A Kind of Justice (31 page)

“I wish you'd reconsider,” he says. His voice is sincere. A mental image pops into my mind of him standing in front of the microphones and an army of media people. Cool, poised, patient. I can hear the same things in his voice now and it angers me. He's giving me the professional Phil and that's not what I want. I want the human one, with vulnerabilities, humility, a sense of humor when things aren't so heavy.

“Thanks for saying so.” Silence. He wasn't expecting that response. I let the silence grow and fester.

“Okay,” he says, finally. “Uh, well, if I can ever be of any help to you or you just want someone to talk to, uh, you know, please call me. Anytime.”

“Thank you, Phil.”

“Goodnight, Bobbi.”

I say good-bye and hang up the phone. Betsy looks up as I come back in the kitchen. “Dare I ask?” she says.

“He asked me out.”

“And?”

“And I said no.”

Betsy widens her eyes in surprise. “I thought you really liked this guy.”

I nod, trying to suppress my sadness. She glances at me, expecting more. “He sleeps with me then stays away for weeks because he's not sure how he feels about fucking a tranny.” The tears come full force. Betsy hugs me.

“I'm a little surprised,” she says when I get myself under control.

“You wouldn't be offended if it happened to you?” I ask.

“Of course I would,” she says. “But you're the girl who hired a hooker to get off with. What's the difference?”

She's partly joshing, partly trying to get me to put this in perspective.

“Expectations. All I wanted from the prostitute was an orgasm and good manners. Phil had me thinking about love songs and holding hands. Doing things together. You're right, it was silly of me. A girl like me should be happy for the orgasm and just look for the next one.”

“That's not what I meant and you know it.” Her voice is a blend of humor and reprimand. “Welcome to the world of women. You don't think this happens to the rest of us? Being a woman isn't just body parts and clothes. This is part of it. You make yourself as attractive as you can, then men size you up and decide if you pass muster. Men
who stink and make you shudder to look at them, they size you up. Nice ones size you up. Everything in between. Every day all kinds of men decide if you're cute or fuckable or a pig.”

“You get to make the same judgments on them,” I point out.

“Not really. When I reject a man, it's because I'm a bitch. When he rejects me, it's because I'm ugly or I'm flat or I'm not passionate or my boobs droop. I don't make these rules, Bobbi, and I try not to live by them, but this is how it is in our society. Male privilege is real. They can make you feel like crap and it makes them feel like studs. We make them feel bad and it's because we can't control our emotions or we're irrational.”

“I can't believe Don was like that,” I say.

“He wasn't like that. That's why I married him.” She pauses, then adds in a soft voice, “That's why I married you, too.”

That takes me aback for a moment. I had never seen any likeness between Don and me other than maleness, back when I was one. “We were practically twins, I guess.”

Betsy laughs.

“I wouldn't have expected you to see any similarities between us.” I blurt it out. I'm a little hung up on the thought.

“Why, Bobbi?” She's surprised.

“Because Don was a real man and I was a fake one. I mean, I know he was a very nice man and you appreciated that about him, but surely it was also a pleasure to make love with a man who liked being a man.”

“I liked making love with Don. I liked making love with you, too.” “But surely it was more frequent with him . . .”

Betsy laughs. “You still have a lot to learn as a woman, Bobbi. It wasn't any more frequent with Don than with you. Just because someone is a hetero male doesn't mean they want to stand stud every day. Life gets in the way. Business, travel, meetings, worries. And there's the Virgin Mary syndrome . . .”

I cock my head in question.

“When you're dating, an interested man can't wait to get you in bed. After you get married and the novelty has worn off, they don't think of you as a sex object anymore. You're more like the Virgin Mary. They love you but they don't have wild sex thoughts about you anymore. You have to work through that with them.”

I nod. I know what she's talking about. I lived it from the other side of the gender divide, but I thought it was just me. What has grabbed my attention, though, is that she's addressing me as a woman, a less experienced sister. We are talking about sex like two women, like adult siblings. It makes me feel so authentic. I glow all over.

