Why?

It was minutes past noon when the Ferragamo slings of Sissy Carol Sparks again ticked across the pavement of Miami Beach, her client snoring naked on the carpet beside the bed, a fifth of Pappy Van Winkle dead on the floor. Sissy could smell the guy’s nasty, overmusked cologne rising from her breasts and she grimaced as she hailed a cab to take her back to Wynwood, another thirty bucks shot.

It had been a standard night, Mr Car Salesman trying to shape Sissy into configurations he’d seen in porn vids, getting a cramp in his leg at one point, howling and limping across the floor, his pink dick flapping pathetically between his thighs. He’d gotten progressively drunker, passing out at four in the morning. Sissy had slept until ten – the guy a beached whale drooling on the carpet – then called room service for coffee, juice and a fruit plate. He’d paid to have her stay until noon, but snored through what he’d expected would be breakfast in bed, so to speak.

As she waved down a taxi, Sissy winced at a memory, the john patting her hair like she was a show poodle and babbling that she was the mos’ beautiful woman he’d ever seen and how he’d like to take her home and show her off to everyone in Kokomo or wherever.

Sissy had started life in her own Kokomo, a tiny town in rural northwestern Ohio, aptly named Hicksville, and wasn’t going back. It had been a hard climb, chased around the house by her uncle – and occasionally caught – starting when she was fourteen, seduced by a music teacher when she was sixteen, a next-door neighbor at seventeen, passed around by a succession of boyfriends, mostly college types, who promised the world and married women who didn’t talk with a twang and live in a trailer park.

Sissy learned two things from her early life: One, men want one thing, and two, men want one thing only.

She’d ditched Hicksville at nineteen, trading a meth head mother and winters so cold they broke pipes under the trailer for the bright-future sunshine of Florida. There had been only one problem: Sissy arrived on the Trailways bus with one-hundred-seventy-seven dollars in her backpack, tucked within the make-up and the few clothes she could fit in the pack.

She found the cheapest motel in the Orlando area, hoping to work at Disney World, which she’d heard hired attractive young people to perform for tourists. Only one problem: the goddamn place wasn’t hiring.

She started looking south. Then, the ad … in the local paper, small and headlined, CHARACTER ACTORS NEEDED. It promised a good steady job, good money, even a place to live. All you needed was to be “responsible, energetic, outgoing and …”

And blah, blah, blah, Sissy thought. What a fucking bust that turned out to be, at least as far as acting. After a strange interview she’d been made an immediate manager and given special duties, finding that beneath all the promises and glittery up-top bullshit it was just another Hicksville, dark and ugly and full of streets that led nowhere. But she had a feel for the work and the money was good, so she stayed a year before getting bored and bolting south to Miami. She’d intended to sign with an escort service, but fucked up and immediately acquired a heroin habit which detoured her career to a massage parlor, cranking out handjobs like Dunkin’ cranked out donuts.

She fell to the bottom, again. Hicksville with hand towels.

Then the cops raided the place and hauled off all the illegals, leaving only one US citizen: Sissy. She’d called a bail bondsman, got a hard-talking dyke named Michaela. With a bit of subtle encouragement, Mick got the drools for Sissy and ended up paying the percentage and all court costs, then sat up three days while Sissy moaned and puked and trembled the H from her system.

Another lesson learned: Fuck with drugs and they’ll fuck you back harder.

Sissy stayed clean and started exercising, spurred on by Mick, who did a minimum ten hard hours a week at a health club and fronted Sissy the membership fee.

Sissy 2.0 arrived. With Mick’s reluctant help – “This is what I’m gonna do, Mick, you got that? Help me or get the hell out of my way” – she finally signed with a low-rent escort service and began doing outcalls at fifty bucks an hour, half going to the service. She found a better service, moved up, and began trolling the street in her own time, targeting horny johns before they could call a service.

The money was starting to roll in.

Which was why Sissy didn’t much care when the cab-fare was thirty and she tipped the guy ten … Sissy Carol Sparks had figured out how the game worked.

Sissy exited the cab and smiled at her apartment building, a ten-unit rehab in a gentrifying neighborhood, her neighbors young professionals who thought the beautiful young woman in 22-A was a medical-equipment salesperson who took a shitload of overnight sales trips. The men initially buzzed at her like bees, but Sissy bought a flashy diamelle engagement ring to back the story of an engagement to a Delta pilot, the marriage at some nebulous point in the future.

All worked out.

Sissy crossed to her unit to shower the stink from her skin, hit the club for a workout, then take a facial and manicure. She’d had gigs for four days in a row – the convention – and was looking forward to curling up in a terry robe and watching West Wing episodes on Netflix … the call girl in that show made three grand a night!

Something to aspire to.

A flash of motion caught Sissy’s eye and she turned to a white van parked on the street, eyes reflected in the large side mirror, gray eyes tracking her every step across the pavement. Normally she would have put a little more sashay in the trim rear to give some poor working stiff a couple seconds of the show. She was, after all, Sissy Carol Sparks, moving up and moving fast.

But this guy was scary, his eyes horny-hot, sure … but angry at the same time. And why was the looney fuck holding his shirt open to show some purple tattoo or whatever? Her internal alarms went off and Sissy nearly ran the last few feet to her door.

30

Miami-Dade PD dispatcher Talia Ocales sat in her semicircular workstation surrounded by monitors and an impressive array of technology. A light flashed on her board and she shifted the headpiece to take a fast sip of coffee, then flicked a switch.

“This is 911,” she said, the address registering on one of her monitors. “What is the nature of your problem?”

“I want to report a freak scoping out the neighborhood. He’s sitting in some piece-a-shit van, staring at women. He’s got some weird-ass tat or whatever on his chest. He’s got sicko eyes … trust me, I know what they look like.”

“Your name, ma’am?”

“It ain’t important. You’ll send some uniforms to roust this perv, right?”

Tania Ocales assured the caller action would be taken and switched off the call. “Uniforms? Roust this perv?” The caller knew cop jargon. Ocales checked for active units in the area.

“Ten-Charlie-three, you there?”

“Runnin’ south on Northwest Fifth,” returned the voice of Patrol Officer Jason Roberts. “Just passed Robert E. Lee Park.”

“Got a complaint about a suspicious individual …” Ocales told him the address.

“Anything more to go on?” Roberts said.

“Old van. Creepy-looking guy.”

A chuckle. “That narrows it down. On the way.”

Frisco Dredd started the van. The engine turned over, coughed, died. He pumped the gas and fired it up again, pulling from the curb when he heard the whoop of a siren and saw flashing blue in his rear-view. His fingers rebuttoned the front of his shirt. Jesus didn’t need to see this meaningless distraction.

The cop came to the door, a younger guy wearing one of those cop smiles that ain’t a smile, eyes like they was weighing you.