A Kind of Justice (24 page)

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
5

S
HE DIDN
'
T WANT
to meet for lunch, so they're in a coffee shop in a hip north side neighborhood popular with liberal Yuppies. Wilkins was relieved she didn't want to do lunch. He's having trouble eating solid food because it hurts his teeth and gums. He can handle soup, but it drives him crazy watching someone else eat real food.

Wilkins places a mocha latte in front of her and sits down catty-corner to her with his bottle of water. He offers her a breath mint. She declines. He pops a couple. He thanks her for meeting him. She nods and tends to her drink.

She's a young white girl, early twenties, hot like a lot of hairdressers are, cute in a cuddly way. Soft cheeks, big eyes, sexy hair. Swollen red lips. She dresses like a hairstylist, a short skirt and tight, low-cut top.

“Can I call you Brenda?” he asks. She nods her assent.

“I'm investigating a couple of incidents that occurred at Salon L'Elégance,” he begins. I believe you were present at the one last spring involving the estranged boyfriend of one of the stylists, a Trudy Dunbar. Is that correct?”

She nods.

He goes through his standard good-cop intro. This isn't about her, she's not a suspect, he's just gathering background information so the district attorney can evaluate evidence. She nods her understanding, sips her latte. He produces the photo of Logan in a dress and makeup.

“Do you recognize this person?” he asks.

She nods, full lips curling into an unattractive sneer. “Bobbi. That's Bobbi. She owns the place.”

“It seems you don't like her.”

“The bitch fired me because I wouldn't take shit from a client.”

Wilkins knows that already. It had taken some careful field work to find an ex-employee who might have a less rosy impression of Logan than the current staff did. What surprises him is how quickly young Brenda goes from a pouty sexpot to a foul-mouthed shrew.

“What is she like to work for?”

Another face. A deep breath. She crosses her legs imperiously. “She's a mean bitch. She thinks she knows everything about hair. She's always criticizing everything you do, if you're young. She leaves the old ones alone because they don't need her shit, and they'd just tell her to go fuck off. She's got rules for every fucking thing. You can't go to the bathroom without breaking a rule. That's why there aren't any young people there. It's all old farts plugging away. Anyone with any life gets out of there.”

Wilkins jots some notes in his notebook. He won't bother reading them. He does it to make people like Brenda feel important. It does something to their egos. Makes them say more than they might otherwise.

“Can you think of anything about Ms. Logan that would precipitate the kind of violence that has taken place there?”

“Have there been other incidents?” she asks. There's an eagerness to her question. She's looking for dirt.

“I can't really talk about the investigation,” he says. “I'm just trying to find out if there is more to these things than meets the eye. What can you tell me about Ms. Logan I might not know?”

She smiles, not a pretty smile, a sarcastic smirk. “Well, she ain't no lady, for one thing.” The smile gets wider. “She's a
he
. A tranny. Had
his wee-wee whacked off. Fucking degenerate queer.” When she says it, she finishes by leaning toward him and raising her eyebrows, waiting for him to be surprised. He wonders how dumb she is.

“Is she violent? Does she make others violent?”

“Well she sure messed up that poor bastard who came looking for Trudy, didn't she? And in the salon she's always giving orders and telling people what to do because she's a fucking football player in a dress. Don't let the big tits fool you, Detective. That's not a woman.”

Wilkins winces a little. Her spiteful assessment of Logan sounds a lot like his, but it sounds ugly and unfair coming from her.

Wilkins asks a few more questions but learns nothing new. Brenda doesn't like Logan, has nothing good to say about her. The bullying accusation might be more interesting if anyone else corroborated it, but the character stuff on Logan was coming in positive. Brenda wouldn't do his case any good, cussing like a mule-skinner, full of transphobic bile. She would be a field day for a hyperaggressive defense attorney.

Still, her assertions have some value to him. At the appropriate time, he might reference the bullying testimony in a list of particulars to intimidate Logan, get her saying things in denial that can be used against her.

