A Kind of Justice (9 page)

The shorter man, pretty, with bleached blond hair and blue eyes, nods his head. “I remember. Tony didn't live here then, but I did.”

Wilkins makes himself focus on the information he wants, choking off the mental image of this gay boy having different lovers every day or week like fags do.

Wilkins takes him back in time to when the murder occurred, reminding him it happened two days before the body was found. “It would have been a Friday night, very late. Saturday morning, actually.
Did you happen to see someone out walking between two and five a.m.? Someone not from the neighborhood?”

The pretty boy steps back slightly. Maybe a foot. It's his bad breath, Wilkins realizes. He tried to keep sucking on breath mints, but he ran out.

“Oh, Detective,” the pretty boy sighs. “That was a long time ago. I don't even know where I was that night.”

Wilkins nods. It was the answer he expected. “Let me share something with you,” he says in a chummy, conspiratorial voice. He opens the portfolio tucked under his arm and removes a stapled set of papers. He pages through them quickly with the young man, careful to speak away from him to avoid another bad breath episode.

“These are news items about things happening in the city that night,” Wilkins explains. “They might help you remember where you were, what you were doing, and all that. Take this home and take your time looking through it, okay? Let me know if you remember seeing anyone. And please show it to your neighbors and ask them to do the same thing.”

The young man nods.

“This neighborhood isn't going to be safe until we find the killer, you know?” Wilkins adds. “It looked like a hate crime, so minorities are especially vulnerable.” Trying to personalize the crime for the pretty boy by implying that the victim might have been gay without saying so.

“Was the victim gay?” the young man asks.

“We're not sure,” Wilkins answers. “We'll know a lot more when we find the perpetrator. Right now, we need witnesses and leads.”

“I'll do everything I can, Detective.” He says it like a grade school kid talking to Officer Friendly. Wilkins would usually find that revolting, but right now he needs help. He smiles and wishes the couple a good day and moves on.

He has distributed dozens of his news packets in the neighborhood
where John Strand got his throat slit five years ago. Not much chance anything will come of it, but at least it gets him out of that dreary apartment. And, who knows, he might get lucky with some of the seeds he's planted here.

*    *    *

M
ONDAY
, A
UGUST
18

I repeat Cecelia's counsel like a mantra as I enter the TransRising conference room. Keep smiling. Be pleasant. Greet each person you meet as if you are a parishioner meeting the pope. Be impressed with each person's amazing accomplishments. Don't talk about yourself.

The meeting is called to order by the Chicago TransRising president, a nice person named Danni. Danni is a genetic woman who presents as an almost-man who is both butch and feminine. She considers herself “gender queer,” someone whose gender identity is fluid and whose presence in society causes even more distress than I do for people who insist everyone has to be either male or female. Danni is thirtyish, smart, and gifted at bringing groups like this together and getting them to accomplish important tasks.

After Danni's remarks and the requisite trip around the table sharing our names, professions, and years in the community, Lisa takes over. Lisa is a twenty-four-year-old transwoman who has been fully transitioned for five years and has lived as a female for a decade. She is slim and pretty and has the self-assurance of a homecoming queen.

She distributes copies of a conceptual brochure promoting a forthcoming benefit for the Center. It is to be a celebration of the fifty most influential transwomen in America. She and two of her friends, also twentysomethings, decided on the theme and will decide who the chosen fifty are.

The brochure is boilerplate. The most interesting thing about it is
the message that the benefit is being sponsored by TransRising and by her website,
The Joy of Trans
. The website is supposed to be a celebration of happy, successful transwomen. It's a collection of self-written biographies of fifty or sixty young transsexual women whose homilies to their own self-discovery read like testaments from born-again Christians about the moment they found Jesus. The site is supposed to offer the public and the media a positive impression of the transgender community, but no one would read that stuff unless they had to.

As the committee members review the etchings, murmurs of approval and admiration flow freely from around the table.

