by Renee James
“Tell me what thoughts you’ve had about this stalker,” he says. “Anything at all, anyone who comes to mind, even if it seems like a remote possibility.”
I sigh, collect my thoughts, and start on the seven-suspects theory. I take him through my visits. Cindy’s hulking boyfriend, Greco. Joey Swidell, the hapless speed freak I took down years ago in the salon, now dying of AIDS. Mark, a man I saw socially and had a nasty breakup with—I don’t elaborate on any of it. Victor Grassi, a tenant I evicted, who said nasty things about me. Michael Albrechti, another social acquaintance who could have borne a grudge but didn’t—I leave out the “Lover Boy” references to avoid a longer story. And Andive, the man most likely to, except he’s a vegetable now.
“I keep thinking there should be a seventh suspect, and that’s who the stalker is,” I say. I explain my client’s theoretical law of sevens to him.
Phil looks at me like maybe I’ve passed over the fine line between eccentric and bonkers.
“I know,” I confess. “It’s crazy, but I can’t shake the thought. And the one I’d choose for the seventh suspect is Andive’s accomplice back when they got me in the alley.”
“The number stuff . . . I don’t know,” says Phil, “but you’re right about Andive’s accomplice. He’d make a great suspect, but we don’t have a description or a name. I was hoping we’d arrest someone for another crime and they’d confess to that one, too, but it hasn’t happened. Yet.”
I nod. The same old circle.
Phil thinks for a while, then starts in again. “Just for kicks, let’s go over to Andive’s apartment building and talk to his neighbors. Maybe we can get a line on people who visited him. Maybe one of them would be the accomplice.”
“That seems unlikely, doesn’t it?” I ask.
“It seems impossible,” Phil says. “But what the heck, I’ve got nothing better to do this afternoon, how about you?”
I smile. “When should I be ready, and what should I wear?”
“Something nice,” he says. “We both need a break from the doom and gloom. I’ll get reservations at Bistro Henri. Very posh.”
“Seriously?” I’m a little raw for a joke right now.
“Seriously. You need to get out a little. Me, too.”
“What does this mean, Phil?” I should be more subtle, but I need to know.
“It means we’re friends and I care about you and I’d like to have dinner with you.”
“Okay,” I say, smiling a little.
“What are you thinking?”
I brush him off. “Nothing.” But I’m thinking it would be great to get him buzzed enough to finish the night between my last set of sheets.
We are grossly overdressed for this neighborhood.
Andive’s building is a rambling, rent-subsidized tenement. Its date with a wrecking ball can’t be far away. Like the other tenements on the block, it looks like it could fall in on itself without much help.
We’re in a west-side neighborhood I’ve never seen before and will never see again. I would never venture here on my own. This is a vision of humanity gone wrong, from the buildings with sagging roofs and peeling paint, to the dead and dying trees at the curb and the patches of brown grass losing the battle for life, to the decrepit vehicles parked on the street, one with its hood permanently raised, another with a pool of oil around it, gathering dust and leaves. This is where the hopeless come to go through the motions of life.
We really are overdressed. Phil is wearing one of his tailored Brooks Brothers suits, gray with narrow blue pinstripes, exquisitely fitted to show off his exquisite body. His white shirt has raised white pinstripes, very subtle, and he’s wearing a silk tie with splotches of bright colors fused together with curving white and gray lines. He looks like a fashion model. I’m wearing a scarlet maxi dress that clings to my upper body like a glove, and makes my waist and hips look feminine. I wear a short black coat over it. The coat is just warm enough for mid-October, and fashionable enough to double as a suit coat indoors.
I look to the building and feel doubts growing. Inside that building, we’ll look like a couple of debutantes at a greased pig chase, and the stares may very well turn to hostility. Phil sees my reluctance and comes to my side. “Don’t worry,” he says. “This will be fine.” He offers me his arm and I slide mine through it and hug myself to him. If he says it’ll be fine, it will be fine.
We enter and make our way down a dimly lit hallway. A man is working an upright vacuum cleaner a few doors down. As we near him, the stench of vomit grows stronger.
