by Renee James
Cecelia smiles and shrugs. The chief is a friend of hers and a straight-arrow public servant. In our little world of ribald banter, I’ve just told her I don’t want to talk about my sources, and she’s accepted the message.
16
THAT JOEY SWIDELL is still alive is proof of how capricious life can be.
Six years ago, he was addicted to uppers, which got him through the day, and alcohol, which got him some sleep at night. He was so wiry thin he could have been cast in a Holocaust film, and his mind seemed right at the edge of addled. That’s probably why I survived my only meeting with him.
I was the manager of L’ Elegance when Joey burst in to haul away his girlfriend. I ended up inserting myself between the two of them. He brandished a gun, and if he’d shot it, I wouldn’t be here, and I suppose he wouldn’t either. But Joey, being the moronic addict he was, tried to batter me instead of shoot me. Big mistake. In his anemic condition, even a simpering queer like me could duck under the blow. After that, I stabbed him in the solar plexus with a hot curling iron—it didn’t penetrate his skin, but it took his breath away and left him doubled in pain. He would have recovered, of course, so I also gouged one of his eyes. It was a deep, vicious strike that my self-defense coach said would incapacitate a villain as surely as a boxer’s haymaker.
When the police arrived, he was still curled up on the floor, crying.
That marked a turning point in my relationship with the staff at L’Elegance. Everyone had respected my work, but there was a little resentment about me getting the manager position, especially with me being a large transsexual woman. After the showdown with Joey, the staff kind of liked having someone of my size and instincts around, and they were happy and accommodating when I bought the salon later that year.
It didn’t work out as well for Joey, but it could have been worse. He ended up taking a plea deal that kept him incarcerated for less than a year, long enough to get weaned off drugs if he wanted to. He probably didn’t. According to Phil, he’s spent most of the intervening years in jail, mostly for dealing drugs. His ex-girlfriend left the salon about a year later. One of the stylists who was friendly with Trudy said her new beau was worse than Joey and she was getting into cocaine. I never heard another thing about her and I’m kind of glad. Stories like hers are horribly depressing.
His address is a nook in an Uptown neighborhood that gentrification hasn’t reached yet. When I was growing up, Uptown was known as hillbilly heaven amongst us white, middle-class youths. It was a rough and tumble place with low rents and a lot of street crime, but the low rents attracted a lot of restaurant and entertainment businesses, which attracted a lot of yuppie types from the prosperous neighborhoods elsewhere on the north side. It has been reconfigured by gentrification over the past decade or two. Real Chicagoans mourn the passing of the old neighborhood, and I don’t blame them. The north side is getting dominated by snobbish, upwardly mobile people who vote liberal but live like holier-than-thou stiffs.
On the other hand, the old Uptown wasn’t the safest place for a woman to walk alone, as I’m doing now, and a transsexual woman like me would have been dead meat. So, I guess I shouldn’t be too critical of the straitlaced yuppies who live here. They don’t approve of me, but they’d never say so, and they certainly wouldn’t pull me into an alley and beat me bloody.
I’m surprised Joey lives in a decent neighborhood until I see his place. It’s on a street lined with ramshackle buildings on one side and rehabs on the other. I’d bet his shack is going to get knocked down or gutted and rebuilt in the next year or so. Meanwhile, the rents are low enough to attract lowlifes like him.
As I scout the neighborhood, a young professional woman exits the two-flat across the street from Joey’s address. She bursts down the sidewalk, oblivious to me, heading for the elevated station, I suppose, wearing athletic shoes with a smart skirt suit, carrying her heels.
I walk to the front stairs like I belong there, and take a seat on them, trying to look like an idle, rich resident, taking in the morning air. It’s a good perch for watching Joey’s house. The shrubs and plant life around the porch create a busy scene for anyone looking this way from the street. I’m not hiding, but I don’t stand out, either. I’m dressed casually, which helps. My hair is pulled back in a bun beneath a beret, and I’m wearing designer jeans and a long-sleeve sweater under a practical but cute vest.