“Any comments or suggestions?” Lisa asks, basking in the glow of adulation.

“What do you think, Bobbi?” asks Danni.

I squirm. There goes the low profile. I shouldn't be here. I don't like these people and I wouldn't go to this benefit if you paid me in nights with the amorous Jose. As soon as I open my mouth, my lovely sisters will start twitching like teenagers getting a sex lecture from an aged parent who couldn't possibly know anything about sex.

“It looks . . . fine.” I almost said “okay,” which is what it is, but that would be an insult to Lisa's genius.

“Pardon me,” says Lisa. “You're a hairdresser, right?” As in, what could a stupid hairdresser know about marketing?

“Correct,” I answer.

Danni fills in the group on my former career and circulates a copy of the latest promotional flyer for my salon. It's boilerplate, too. I'm not a creative genius.

“Not bad,” says Lisa. “The sight line doesn't lead into the copy, and you could do more with the photo, but not bad.”

I smile.

Danni follows up with me. “Bobbi, it sounded like you had something more to say.”

If Cecelia were here she would jab me in the ribs and remind me to shut up. As combative as she can be, she gives these twits a lot of space in the interest of connecting our generations. Alas, Cecelia isn't here and Lisa's arrogance has gotten under my skin. Plus, I don't need this committee in my life right now, not with a failing salon and a loved one in severe emotional plight, a nasty cop breathing down my neck, and a social life so meager I have to pay a hooker to get laid.

“I just think we might talk about the strategy of having a Top 50 theme here. It's going to offend 90 percent of the people in the top 500. Plus if you've ever seen a botched list like this, they can be very damaging to the credibility of the sponsor. Do we feel like we have the expertise to pick the fifty most influential transwomen in America? Do we know who all the influential transwomen are?”

Lisa's face flushes. She is irritated by me in the same way a rich tourist is irritated by the supplications of a street person. Amazing that as timid and cowardly as I am, I somehow manage to set off people like this.

“Do you have a better theme?” she snaps. “Does anyone like Bobbi's idea better than mine?”

She looks around the table, a glare on her face, daring anyone to contradict her.

“We like the Top 50 theme a lot. Thank you for doing it,” says one of the toadies. Several heads nod in agreement. Lisa glowers at me, demanding capitulation. I avoid a stare-down by writing a note on my pad. It's my resignation, addressed to Danni.

“Okay then,” Lisa says. “Looks like we have a plan.” She babbles on about the agenda for the next meeting, then Danni closes.

After the meeting two of Lisa's friends confront me. “So you hired Jalela, huh?” one says.

“Yes.”

“Why did you make her apply at other places?” The question is a
hostile one. “Do you have a problem hiring transwomen?” As it happens, I had her apply at other salons so she could learn how to do it, so she wouldn't be dependent on the largesse of other transpeople all her life. I also helped her write a resume and coached her on how to answer the standard interview questions. Not that any of this is any business of the vacuous princess confronting me.

“I hired her and you didn't,” I say pointedly. My decades of testosterone-driven male living give me the urge to add
you fucking moron
to my statement, but I don't. “If you want to make hiring decisions, get your own business. That's what I did.”

I didn't swear once.

I brush past them to catch up to Danni before she leaves. This committee is an ugly reminder of what it would have been like to go through high school as an unattractive girl. The quality of my life will go up several notches when I rid myself of this association.

Danni tries to talk me out of resigning. We have to learn to work together, she insists. I agree but I tell her I'm not the right person to bridge the gap, that an hour with those kids was enough to make me wish I was a man again. A gross exaggeration, but it makes a point. I assure her I will continue to support the center with donations as long as I'm able, but no more promo committee. And I ask her to please get my name off the committee roles before they issue the Top 50 list. I do not want pioneers of the transgender community like Cecelia blaming me for a list of juvenile twits whose greatest accomplishment is winning Lisa's admiration.

