A Kind of Justice (16 page)

“Move in here, Betsy. It's not forever. Only until you get your feet on the ground again.”

We bat this ball around for another ten minutes. In the end, she agrees to think about it. I hang up thinking there's something else going on that she won't talk about.

As I tend to my evening chores, I reflect on the reality of my own
mortgage and business situation. A good definition of “awful” would be both of us losing our houses and our jobs at the same time.

Not the kind of thought you want to take to bed with you, but this has been a long, dreary day and I can't muster the energy to do anything but tumble into bed and hope for a long, dreamless sleep.

*    *    *

W
EDNESDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
24

Wilkins views the pathetic wreck in front of him, trying to hide his contempt, trying to appear sympathetic.

In his day, the man was a cruel, merciless brute. His sheet told the story of a man who made his living assaulting people and got his jollies off the same way. He had worked off and on as a laborer, but he also hired out as muscle. Strictly small-time, strictly freelance. Debt collecting, intimidation. Arrests for assault, most charges dropped. Did time for a weapons violation once, and serious time after a series of sexual assaults on both men and women.

His last arrest looked like he would be put away for a long, long time. He had raped a male prostitute and beat him to within an inch of his life. There was a witness. There was physical evidence. Then a high-priced criminal lawyer takes his case, the physical evidence disappears, and the witness can't remember things clearly anymore.

Where did the money for the lawyer come from? Wilkins figured that's when Strand entered the picture. A friend who knew how to make evidence disappear and witnesses forget. It must have seemed like a Christmas miracle to Andive, getting saved like that. Until it all went wrong five years ago.

Andive is a shadow of the hulking goon in his arrest photos. His beefy body has run to fat. He has trouble walking, leaning heavily
on a cane and limping badly on both feet. His face is slack with sad, deep rings under his eyes. His cheeks fall in fatty folds. He sits heavily at the kitchen table, grunting in pain. Wilkins puts a twelve-pack of beer in the refrigerator and two cartons of cigarettes on the counter, the agreed-upon price of his audience.

He sits opposite Andive, popping a couple of breath mints in his mouth, offering the box to Andive who shakes his head no. Not much chance Andive would even notice his breath, the shape he's in, but no sense taking chances.

Andive's kitchenette apartment is as claustrophobic as a jail cell, white walls, white ceiling, broken white and red tile on the floor. A single room with a bed, a dresser, a television set, a kitchen table with three chairs, a sink half-filled with dirty dishes, a full garbage can scenting the air with the stink of bad food rotting. A place where animals come to await death. And Andive had been an animal in his day. Mean, stupid, no conscience. The kind of man where, after you arrested him, you wanted to go home and take a shower.

Wilkins stays focused on the job at hand.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Andive.” Wilkins is in strictly “good-cop” mode for this visit. Andive doesn't have to talk to him if he doesn't want to. It has taken weeks to get this far.

“I want to say again what I told you on the phone, Mr. Andive. I'm investigating the murder of John Strand and not any other crime. I'm looking for background information that you might be able to help me with. I'm not going to record this interview. You are not on record. Nothing you say can be used against you because it's not on record. If you have information that's helpful to my investigation, I may ask you at a later time to state that information for the record. That will be up to you.”

Andive's eyes register some degree of comprehension. Wilkins repeats that he is not trying to make a case against Andive for anything. Andive nods.

Wilkins produces a photograph from his folder and puts it in front of Andive. “Do you know this man?” he asks.

Andive stares silently for several long counts, thinking about whether he wants to answer or not.

“I repeat, sir,” Wilkins interjects. “This is not about you. I'm not setting a trap. I'm trying to learn some things that will help me solve a murder.”

Andive nods. “I did know him. He's dead now. His name is John Strand.”

“Thank you, Mr. Andive. Can you tell me how you knew Mr. Strand?”

“He helped me out when I was in a jam once. After that, I'd help him out when he needed things done.”

“What kind of things?”