“Breathe through your mouth,” says Phil in a low voice, smiling a little. “It may get worse.” I shudder. He stops me a couple of steps from the man, then approaches him and taps him on the shoulder. The man startles and turns, his mouth open, his eyes frightened. He relaxes a little when he sees us. Phil badges him and he turns off the machine.
“Goddamn drunks,” the man mutters. It’s an apology for the stink, but the man cleaning it up could have been the one who made the deposit. He’s wearing wrinkled pants and a shirt that has to be on its third day of service or more. Several days of stubble cover his cheeks and chin. His eyes are bloodshot and open too wide, making him look like a crazy man.
“We want to talk to some of Frank Andive’s neighbors,” Phil says. “Can you show us where he lived?”
Our host turns out to be the building super, if such a term fits in a building like this. He smiles a jack-o-lantern smile, a wide crescent with missing teeth, and leads us there. Mercifully, it’s on the first floor. I wouldn’t want to go any further into the belly of this beast than necessary.
“Ain’t rented yet,” the super says when we get to Andive’s old place. “Want to look around?”
Phil nods his head, and we’re allowed in, promising to let the super know when we leave.
Stepping into Andive’s kitchenette apartment is like stepping into a sad dream. Stark white walls and a white ceiling bounce the glare of the ceiling lights everywhere, casting an otherworldly sheen on everything. The tile floor is a pattern of white and red squares with lots of chunks missing. A compact kitchen forms one side of the place, a table, bed, dresser, and television set fill the rest. It’s a step up from a jail cell, but many steps down from even humble places like the dump Cindy and Greco inhabit.
The place smells. It’s not like an outhouse, the aromas are subtler than that, but they add to the bleakness of the room. There is the smell of food garbage, though the kitchen area is clean and the garbage can is empty. There’s also the scent of an unwashed human body, a blend of sweat, body odor, and unchanged sheets. Again, the bed has been stripped and looks clean enough, but the redolence lingers like a hangover. The super has scrubbed the place, but some stink will never go away.
Phil ducks inside the bathroom and comes out quickly. “You may not want to go in there,” he says.
I make myself look inside. I’m here. I might as well see everything. My memories of this rotting man can’t get any worse. Even at the threshold of the bathroom, my olfactory senses are slammed with an olio of mildew, chlorine cleaner, and a hint of urine. Visually, it’s okay. It has been cleaned, but it will never be a place where someone would linger with the Sunday crossword puzzle.
“Wilkins told me once that coming here was like watching an animal die,” says Phil, surveying the room. Wilkins was the brilliant Chicago PD detective who came close to putting me in jail for the murder of John Strand. His masterstroke was connecting Andive to Strand and to me. He somehow got Andive to confess that he did goon work for Strand and was one of the men who raped me. Just a couple months after the rape, Andive got his due in the same alley, and not long after that, Strand got his throat slit.
“I believe it,” I say. “I’ll bet it made him as queasy as it does me.” Wilkins looked like the kind of black man who scares all trace of skin tone out of white people. He was a thick, squat man with no neck, an ugly face, and a permanent scowl. He played the role of the proverbial �
�bad cop” perfectly. But as it turned out, he was like the best of us, struggling to understand right and wrong, trying to be a good person, trying to overcome the contrast between how he looked to people and the person he was inside. It turned out, we had a lot in common, even though we started out hating each other.
“You know,” says Phil, “if I had to come into places like this every day and deal with people like Andive, I don’t think I could do it.”
“I don’t think you could either. I certainly couldn’t.” The mere thought of it makes me glad I’m a hairdresser and a woman and not expected to deal with life’s murkiest depths.
“I wish people could see this and feel what we’re feeling when a cop crosses the line and everyone starts cursing us,” says Phil. “I’m not saying it justifies brutality, but it explains why someone who goes out to do good every day sometimes gets crosswise with the mission.”
