Chapter 3

I DRESSED QUICKLY and drove over to the Metro, which actually wasn’t too far from our house. It was a huge gay bar and club situated on what amounted to the dividing line between the Riverside and Avondale neighborhoods. When I got there, I spotted a couple of cruisers and an EMT van already in place. I flashed my shield and pushed my way through the crowd of spectators.

Inside the club, I was quickly directed behind the scenes to a dressing room, where I found a large mound of human flesh lying on the floor, clearly dead. Carl was looking at the body.

“Hi, boss,” Carl said.

“What do we have, Carl?”

“The body of Melvin Seymour, aka Madame Dixie—headline attraction of this and several other clubs around the state.”

I looked at the late Melvin and saw that there was a small hole where his left eye had once been. Blood and other substances had oozed from the hole, and his mascara had run all over the place. Melvin might have been a star on stage, but as a corpse, he was a mess.