I’m still trying to decide how to approach Joey when a shabby-looking man comes out of the building. He looks something like Joey from a distance—thin, wearing raggedy clothes and a military fatigue jacket. It’s a warm day for such a heavy jacket, but he’s probably a junkie, and even if he isn’t, the man doesn’t have enough body fat to survive an evening breeze in Tahiti.
The fatigue jacket rings a bell. The man who was seen trying to break into the salon was wearing a fatigue jacket. My pulse kicks up a notch.
When he’s halfway down the block, I get up and follow him. He heads west. A block before Clark Street, I break off and head south, then west again, moving fast. I don’t want him to know I’m following him, and he’s moving slowly enough that I should be able find him easily on Clark. When I get to Clark, I walk north, looking for him, trying to look like someone from the neighborhood, out running errands on a nice autumn day. I spot him. He’s heading my way on the other side of the street, walking at a casual speed, glancing in windows. He turns into a fast-food restaurant.
I linger for a minute, waiting to see if he takes out food or stays in. When he doesn’t appear, I cross the street and enter the restaurant, eyeing the tables surreptitiously while I walk to the counter. Only three tables are occupied, the other two by normal-looking people. Joey looks like a corpse except that he’s eating French fries and working his phone. I order a coffee and sit a few tables from Joey, with one of the other customers between us. I can see him when I lean forward to sip my coffee or pretend to study a message on my phone, and I’m out of his line of sight when I lean back.
He has the eyes of an old man who has seen too much. His eye sockets look like dark caves in a mountain shaped like a man’s skull. Black rings line the flesh underneath the eyes as if etched there by an evil spirit. His clothes drape over his scrawny frame like a limp flag dangling from a pole on a windless day. His jeans are tattered and unkempt, his shirt wrinkled, the jacket has dark spots I can see from ten feet away. His hair hangs in limp strands below his ears, oily and uncombed. I’m sure it hasn’t been washed for days. The thought of touching it is repulsive.
I can’t smell him from where I’m sitting, but his appearance is so squalid I can imagine body odor strong enough to make another person gag.
His emaciated appearance suggests he’s packing a firearm. He’s not strong enough to fend off an attack of Barbie Dolls let alone protect his inventory of drugs from low-life customers. The gun would be a cheap pistol of some kind and stuck in his belt in the small of his back. When he sits back in his chair, only his upper back makes contact with the seat back.
I try to envision approaching him on the sidewalk when he leaves, but in each scenario, I see him shooting me, maybe out of fear, me being bigger and healthier—and a stranger. When I envision approaching him at his apartment, I see violence erupting, maybe right away, or for sure when he realizes who I am. He’d use a weapon—the gun or a club or a knife.
My best bet is to confront him here and now. Or walk away. I can hear Cecelia’s voice in my head just as clearly as if she were sitting here: “Get out of there, Bobbi. Let the police handle it.”
She’s right, but the police can’t handle it. There’s no evidence, and there won’t be until we get to the part where he kills me or beats me or both. It’s up to me.
It takes three steps to get to Joey’s table. Before he can even look up, I slide into the chair opposite him. “What a wonderful surprise, Joey,” I say. “Long time, no see.”
His eyes dart from his phone to me. His gaunt face registers shock, then confusion as he realiz
es I’m not dangerous, but he can’t place me.
“Do I know you?” He says it like a mobster, tough, challenging. His eyes peer at me from their deep recesses. His face is expressive, but his eyes are dead. I don’t see how this degenerate could summon the energy to stalk me.
“We met a few years ago.”
He squints and shakes his head, no, he doesn’t recognize me. That’s what fifty thousand dollars’ worth of plastic surgery buys you today.
“Trudy introduced us.”
Recognition slowly creeps over his face, but he still can’t quite place me.
“You called me a dickless queer, or maybe it was tranny queer. I don’t remember exactly. You didn’t give me much time to think.”
“You!” He says the word like I was the second coming of his worst nightmare.
