'PRETTY IN INK'
Chapter 1
If your name is Britney Brassieres, being taken
down by a tsunami of champagne might seem only fitting.
One minute, she was belting out "Oops! . .
. I Did It Again," the next she was on the floor, her arms flailing
as the Moët - not the really expensive kind, but that White Star
you can get at a discount if you look hard enough - showered her.
I know it was Moët because I saw the guy with
the bottle. He'd come up to the edge of the stage near my table as Britney
was singing, shook the bottle, then popped the cork, which was as loud
as a gunshot as it went airborne and slammed right into Britney's chest.
Bull's-eye.
It wasn't an accident, either. He'd aimed it at
her.
I jumped up on a gut reflex and impulsively shouted
at the guy. "Hey!"
After successfully hitting his target, he turned
the bottle on me - confirming that he'd actually heard me - and everyone
else in my vicinity.
Unfortunately, it still had some oomph left, and
liquid splashed across my face, getting into my eyes and dripping down
my face onto my chest. I tried to blink, but it hurt, so I kept my eyes
closed, hearing the pandemonium around me: chairs scraping as people
scrambled to their feet, glass shattering. The vibration moved through
my legs as the floor shook with the weight, the hurry to escape. I wanted
to shout out that it was just champagne, but that cork explosion freaked
everyone out, and when they saw Britney fall, they figured the worst.
Bodies shoved past me, jostling me, and I struggled
to keep my balance, holding out my arms like a trapeze walker and hitting
someone who grunted but didn't stop.
"Joel?" I shouted above the din. "Joel?"
An arm snaked around my waist. "I'm here, Brett.
You okay?" His voice was soothing as his big belly pressed into
my side, and for a second I relaxed before tensing up again.
"Yeah, just got some champagne in my eyes.
Is Britney okay?" I asked, trying to open my eyes, but they still
stung and I shut them again.
"She's moving," Joel said. "I think
she's okay. What happened?"
"Guy with a champagne bottle. Where'd he go?" This
time I forced my eyes open, blinking a few times quickly, clearing the
fog. I scanned the dimly lit nightclub. There had been about a hundred
people here for the show; most of them now were pushing one another toward
the door; someone was screaming, someone else wailing.
The scene on the stage looked like something from
a Shakespearean tragedy: Britney, in her blue and white schoolgirl outfit
and long blond tresses, was splayed across the floor as her fellow performers
hovered over her, clucking like the mother hens they were. I spotted
Charlotte with them, kneeling and stroking Britney's forehead. Britney's
lips were moving, and her eyes were open.
MissTique, who ran all the shows here at Chez Tango,
flailed her arms as she teetered on six-inch clear plastic stilettos
on the edge of the stage, not because she was going to fall, but because
she was trying to calm everyone down. She shouted, "All right," "Everything's
fine," and "Get me a cocktail." The last was to a young
man with a remarkable physique who'd been dancing shirtless behind Britney
before the champagne attack.
"Where's Bitsy?" I had to lean in toward
Joel so he'd hear me as we took a couple of steps toward the stage.
Bitsy is a little person, and it was easy to lose
her in a crowd.
Or bump into her.
"Watch it!" I heard her say and looked
down to see her rubbing her arm where I'd collided with her.
I was about to apologize when it grew darker, sort
of like a solar eclipse. But instead of the electricity going out, it
was merely Miranda Rites blocking the light behind her. She looked like
someone had dumped a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on her: a vision in pink
sequins and a high bouffant of pink-accented orange hair, the multicolored
butterfly tattoo I'd given her just a few weeks ago stretched between
her shoulders just above the ample bosom. It was fake, of course. The
bosom, I mean, not the ink.
"She's okay, right?" I asked Miranda,
shouting, cocking my head toward the stage.
The dark concrete walls didn't swallow the din;
it just bounced off them into my ears with a sort of echo effect.
"I think she's in shock." To compensate
for the noise, Miranda's voice had reverted back to its husky tenor,
giving her that Sybil split-personality thing: Is she a woman? Is she
a man? Can she be both? "She hit her head, though. I saw it from
backstage."
"Did you call an ambulance?"
"They're on their way. Cops, too."
I thought about my brother, Detective Tim Kavanaugh.
I wondered whether he'd show up. He might be a little surprised to find
me here at Chez Tango.
It was opening night of MissTique's new Nylons and
Tattoos show, featuring Britney, Miranda, Lola LaTuche, and Marva Luss.
Drag queens.
