A Kind of Justice (19 page)

Which is why I'm really glad I no longer have a male appendage. I'm cutting Officer Phil's hair in my home salon, and hard as I try to keep it strictly professional, inside I'm aroused. If I still had a penis it
would probably be erect right now, and poor Phil would be horrified, never to entrust his person to my touch again.

He called for an appointment just as I was finishing my last client for the day. It was an emergency, he said, a big press conference tomorrow and his captain saying he looked like a hippy with the long hair and all. I told him I could do him at my home salon and spent the next several hours entertaining breathless fantasies about this service ending up in my bedroom.

Unfortunately, all that's on Phil's mind is a haircut and more brotherly advice for me to keep out of Detective Wilkins' way.

“It would be a good idea for you to have a lawyer on retainer, or at least familiar with what's going on,” he says. “It's worth worrying about.”

“Does Wilkins have photos of me gutting Strand?” I'm being sarcastic. Strand died of a slit throat, not a sliced gut. It was in all the papers.

Phil grimaces as I glance at his face in the mirror. “Very funny, Bobbi. What's not funny is, he's stacking up a lot of circumstantial evidence.”

“What? That I hate men? That I thought Strand killed Mandy?” I'm acting flippant, but inside my stomach is churning. I know Phil means well, but I really don't need any more anxiety in my life right now.

“More than that, Bobbi. He says the guy who got mugged in the alley was following you when it happened, and Strand was the one who hired him to follow you. He says you had him beaten because he was one of the guys who raped you. He says the guy will testify.”

My mind seizes in shock. I never thought that goon would incriminate himself just to get revenge on me. I stop cutting and stare into the distance. I can't fake nonchalance anymore. It's deathly quiet in the room. I can't think of anything to say and neither can Phil.
Actually, I can't even think about talking. All I can see is that train bearing down on me.

My brain thaws finally. “How does that man know it was me? I have no idea who that person is.”

“He told Wilkins that Strand hired him to follow you. So he would have known who you were. And a jury would probably buy that, Bobbi. You're distinctive-looking.”

“Yeah. Ugly chick. With a dick, back then, anyway.”

“Stop that, Bobbi. That's not true and that's not what I meant. You're tall. You have red hair. Very red back then. And you're well endowed.”

For a fleeting moment my mind skips away from fear and dread to savor his compliments.
Well endowed!

“So you're buying that crap? The tranny did it?”

Phil winces. “I'm not buying anything. I know you didn't do it and I told Wilkins you didn't, you couldn't. I'm just telling you how Wilkins sees the case. And please stop with the ‘tranny' references. It's an ugly word.”

“Why is he telling you all this? Are you going to lose your badge for telling me? Are you violating some kind of secrecy in the investigation?”

Phil shakes his head. “No, Wilkins told me to tell you, told me there's nothing you can do about it anyway.”

I try to finish the cut, but the tears come. Just a couple at first, then a stream. I stop, dab my eyes. The tissue comes away smudged with makeup.

Phil stands, puts his arms around me, hugs gently. “I'm sorry, Bobbi.”

“You know,” I say, when I can speak, “I work so hard. At hair. At life. At keeping people employed. I work to just get people to treat me like a human being. This isn't fair. It's just not fair. He's going to destroy me just because I'm transsexual.”

As I sob, Phil strokes my back and continues to hug me. I can feel the warmth of his chest on my breasts, his flat stomach nestling against mine as our bodies meet.

“It's okay, Bobbi,” he says. “Just have a lawyer ready and don't do anything stupid. He doesn't have anything a good lawyer couldn't neutralize.”

“He doesn't have to convict me to destroy my life, Phil. If I have to spend money on attorney's fees right now, I could go under.”

“Your salon?”

“My salon. My home. Everything I own. I'm right on the edge.”

Phil's arms tighten around me. “Oh, Bobbi,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

I hug him tight. I can feel my arms tremble. I've buried my face in the nook between his shoulder and his chin. When we finally relax our grips on each other, I see eye shadow and mascara smeared on his neck. I dab at it with my tissue. The makeup comes off, leaving slightly reddened skin where I rubbed. Reflexively, I kiss the sore spot, as I would with Robbie.

