it was you,” the man said.

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Tommy.”

“Little Tommy is your brother?”

“So you do know him.”

“He wants to be a drag queen,” she said, “and I’ve been teaching him how.”

“And fucking him,” the man said.

“Buddy, I don’t know if anybody’s been fucking little Tommy or not, but in any case, it’s not me.”

“You’re lying,” the man said. “Now tell me where Tommy is.”

“Probably down in Orlando trying to win a talent contest at the Parliament House.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Honey, I don’t give a flying fuck what you believe. Now get out of my chair so I can sit down. I’m dead tired.”

A gun appeared in the man’s hand and made a little burping noise.

“Not anymore, you aren’t,” he said. “Now you’re just dead.”

He locked the dressing room door from the inside and scrambled out through a window.

1

Jacksonville, FL

WE’D SPENT A TYPICAL Friday evening dining on lasagna and garlic bread at the Pizza Italian, a small Italian restaurant in the Five Points shopping district of Jacksonville. Founded and still run by a Greek immigrant named Gus, the restaurant had been a neighborhood favorite since early 1976. Gus offered the best meatball subs in town, very good pizza, lasagna that was second to none, and his homemade blue cheese dressing was so popular that he sometimes sold it separately. Mike and I were sitting in one of the booths along the wall. We’d been joined by Carl Johnson, a rather cute redhead, and his partner Jim Williams, who was an attractive brunet. Carl was a detective with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and Jim worked for one of the national accounting firms. He’d passed the CPA exam the previous fall.

“Ask you a question, boss?” Carl said between bites.

“You know, Carl, you could call me George when we’re not at the office,” I said.

“I like calling you boss, Lieutenant. Besides, if I got in the habit of calling you by your first name outside the office, I might slip and call you that on the job.”

“Okay, I surrender. What’s your question?”

“When Jim and I got here this evening, you and Mike seemed to be having a rather intense discussion.”

“Yeah, we were, sort of.”

“Mind if I ask?”

“We were trying to decide what to use as an anniversary date,” Mike said.