*    *    *

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
12

I walk in the door, and heavenly aromas waft into my senses. Betsy greets me as I cross the threshold, sharing her beautiful I-love-you smile. She has a sumptuous dinner prepared and a nice bottle of red open and breathing. There's a gleam in her eye, and she has enough energy to make me feel like a sloth.

She's back! My heart turns a couple of cartwheels. I wish I believed in God so I could thank someone. Instead, I kiss her cheek and hug her and pelt my innocent niece with a torrent of kisses and hugs. Dinner is a slow-roasted pot roast rubbed with herbs and spices, surrounded by carrots and potatoes and onions and peppers.

When Robbie excuses herself to resume play in the living room, Betsy and I sip wine and lapse into that kind of languid, easy conversation people have when everyone is feeling mellow and no one wants the mood to pass. She talks about her day. She has been working for the Equal Rights Council for a week. Today, they asked her to start working on a position paper on marriage equality. She's floating on clouds. She talks about the issues and her research with the passion of a missionary. Her beautiful face is flush with color. Her wide, oval eyes are filled with excitement. Her hands gesture and flow like a flag in a spring breeze.

She tells me about her coworkers. They are congenial, respectful of each other. They are committed to idealistic things. They are glad to have her on board because no one wants to pitch the position paper to the dailies and the radio and television stations. She apologizes for talking so much. I tell her I feel like I'm at a great concert and I don't want the music to stop. She pooh-poohs me, but it's true.

She asks me what I've been up to.

Perhaps because we've talked so little in the past month, perhaps because I'm giddy over her mood, or perhaps because I've had two glasses of wine, I tell her some of my truths.

“Well, the good news is that business seems to be improving.” I give her my theories: that our promotions are working, that we're getting some business from salons that went under, that America is getting used to the idea of the recession and starting to resume some activities that were dropped after the financial catastrophe.

“What's the bad news?” She asks it playfully.

“I still can't afford to hire my male prostitute.”

She giggles. “Okay, I asked for that. But really, you've seemed very tense a lot of the time. What's going on?”

The person who is the sun and stars in my life is sitting across the table from me aglow for the first time in weeks. I could never tell her that most of my anxiety was about her and about my ability to be there for her.

“Oh, just frustrations at the salon and things like that.”

“You're dodging me, Bobbi. Don't do that. I'm not a child.”

“There's a whole list of things, Betsy. If you knew them all, you'd never respect me again.”

“Like what?”

“Like I want Officer Phil to sweep me into a dark room and make wild, passionate love for a night. And another. And another.”

“What about that woman? Jen?”

“Her, too.” I should never admit these things to anyone but Marilee or Cecelia, but the wine has my defenses down. I expect Betsy to be repulsed, but she laughs out loud instead.

“Bobbi, you have this so wrong. You were so restrained as a man and so wild as a woman. It's supposed to be the other way around.”

I blush. “Not really. I don't actually
do
anything. I just have fantasies.”

“Join the female race.” She pours the dregs of the bottle into our glasses. “Now, stop dodging the question.”

I swear she has been getting shrink lessons from Marilee. My illicit sex fantasies were a painful confession, but of course not the biggest cause of my anxiety. I try blaming it on business worries.

“Come on, Bobbi. We're supposed to be sisters, right? Sisters tell each other things. Things they might not tell a lover or a parent.”

“Do you think we're there now? Sisters?” It's a question I have, but it's also a good way to steer the conversation away from dangerous topics.

“Do you think we aren't?”

“Well, you're hell-bent on getting your own place.”

“Most sisters who love each other don't live together, Bobbi.”

I have to concede the point. Betsy still wants to know what I'm holding back. I'm out of excuses for not telling her.

“There's a detective investigating a murder from five years ago. He would love to charge a transgender person with the crime. The victim was involved with transwomen. The cop would like to implicate me because he hates me even more than he hates transgender people in general.” I tell her about my run-in with Wilkins five years ago, getting the DA's office to pull him off the case, him getting his hands slapped for being a bigoted shit-for-brains.