They'd chosen The Painted Lady, my tattoo shop,
as the one they'd entrusted with designing their new ink, because Charlotte
Sampson, our trainee, knew Britney, who was Trevor McKay when he wasn't
dolled up. In Charlotte's other life as an accountant, she'd done Trevor's
taxes the past couple of years. When Trevor found out Charlotte had ditched
her former career choice to be a tattoo artist, he said it must be karma.
Because of our contribution to the show, Charlotte;
my shop manager, Bitsy Hendricks; my friend and tattooist Joel Sloane;
and I had been given the VIP treatment: free drinks, a great table, a
backstage tour. The only one in our shop who had chosen not to come was
Ace van Nes, who had issues with the idea of a drag show - but he had
issues with a lot of things. I'd been a little leery at first, too, for
different reasons than Ace, but I easily caved to peer pressure when
Charlotte, Bitsy, and Joel said we just had to be there.
So that's how we ended up covered in champagne,
the music blasting, a strobe light cutting across Britney's body as she
lay sprawled on the stage, her five-inch red platform heels pointing
toward the ceiling and looking oddly like the Wicked Witch of the West's
just after the house fell on her.
My eyes were still smarting from the bubbly, and
I closed them again for a second. When I did, my memory kicked back on
the guy who'd sprayed me. I hadn't seen his face. The strobe had created
a cutout image, his outline flashing light then dark too fast for me
to remember many details, especially with the oversized hooded sweatshirt
and baggy jeans that precariously hugged his hips, with bunched-up boxers
protruding from the top like he was some urban kid.
But he'd had his sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
Maybe he didn't want to get any of the Moët on himself. By doing
that, however, he'd given me something I could share with my brother
the detective. Something that I would never miss.
He had a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm.
A rather distinctive one.
It was a queen-of-hearts playing card.
Chapter 2
Someone finally shut off the strobe when the cops
showed up and replaced the dim lights with bright ones that accentuated
the weariness of the night: spilled booze, smudged martini glasses, a
couple of shoeless heels. Even the hunky background dancers looked a
bit worse for the wear. And while the champagne spilled only halfway
through the show, there had been enough cocktails beforehand to get a
third world country drunk.
I didn't see my brother with the two uniforms who'd
escorted the paramedics onstage to tend to Britney. Then again, it didn't
seem logical that a detective would be sent here. While it was clear
to me that the guy who shot the cork at Britney was aiming for her, she
may have only gotten a bump on the back of the head when she fell.
But I remembered that actress who'd had what everyone
initially thought was a minor bump on the head, too. She died just hours
later. Maybe I should tell those uniformed cops that the cork was shot
on purpose. I could at least give them a description of the tattoo, even
though I hadn't seen the guy's face.
I felt something tug on my foot as I started toward
them. I glanced down. My shoe was stuck to some spirit gum sporting a
curly blond wig that had somehow lost its drag queen.
"You know you're dragging something that looks
like a dead cat, don't you?" Joel asked.
I was one step ahead of him. I leaned against his
arm and lifted my foot, pulling the wig off my shoe with one yank. I
waved it in front of him, accidentally hitting Bitsy with it. I hadn't
seen her come around the other side of him.
She made a face at me and brushed at the wig. "Where'd
you get that?"
I tossed it on one of the large speakers next to
the stage, where male dancers had been performing as Britney lip-synched. "I
saw him," I said simply.
Bitsy looked at me like I had three heads. "What?"
"I saw the guy with the champagne. The cork
- it hit her. He aimed it at her."
Joel tugged my arm. "You have to tell them." He
indicated the cops. So even Joel thought it was a good idea.
We made our way over to the stage. Joel is good
in a crowd. He weighs about three hundred pounds and few people can get
past him. Bitsy, however, was again missing.
As we approached, I did see a detective, after all,
near the edge of the stage. I could tell he was a detective because of
the cheap-looking green sport jacket and gray Dockers frayed at the bottoms.
His hair was cropped short and his ears stuck out, giving him the appearance
of an impish Santa's elf. And he had that look about him. That cop look.
The one my dad had. The one my brother has.
"Excuse me?" I said loudly, trying to
get his attention.
He didn't hear me.
"Excuse me!" I said more loudly.
He turned and looked right through me.
"Excuse me!" Third time is said to be
a charm, but he hardly looked charmed. He frowned.
"Yes?"
"I saw the guy who hit her with the cork," I
said.
He leaned over and whispered something to one of
the uniforms before turning back to me, rolling his eyes and sighing.
I didn't hear the sigh, but I could see his chest rise and fall. Maybe
he should think about asking MissTique for a job. He obviously had a
flair for the dramatic. I wondered what he'd look like in a dress, then
immediately tried to erase the image from my head. It wasn't pretty.
