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About the Author: Michael Bracken (www.CrimeFictionWriter.com) is an Edgar Award and Shamus Award nominee whose crime fiction has appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year, and many other publications. Additionally, Bracken is the editor of Black Cat Mystery Magazine and several anthologies, including the Anthony Award-nominated The Eyes of Texas. In 2024, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his contribution to Texas literature.
“Cash.” I held out my hand. “In advance.”
Cater Reese, owner of the Dew Drop Inn, a honky-tonk on the outskirts of Chicken Junction, Texas, glared at me from behind his cluttered desk. He overfilled his chair, and his eyes narrowed to the point of disappearing. “I’ll pay you after the last set.”
I still had my hand out. “Pay now or there won’t be any sets.”
“We got a full house out there. You don’t want to disappoint your fans, do you?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said, though it would be the first time since release from court-mandated rehab two years earlier. When the record company dropped me after my sophomore album tanked and I couldn’t even get gigs as the opening act for other one-hit wonders, I fell into a cliché: booze, coke, and meaningless relationships. Then a paparazzo photographed me passed out on a hotel-room floor wearing nothing but tighty-whities and a bruise on the side of my face where I’d smashed against a glass-topped coffee table on the way down, a white dusting on my nostrils, and a line of coke still gracing the table.
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