I wonder if I will find a friend like this in prison. Not a lover. A soul mate who will accept me as a woman.

*    *    *

W
EDNESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
10

Wilkins leafs through his murder book. He has been working on it day and night. He can't sleep anyway, and the department has put him on medical leave, so there's nothing else to do.

It is the most thorough murder book he's ever assembled. He has added extra touches to make sure nothing slips through the cracks if he dies before the case is prosecuted. There's the boilerplate stuff, like his theory of the crime and the relevant factual documents. And added features. He has created an appendix that profiles each person he believes could have had a role in the run-up to Strand's murder. Each profile has a photograph of the person and hard data that will make locating them easier a year or two or three from now when this thing comes to trial. Drivers license number, phone number, social security number, current address.

After the facts he writes a narrative about each person. Who they are, what they do, how they figure in the murder.

The murder book is as thick as a Russian novel and has just as many characters. He's proud of it. It's his last work as a cop. He wants to go out right. Maybe they'll use this as an example in training young detectives in the future. That would please him.

He is focused on the investigation all the time. Everything else in his life is too depressing to contemplate. He wonders if he will live long enough to see Logan's trial. Probably not.

He thinks it's a decent case, which is far more than any other detective could have achieved. No smoking gun, but months of hard digging and creative analysis have produced a powerful inventory of circumstantial evidence. Plenty of proof to indict, probably enough to convict. But it would be better if he had even just one piece of hard evidence linking Logan directly to the crime. DNA or a hair sample from Strand's apartment. An eyewitness. A confession.

A confession. Wilkins sits back in his chair and thinks about the confession. He thinks Logan is one of those people who wants to confess. People with a sense of decency have trouble living with a crime like this, knowing they murdered someone. They are plagued by guilt and fear for as long as they hold it in.

Wilkins has that trait, himself. That's one of the reasons he never shot his firearm except at the range. His son will learn that about him in his journal, the one he's been keeping just for Stephen.
Stephen
, he says,
don't own a gun and don't shoot anyone. Even when it's legal, it's hard to live with
.

Logan has a conscience. She has to be plagued by nightmares and remorse. He thought she might have come forward by now. He could sense that she wanted to when they talked. She wasn't on the edge, but she was close.

He wonders if maybe she's protecting an accomplice, if that's what's
holding her back. She could be the type. He couldn't come up with anything on an accomplice, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one. The weight lifter was at work that night. The Swenson woman didn't have a great alibi for the time of the murder, but the doorman at her building saw her come in before midnight and didn't see her leave again.

As much as he poked around for information about other possible accomplices, nothing else had turned up. Just Barbi Dancer's recollection of a black sport sedan driving by at around the time Strand was being abducted, but that went nowhere—no license plate, no driver identification, not even an indication the vehicle had anything to do with Strand's abduction and murder.

He pictures Logan in his mind, how she looked when they talked in her salon. Yes, he thinks, she was close. She wanted to tell him. It's worth asking her again. He would ask, not bully. He'd be respectful, courteous. He'd give her a last chance to redeem herself, free her soul, catch a deal from the DA.

He tries to scuttle the next thought, but he can't keep the image out of his mind of Logan being hauled off to jail in handcuffs, another victim of a murderer the police should have caught. It's the law, he thinks, but it's not fair. Logan was right about that. If CPD had done a better job with the Marvin investigation, none of this shit would have happened.

He pushes the thought from his mind. His job is to enforce the law. A judge or jury will decide what's fair. But as he thinks it, he knows better. Trials are about laws and evidence. She'll take a beating if it goes to trial.

Call or meet in person? His appearance is so off-putting that he has been avoiding in-person contact when he can. Even walking down the street is embarrassing, people gawking at him, doing double takes. Jesus, wait 'til they make my face into a monster mask, he thinks. The
medical text photos flash into his mind, rotting jack-o-lantern faces crushed on one side, hellish fiends with puckered mouths and desperate eyes. People will wince and gag.