Phil looks at me through sad eyes. I start to wipe my eyes with the tissue, but Phil brushes my hand away and kisses me on the lips, softly at first, then firm and warm, his arms squeezing me to him. Me squeezing back. Me rubbing my body against his, any sense of reserve or decorum forgotten in the moment.

And just like that, he breaks it off. He takes a step back, blushing. “I'm sorry, Bobbi. I don't know what came over me,” he says. “I was inappropriate. I apologize.”

A torrent of words and thoughts cascade through my mind, so fast and so mixed I cannot give voice to any of them.

“The only bad part was the end,” I say finally.

“I'm not good with words—” He starts to say it, but I cut him off.

“I don't mean the words, Phil. I mean the kiss. We're adults here, right? We both know what I mean. I'm this close to begging you to seduce me.” I show a small gap between two fingers.

He blushes beet-red. “Bobbi. That would be wrong.”

“Wrong? Like fucking a tranny is against your religion?”

“No. Wrong because . . . because . . .” He stumbles for a moment. “Because I don't know if I'm sincere.”

“You're going to have to explain that, Phil, because you felt pretty sincere to me.”

He self-consciously arranges his male member so it isn't bulging so noticeably. “That's not what I mean.” He struggles, looking down at the ground. “Actually, it is what I mean. Bobbi, you turn me on . . .” His voice trails off.

“Why is that a bad thing?” Says the girl who mostly provokes disgust in men. What kind of life is this, anyway?

“It's . . . I'm not sure why . . . I don't want to hurt you, Bobbi. I think the world of you.”

It dawns on me finally. “You think maybe you just want to fuck me because I'm trans? See what it's like?”

Phil nods. His face is filled with shame. He glances at me and glances away. “I can't do that, Bobbi. Not to anyone, but especially not to you.”

I take a deep breath and exhale. “Why on earth are you a cop, Phil? You should have been a priest or a rabbi. Or maybe an angel.” I gesture for him to sit again so I can finish his haircut before I have a heart attack or begin compulsively masturbating.

“I don't want you to hate me, Bobbi.” He glances up and we link eyes in the mirror. He looks like a puppy who just peed on the carpet.

“I could never hate you, Phil. You're the most decent guy I know. And just so you know, if we did it and afterwards you felt like you never wanted to do it with me again, it would be a lot like right now except I would have had a great orgasm to show for it.”

If he blushed any redder, his capillaries would pop.

After he leaves, I prepare for a nice bath. I am experiencing a wide range of emotions. Unfulfilled, certainly. And wondering if it will
ever happen for me, romantic love. And I'm feeling kind of pathetic. I was kidding with Phil, but I wasn't. I'd have been glad to be his tranny fuck tonight just to be the object of his desires for a moment in time.

Before I step into the bath I dig out a CD to put in the stereo. It's a digitized recording of an old Kingston Trio album a customer got me. I click forward to a song I'd been humming in my mind since Phil left. About a spinster woman so romantically hopeless her brother prays someone will take her out of pity.

F
RIDAY
, O
CTOBER
17

B
ARBI
D
ANCER ANSWERS
the door to her apartment wearing a G-string and a tiny top that just covers the nipples of her breasts. Behind her, loud music plays on the sound system. Stripper music. Wilkins stares at her body for a moment after she opens the door. She is not at all put out. She arches her back a little to add to her pose.

“Come in, Detective,” she says. She walks into the living room, her butt swaying provocatively. “Sorry about the costume.” The tone of her voice says she's not sorry at all. She turns off the music. “I'm practicing a new number,” she explains. She throws on a robe and sits down in a chair, gesturing for Wilkins to sit opposite her on the couch. The apartment is the second floor of a spacious brownstone in Andersonville. The living room has high ceilings, clusters of photos on the wall, many showing Barbi in various states of undress. The furniture is modern, new, in good condition. The colors are black and white, stark and modern.

