Seven Suspects

by Renee James

  I stand and gather my things to go. Phil helps me put on my coat. I turn to him and kiss him on the cheek. I’m wearing flats, so I have to stand on my toes to reach him. It makes me feel like a cute cheerleader for a moment, until the realization that the man of my dreams won’t have me sweeps all other thoughts away.

  18

  DESPITE PHIL’S ASSURANCES that rapist-and-thug Andive is on his deathbed or close to it, I have to see for myself. That’s what brings me to Cook County Hospital this morning.

  If you’re a young medical resident, especially in Emergency Medicine or Surgery, Cook County Hospital is the ultimate learning ground where each day brings cases that range from the routine to the exotic to stabbings and gunshot wounds and the other hallmarks of combat medicine.

  If you’re indigent or poor and have no medical insurance, it’s the last stop on the train of hope. They’ll take you in, but if they can’t fix you, your next trip will be in a meat wagon.

  When I was a young, upwardly mobile white male, Cook County Hospital teetered on the edge of my earth. It sits just south of the Eisenhower Expressway. The environs north of the expressway are mostly safe, mostly middle class, and mostly white. South of the expressway, and west of the hospital, it’s mostly non-white, largely poor, and home to some neighborhoods that are as violent as a third-world city.

  The south and west sides are where most of the violence against transgender people occurs in the metro area. This thought lurks in my consciousness as I get off the Blue Line train and make my way to the sprawling hospital campus. I’m not in any danger, especially during the day, but crossing the bridge to the south side of the expressway feels like a voyage to another country. Weeds struggle from cracks in the sidewalk. Litter collects along the safety wall. The metal railing atop the wall is pockmarked with rust and chipped paint. Nearer the hospital complex, derelict buildings sag in the dim light of a gray day, windows and doorways boarded. One still has a sign advertising check-cashing and money-order services, though the building seems to have been vacant for a long time.

  On the other side of the street, the façade of the old Cook County Hospital rises from the scabby asphalt street like the thick remnant of an Old-World citadel. Behind it, the “new” county hospital is a gleaming structure of steel and glass and concrete. The signs on the building make reference to its formal name: John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County. This is a cruel joke played by local politicians on the local citizenry. John Stroger was the long-serving president of the Cook County Board. The two greatest accomplishments of his many terms in office were avoiding arrest for the various malfeasances that claimed so many other local pols, and getting himself reelected one last time even though he was literally and medically brain-dead.

  As I enter the building, I put a slight smile on my face. I’m trying to look happy to anyone who sees me, and appear as though I belong here, like an attending physician or maybe an administration person. This sometimes offsets my unusual appearance.

  Inside, the facility seems as modern and squeaky clean and professional as any other hospital. I get directions to Andive’s room at an information desk and make my way to the elevators. I personally integrate a packed elevator car, the only white person on it, and maybe the only trans person any of my fellow passengers have ever seen. I can feel curious eyes pouring over every part of my anatomy, even though I’m wearing conservative business attire today. We rise silently to my floor and I get off with several others. They go their separate ways, no longer interested in me. Like Cecelia says, we trans people aren’t really that interesting.

  The door to Andive’s room is cracked open. I peek inside. It’s dim and deathly and the air inside is moist and tinged with the smells of bedridden bodies. There are two beds with a curtain between them for a suggestion of privacy. That’s not an issue though. Both roommates are as silent and still as corpses. Only the beeps and lights and scrawling lines of a phalanx of monitors offer proof they are still living. There are no visitors. I enter. As I draw near the first bed, a lingering odor of human waste hangs in the air. The men in both beds are wearing diapers. I feel like I’m standing in Hell, waiting for the boat to oblivion on the banks of the River Styx. The sense of death and despair even overpowers the stink of shit.

  I can’t tell which man is Andive. They are both gaunt and gray, their bodies wasted, their faces covered by skin that hangs like putty from their skeletons. This is shocking. I never got a good look at Andive back in his heyday, when he made a living as a goon and got his fulfillment from sexual violence, but I know he was a large, brutish man. I saw him from a distance a couple of times when he was following me on the orders of John Strand. It was close enough to see a thick, powerful body and the vague outline of a fat, ugly face. A smaller version of Cindy’s King Kong.

  I play through the scene of Andive and his accomplice assaulting me so I won’t feel pity for whichever of these men is Andive. I check the beds for names. Andive is the closest to the window, which is covered by blinds but lit up at the edges by the light of day on the other side of the wall.

  The emaciated man in this bed bears little resemblance to the Andive of my nightmares. The body that once intimidated has turned to pre-death mush. The bones of his shoulders and ribs show through the skin as if he were a death camp survivor. There is no suggestion of the cruel animal he once was, just a withered pot belly protruding underneath a withered rib cage, and the wasted face of a man so close to death his heartbeat is just a technicality. I stare at his face, trying to match it with a police photograph of him I saw in a file on the Strand murder. This living corpse bears no resemblance to the beast of my past.

