A brief and hearty cheer went up, and then was silenced as Rose stepped into the clearing and began to lip-sync.
Rose wasn’t wearing much, but the whole ensemble sparkled from strap to strap. It looked like the skeleton of a beauty queen’s apparel in the swimsuit competition, done up in silver, with a tiny hint of beaded fringe down south, where it counted. But fringe or no fringe, I was impressed with the tuck-job. It was a tuck-job that made me feel less odd about calling a six-foot-plus man a “she” in my interior monologue. It reinforced the very shiny illusion, but so help me God, there was nothing to be done about her legs.
Don’t get me wrong—they went for miles, and the muscle definition was absolutely to die for … but you’d never mistake them for belonging to a woman, unless we’re talking the She Hulk. Still, this observation did not prevent me from feeling a touch of envy. If Mattel ever makes a Drag Queen Barbie, they damn well ought to pattern that doll’s proportions after Sister Rose. Those were legs that could crack a horse’s ribs, and they knew how to move.
They scissored and stretched, and banged apart, dropping Rose’s crotch down to a floor-level split that I would’ve considered too painful to attempt, but she never dropped the beat or the verse. Rose grabbed the nearest rail and scaled it with the ease of the world’s most glamorous chimpanzee, slinging herself easily and gloriously in time to the music—and all the while never flashing even a hint of anything incriminating.
If I seem fixated on this point, well, I’d never seen a drag show this up close and personal before, and it fascinated me. The pageantry, the artifice, the unapologetic pretense … It was effusive and charming, albeit loud as hell. By this point in the night, I was wishing for earplugs and wondering if my unnaturally sensitive ears would ever truly recover, but I couldn’t muster any real concern about it.
Rose’s big black wig was outfitted with big faux gemstones that caught the lights and hurled them around like lasers, and her darkly painted lips contorted themselves around lyrics that only barely pretended to be a double entendre. If there was any such thing as a single entendre, this was it.
But out of the corner of my eye, I saw something I didn’t like—although it was gone as soon as it’d snagged my attention. I asked myself, “Self, what was that?” and nobody heard me, which was just as well, since it wasn’t that funny and I was actually kind of serious. The subconscious is a strange thing, the way it sorts and settles what needs our attention and what doesn’t, and mine was screaming at me that I was missing something—not that it would’ve surprised me. How could anybody take in the whole scene without missing half or it, or more? The spinning lights that changed color on the fly were enough to induce seizures all by themselves, and when added to the head-splitting volume of the music, and the spectacle of the show, and the crushing waves of inebriated late-night partiers, it was hard to think straight, much less evaluate anything.
Even danger.
And I didn’t like that.
The thought was a land mine, setting off an explosion of sudden panic. “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said aloud since no one was listening. “This was a bad idea.” The room was big, but too crowded to either get away or hide effectively. I scanned quickly for the exits and saw several lighted signs with arrows, but those weren’t the exits I wanted. Those were the exits that everyone would be using.
Again, I saw something through the crowd—a snippet of suit, a swatch of hair. I struggled to fish it out again, to discern the man as he moved through the crowd because yes, I was pretty sure I’d seen a man. And then he was easy to see, or easy to track, because he wasn’t moving like everyone else. He wasn’t dancing. He wasn’t even doing that sideways sway people do when they’re trying to walk across a dance floor, moving along with the flow and yet trying to maintain some preservation of the rhythm.
I could see him moving like a snake through the grass, flat and sneaky, and utterly out of place at the Poppycock Review.
He was wearing a dark suit, maybe a black suit—I couldn’t tell. But he was definitely dressed for business at a quarter till three in the morning, in a drag bar, in the less-than-awesome part of Atlanta. Which may or may not have meant a damn thing, or so I told myself. I had to tell myself that, and I had to keep telling myself that as I began to slide around the side of my pillar, keeping my shoulders pressed up against it. For no sooner had I almost convinced myself that he was somebody’s dad or some random swinger than I saw that the man in the suit was not alone.