Wilkins tries not to stare. She looks like she could have been the model for the original Barbie Doll. He's amazed at how perfect she is. He would never make her for a transwoman. Her voice is perfect, her feet and hands are feminine, her hair is Barbie-blond, and her eyes Barbie-blue. She has a tiny waist and a Barbie-perfect butt. She's maybe five-nine, five-ten.

“Thank you for seeing me,” he says, popping a couple of breath mints in his mouth. He offers her the package. She declines.

“Rosa said you were a good guy, so I'm counting on that,” she replies.

Wilkins goes through his standard introduction, then shows her the first photo. “Do you know this man?” he asks.

She looks at the photo of Strand the way a society matron would look at a dead rat on her living room rug.

“John Strand,” she says. “I knew him. He's dead. His name is John Strand. Someone killed him five years ago.”

Wilkins nods. “Thank you. That was just a formality. I understand you were seeing him? Socially?”

“I was his bitch.” She looks away from Wilkins.

“Can you explain what you mean?” Wilkins says it gently.

“When he wanted to get laid, he came to me. When he wanted to get his friends laid, he came to me. When he needed to get his cock sucked, he came to me. When he needed to beat the shit out of someone, he came to me.”

“Why did you see him?”

She looks at him, her hard-boiled veneer giving way to vulnerability for a beat or two. She shrugs. “He could be real nice. He was handsome and sometimes he made me feel like a woman. Flowers. Sexy nighties. You could say we were using each other. He paid off the bill for some facial surgery, and he paid for my breast augmentation. He promised he'd pay for my GRS.”

Wilkins cocks his head quizzically. “GRS?”

“Gender reassignment surgery.”

“How long had you been seeing him?”

“Oh, maybe six, eight months.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“That you don't already know? Well, mainly, he couldn't get it
up with natal women. He tried. They were attracted to him, and he would try to make it with them but he couldn't stay hard. It made him crazy. He could only make it with transwomen. Pre-ops. I think he lost interest once a girl had GRS. I don't know that for a fact, but I do know he liked to do a girl in the ass. I always wondered about that, you know?”

“You said he beat you? What would make him do that?”

She shrugs, shakes her head, purses her lips as if reliving a bad moment. Wilkins registers surprise that such a hard-shelled person would show emotion, not that she wanted to. She fought it. “Anything,” she says. “Nothing.” She shakes her head again. “He liked to talk dirty in sex and sometimes he wanted me to talk dirty, too. But if I started talking dirty when he wasn't in the mood, he'd go crazy. Sometimes after sex he'd just lose it, like I made him sick. Whatever set him off, when he went off, it was like I was some kind of disease. He'd hit me in the face, in the stomach. Squeeze my nipples until I cried. Sometimes he kicked me. He'd kick anywhere, but especially in the crotch. Very personal. I had a penis then and a scrotum. Not much left, but enough so it hurt. I'd fall on the floor, and he'd kick me some more.”

“How often did that happen?” Wilkins asks.

“Too often.” She looks at him. “You're wondering why I put up with that. Because I'm an idiot. Because he'd always be really nice after that. He'd say he was sorry and he was working on his anger issues. And he'd give me nice things. The breast augmentation, the clothes. Money. I was a whore, Detective. I still am. I strip onstage, but I make my real money doing private gigs. I'm the girl who jumps out of the cake at a bachelor party and sucks a half dozen cocks. I'd rather be a brain surgeon, but you know higher education doesn't really recruit T-girls and the only way to get enough money for college is to do what I'm doing, so really, Detective, what's the point?”

Wilkins clears his throat. “I'm sorry,” he says.

After a long silence, Wilkins speaks again, softly. “Were you with him on the night of April 27, five years ago?”

“The night he was killed?” She asks it rhetorically. “Yes. But I didn't kill him.”

“I know that,” he says quietly. “Could you just tell me about that last night? It might help me find out who did kill him.”

“The person who killed him made the world a better place.”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?”

“No.”

“What about that last night. What happened?”

“He called that afternoon. Wanted to meet that night. I said okay, I was going to a club with some girlfriends, should I cancel? He said no, he'd be running late, that he'd call when he got there. We did this a lot, meeting like this. He didn't want to be seen with me, so he'd park nearby and call me, and I'd come running.