Andive shrugs. “Messages delivered. People watched. That kind of thing.”

“What kind of messages did you deliver?”

“Mind-your-own-business messages. He liked his privacy. He didn't like people talking about him.”

“What kind of people?”

Andive spreads his thin, tight lips in a malicious smile. “His tranny whores and lady-boys.”

“What would they say about him?”

“Nothing after I paid them a visit.”

“Why did he need you to see them?” Wilkins flashes a warm smile. “It's okay, this isn't about you.”

Andive collects his thoughts. “He was a big shot. He couldn't have people knowing he liked getting it on with trannies. And . . .” His voice tapers off.

“And?” Wilkins coaxes.

“And he liked to get rough with them.”

“How rough did he get?”

Andive shrugs. He's not going that far.

Wilkins reaches in his folder again and produces another photo. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

Andive's lips curl back in a silent snarl. He looks up at Wilkins, his eyes suddenly alive with rage. “What are you after?” he asks.

“I'm just trying to find out if this person and Mr. Strand knew each other and if they did, what the nature of their relationship was.”

“Relationship.” Andive smirks joylessly. He looks around the room, at Wilkins, away, his eyes darting and dodging as he weighs his words. “I've seen her around,” he says, finally.

“Did you ever deliver a message to her from Mr. Strand?”

Andive's face breaks into an evil smile. “Might have.”

“What was the message?”

“Don't talk about Mr. Strand.”

“What was she saying about him?”

Andive shrugs. “Probably that he fucked her in the ass and pushed her around a little, but I don't know for sure.”

Wilkins pauses, picking his words carefully so he doesn't scare the man quiet. “Can you share with me what the message was that you delivered?”

Andive's ghoulish smile would have made Wilkins gag if he wasn't so focused on what he needed to get done here. “‘Be careful who you piss off.' That was the message.”

Like the tumblers falling in a combination lock, Wilkins can hear a click in his mind. In Logan's rape file she claimed one of her assaulters said, “Be careful who you piss off, you fucking freak.” He's tempted to ask Andive if he delivered the message with a gang rape, but resists the urge. Andive might say yes, but either way he might very well shut up and stop helping.

“Did she shut up after that?”

“I don't know. Strand had me and someone else following her around, letting him know who she talked to, where she went.”

“Were you following her the day you got mugged?” There it was, the question of the month. The year maybe. Wilkins braces himself for an angry response, a demand he get out of the apartment and never come back.

Andive stares at Wilkins, his face angry, but not at Wilkins. At the memory of the beating that ended his life as a predator in a few minutes. “Yeah. I was following her. She knew it, too. It was a setup.”

Andive's hatred radiates from his eyes and face.

“Why didn't you identify her to the investigators?”

“Strand wouldn't like it. He'd have had me killed. Plus that was the same place I delivered Strand's message to her. It could have gotten touchy for me, you know?” He smiles smugly. He just told Wilkins he raped Logan, but without saying the words. Sheer genius in his sick world.

Wilkins nods, trying to look sympathetic, trying to hide the revulsion he always felt when he got this far into the mind of a sick bastard like Andive.

“Do you really think Strand would have had you killed?”

Andive nods yes emphatically. “No doubt about it.”

“Did you ever know him to have someone killed or to kill someone himself?”

Andive shakes his head. “Ain't going there, Detective.”

Wilkins swallows his emotions, puts the photos back in his file, scans his list of questions. “You've been very helpful, Mr. Andive. Just a couple more questions. Do you have any idea who might have killed Strand?”

Andive nods yes. “That fuckin' tranny. No doubt in my mind. She might have had someone else do the dirty work, but it was her.”

“What about your partner, the other guy following her?”

“He disappeared after I got mugged. He didn't have issues with Strand. Strand took care of him.”

“Do you know the man's name?”

Andive shakes his head, no.

Wilkins thinks for a moment. “One last thing, Mr. Andive, do you know who Strand was seeing, if anyone, around the time of his death?”