*    *    *

W
EDNESDAY
, A
UGUST
20

“Your news clippings got me to thinking and I went back on my computer to April 23, 2005, and there it was.” The pretty boy is gesturing effeminately, but Wilkins doesn't mind. The man has information for him. “I went to a concert at the House of Blues that night. I remember the night very clearly.

“I went alone, something I never do, but I wasn't seeing anyone and I was getting stir crazy. And Bearcat Hogue was playing.” The man's hands flutter with excitement. He is wearing a t-shirt and the hand gestures show off arms laced with tattoos.

“And the reason I remember all this is because after the concert, as I was leaving, I met someone.” He rolls his eyes, sighs. It was a romantic liaison. Wilkins blocks the mental image, noting only that it's good the man has vivid frames of reference for the night. It would be impressive on the witness stand.

“So we went for a drink, then to a party, and when things started getting interesting, I invited him to my place. That's when he tells me he's with someone and has to get home.” Pretty Boy makes a sad face, exhales. “He gives me a ride, though. I have him drop me at the corner. I start walking home. It's maybe three or four, and all of a sudden I realize someone is walking toward me. At first I'm scared. Punks beat up people like me just for the fun of it, you know? But this person doesn't even notice me. He passes under a street light, and I can see he's tall and cute. I remember because my next thought was, he's gay. Kind of shaggy hair and his walk was a little swishy”—he looks at Wilkins, smiles self-consciously and shrugs, acknowledging that he's a little swishy, too—“and I had this terrific urge to go introduce myself to him, maybe have a drink.”

“I didn't. It was late and that can be so dangerous. But I thought about that moment a few times after that. It was kind of romantic, in a road-not-taken kind of way.”

Wilkins reviews his notes with the man to make sure they're accurate, then starts filling in blanks.

“How tall would you say that person was?”

“I'd guess maybe six feet or so.”

“Did you get his hair color, eye color, build? Facial hair? Anything like that?”

“His hair was darker in the streetlamp, not black but probably some shade of brown. He had a beard and mustache, sort of a Van Dyke. And I remember his hair was longish, at least for a gay man, if he was one. It covered the top of his ears and came down to his collar and it fell across his forehead.” He gestures with his hands to show the hair length at different places on his own head.

Wilkins carefully works his memory for more details. The man was wearing jeans, a bomber jacket, hands in pockets. He looked fit. He had a cute ass, and the pretty boy said he wasn't the type to really notice such things. The comment didn't disturb Wilkins at all. His mind was fixed on how this description fit his theory of the crime. The tranny hairdresser gets dolled up like a man to do the deed. The only thing she can't hide is her prissy walk and that bubble butt of hers.

He hates that he noticed her ass.

“Did you see anyone else on the street that night?” Years of experience have taught Wilkins to ask and re-ask questions. You never know.

“No. It was deathly quiet that night. I remember.”

“Not even someone walking their dog or going to the store for a pack of cigarettes?” Wilkins isn't pushing, just seeing if anything could jog the man's memory.

“The only other thing moving was a car that came by. I remember it now because its headlights helped me see that guy better.”

The pretty boy didn't see the driver. The car was a black BMW, his
dream car, but it was unremarkable otherwise. There were many of them in that neighborhood.

*    *    *

T
HURSDAY
, A
UGUST
21

“What kind of people did Mr. Strand entertain downstairs?” Wilkins asks.

The older man on the other side of the coffee table asks his wife to get them some cold lemonade. It was a cue and she took it, going to the kitchen to give them a few minutes of privacy to talk about things men talk about.

“I only saw a few of them and only one of them close up. They were women, but I don't think they were real women.”

Wilkins raises an eyebrow as if he is surprised and confused. “Sir?”

“I think they were men dressed as women. Transvestites. Except the one I passed in the hallway had real boobs and she showed them off. She looked like a prostitute, a female prostitute, except she was big. Tall, big bones.

“The other two I only saw from behind. I can't be sure they were men, but since I saw the first one, that's what I think.”