Seven Suspects

by Renee James

  Nothing.

  I walk completely around the garage and see nothing. I look in a window on the side wall. Nothing. A dim, one-car garage, car gone, a workbench on one wall, storage on another, dust, and dirt.

  I have a hard time putting on my heels because my body is shaking. My hands. My knees. My mind. I should take solace from the fact that it’s sunny and bright outside, it’s the morning rush hour, there are people up and about, regular people. Nothing like the deserted alley, dark and silent in the late hours of night, when I was assaulted. The slide show of that experience plays in my mind as I search for evil in the sunlight of a beautiful day.

  By the time I reach the El station, my shaking fear has given way to seething anger. This is one of the ways I know I’m not a real woman, not the way my transsexual sisters are. They would stay shaken. They would cry. They would talk to someone. They would seek the support of friends and community. This is completely rational. This is what women do, whether they were born with all the right parts or had to put things together as they went along in life.

  But not me. Even though this body hasn’t had a drop of testosterone in its bloodstream in a decade, my response to bullying and terrorism goes through several stages, the last of which is blind anger. It makes me do crazy things, like tracking down the murderer John Strand, like not relying on other people to protect me, like plotting to murder the murderer before he could murder me, even though there seemed to be no chance I could succeed.

  Knowing this about myself is liberating. I call the school and tell them we may have been followed by a stalker this morning and ask that they keep a close eye on Roberta today. Then I board the train. As it lurches and jerks back to the Loop, I concentrate on how to spoil my stalker’s game.

  My anger deepens when I reach the salon. Jalela and one of the detectives from yesterday are on the sidewalk, in front of the shop. The detective is taking photos of something. As I draw near, I see that graffiti has been crudely spray-painted on our door. At first glance, it just looks like vandalism, an attempt to inflict pain on someone else with a simple act of destruction. But as I look closer, I can see that the vandal was trying to depict a penis penetrating a vagina.

  “Does this image mean anything to you?” I ask.

  “Hard to say,” says the detective. If he’d said anything else, I would have suspected he was impersonating a detective.

  “It looks like maybe sex to me,” says Jalela. She’s smart and she’s had more bad experiences with assaults and rapes than my friends and I combined.

  “Me, too,” I say. “Any leads?” I ask the detective.

  “Nothing I can talk about, but we’re working it,” he says. Which is cop-speak for: We haven’t got a clue. I’ve been through this before.

  When the detective leaves, I ask Jalela to schedule my weekend clients for a different stylist or a different day. I’m going to take care of this bastard once and for all.

  Finding Cindy’s boyfriend is as easy as finding Cindy. I get her address from our files and make for the Blue Line. As the train rumbles through the subway portion of its journey northwest, I think about Cindy, starting, as always, with how I would have loved to be born with her body and face. She is very pretty and has a sexy body—tiny waist, perfect hips and butt, and perky breasts. She has thick, flowing hair, the kind I always wanted on my models when I was doing hairstyling demos—the density of a waterfall, midway between fine and coarse texture, and just enough natural curl so you can bend and shape it into anything.

  When you grow up as a girl with a male body, you look at women like Cindy and you think, if you could just be like that, your life would be perfect. But somehow, lots of beautiful girls grow up to be beautiful, miserable women. I’ve known quite a few in the beauty business, and sometimes, when I’m trying to overcome feelings of hopelessness about my appearance, I try to recite their names and call to mind their faces and prove to myself that I’m better off being ugly and driven. It makes a good story, and on an intellectual level, I can make myself believe it. On an emotional level, it’s hogwash.

  I’m surprised that Cindy and Kong can swing a place in Wicker Park. They don’t seem like they’d have the income heft for a nice area like this, unless they’re dealing drugs on the side or maybe Kong is the most tattooed brain surgeon in Chicago.

  The answer to the riddle comes when I get to their address. In the middle of a block of nice apartment buildings, their address is a sagging two-story tenement with a weedy front, peeling paint, and windows so dirty the residents don’t need curtains for privacy. I ascend the rickety steps carefully, enter the building, and climb the staircase to 2B. There’s no security system. Electricity may be a breakthrough too recent to be employed in all its possibilities here, though I can hear television sets blasting from several units, including Cindy’s. I knock.

  Cindy is not happy to see me.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Her voice and facial expression turn her natural beauty into an ugly parody of white trash. The transformation is stunning, even though I’ve seen it before. I’m so hung up on appearances I can’t understand why someone with so much appearance to work with would make herself ugly instead.

  “I’d like to speak with your boyfriend.” I say it as pleasantly as it can be said. I’ve been rehearsing it.

  “Well, he doesn’t want to speak with you, you dickless fucking queer.”

  If I had a quarter for every time someone has called me exactly that, exactly a dickless fucking queer, I could buy an island in the Caribbean, not that I want one. It doesn’t bother me at all.

  “It’s important he talk with me, Cindy.” I say it with just enough edge in my voice to get her attention.

  “What about?”

  “You know what about.”

  She frowns. “I don’t know nothing. Go away.” She starts to close the door, but I hold it open.

  “What’s his name?” I ask.

  “Like I’m going to tell you.” She starts to close the door again, and I hold it open again.

