It was an especially vicious killing. He was shot at point-blank range late at night in the living quarters of a railroad museum he operated on the island. It was a curious affair. Frank Fontis was a well-liked, middle-aged queen with no known enemies in the Keys.
He was a gardener by trade. Swishy, a bit of a camp, he took great pride in working for Tennessee and in being his friend. And, like Tennessee, he was at times hypochondriacal and loudly self-dramatic. He was also unusually generous, particularly if you were young, pretty and male.
That may be the reason he got into such deadly trouble. In the winter Key West is invaded by young drifters without funds who turn to drug dealing, petty theft, and prostitution to make do.
They sleep in battered campers parked along public beaches or in cheap rooming houses; they lounge at night along Duval Street, displaying a mixture of sullen sexual availability and thinly disguised threat, much like hustlers everywhere. They are hungry, desperate, on to the game, with eyes open to the easy mark. Frank was just the right sort of pushover to hit, being fat, trusting, defenseless, and homosexual.
So one night that January he was discovered naked and bloodied on the floor by the front door of the tourist-trap he owned. Scattered near his body were several hundred dollars in bills, as if someone had tossed them into the air in glee after blowing his life away.