  I look about his half-room, memorizing the place where his wretched life will end. There are no flowers or potted plants or any other human touches. He is dying a pauper’s death, alone. Two canes rest against the wall in a corner, a monument to my role in the misery of the end of his life. It would have felt good to do it myself, especially back then, to feel his bones shatter with each blow, to witness his transformation from a pitiless agent of torment into a helpless invalid, one crushed bone at a time. We’re not supposed to admit to such feelings, we who try to be civilized and caring, but anyone who’s ever been raped will know the feeling. It lies deep within you, a poisonous fusion of rage and fear and betrayal. It bubbles and churns and you want to explode like a volcano. Turning your nightmare into a toad who can barely make it to the toilet under his own power is a way to shed the mantel of victim and take charge of your life again.

  I take one last look at Andive and start to leave when a large man enters the room. He startles when he sees me, like he wasn’t expecting a living person in the place. I’m a little spooked, too, for the same reason.

  He smiles to put me at ease. I smile back and say hello. He joins me at the foot of Andive’s bed. He’s a tall, blubbery man, maybe six-two, at least three hundred pounds, his waist wider than his chest. He walks with the uncertain gait of an invalid, rocking to each side as if struggling for balance, as if each step is painful, as if his legs are deformed somehow, and ready to collapse under the strain of his girth. His middle shakes like Jell-O with each footfall. For all that, he’s youngish. Early thirties. He’s wearing a brown business suit, cheap but decent-looking even though his body doesn’t model it well. He has close-cropped hair and a fleshy face. I step to one side so he can get to Andive’s bedside, but he stays in front of me.

  “Are you here to visit my uncle?” he asks.

  I’m taken aback. I never thought of Andive as having human relatives.

  “I heard Mr. Andive was not doing well and came to pay my respects,” I say.

  “That’s very kind of you. He hasn’t had many visitors.”

  I want badly to ask the names of the visitors he has had, but swallow my curiosity.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.

  He waits for me to say something, but I don’t. It has taken forty-seven years to learn that I don’t have to fill
an awkward silence with a statement I don’t want to make.

  “How did you know Uncle Frank?” the man asks.

  “I didn’t really know him well, and it was a long time ago.” I dodge his questions with the agility of a politician. “I’m so sorry he’s ailing.” As I finish the sentence, I nod to him and try to make my way to the door.

  “Just a moment,” he says pleasantly. He takes a sign-in book from Andive’s table and hands it to me, with a pen. “If you give me contact information, I’ll let you know about the funeral arrangements.”

  My face flushes. There is no way I’m putting my name on anything associated with Andive, and I’d only go to his funeral if I still had a penis and could pee on his grave standing up.

  “I’m afraid I’m leaving town today,” I stammer. “I was just passing through and wanted to pay my respects. Thanks, though.” I return the book to him, stumble through another thank you, and head for the door.

  He lumbers after me. “I didn’t get your name,” he says. He flashes a friendly smile and extends his arm for a handshake. “I’m Albert.”

  I start to go into a brain freeze. I extend my hand to be polite. It comes to me. “Roberta,” I say.

  “Roberta—?” He asks it, an eyebrow raised. He wants my last name. As much as I don’t want to leave my name in this terrible place, I refuse to lie about it. I’m not going back to a life of lies, not even here.

  “Logan,” I say.

  His eyes drop to our joined hands as we shake. I know exactly what he’s thinking. I have big hands. Massive hands for a girl. When his gaze returns to mine, there is a glint of recognition. He’s made me.

  “My condolences and best wishes,” I say. I want to leave before he asks me what his uncle was doing with a transgender woman. He seems nice enough, but people can get very hinky about people like me.

  I move to the door, but he follows me into the hall.

  “So, you’re not from around here?” he asks.

  I blanche. “I’m kind of in a hurry. Commitments.”

  “What do you do?” he asks. “You look like a professional woman. Lawyer?”

  I smile. “Not even close. Really, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to go.”

  “Sure,” he says. “No problem.” He’s not stopping me, but he’s staying with me and I’m almost running to the elevator. Given his proportions, it’s like being chased by an avalanche. And there’s something about the way he says, “No problem” that sets off my inner feminist. He sounds like a phony salesman, assuring the dim-witted ditz that the wreck in front of her is a sturdy, reliable car that will last for years, so practiced in his manner that he doesn’t disguise the emptiness of his words, knowing that the important thing is, he’s saying what the customer wants to hear, and the customer is a stupid woman, and she’ll do the rest.

  I’m insulted and annoyed. He wants to fuck a tranny and he thinks I’m an easy mark. I walk on in silence.

  He keeps trying to engage me. “I want to thank you again for coming to see Uncle Frank.”

  I’m almost to the elevator. I pray the doors open when I get there. He strains to catch up to me, wheezing and rocking. If he were chasing me down a dark alley, my main worry would be that he’d have a heart attack.

  I stop at the elevator and push the down button and begin the interminable wait for the car to arrive. God, I think, what if this jerk gets on the elevator with me? I try to recall where the police were stationed in the lobby and hope it doesn’t come to that.

  “So you do live in the area, then?” He has locked eyes with me, a little smile playing at his lips. It’s a cocky smile, like he’s patronizing me, the helpless transgender twink who’s desperate for the affection of a giant replica of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

  “I’m not on the make, Albert.” I say it firmly, so there’ll be no doubt.