  “If you don’t tell me, the police will pay you a visit.”

  Alarm shows on her face. I’ve stepped on something, but I’m not sure what.

  “What’s this about?” she asks again.

  “He’s been stalking me. I need to make him stop.” I don’t soft-sell this. I let her see I’m grimly determined.

  “He wouldn’t stalk an ugly bitch like you, Bobbi.” She says my name tauntingly and gives me her foul smile.

  “Who would he stalk, Cindy?” I respond. “What kind of women does he like to terrorize?”

  This stops her. Like the old line about the attorney asking the witness when he quit hitting his wife. It takes a few beats for her to answer. “He don’t stalk nobody. Leave him alone.”

  “I need to hear that from him,” I say. “The last thing he said to me was that he was going to get even.”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “I have a half-dozen witnesses who heard him say that. He can talk to me or he can talk to the police.” My voice is calm. I’m in control. Kong may be able to intimidate me, but Cindy hasn’t got a chance.

  “The police aren’t going to bother with this.” Cindy says it, but her words are more confident than her delivery.

  “Of course they will,” I respond. “My salon has been vandalized, I’ve been threatened, and the last person who tried to assault me was your boyfriend. They’ll be here as soon as I swear out a complaint.”

  Her face has transformed from anger and contempt to doubt. “You just want to talk to him?”

  I nod yes. She opens the door wider for me to come in and sits me at a table in the kitchen. The place is an odd combination of college grunge and homemaker clean. The kitchen counters and cabinets are scratched and worn, but they glisten as though they’d just been scrubbed. The tile floor is dark and ugly, but so clean I can see the exact crease between the floor tiles and the baseboards. The table is a fifties relic: aluminum legs and framing, F
ormica top, scarred and spotless. My upmarket flat would win on fancy furnishings, but this place would put mine to shame on cleanliness. It reminds me that, whatever her other faults, Cindy’s workstation was always immaculate.

  She returns with Kong in tow and gestures for him to sit at the table, opposite me.

  “Whadyawant?” The three words merge into a single mumble. Kong glowers at me. His face is intimidating, but his body language is hesitant. He doesn’t face me straight on. Instead, he sits at an angle in the chair, shoots a furtive glance at me, then looks away. Kong has a secret.

  “Ever since you threatened me in the salon, someone has been trying to terrorize me,” I say. “I think it’s you, and I want to give you a chance to stop before I call in the police.”

  “That’s bullshit.” He still hasn’t looked at me.

  “Stalking me is bullshit,” I say. “Breaking into my salon is bullshit. Defacing my workstation is bullshit.”

  “He didn’t do none of that.” Cindy says it in a disdainful voice, but I can hear a note of fear in there, too. Her bad grammar is new, too. In the salon, she spoke English like an educated person. I stare at her for a moment, trying to calculate which presentation is an act.

  “I want to hear him say that,” I respond.

  “He don’t have to say shit to you,” Cindy says.

  “Sir, have you been following me?” I put the question directly to him.

  He finally turns his head to lock eyes with me. His lips start to form a sound, but before he can say anything, Cindy interjects again, seething angry now.

  “He hasn’t been following you, you ugly whore!” Her voice rises in anger, but I’m equally aware that I’ve graduated from dickless queer to whore, a quantum leap forward in my struggles for womanhood.

  “Haven’t you done enough to us?” Cindy’s face is red. Her anger is real. “We’re both out of work. We’re losing everything. You fucking cunt! You horrible witch!” Deep, flush-faced anger. Good English. Insults that address me as a woman. I wonder what it all means, but Cindy doesn’t give me enough time to sort it out.

  “Get out. Just get out. I can’t stand the sight of you. I never should have let you in. Go! Get out or I’ll call the police!”

  She means it, no doubt about it. I stand up slowly and nod, first to Kong, then to her, then look back at Kong. He’s still sitting, staring at the far wall, tense.

  “Sir,” I say, “may I have your name?”

  “No!” Cindy shrieks. “Get out! Get out now!” She bangs her tiny fists on the table in fury. I’m shocked at how emotional she is. I withdraw as gracefully as I can, Cindy slamming the door behind me. As I walk to the Blue Line, I look back several times to see if Kong is following me. He’s not, but then, if he’s the stalker, I wouldn’t see him anyway.

  I spend the rest of the day getting contact information for my other suspects. I thought about asking Phil to help. He can get an address and phone number on anyone in Chicago in minutes. But I keep thinking that talking to Phil would stir up the old emotions. No need. One of Phil’s buddies is happy enough to help out. It’s not like I’m going to murder anyone, or at least, he doesn’t think so.

  10

  “I HAVE SOME news for you,” I tell Roberta as we walk to the El station from her school.

  “Is it good news or bad news?” she asks.

  I take a long glance at her. It’s hard to believe an eleven-year-old would talk like that, let alone think that way. “You be the judge.”

  She makes a face.

  “The thing is, your grandparents are picking you up early today. Right after we get home.” I would have agreed to an early pickup anyway, but with the stalker closing in on us, it seemed like an opportunity to remove Roberta from danger.