A second guy was worming his way from the other end of the room, gliding through the crowd like he’d just stepped out of the Matrix. Except that I was prepared to bet he’d freshly stepped out of a long black car instead.
I don’t know how I knew, except that I always know bad news when I see it, and staring back and forth between these guys—while simultaneously trying to spot any others—I was damn near positive I’d spotted a problem. And the longer I stood there spotting it, the more obvious it was that they were working their way toward Rose, who was almost finished with her song.
On the one hand, this was a relief for me, personally. On the other, it was definitely Not Good for Rose, and oh God, what if I’d led them straight to her?
But that didn’t make any sense. I’m neurotic and self-second-guessing about many things, but I was absolutely confident that I hadn’t been followed since Seattle. So what did this mean? I was frantic for an answer, but nobody was going to give me one and the show was winding down.
I had no idea what to do.
A third man of the same suspicious tribe came slithering from another corner, and that only left one corner, which meant there was probably someone coming up behind me, too, and I’d just have to cross my fingers that nobody was looking for me—not on this trip. I held my breath and Rose pretended to hold that last note, and as the music died away the three men—yes, shortly joined by a fourth from over my left shoulder—converged on the dance floor.
The suited man nearest me was walking in front of me, with his back to me. He turned sideways to facilitate his passage, and I saw the distinct bulge of a gun. But surely they wouldn’t just whip ’em out in a crowded room?
Frantic, I shifted my gaze back to Rose—whose face was covered with a dawning sort of horror because she, too, had seen them now.
The DJ was making his closing announcement, stating the hours the club was open, thanking everyone for coming out, and sending them on their way with the old bit about how “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
The crowds were thinning, and thinning fast.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on building up a shout—not a vocal one, but a psychic one—in an attempt to draw Rose’s attention. I gathered it up and sent it out, projecting it toward the drag queen and smacking her with it: Over here!
She blinked and recoiled, and spied me at my pillar. She gave me a scowl that implied very strongly that she believed I’d brought the suited men here, when of course I had not, but I’d be hard-pressed to prove it in a shouting match across a still-considerably-loud club floor covered in people.
So I sent it again—Over here, goddammit! Now!
For some reason, it took. She jolted into action, not pushing her way through to an exit, but grabbing the ironwork circular stairwell behind her and using it to climb the nearest banister. From that banister she skipped onto the rail, up above the people and with a far clearer path than anyone down on the floor could’ve managed. She moved so smoothly and with such strength, that within moments she was down to the other end of the floor and was forced to drop down in front of me. Her high heels crashed loud enough to be heard above the lingering exit music. She grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me forward.
“What the fuck is going on?” she demanded in her man-voice.
“I have no idea! But we need out of here, now—” which was an understatement, because the floor was clear enough that, with a bit of shoving, the suited men were able to run toward us.
Still ho
lding me by the shoulder, Rose shoved me forward and I let her. Nothing could be gained by fighting between ourselves, after all, and she knew where we were going. I didn’t. I asked, “Is there another way out of here?”
“This way,” she said, propelling me face-first into a very large woman (or man?) who didn’t like getting hit, but who was too drunk to do anything about it. I ricocheted off her (him?) and almost into another support pillar under the balcony, but I steadied myself and wiggled out from Rose’s grasp. I was going to need more mobility than her vise-like handhold would permit.
“Which way?” I asked, and this time she shoved me back, around a corner, down into a very dark place that, after one more turn, was all but pitch-black.
She stumbled and I heard a shuffling sound that indicated she’d decided to jettison the shoes, which—let’s be fair—was a totally great call. I didn’t know how she could walk in the things, and I say that as someone who was running in four-inch heels. “Where are we?” I wanted to know.
She said, “Storage. Move it.” And she gestured with the shoes, which dangled from their straps in her hand.
