The sandwich board outside of Sophie’s Place announced that a female impersonator named Crystal was performing inside. I’d spent the better part of the afternoon doing a background check on C.D. Ganz while I waited for the club to open. That was PI work—half tech work, half legwork, waiting for something to pop. Ganz had no criminal record, and didn’t cross with either Darby or Spada, but he was up to his eyeballs in serious debt. Had he resorted to blackmail when Tim backed out of his promise to finance the bar? He’d said he had found financing elsewhere. Had he meant Stephen? Is that why he pointed the finger at Darby, maybe even fabricating the argument on the boat, to hide the fact that he’d extorted money from Tim’s family?

It was just past five, Happy Hour, and the lively street was jammed with evening revelers out for a good time. I walked inside and checked the bar, but Mutt wasn’t there. On stage, the flame-haired Crystal vamped it up in a sequined gown and killer stilettoes. He was a real stunner. I slid onto a barstool, ordered a Coke, and watched the show and the crowd, hoping to spot Ganz milling around beneath the baby blue gel lights. The place was packed, and the lights and the close quarters made the room hot.

“Crystal’s a real barn burner,” I said.

The bartender, a thin black guy with a bushy moustache, worked his damp rag along the surface of the slippery bar, sopping up wet spots. “He brings them in, that’s for sure.”

“I’m looking for C.D.,” I said. “He around?”

He grinned. “Depends.”

“On what?”

He angled his head toward the stage. “On how you want him.”

Crystal had put her finishing flourish on Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” and was starting on Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’.” I turned toward the stage, really looking this time.

“That’s C.D.?”

The bartender grabbed a promo card out of a dispenser on the bar and handed it to me. “By day. By night . . . sparkle, sparkle.”

Crystal, aka C.D. Ganz, stared up at me from the glossy card. His makeup was flawless and he wore a feathered gown Cher would have strangled Bob Mackie for, but it was the red hair that registered most. Good old Cap recalled seeing a good-looking redhead visiting Tim’s boat days before he died. A professional woman, he said, with a briefcase and a cute little wiggle. Dressed as Crystal, C.D. could also have passed for a hooker to a nosy perv minding someone else’s business and peeking through keyholes at naked women.

“Holy moly,” I muttered.

The bartender squinted. “You say something?”

“He does this every night?”

“Couple times a week. Why?”

“Does he ever dress like a woman outside of the club?”