A Kind of Justice by Renee James

a woman, she has never been reluctant to dominate the meek. That’s why we tangled so much before I began my transition.
    Which is why the look on her face is so alarming. Her eyes almost ache with sadness. There is a softness about her. Her voice becomes delicate as she speaks of Betsy’s financial problems.
    â€œI just can’t believe Don would leave them so vulnerable,” I lament. “He was a careful man. He was careful with money. How could he not have a serious life insurance policy? I don’t understand.”
    Cecelia puts a hand on my arm, a consoling gesture. “A lot of successful people handled money and risk that way in the run-up to the crash. The appreciation trend in real estate was so powerful for so long that people were making big money flipping houses. Don was a money guy. He’d have seen it as a great bet.”
    â€œA guy like him would go cheap on life insurance to get a bigger house?” I ask it incredulously, but as Cecelia lays it out I know that for someone like Don the potential for a big profit at low risk would be more seductive than a naked starlet.
    â€œLots of people just like him did that,” she answers. “Banks are going to be repossessing houses for years because of it.”
    I usually try not to cry in front of anyone else because it looks so unseemly, someone as big and butch-looking as me crying like a schoolgirl. But my body chemistry is completely female now and tears come as naturally as curses did when testosterone coursed through my veins. The sadness of the moment, the day, the month, chokes my inhibitions and I sob in Cecelia’s opulent Caddy as we start and stop our way toward home.

  6  
    M ONDAY , A UGUST 18
    â€œH I , I’ M D ETECTIVE Allan Wilkins.” He says it like a syrupy politician asking for votes, trying to hide the fact that they make him sick. Two obviously gay men, walking down the sidewalk way too close to each other, chatting and chuckling like a couple of girls.
    As he greets them, he holds up his shield and flashes a big smile, all white teeth and love. It’s an integrated neighborhood, but getting stopped on the street by a burly black guy has the potential to scare the crap out of most white citizens. He doesn’t want that. He wants trust and help.
    The couple stops and returns the greeting with caution.
    â€œI’m sorry to trouble you. I’m doing a follow-up on an old murder case. You may remember it. A few years ago? A man named John Strand was found dead in his apartment a block from here?”
    The shorter man, pretty, with bleached blond hair and blue eyes, nods his head. “I remember. Tony didn’t live here then, but I did.”
    Wilkins makes himself focus on the information he wants, choking off the mental image of this gay boy having different lovers every day or week like fags do.
    Wilkins takes him back in time to when the murder occurred, reminding him it happened two days before the body was found. “It would have been a Friday night, very late. Saturday morning, actually.Did you happen to see someone out walking between two and five a.m.? Someone not from the neighborhood?”
    The pretty boy steps back slightly. Maybe a foot. It’s his bad breath, Wilkins realizes. He tried to keep sucking on breath mints, but he ran out.
    â€œOh, Detective,” the pretty boy sighs. “That was a long time ago. I don’t even know where I was that night.”
    Wilkins nods. It was the answer he expected. “Let me share something with you,” he says in a chummy, conspiratorial voice. He opens the portfolio tucked under his arm and removes a stapled set of papers. He pages through them quickly with the young man, careful to speak away from him to avoid another bad breath episode.
    â€œThese are news items about things happening in the city that night,” Wilkins explains. “They might help you remember where you were, what you