But maybe not Logan, he thinks. She sees strange-looking people every day. She mothers them. Maybe seeing Wilkins' pathetic appearance will break down some of her defenses.

He dials her number. It's not like he has anything else to do. It's not like he has anything to lose.

*    *    *

F
RIDAY
, D
ECEMBER
12

“You should come, too,” says Lisa. “I can get you a ticket. Free.”

She is sitting in my chair at the salon. I am prepping her for an up-do. She has a formal party to attend tonight, a black-tie fund-raiser for the LGBT community. The mayor will be there, congressmen, bankers, stockbrokers, the hoi polloi of Chicago. The big thing is, she came to me for the 'do. The olive branch has been extended.

I smile and study her face and hair in the mirror. When we meet at community functions I see her differently than I do now. What I notice when we meet out there is her femininity—her face, her actions, her voice most of all. I notice that she is pretty, but as a transwoman myself, her attractiveness is less significant than the fact she looks and sounds like a woman. Many of us don't, me especially.

In the salon, a different image appears. Now I look closely at her face shape and skin tone, the symmetry of her facial structure, the relationship between her head and the rest of her body, the color of her hair, her best features. It's no longer about her transsexuality or mine. Here, she is just a woman wanting to feel beautiful tonight, and I am a hairdresser who wants to help her get there.

“I think society events like the Mid-Winter Ball are best left to the Cinderellas among us, Lisa,” I answer. “But thank you. That's a generous offer.” Indeed it is. The tickets go $250 apiece.

“You're as much a Cinderella as anyone else,” she says as I work her hair with my hands, feeling the texture, looking at how her face changes when I move the hair to different positions. “Here's an idea. Get your boyfriend to come, and I'll get two tickets.”

This is a very nice offer, but I'm feeling like the main point here is, she can get two tickets, just like that. And she thinks Officer Phil is a hunk.

“I'm afraid Phil and I aren't an item.”

“You broke up?”

“If you can call it that.”

I begin sectioning Lisa's hair. “What happened?” she asks.

This is where I change the subject with clients. I don't talk about sex or politics during a service. But Lisa isn't a regular client. She's here as a one-shot deal, and we know each other outside these walls. And we aren't friends, so there's nothing to lose.

“Basically, he's not sure he can handle life with a transwoman, but I don't think he'd have that issue with you or one of the other cute girls. I'm just too big and masculine. Oh well . . .” I try to say it with nonchalance, but even I can hear the edge in my voice. It still hurts.

“Don't say that. You're a proud, beautiful woman, Bobbi.”

Yay rah. It's nice of her to say something encouraging, but this is strictly pro forma script in the trans world. Everyone is proud and beautiful. Lisa means well. She's motivated by her Lincolnesque humanity. She's here to save the wonderful people of transgenderland and some of them are somewhere between ugly and embarrassing to look at. Being patient with us is part of being a savior.

She tells me that I'm a role model for several of the girls at TransRising. “Especially the bigger ones.” As she says it she realizes
her social error. “You know, I mean the taller ones. They see in you that they can be tall and sexy and have great careers.”

Good recovery, Lisa. Just for that I won't dry your hair with a blowtorch.

We talk about the TransRising ladies while I wrestle with her hair. It's long and straight, not a hint of curl, and as slippery as satin. That makes it very attractive when she wears it down. It moves with silky grace and gives off a healthy shine. But it's hard to work into formal hair because it resists back-combing and curling as if each hair were coated with Teflon. I cover the base of her locks with a hair spray that sets up like Krazy Glue, then tease like a hairdresser possessed by the devil.

Lisa is talking about the girls at TransRising. She remains calm as I turn her head into a ball of cotton candy. She is interesting and insightful, much as I wish she weren't so I could feel better about my misgivings toward her. She knows each of the TransRising residents on a personal level, their histories, what they like and don't like, what they want to achieve with their lives, where they are in their transitions and education. What they need to accomplish to be accepted as women in polite society.