“I can hear them behind us.”
“Thanks. Like I need the motivation.” She whipped back and took my hand, but they were getting close—very close. Close enough to be scrambling for a light switch somewhere behind us, only a few yards back.
So I said, “No, let go.”
“I’m not backing us into a corner—it opens back here, to an alley.” And then she smashed against something hard, and it didn’t move. I piled up behind her; I just couldn’t stop in time, and I smacked my face into the back of her shoulder, earning me a mouthful of sequins and a moment of panic.
“It’s locked!” I blurted.
“It shouldn’t be,” she complained. “From the outside, maybe?”
“They tend to be pretty well prepared,” I said feebly. Then I added, “Work on it.”
She sputtered, “What?”
“Work on it. Bash it down if you have to. I’ll take care of these guys.”
“What if there are guys outside?” she asked, which was a perfectly valid question.
I said, “We’ll cross that bridge … oh, just work on the door.” As I ran back into the corridor without any lights, I added over my shoulder, “We might not need it anyway.”
The first suit never knew what hit him. The darkness meant nothing to me, or next to nothing, and I cut through it quickly. I jumped at the last second, grabbed him by the throat, and twisted his head until his skeleton snapped and everything inside the suit ground to a halt. The man went limp and I picked him up, held him low, right around knee level, and flung him down the darkness like I was bowling for feds.
But by then the other three guys suspected something was amiss. I heard whispers going back and forth between microphones and earpieces, but my ears were badly bludgeoned by six hours of too-loud music, and I didn’t catch anything but a collection of ferocious hisses. They were spreading out, and crouching down—I could tell that much.
I took the opposite approach and reached up for a set of pipes that ran above my head. I could see them in the blackness, slick as eels along the ceiling, worming through the building like veins. I propped one foot up onto the nearest crate and it jingled faintly, revealing that it was filled with small decorative bells, damn it all to hell. Might as well have been packed with exploding whoopee cushions for all the noise it made. But with a shove and a jump I’d reached the overhead pipes and hauled myself flat up against them—just in time to dodge the blast of gunfire aimed at my great jangling fuckup.
One shot, and it could’ve been a nine-millimeter or a cannon in that dark, narrow storage room. But I was well out of its range, up there with the pipes clasped to my chest and my ankles interlocking to hold my full weight up above the floor.
Sister Rose barked, “Raylene!” but I couldn’t answer without revealing myself, so I didn’t. And when one of the feds began a grim charge down the narrow thoroughfare, I swooped down and picked him up Batman-style: one hand over his mouth, one arm around his neck. I held him up off the ground and let him struggle while the third fed came scooting onto the scene. But hey, since I was holding this big heavy lug of a bastard (and if I were to be honest, gradually losing my feet’s grip on the pipe), I swung him around like a pendulum—breaking his neck with an almost-accidental snap—and I clocked the incoming suit with his buddy’s corpse.
Then I dropped down; I had to, my ankles were giving way and my shoes were on the verge of slipping off. I clattered down to the narrow walkway, landing heavily on the freshest fed. He squirmed and shoved me away, drawing up his gun and getting ready to fire it in my general direction, or maybe Rose’s.
I didn’t let him. I wrenched it out of his hand before he could squeeze the trigger and I used it to bludgeon him into stillness. Something broke and his skin began to leak, but the tang of blood was only a faint distraction. I willed myself to ignore it, because I couldn’t be hungry and be aware of my other pursuer at the same time. This last guy was smarter than the first wave; he was hanging back and patrolling the perimeter as best he could—lurking out by the lights in the hall, where the doorway was open, letting the glare of the cheap bulbs cut sharp shafts of light against the darkness.
I could hear him whispering back and forth into the tiny microphones that were tucked into his shirt collar, and I could even pick out most of the words. He was calling for backup and debating the best approach, which was good. It meant that whoever was after us didn’t know where I was, or what I was.
I hoped they didn’t know what I was.