“I heard he hooked up with a tranny hooker they called Barbi. I knew who she was. Everyone did. She looked like one of those Barbie Dolls, big tits, blond hair.”

“What's her last name?”

“I don't know. Everyone called her Barbi Dancer. She was a stripper and a whore. She hung out at a tranny pickup bar in Boystown. Chicago Sizzle. She might still hang there. If she's still alive.”

Wilkins packs his things, wishing he could ask Andive why he raped Logan when he delivered the message. Him and his accomplice. What were they thinking? Was it erotic for them? “How pure is a truth you find in a cesspool like that man's mind?” he asks himself. “Calling him shit is an insult to feces.”

*    *    *

T
HURSDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
25

Danni and I make an odd couple sitting at a sidewalk table, sipping wine, watching commuters bustle home from work.

Me, born male, trying to look like a woman, clad in a form-fitting dress that shows off my legs and cleavage, wearing long, curly hair, painted nails, lipstick, and makeup. Danni, born female, dressed in male clothing, with a short, masculine hairstyle, genderless shoes, no makeup, not a hint of female breasts. I am a transsexual woman. She makes her gender choice day by day.

Today, by appearance at least, we are like two trains going in opposite directions.

“I thought the last committee meeting went better,” she is saying.

I laugh good-naturedly. “The only way it could have gone worse is if someone got shot.”

She smiles. “Really, though. I think the younger ladies are starting to accept you. And we need you on that committee.”

We bat that thought around for a while. I'm not convinced that I bring much. “I have experience, but they have ideas.”

“Not all their ideas are good ones,” Danni says.

“Any idea that results in action is a pretty good idea,” I answer. I tell her about the demise of the TransGender Association, the group that ushered me through my transition. TGA is dying under a tide of weak leaders, unable to change the group's traditional venues even in the face of a changing transgender world and steadily declining membership. New ideas are treated like alien conspiracies.

“What about the Top 50?” Danni gets us back on subject.

“If they had kicked it around more they might have come up with something better, but the truth is, the Top 50 is better than sitting around the table sucking eggs.”

Danni shoots me a questioning look. “Are you just trying to shake free of the commitment?”

“No, Danni. But I have a lot on my plate right now and I'm trying to narrow things down to my vital interests and things I can significantly affect.”

“You can significantly affect this committee and its work, Bobbi.”

I don't believe it, but I ask her how I can affect the committee.

“In the first place, you can help keep a dialogue going across the generation gap. You are someone the young professionals can respect. You can carry on a conversation with them as a peer.” I arch my eyebrows in doubt.

“Come on, Bobbi. You could have said something really snotty about Lisa's work. I knew it, you knew it, and she knew it. You chose not to. It meant something. You could have had an end-zone dance when that cop left the last meeting with you, but you didn't. You're teaching them who you are without giving them a reason to resent you. That's a lesson in itself, and it's also bringing closer the day when that committee can have an open discussion about things without anyone's ego getting in a bind.

“And the other thing is, you're showing them how to get along with the older generation of transwomen. You're someone they can respect, and when they do, it's easier for them to respect other women who transitioned later in life.” Danni is good at this. She's talking about how hard it is for people to get past how we look, but she's not saying anything negative.

She takes a deep breath and locks me in eye contact. “This is important stuff, Bobbi. We're the smallest minority in Chicago. We need to work together. And we need to start getting transgender kids off the street. This is our chance. If we can turn around a dozen, fifteen, sixteen a year, get them through high school, into decent jobs or maybe college, if we can do that, people are going to sit up and take notice. People are going to figure out it's cheaper to save these kids and get them a decent start in life than letting them steal and suck men's dicks until they die of AIDS or get beaten to death.”

I know she's right, about the need for unity and the need to start saving some souls. Okay, I tell her. I'll do my best. She extends a hand to mine and gives me a warm squeeze. It feels good. Having her respect is something to value, even if it means more endless meetings with Lisa and her goslings.