  Roberta scrunches her face in dismay. Dining with the Hitlers is a toxic combination of bad diner food and constant nagging to eat her petrified vegetables and swallow a week’s worth of fat grams in one sitting.

  “Oh crap,” she mutters.

  “What?” My voice is sharp for someone with a vocabulary like mine. But Betsy is strict about the use of obscenities, even soft-core stuff like “crap,” so I have to wave the decency flag and seem like I’m sincere.

  “You say shit-fuck-damn-cocksucker-motherfucker all the time!” she says.

  “What?” My voice goes up an octave and several decibels. I’m aghast to hear her say it. It’s quality cursing to be sure, stolen from an old George Carlin routine, but I’ve carefully kept it from Roberta’s ears, even when the restraint almost killed me. “When have I ever said anything like that?”

  “Most recently, you mean?” She’s smiling smugly, enjoying the moment.

  I make a face at her. “Name one time.”

  “When you and Phil broke up, for one.”

  “What?”

  “You said it to him, then you said it to Cecelia later when you were on the phone with her.”

  I stare at her while we walk. My niece has a streak of Big Brother in her. “You were supposed to be asleep,” I say.

  She shrugs. “I wasn’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t talk like that and I can’t let you talk like that because—”

  “Because it’s Mom’s rules,” she finishes for me.

  We walk in silence for a few more strides, then she starts again. “Do I have to go with them, Aunt Bobbi?”

  “Well, kind of.” I’m feeling guilty that Roberta didn’t get a say. “I thought you were okay with the plan. No?”

  “I guess.”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t they treat you well?” It would be nice to have an excuse to scrape the flesh from Grandpa Hitler’s face.

  “They’re okay,” Roberta mumbles. “But they’re not any fun. They lecture me and watch TV. That’s it. And Grandpa doesn’t say nice things about you.”

  In a perfect world, I could just tell Roberta that Grandpa Hitler is a mean old Nazi with shriveled balls, angry at the world because the only sex he’s had for the past half century was with Grandma Hitler who is to womanhood what prunes are to plums.

  “They love you, that’s the important thing,” I say. This is a huge concession to the real world. It would be better to have a dog that loved you, or even a rattlesnake.

  “I’m going to tell Grandpa to shut up if he starts talking about you again.”

  I put an arm around her and she puts hers around me as we walk.

  “No need, Princess,” I say. “I only care what you and your Mom think of me, not them.”

  “It makes me mad.”

  “Don’t let it. We all have flaws. They have problems with people who are different from them, but they love you. So, accept the love and make up your own mind about me.”

  Roberta nods her head solemnly, then glances at me impishly. “Or I could just stand up in their church and say, shit-fuck-damn-cocksucker-motherfucker.”

  I stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk, my breath caught in my throat. “Roberta!”

  She’s bursting with pent-up laughter. “You should see yourself, Aunt Bobbi.”

  “If you ever did that, your Mom would never let me see you again. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand.” As she says it, the laughter explodes from her lips and her small body shakes and rumbles with glee. It’s catching. I can’t help but smile, then laugh with her. She’s had a great time catching me in my own game. As we roll along merrily to the train, it occurs to me that our Princess Roberta has entered into a new phase of life, and Aunt Bobbi feels ill prepared to deal with it.

  Fate. Karma. God’s grand design. Call it what you will, some days are just fucked before you get out of bed.

  Roberta and I are enjoying a glorious walk home. The trees are turning color, the air is dry and warm, and paradise is beaming down upon us in a golden glow. Roberta is regaling me with stories about her friends at school and how she might sort of like a boy who’s cute but a head shorter than her. I’m saying height doesn’t matt
er that much if the love is real, but that maybe she shouldn’t make any commitments for a while because she won’t be twenty-five for at least a month. Laughter fills the air. Our spirits are light.

  As we reach the walkway to my building, all good things end, and an avalanche of life’s stinkiest waste comes crashing down on me.

  It starts with the artwork on my porch. A giant erection has been spray-painted across the front door and the wall surrounding it. The penis is crude, but discernable. The artist has tried to make the door a vagina. This is less discernable unless you’re acquainted with the artist’s style. It’s a jumbo version of the paintings on my workstation and salon door. We can see all this from the front sidewalk. There’s also something on the porch floor, in front of the door, but I can’t make it out.

  My mind races with competing thoughts. Did Kong do this? He had all afternoon. Then the more pressing concern: How am I going to get this cleaned up before the Hitlers get here? I’m just beginning to conjure a vision of their reaction when Roberta pulls on my hand.

  “Grandma and Grandpa Wisconsin just pulled up, Aunt Bobbi.” She’s looking at the curb in front of the building. Her voice is hushed and worried. She knows what’s coming next as well as I do.

  “Shit-fuck-damn-cocksucker-motherfucker.” The words roll off my lips as easily as Betsy says her Hail Marys.

  “Don’t say that when Grandma and Grandpa get here,” Roberta says.

  Whenever I’m tempted to ask her where she heard an obscenity, I will always recall this moment. Assuming I survive it. I lead Roberta to the door. No need to wait for the Hitlers. They’ll be here as surely as flies find dog shit on a fresh-cut lawn.