A Kind of Justice by Renee James Page A

were doing, and all that. Take this home and take your time looking through it, okay? Let me know if you remember seeing anyone. And please show it to your neighbors and ask them to do the same thing.”
    The young man nods.
    â€œThis neighborhood isn’t going to be safe until we find the killer, you know?” Wilkins adds. “It looked like a hate crime, so minorities are especially vulnerable.” Trying to personalize the crime for the pretty boy by implying that the victim might have been gay without saying so.
    â€œWas the victim gay?” the young man asks.
    â€œWe’re not sure,” Wilkins answers. “We’ll know a lot more when we find the perpetrator. Right now, we need witnesses and leads.”
    â€œI’ll do everything I can, Detective.” He says it like a grade school kid talking to Officer Friendly. Wilkins would usually find that revolting, but right now he needs help. He smiles and wishes the couple a good day and moves on.
    He has distributed dozens of his news packets in the neighborhoodwhere John Strand got his throat slit five years ago. Not much chance anything will come of it, but at least it gets him out of that dreary apartment. And, who knows, he might get lucky with some of the seeds he’s planted here.
    *    *    *
    M ONDAY , A UGUST 18
    I repeat Cecelia’s counsel like a mantra as I enter the TransRising conference room. Keep smiling. Be pleasant. Greet each person you meet as if you are a parishioner meeting the pope. Be impressed with each person’s amazing accomplishments. Don’t talk about yourself.
    The meeting is called to order by the Chicago TransRising president, a nice person named Danni. Danni is a genetic woman who presents as an almost-man who is both butch and feminine. She considers herself “gender queer,” someone whose gender identity is fluid and whose presence in society causes even more distress than I do for people who insist everyone has to be either male or female. Danni is thirtyish, smart, and gifted at bringing groups like this together and getting them to accomplish important tasks.
    After Danni’s remarks and the requisite trip around the table sharing our names, professions, and years in the community, Lisa takes over. Lisa is a twenty-four-year-old transwoman who has been fully transitioned for five years and has lived as a female for a decade. She is slim and pretty and has the self-assurance of a homecoming queen.
    She distributes copies of a conceptual brochure promoting a forthcoming benefit for the Center. It is to be a celebration of the fifty most influential transwomen in America. She and two of her friends, also twentysomethings, decided on the theme and will decide who the chosen fifty are.
    The brochure is boilerplate. The most interesting thing about it isthe message that the benefit is being sponsored by TransRising and by her website,
The Joy of Trans
. The website is supposed to be a celebration of happy, successful transwomen. It’s a collection of self-written biographies of fifty or sixty young transsexual women whose homilies to their own self-discovery read like testaments from born-again Christians about the moment they found Jesus. The site is supposed to offer the public and the media a positive impression of the transgender community, but no one would read that stuff unless they had to.
    As the committee members review the etchings, murmurs of approval and admiration flow freely from around the table.
    â€œAny comments or suggestions?” Lisa asks, basking in the glow of adulation.
    â€œWhat do you think, Bobbi?” asks Danni.
    I squirm. There goes the low profile. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t like these people and I wouldn’t go to this benefit if you paid me in nights with the amorous Jose. As soon as I open my mouth, my lovely sisters will start twitching like teenagers getting a sex lecture from an aged parent who