“He's back on the case,” I tell her. “The murder victim was someone important, and the city wants the crime solved, so they've turned him loose, and he's bugging me.”

Betsy looks puzzled. “You would never kill someone.” She thinks for a moment. “Would you?”

“I haven't yet,” I say. I'm being coy but not lying. “But he can make it hard for me anyway. He can bring charges and make me spend thousands of dollars to defend myself. That would really hurt. Money is tight right now, and the publicity would be bad for the salon.”

She bites her lip, thinking.

“I have retained an attorney, just in case,” I say preemptively. “He has advised me not to discuss this with anyone but him. That includes you, Betsy. You can be subpoenaed and forced to testify and a good prosecutor could turn the most innocuous statement into something that appears to corroborate wild allegations from someone else. That's the gist of what he said.”

Betsy digests this, deep in thought. “I don't understand.”

“I can't explain our legal system. I'm just asking you to let me take my attorney's advice.”

“It feels wrong,” she says. “I don't like us having secrets, especially when Robbie and I are so dependent on you.”

“I don't either, Betsy,” I reply. “Sometimes there's just no right answer.”

“That's too slick, Bobbi,” she says. Her face is angry. “I tell you everything, you tell me nothing. You kept your transition a secret, your lovers . . .” She goes on about my lovers for a while, not really fair, but I get her point. I didn't tell her about my transition because I was terrified she would find me repulsive. I'll share that with her at some future time. She's not in the mood to hear it now.

“Do you really think I'd betray you to the police?” she asks. Her face is flushed. I have hurt her deeply.

“I don't want to put you in a position where you would have to choose between lying and betraying me,” I answer.

“And I want to make my own decisions. Do you think I'm so pure I haven't lied for someone I love?”

Actually, that's what I was thinking.

*    *    *

F
RIDAY
, N
OVEMBER
14

Every night this week, I have been wakened by tortured dreams. They're always some variation on the police crashing into the apartment, hauling me away in cuffs, Betsy and Robbie sobbing with terror, me rotting in a cell, my salon closing, my loved ones taking shelter with Betsy's parents in the village of malicious trolls.

The bitter irony is that to overcome the telltales of sleep deprivation, I have to get up a half hour earlier each morning to do battle with the rings and creases in my face.

Fortunately, things are going a little better in the salon. We're still struggling financially, but the staff is upbeat. We haven't had any blowups or incidents. And everyone has been very nice to me. I know that sounds stupid. I'm the boss. But I'm endlessly vulnerable. I can
keep going in a shitstorm of setbacks, but life is so much lovelier when I am surrounded by people with warm hearts and glad smiles.

My legal problems still bother Betsy, but she knows I'm not a danger to society or to her or Robbie and she has gotten on with her life.

Tonight I have joined Betsy and her coworkers for drinks and dinner at a nice restaurant in the north Loop area. There are four of them from the office, plus Betsy. They are a nice group of people and they have welcomed me. I can't help feeling like this is the event where the new employee introduces everyone to her husband or boyfriend, except Betsy is substituting her ex-husband who has gone through some changes. No one else seems aware of it, and I have been made to feel at home from the moment I entered the restaurant.

Her colleagues are two gay men and two lesbians. There are another half dozen people who log time regularly at the office, a mix of gay, lesbian, and straight people, and one transgender woman. They rave about the transwoman, whose contributions are limited because she is active in so many transgender groups. As they talk about her, I realize the woman sounds a lot like Lisa, the young leader at TransRising. I make a note to myself to tell Betsy not to mention me when she meets this lady. It will go much better for her.

After dinner, we stroll down to a small jazz club on Dearborn. It's a cold night, but the door is open and the lush tones of a saxophone drift out onto the street, telling the story of Billy Joe with a drawn-out bluesy sadness that is unspeakably beautiful.