Durst’s ex-wife’s case had been reopened, and the police may well have been curious as to his whereabouts at the time of Susan Berman’s murder. A man fearing pointed inquiries could be expected to retreat. Yet it was a very big world for the beneficiary of trusts emanating from a $650 million business. When considering the question "Why Galveston?" little in the way of explanation is revealed by the first two Robert Dursts, or even by the Durst disguised as Dorothy Ciner.

The answers, in all probability, lie with a fourth Robert Durst, who went by Roberta.

As the bus driver had guessed, the young black cross-dresser who rode the No. 6 and disembarked at 53rd and P 1/2 with Durst had indeed departed Galveston a few days after Morris Black’s headless trunk and dismembered limbs were discovered in the bay. When I tracked down Frankie in an apartment in another Texas city this past January and asked about the timing of her departure, her bulbous eyes narrowed and she shook her head emphatically. "I’m not even gonna comment," she said quietly. "I didn’t have nothing to do with it; I ain’t gonna be nobody’s damn witness; I’m not gonna be subpoenaed to come to no court—mm-mm! He cut that man up! First the head, then..."

She clamped down on whatever words might have come next. Frankie wore a navy sweater, a sensible knee-length cotton dress, a gaudy silver necklace, perhaps a little too much eyeliner and a modified Dorothy Hamill haircut that she intended to have redone the next day. She was in the middle stage of her hormone treatments and was more than a little unsettled at having been tracked down. It was not her desire to dwell on her Galveston adventures, whatever their scope. "See, right now I don’t want that kind of life," she told me. "I just want to be a regular woman. Y’know what I’m saying? Working nine to five. I don’t wanna do no more shows. I don’t wanna be around no thugs." Even before I could explain that I would not publish her full name or whereabouts, one of her friends stepped in, refused to let me continue and threatened to alert the apartment complex’s security guard. Frankie called off the dogs, then just as quickly hedged: "I don’t know that I can be of any help to you, anyways. I only seen him that one time on the Seawall." Upon my mentioning the No. 6 bus, however, her expression changed. She smiled, almost fondly, and I followed her through the apartment doorway.

"I met him at Kon Tiki," Frankie said, referring to the downtown Galveston gay bar where Durst had been spotted eyeing the drag queens. Frankie had been one of them, earning $65 plus tips to supplement what she was making turning tricks on Seawall Boulevard. On this occasion, Durst had worn women’s attire. "Came to me. Because, you see, I was a newbie.…He was trying to be twenty-four"seven like me. But he was a vampire. You know what I mean by vampire? Only dressed at night, and when daylight hit, he come in…[He was wearing an] ol’ ugly-ass blond wig—tried to dress nine-to-five, and real girls don’t dress like that.…I could tell—he had inappropriate exaggerations. And his voice was a little too deep, and when a person tries to change the octave of his voice—see, I know I sound like a southern belle."

It was the end of May 2001, and Robert Durst had ditched the dour, uncommunicative guise of Dorothy Ciner in favor of Roberta Klein. Others besides Frankie and Big Daddy would see this more flamboyant version of Durst in drag—among them a taxi driver who picked him up on Avenue K in the evening and dropped him off at gay nightclubs on three occasions ("He wasn’t wearing no ghetto dress," the cabbie told me) and a 62-year-old carpenter who worked next door to 2213 Avenue K and had twice observed Durst walking home, once in a red dress, another time decked out in yellow. Galveston’s gay community has hardly diminished since the cavortings of Shearn Moody Jr., and at any given time, three or four island venues feature performers in drag. Less publicized is the city’s Rosenberg Clinic, which, along with the University of Texas Medical Branch’s gender-treatment program, treats upwards of 350 transgender clients a year. Frankie was one such patient. Durst already had plenty of experience with makeup and heels, she said. But if his decision to go "twenty-four-seven" was a late one, this would not be exceptional, says UTMB gender-treatment specialist Walter Meyer. "The common history is that they struggle with these issues as adolescents, decide to stick it out and then in their forties or fifties try the other way," Meyer says. "That’s not a rarity at all."