“I’m only telling you—” She shivered, pulling at the spaghetti straps of her sequined flamingo-pink dress. “I’m only telling you because it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m broke. He knows I’m broke. And whenever he gets tired of pushing me around, he’s going to do it. He’s going to—I don’t know. Release it. Stream it. Broadcast it. And then it’ll all be over.”

“Who’s he?”

“Whoever he is. The guy who’s got the video. The guy who keeps squeezing me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” She threw a half-picked cotton ball on the ground and started another. “It’s not like we’re friends. I’ve got no idea who he is. And trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve—I’ve asked around. I’ve called in favors. I’ve tried everything.”

“What’s the video of?” Shaw asked.

Regina’s nails froze in the midst of fluffing another shredded piece of cotton. “How much do you know about drag?”

Shaw shrugged. “A little.”

North shook his head. “Not much.”

“It’s an act, right? A performance? This—” Regina touched the platinum wig, then the falsies, then the sequined flamingo dress. She flexed her hands to display the two-inch-long nails. “This is all costumery. You can buy this at any beauty shop on Gravois. Just walk inside, pick up the same wig, the same nails, the same plastic tits. Ok, well, the tits might be a special purchase. But the rest of it, it comes off the rack. There are queens who spend fortunes on custom wigs, on custom dresses, on custom everything. And do you know who cares about those queens? Do you know who drives across three states to see them? Nobody. Because those queens think drag is about the clothes and the hair and the best tits and the tightest tuck. They don’t know that drag is a performance. It’s a lie. And the best liar, that’s the one everyone comes back to see. That’s the one that’ll make a guy drive across three states while his wife and kids are safe in bed. That’s what makes Regina into Regina Rex.”

“So?”

“So,” Regina said, her voice dropping into a husky mimicry of North’s and then slipping back into falsetto, “sweetie, it’s an illusion. Break that illusion, and Regina Rex is gone. Bye, bye, Regina. Like that.” She snapped her fingers, and another mutilated cotton ball drifted to the floor.

“You still haven’t told us what the video is of.”

“It’s of me.” Her voice slipped again. “Tony Montgomery. Inside Lady Adderall Bites dressing room at Miss Opportunity’s, which is one of the best drag clubs in Vegas. And it shows me doing something that I shouldn’t have done.”

North spread his hands and waited.

“It was the 2008 Vegas Drag Race, and we were the finalists. I ripped some of the stitches in her dress. Lady Adderall Bites loves—loved, I guess—to do splits. The whole dress, the whole thing, it just popped right off when she went into her signature move. Somebody else might have pulled it off, made it look like it was on purpose, but she was so freaked out that she started crying and ran off stage. And I won.”