The scene at the Jack Hammer was just starting to heat up on this steamy Friday night. It was early yet-not even nine o'clock-and most of the action usually took place after midnight. But the heat had brought people out into the night to escape the confines of their stuffy apartments. Like cockroaches skittering out from beneath the refrigerator, they ventured in swarms into the darkness in search of adventure and sex.
The bar scene around Christopher Street had never fully recovered from the AIDS crisis, but widespread use of condoms and the advent of more effective antiretroviral medication had revived the scene in the last few years. Although still not what it used to be, it was the place to go if you wanted a drink, a dance, and a date with some husky young stranger who would go to bed with you and disappear the next morning, no questions asked. The Jack Hammer was not an upscale place like The Townhouse, a piano bar on East Fifty-eighth Street where older gentlemen of means went to meet younger men. It catered to rough trade, and the atmosphere of danger added to the thrill of the chase for many of the customers.
At the Jack Hammer, gym rats mingled with bikers, and cross-dressers of all races and ages rubbed shoulders with trannies and personal trainers. Beer was sold behind the bar, but sex was the main entree on the menu. Testosterone swirled in the air along with the cigarette smoke that curled in blue clouds under the hot colored lights on the dance floor-red, pink, and blue, just enough light to illuminate the sweating bodies, but not quite enough to make out the faces.
It was into this atmosphere Hildegard Elena Krieger stepped, clad in her red bustier, boa, and torn fishnet stockings. This was where Joe had gone with his friend the night before he died, she knew, so this is where she must be.
She had played many roles in her time, but had never impersonated a man dressed as a woman. Excitement and fear wormed their way through her gut as she pranced down the narrow steps to the entrance, balancing precariously on her three-inch heels. She felt like she was going to be sick, she was terrified, and she had never felt so alive. Like many people who take up careers in law enforcement, Elena Krieger was addicted to danger, and her adrenal gland was working overtime tonight.
She had ignored Chuck Morton's advice-she didn't really think of it as an order-to have backup. She felt it would interfere with her cover identity; she knew from experience that an undercover role was only effective if the mark, or target, couldn't smell a rat-and some of them had a very well-developed sense of smell. If the killer came to this bar, she would find him-before he found her.
The pounding of percussion made her head vibrate as she tossed her boa over her shoulder and stepped into the darkened room. She was instantly swallowed up by the crush of bodies twisting in a fog of swirling blue smoke.