Behind me, I heard Rose’s shoulder slam against the back door and then there was a pop as the thing flapped open, sucking a little of the dark out of the storage room. “Raylene!” she cried out, and I still didn’t answer but I was beside her in a flash, behind her and urging her outside, into the alleyway.
“Son of a bitch, you’re fast,” she observed. “I thought maybe they’d hit you.”
“Me? Hell no,” I assured her. “But they’ll be on us in a minute, so come on.”
“Where?”
Around us the alley was dark and nasty, cluttered with decomposing trash and pocked with puddles that were filled with something that was more eau de bum piss than rainwater. Overhead, the moon was rolling slowly across the night sky, ducking behind a few thin clouds and peeping back out the other side. “This way,” I said.
She asked, “Why?” but she followed regardless, which I appreciated.
“My car.”
“You found a parking place out here?”
I would’ve responded but the back door smacked behind us and the last fed had found a friend, and they were on our trail. I ushered her forward and jammed her around the nearest corner, praying we hadn’t been spotted.
If it’d just been me, it wouldn’t have bothered. I’d have taken to the rooftops and been a mile away before their eyes adjusted to this new level of light. But Adrian deJesus was only human, and we had too many common interests and enemies to part company now.
She was barefoot and I was wearing high heels, which was a strike against the pair of us, but she moved easily and, just like she’d climbed the rail indoors, she grabbed a rain gutter and hoisted herself up. The metal tube creaked and groaned but held, and she swung her body over onto the Poppycock Review’s angled roof.
“Come on!” she breathed, reaching down a hand.
I took the hand because I didn’t want to push our luck by relying on the gutter, and I was impressed by how easily she lifted me. Underneath that skimpy drag garb, Sister Rose was built like a brick shithouse, and she moved smoothly to draw me up beside her.
She flashed me a military-style hand gesture that I didn’t really understand, but I nodded and followed along. We were on her turf after all, and this wasn’t my corner of town. For all I knew she hung out on the roof and ziplined around the city easy as you please, just for shits and giggles.
I opened m
y mouth to ask, “Where are we going?” because she’d started leading me at a leaning pace around the edge. But she smacked me in the mouth—more roughly than strictly necessary—and hissed a “shh!” that could’ve cut tile. She pointed at my shoes and pretended to hold them by the heels. Who was I to argue? I played copycat and joined in the angled game of walking at a sideways lurch, heels dangling from one hand and bare feet sticking grittily to the shingles.
“My car,” I whispered softer, at her back. Because I was confident that I could dodge her if she tried to smack my mouth shut again, now that I knew to expect it.
“Where?”
“Peachtree, a block that way.” I pointed when she looked over her shoulder to see what nonsense I was going on about.
Down below us we could scarcely hear them, but we could see them.
They were splitting up, circling the building. If they knew we were up above them, they were careful to hide it, but one of them buzzed into his mouthpiece that they needed reinforcements and asked something about a satellite. Call me a pessimist, but I figured that whatever came back through his earpiece wasn’t good for us, which was a bummer. I’d thought it might be worth my time to hop down, wreak a little havoc, and boom—two feds out of the way, and permanently off our trail. But if more were coming, it might be too much of a time sink to be worth the trouble.
“Do they know?”
“Know what?”
“About your car,” she whistled quietly between her teeth.
“Not unless they’re magically tracking me by the pixie dust that spills out of my ass. It’s down there,” I said, as if I might’ve somehow parked it on the shingles where we stood. Lest that be the last idiotic thought ringing through Sister Rose’s ears, I added, “We have to go down and get it.” Because I didn’t plan to carry the bulky queen anywhere. It’d scarcely be any faster than hobbling around in high heels. Behind the wheel, I could get us out and clear at eighty miles per hour, if it came down to it. “Besides, they’re looking for two … woman-shaped people on foot. Let’s go get my wheels and scramble their assumptions.”