“You disgusting butt-fucking queer—” He rattles off a chain of the most vile expletives he can think of, ending with my favorite—cunt. He’s loud. The people at the other tables stare at us. I want to thank Joey for calling me a cunt, but he’s so feeble in body and brain he wouldn’t understand my reasoning. In fact, it might be enough to make him go for his pistol, which wouldn’t work out well for me.
“I was hoping we could have a quiet chat,” I say, when he settles into a simmering silence for a moment.
He starts with the expletives in a loud voice again. The other people in the place leave in a hurry.
“Maybe you’d like to talk outside?” I ask. “Or let me buy you a drink somewhere?”
He grinds his teeth and stares at me. I wait for him to speak. Just when I think it’s hopeless, he says, “I got nothing to say to you.”
“Joey, someone has been stalking me and doing damage to my property. I have to give the police a list of suspects pretty soon, but I wanted to talk to you before I put your name on it.”
While I’m talking, his eyes shift down to the tabletop. He’s like a wild animal. It’s anguish for him to hold eye contact with a human.
“If it’s you, I’d like to come to an understanding so it stops and you don’t have to face the police. I understand you’ve had some troubles with them.”
His eyes rise up again to meet mine and I see a glimmer of life in them for the first time. It’s hate. Pure loathing. I tense up a little, ready to grab his hand if he makes a move toward his gun. He doesn’t. He smiles instead, a gesture only slightly less gruesome than assault with a deadly weapon.
Joey’s smile is a checkerboard of missing teeth and rotten survivors. It goes perfectly with his ashen skin, which, now that I see him up close, is pockmarked with little sores and lesions. Lice maybe. Or bedbugs. I catch a whiff of his breath. It’s a pungent reminder of the cop who almost put me in jail for the Strand murder. He had an aversion to dentists and hadn’t seen one in many years. The odor from his rotting teeth and gums was enough to repel a buzzard.
“What did it feel like when they cut off your cock?” Joey sneers.
“It felt wonderful,” I answer. It did. As painful as the post-op days were, I started feeling whole for the first time in my life. “But I’m not here to talk about my genitals, Joey. I want to know if you’ve been stalking me. If you don’t want to talk to me, you can take it up with the police. They won’t wait until you go to a restaurant, though. They make house calls.”
Joey runs this through the mud of his dim mind, still smiling that repulsive smile. It’s like watching a normal person think in slow motion. “Okay,” he says finally. “But not in here.”
Warning bells go off in my mind. There’s no reason not to talk here. The place is deserted. The counter staff can’t hear us. For a moment, I consider walking away from the whole thing, then scoff. If I can’t handle this half-dead junkie, I won’t make it much further in life anyway. Plus, I need to check names off my list, not add question marks.
“Okay,” I agree. “Let’s take a walk.”
He nods and stands up. He leaves his trash on the table and exits, me following. He heads for the corner, walking faster than before. He turns east, toward his hovel.
I keep pace with him. “What have you been up to, Joey?” I ask.
He walks several more strides in silence, then looks at me with that sickening smile. He’s trying to leer, but it’s more like being flashed by someone with a really ugly butt. “I’m a businessman,” he says.
“Ever see Trudy anymore?” I ask.
“That crack whore?”
“She’s a crack whore?” We’re off the subject, but I have to ask. She had so much potential as an artist and a person.
He shrugs as if to say, maybe. “I heard some things,” he says. He doesn’t give a damn if it’s true or not.
We walk several minutes in silence. He doesn’t seem to notice me. His eyes point straight ahead, he walks with a purpose.
“About the stalking . . .”
He ignores me.
“Joey, the stalking?” I want to get this out of the way. All I really need is a denial from him, but I want to hear it.
Several more steps. He finally glances in my direction, just for a second. “You want to talk to me, you come to my place.”
Alarm bells go off again, but part of me can understand his point. He feels safe there. Plus, he can make me go out of my way, create inconvenience in my life. A petty thing, but Joey isn’t in any kind of shape to be planning grandiose revenge schemes.