As he jumped down off the stage to join me and Joel
- Bitsy had somehow scrambled up onstage and was talking to Charlotte
now - I noticed that he was older than I'd originally thought. Or maybe
it was the lighting that showed off the wrinkles around his eyes and
the sag of his jaw. I wondered what I looked like in this dreadful light.
Sister Mary Eucharista, my teacher at Our Lady of
Perpetual Mercy School, would say I shouldn't be so vain while Britney
was being moved onto a gurney.
A gurney?
"Are they taking her to the hospital? I thought
she was okay."
The cop shrugged. "Hit her head pretty hard
on the floor. Paramedics want to make sure she doesn't have a concussion." He
was distracted, checking out my tattoos. His eyes followed the Monet
water lily garden up my arm to the dragon poking its head up through
the low neckline of my silk blouse, which was sticking to me because
it was wet from the champagne. Fortunately, it was black, so he couldn't
see the rest of the dragon curling around my torso, meeting up with the
tiger lily that slinked down from my breast to my hip. My jeans hid Napoleon
riding his horse up the Alps on my right calf, the ink so new it still
had a bubblegum pinkish hue, and my blouse also covered the Celtic cross
on my upper back.
In a moment of solidarity, the cop moved his sleeve
up to show a snake curled around his left arm just above his wrist.
"Nice," I said politely, although it was
probably flash, a stock tattoo. At The Painted Lady, we do only custom
ink.
He grinned. "So what happened here? We can't
get a real answer out of any of those fags."
My own smile disappeared. "They're drag queens," I
said coldly. "Performers."
"Yeah, whatever," he said, not seeming
to notice it had gotten frosty in here. "What's your name?"
"Brett Kavanaugh." I watched him write
it down in his little cop notebook, an eyebrow rising as he took a better
look at me and not my tattoos this time.
"Kavanaugh?"
"You probably know my brother." Tim and
I are carbon copies of each other, except he shaves and has freckles.
Sort of natural ink as opposed to my self-imposed ink. A lot of people
think we're twins, with our red hair and thin frames, although he's got
more muscles while I've got more angles. He's taller than I am by three
inches at six feet, but most people don't notice because I don't shy
away from wearing heels.
The cop's expression changed slightly, the corners
of his mouth tightening, and he nodded in that way people do when they're
just being polite. I wondered whether there was bad blood between him
and Tim. Which reminded me . . .
"I didn't get your name."
He gave me a smirk. "So tell me what happened
here."
Definitely bad blood.
I stood up a little straighter, forcing myself not
to pay attention to my wet blouse. "There was a guy standing next
to the stage. He had a champagne bottle, Moët White Star, I think.
He pointed it at Trevor and hit him with the cork."
"Trevor?"
"You do know his name is Trevor McKay?" I
indicated the gurney, which was now being wheeled across the floor toward
the door.
He blinked at me a couple of times, then asked, "What
did this guy look like?"
I shook my head. "I didn't see his features.
He had a big gray hooded sweatshirt on, and baggy jeans."
"Maybe it wasn't even a guy; maybe it was a
woman."
"No, it was a guy. He had his sleeves pushed
up. Definitely man's arms."
"But these guys" - the cop waved his hand,
indicating the stage - "all look like women. Maybe it was a woman
who looks like a guy."
I stared at him to see whether he was joking. He
was dead serious.
"No, it was a guy," I insisted. "He
had a tattoo," I added.
The pencil paused over the pad. "What sort
of tattoo?"
"A queen-of-hearts playing card. On his inner
forearm. His right arm."
"So you can't tell me anything else about this
guy, but you're sure about the tattoo?"
"I own a tattoo shop. The Painted Lady."
The eyebrows went back up again, and his arms fell
to his sides. "At the Venetian?"
He seemed to know it. "Yeah," I said.
"Pricey place."
I didn't know whether he was referring to the upscale
shops that made up the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes or my custom tattoos.
"You can get cheaper ink on Fremont."
Sure. I should've known. He was determined to take
me down a notch. I had to ask Tim about this guy who wouldn't give me
his name.
"There's no cork," he said curtly.
I frowned. "What?"
"No one has seen the cork that you say hit
him. You're sure it was a cork?"
"No, a frog flew out of that bottle." I
rolled my eyes at him, irritated that he was questioning everything I
was telling him. Like I would lie.
"No frogs, either," he said humorlessly
as he stuffed the notebook in his jacket pocket. "Do you have a
card or something? In case I need to ask you more questions?"
"Maybe you can give me your card," I suggested.
I thought it might work. And for a second, he considered
it. But then he grinned and said, "I know where to find you," before
heading back to the stage.
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