  “Of course not.” He says it like I’m a naïve young teen, so patronizing I’m tempted to squeeze his balls until he cries. I wouldn’t do that, of course, but it would make our society a better place.

  “How about I look you up sometime?” he says. “I’d really like to get to know you. Talk about Uncle Frank, what a beautiful girl like you does for fun, like that.”

  The elevator door dings, signaling the arrival of the car. Almost home. As the door opens, I try to end the conversation with Albert politely. “I don’t think so,” I say. “I’m with someone and I have a business that keeps me very busy.”

  I get on the elevator. When I turn to the door, Albert is looking back at me, his hulking form filling half the doorway, that moronic, condescending grin on his face.

  “No problem,” he says with a wave. “We’ll just talk.”

  The doors close. Silence fills the elevator car as I descend to the lobby. I weigh the odds on whether or not Albert looks me up. I think not. If he wants to get laid by a transwoman, there are clubs in Boystown where he can have his pick of young, gorgeous girls who satisfy the urges of men like him professionally. But if he calls, he’ll be easy to discourage. Albert is just another horny buffoon.

  By the time the elevator reaches the first floor, Albert is far from my mind, replaced by a pervasive melancholy that overwhelms me when I recall the sight of Andive lying on his deathbed, waiting for the grim reaper to take his wasted body and place it on some spiritual trash heap of squandered lives. Everything has turned bleak and dark. The first-floor décor that seemed so bright and clean on the way in now appears dreary and sad. The pictures hung on the walls are cheap and boring. The people I pass are all dying—I can feel life pour out of them. I can see the doom that awaits them. These are not rational sensations, and I know it, but they are overwhelming nonetheless.

  I burst through the exit door into the daylight and take several deep breaths. It’s not like I’ve escaped to a beautiful place, but at least I’m free from the walls that were closing in on me. I make my way to the Blue Line station, concentrating on my breathing, trying to clear my mind. I stop on the bridge to the station and focus on the Loop skyline to the east, its civilized sophistication just a few train stops away, and yet it’s a world so different from this one. I dial Officer Phil’s number to make good on a promise to report to him if he promised not to follow me.

  “I’m done,” I say when he picks up. “I saw the bastard. You’re right. He couldn’t be the one.”

  “Are you okay?” Phil asks. There’s a note of concern in his voice, which is painful to hear. It was easier to deal with his rejection when I thought he’d just moved on to a younger, cuter model and didn’t care about me anymore.

  “I’m fine.” It comes out curt, like I’m in a bad mood. Which I am.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Phil says.

  “I saw the pig. I saw him dying. It was sickening, but I have no regrets other than not breaking his bones myself.” Phil knows everything about my history with Andive and John Strand. We share evil secrets.

  “You sound troubled, Bobbi.” Phil is talking gently now. Where other men are patronizing, he is considerate and caring. It makes living without him intolerable. “Tell me about it,” he says.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” I don’t want to have this conversation with him. It will re-fracture my broken heart and blanket my world in sorrow for weeks, smothering every thought in darkness, clouding everything I see with hopelessness. I change the subject.

  “I met Andive’s nephew.” I say it flatly. There’s a moment of silence on Phil’s end.

  “He has a nephew?” Phil is surprised.

  “You didn’t know?” Curiosity pushes through my despair for a moment. Phil had checked out Andive himself before he told me the man was dying in Cook County.

  “His paperwork didn’t list any relatives,” says Phil. He recites what he learned, which isn’t much. Andive was found unconscious and near death in his apartment by a neighbor a week ago. He was transported by ambulance to Cook County Hospital, dia
gnosed as a stroke victim, with little mental awareness, no control over his bowels, and unable to walk under his own power. He was uninsured, with no known next of kin and no property other than the meager contents of his small apartment.

  “The nephew said his name was Albert.”

  “I’ll ask around,” says Phil.

  “Don’t bother on my account,” I say.

  “What did he look like?”

  I give Phil a physical description.

  “What was he like?”

  “He seemed okay, I guess,” I say. “After he read me, he wanted to get social. He was irritating about it, but no more so than the average tranny fucker.”

  Phil is silent. I realize he thinks I’m including him in that condemnation. “You’re not one, Phil,” I add. “You never were. Get over it.”

  “Thanks, Bobbi,” he says. There’s a sadness in his voice that touches me. “Be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And let me know if you make any more calls on your suspects, okay?”

  “Sure, Phil,” I answer. But it’s a lie. I know who I’m calling on next. I don’t need Phil as a backup, and I don’t want him to know about this chapter of my life.

  19

  CECELIA IS AGHAST when I ask her to help me find out Lover Boy’s real name. She lets fly a chain of exclamations that have the same effect as a stream of expletives but doesn’t use any of them. “I will never, ever aid and abet your certain date with HIV and God knows what other venereal diseases,” she says.

  “I’m not looking for intimacy with him.” My voice is frosty. “He’s the last name on my list of suspects, and now that I think about it, I should have started with him.” Of course, there should be another name on my list, the seventh name, but I guess this is one time the law of sevens doesn’t apply.