As long as I’ve known Phil, I’ve seldom seen this reflective, philosophical part of him. He has always been a fun guy and plenty sympathetic, but not what you’d call deep. This moment is like the first seconds of a sunrise, light creeping toward me like a messenger of understanding. I nod my agreement and kiss him softly on the cheek. I would love to throw my arms around him and bathe his exposed soul in the comfort of another body. But that is no longer my province. Even though he is looking after me in my time of crisis, even though we are going to dinner, we will never be a couple again.
The first door we knock on is answered by a withered man in boxer shorts and a wifebeater t-shirt. His droopy eyes widen when he beholds me. Not many women enter here, I’m sure, and probably never a transwoman. Plus, I stand a good six inches taller than him in heels. Phil badges him and asks him about Andive’s visitors.
“Far as I know, just his son,” the man says. His voice is thin and weak. I can’t tell if he’s a gritty eighty-year-old or a wino in his sixties, counting down the last months of his life. He can’t keep his eyes off me. It’s not lust or bigotry, though. I think it’s the incongruity of finding an Amazon woman at his door.
“He had a son?” I ask. There’s doubt in my tone.
“I think so,” says the man. “Tall, fat kid, in his thirties I think. He just showed up a couple weeks ago.”
“Could that have been his nephew?” I ask. “Albert? Larson?”
“Maybe,” the man says. He idly scratches at his crotch, not aware of himself. “I didn’t meet him. I just saw him. And Andive told me the kid just found him. They didn’t know each other before.”
Phil asks some follow-up questions and scribbles notes in a pocket-size notebook, and we move on. Most of Andive’s neighbors know nothing about him. Some don’t even know his name or that he’s in hospice, hours from death. Several don’t answer their doors. When we come to the last place on the floor, I step in front of Phil and knock in a dainty, feminine way. I glance at him as I do it, and he nods his agreement. Maybe a more timid knock will get us an audience.
The man who answers has beady, ferret eyes and a body so full of nervous tension I’d swear he was plugged in to an electric outlet. He glares suspiciously at Phil, who badges him and flashes his friendly smile that puts people at ease. The man nods curtly as Phil explains what we want, but his eyes are on me, hungry eyes, but more menace than lust. I would not want to meet this man anywhere alone. I sidle a little closer to Phil, and a half step behind him.
“What’s it worth to you?” the man snaps.
“What do you have?” Phil replies.
“Not much. He’s had a couple visitors, might be interesting.”
Phil digs out a twenty-dollar bill. The man’s flaccid face turns prunish, like twenty dollars couldn’t possibly interest a man who lives in a dive like this. Phil shrugs his shoulders as if to say, “I tried,” and puts the bill back in his pocket.
“That’s it?” says the man.
“That’s it,” Phil confirms. He handles this like he does it every day. In fact, he’s navigated this whole adventure like a self-assured street cop. Not what he claims to be at all.
The man gestures for Phil to bring out the twenty again. Phil hands it to him. The man takes it and waves us inside.
Phil asks for his name.
“Am I going to have to testify to something?” he asks.
“No,” Phil assures him. “It’s just routine.”
The man gives Phil his name, then adds, “But everyone calls me Weasel.”
His nickname confirms all my suspicions. I can see this lowlife stabbing someone in the back and going to lunch five minutes later.
“We’d have a beer together every now and then,” he tells Phil. “We met a few times, back in the day.” A grim smile. He’s telling us he was a criminal, too, not that he needed to. “He didn’t have a lot of visitors. Looking for anyone in particular?”
“How about anyone else from ‘back in the day’?” Phil asks.
“I thought so,” Weasel says. “There were a few.” He rattles off three names that mean nothing to us.
“Andive used to do work for a man named John Strand,” Phil says. “He had a partner. We’d like to find that man.”
Weasel’s eyes pop at the mention of Strand. Strand was a wealthy, important man in Chicago and his death was big news for quite a while. “Twenty ain’t buying that,” he says.
Phil forks over another twenty. Weasel starts to object, but Phil holds up a hand. “That’s it. That’s the max. If you want it, talk.”
Weasel flashes a nasty grimace, but pockets the bill.