We continue in silence to his shack. The walkway in front splits a few feet before the front stairs. One part leads to the front door, the other splits off and goes around the house. I’m mulling whether or not to go in the front door when Joey veers off on the walkway that goes to the back. I’m relieved. We can have a short chat on the back stoop, and I’ll be on my way. I follow obediently.
The house is an ancient, clapboard-sided wreck. We walk the length of one side, then Joey hangs a sharp right and almost runs. His speed startles me. Instinct kicks in. I chase after him. As I make the hard right turn, he’s there, right there in front of me, faster than a bullet. He swings a metal garbage can at me before I even comprehend what it is or what he’s doing. The garbage can hits me in the face and upper chest, hard and sudden, sending me sprawling backwards. I land on my back, the garbage can on top of me. I roll it off and look at Joey. He’s reaching behind his back for the gun I know is there. It’s caught on something. He yanks once, twice, three times to pull it out.
I look for a weapon as I scramble to my feet. The lid of the garbage can is the only thing I can reach before Joey shoots me. I snatch it up and turn sideways to Joey. He’s finally freed his pistol, a little thing, probably a piece of junk, but plenty able to kill me at a range of seven feet.
As he cocks the hammer, I fling the garbage can lid at him like an oversized Frisbee, my best sport as a teen. I get leverage and all of my diminished strength into the heave. The lid leaves my hand spinning like a saw blade. It hits him flush in the face. His nose erupts in blood. His hands fly up, too late, and he stumbles backwards and falls on his back.
I flash to his side, ready to deliver a heel stomp, searching for targets on his body—the solar plexus, his throat, his face. I lift one foot, taking aim at the solar plexus, an easy target because he’s still prone, and safe because I won’t kill him with it.
Just before I deliver the blow, my other senses kick in, and I realize he’s crying. I step back. Jesus, he’s sobbing like a toddler who just fell down the stairs. Blood gushes from his nose. It’s broken for sure. And his upper lip is swollen and bleeding. Still, a grown man shouldn’t be sobbing his heart out.
I find Joey’s gun. It flew from his hand as he fell. My self-defense coach would call it a startle reflex, and startling a mugger is a primo strategy in his school of self-defense. The gun is small. I’m not a firearms person, but I’m guessing it’s a .22 caliber, and it looks like it’s in about the same shape as Joey. I take off my vest and use it to pick up the weapon. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but it won’t be going back to J
oey, and it won’t have my fingerprints or DNA on it.
I bundle it in my vest and hold the bundle under my arm as I stand over Joey. He’s still lying on the ground, still crying and sniffing, not as frantically now, but just as pathetic. I shake my head. How could someone too physically weak to supervise preschoolers pick a life of crime?
“Joey, get up.” I try to just say it, not loud, not mean. But I can’t keep a note of contempt out of my voice. “It’s not that bad. Get up. I’ll help you get to the hospital.”
I reach out a hand to help him up. He pushes it away, then struggles into a sitting position, sniveling and shaking. He works his way to his feet and moves on shaky legs to the back steps. He collapses on the stairs as if he’d endured a year of torture in a KGB camp. He sits with his head held in his hands, leaning forward, sobbing. Blood drips from his face to the dirt below, creating dark stains like freckles on the barren soil.
“We should get that nose looked at,” I say. It’s my mom voice. I’m all out of anger toward this pathetic creature. I feel like a bully.
“Go away. Go the fuck away, you—” His sentence segues into a string of vile epithets, though none of them touch on my body parts or me being queer. It makes me think he’s in shock or suffering from a concussion. Assailing me with the same language he’d use for a fellow street person seems like he’s not quite back in the here and now.
“You need medical attention,” I say, when he stops cursing.
He wipes his nose on the sleeve of his fatigue jacket. It adds an intermittent, dark smear to the other blemishes on the garment. He shakes his head from side to side in despair.
“I don’t need your fucking help,” he blubbers, “and I sure as hell don’t need a ration of shit from some fucking ER bitch.”
I’m not sure if he’s impaired or genuinely worried about going to the ER. “Medical people won’t give you any trouble,” I say.
“You don’t know.” He wrings his hands and shakes his head some more.