“Everyone calls him Stick,” Weasel begins. “Mick the Stick. I don’t know his last name. He disappeared for a long time, but he showed up here about a year ago. He crashed with Andive for a couple days. We did some drinking.”
As he talks, his eyes shift quickly between Phil and me, as if one of us will pounce on him if he’s not looking.
“Did they talk about their work for Strand?” Phil asks.
Weasel shrugs noncommittally. His darting eyes come to rest on me and a shadow of a leering smile comes to his face. “One story was when they put the wood to some tranny. They were laughing about that, how the tranny cried and squealed.” He’s eyeing me and I can see equal parts cruelty and delight in his face. He’s evaluating what I’d be like as a conquest, and he’s having a good time watching my embarrassment. He knows I was the victim.
“Do you know where he is now?” asks Phil.
“No idea.” Weasel gloats as he says it, glad he can’t help.
“Where had he been before he showed up here?”
Weasel shrugs. “All over, I guess. Miami, Atlanta, other places. He was lying low when he came here, so he probably got in trouble somewhere.”
Phil asks more questions, but Weasel either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to share any more information. When we leave, Phil pauses in the doorway and locks eyes with Weasel. “I saw how you were looking at Bobbi,” he says. “If anything happens to her, I’ll turn you into a puddle of shit.” He nods curtly as he finishes the sentence and leaves. Another side of Phil I’ve never seen.
26
WE STICK TO the early dinner plan, even though I feel like I need a hot shower after our adventure in Andive’s flophouse. Fortunately, Phil shakes it off and is his charming self as we enter the restaurant.
It’s an upscale French eatery for the snobbery elite, and even though some of the early diners are dressed casually, our attire fits the ambience. Starched white tablecloths, tuxedoed waiters with chins held high, hushed conversations across small tables. Phil offers me his arm as the waiter seats us. I try not to hug too hard, but God, it feels good, being in a lovely restaurant with a charming man, wearing elegant clothes, feeling like a woman, feeling like a woman on a special date with someone who thinks she’s special.
We order and sip wine, making small talk about mutual friends, family members, my business, his job. I search his face constantly as we chat, wanting to see passion for me written in his smile, a trace of lust in h
is eyes, fearing I’ll see distance, the respectful aloofness that I got from him when we broke up. I don’t see proof of anything, though. Phil is forever affable and gracious and has never been one to express passion or rejection in a public place. I wipe the thought from my mind. We’re over, as a couple. I must enjoy this moment for what it is: a great dinner with the finest gentleman I’ve ever met, and probably the finest I ever will meet.
I decline dessert, but order a decaf to extend the evening a little. Phil follows my lead.
After the waiter leaves the coffees, our conversation drifts like a soft melody on a warm spring day. Then Phil looks at me with curiosity on his face. “Have you seen any more of that Albert guy? Andive’s nephew?”
“He’s upgrading the salon security system,” I say.
“He’s not coming on to you anymore?”
“No,” I assure Phil. “I think I made it clear I wasn’t available.”
“You should get security in your apartment, too,” says Phil.
“I’m getting that next week,” I answer.
Phil nods and the conversation wanes for a moment, each of us in thought.
“I’m just curious,” says Phil. “When you listed your suspects, there were two guys you called social acquaintances. Tell me about them.”
My heart sinks. I don’t want to go beyond the superficial sketches I already gave him. How do you tell the man of your dreams you’ve been sleeping around? But Phil’s asking because he’s trying to protect me from a stalker. I have to be honest.
“I met Mark at the deli near my salon,” I start. “We ran into each other a couple times, he asked me out, it didn’t go well. So, just one date.”
“What didn’t go well?” Phil asks.
I repress an inner shudder and tell him about the lewd artwork I found on my table at the deli. “I found the same style of art in Mark’s apartment, with the same theme, a crude dehumanizing of women as sex objects,” I say. “It was a shock. I had been thinking whoever did that sketch in the deli was the stalker. It was so mean, like the work of a sociopath. Then I find out this guy I thought was a nice guy had done it and he wasn’t embarrassed about it, any of it.”