Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
"But they don't
always have to be true."
He looked at her and
smiled. It was half because he enjoyed her optimism and half to portray a
heartiness that he didn't feel. She was quiet again. Her chin was still on her
wrist and she was looking at him with an expression of frank thoughtfulness and
curiosity, like a boy might examine a new green bug found under the porch
light.
"This is a hard
one, Hess."
"They're the worst. A
guy who doesn't regret it in the morning. Just starts planning the next
one."
"But isn't that a
weird look in the sketch? In his eyes, like he's sorry or sad or something?"
He nodded. He was proud of
her in that moment and wished there was a way to say so without making her feel
small.
"I've never seen a
look like that," she said. "I wonder if Kamala Petersen might have
added it."
She stood then and slid
the chair under the desk with a push of her foot. She put her hands on her hips
and looked down at him uncertainly. "Well, it's Friday evening,
Lieutenant. Want to get something to eat?"
Hess said fine with me
before reminding himself that it was going to take considerable effort to leave
his chair.
Too late now, he thought.
He lay his arms along the rests and set his feet squarely and looked at Merci
again to see if she was registering his weakness. She was standing close by
with one of her large hands out and he took it before he realized everything
that taking it would mean.
He glided
upward on her strength.
Colesceau sat in his darkened living room at 12
Meadowlark and listened to the chanting of the crowd on the street outside. The
blinds were closed and the lights were off. He stared openly at the images on
the TV screen but his attention was outside with die mob. His heart felt heavy
enough to stop beating. Five days before the nightmare would end, and this is
what they do to you. He felt a rage so overwhelming his arms trembled with the
power and urgency of it. He felt the weight of ice picks in his hands.
When the chanting stopped
he went over and worked the blinds open just a crack so he could see out. But
as soon as they saw the plastic louvers move they started yelling again. It had
gone like this for two straight hours now, and six hours yesterday after work.
It amazed him how a news story in yesterday's morning paper hatched a crowd so
instantly. One day he had privacy; the next he had these . . . concerned
citizens howling for his blood. And photographers bushwacking him as he got out
of his
little red truck.
But he looked through the
thin crack anyway, at the outraged and outrageously beautiful face of Trudy
Powers contorted into a mask of purest hatred. She raised and lowered a sign in
rhythm to the chant:
MAKE
our
NE/G
Hborhood
SAFE
for the CHILdren!
MAKE our
NElGHborhood
SAFE
for the CHILdren!
Her sign said
Rapists make bad neighbors
and
Trudy waved it up and down like a fan at a soccer game.
Jesus, thought Colesceau,
I don't exactly love children but I've never even considered hurting one. He
wondered what the police had told these people. Did they know his convictions
were only for attempted rape of very old, pathetically ugly and helpless women,
not the glowingly healthy children of people like Trudy Powers? Did they know
he was pumped full of female hormone and quite harmless? He was astonished. He
touched his crotch—a bag of dumplings.
The reporters were still
there, too. They were different ones but you could tell what they were—cameras
and microphones and grim, hungry faces. There were two big news vans parked on
the other side of the street. One of them was from the channel he was watching!
Five more
days. Now this. Thank you, Holtz-Thank you,
Carla. Thank you, fucking police.
At
least
in
Romania they
just shoot you and get it over with.
He twisted the blinds shut all the way again and went
into the kitchen. He made a big Bloody Mary with the mix from the fridge and
the vodka from the freezer and about a tablespoon of hot sauce.
MAKE
our
NElGHborhood
SAFE
for
the CHILdren!
His phone rang again. Holtz had called once yesterday
and once today. Kaufman, the ACLU lawyer, had called twice today and promised
to call again. Sure enough:
Mr.
Colesceau,
this is Seth Kaufman of the American Civil Liberties Union again. I just wanted
to make it clear that we're concerned about you and your rights. We think we
can help you and we're willing to do so. I'll leave my number again and
encourage
you to call. We can't help you
if you won't help us help you. My home number is . . .
Colesceau felt a rush of
anger surge through him and he picked up the phone.
"This is
Matamoros." "Good, great. I'm glad you picked up. Now, how are you
holding up?"
"It is difficult.
I feel like an animal."
"They're treating you
worse than an animal. I hear something in the background. Are those your
neighbors?"
"They chant like
monks, hours at a time. I feel like it may cause me to lose my mind."
"Can I come over?
Like right now? 1 think we can get a court order to desist against them, or at
least move them back to the nearest public place. You live in an apartment
complex,
correct?"
"The Quail Creek
Apartment Homes in Irvine."
"Well, that's private
property. Do you have a back door into your unit?"
"None."
"All right. Look,
there are a lot of people out there who are on your side. And we can convince a
lot of others, if you're willing to stand your ground and speak your piece.
We'll talk about our options. Would you mind making a statement on-camera? It
could go a long way to getting some public sympathy coming our
direction."
"I have nothing
to hide. But I don't like cameras."
"No cameras, then.
Until we meet, don't say anything to anybody. Don't open the door. Don't say
anything to those people. I'll be coming down from L.A. so let's say exactly
one hour from now. I can get you out of there, we can go get some coffee or
dinner if you want. Or I'll bring some takeout."
"That would be
welcome. I need to go out."
"Do you have a copy
of the medical protocol you signed when they released you from the
hospital?"
"I have it-perfect.
Give me your
address."
• • •
Kaufman brought an
overcoat that Colesceau pulled on over his own before they walked through the
front door and into the jeers of the crowd. Even with his face buried down in
the big coat he could see the bright jolts of light from die photographers'
flash attachments, and he could feel the white brightness of the lights set up
for the video shooters. And the chant tripled in volume as he moved toward the
driveway and Kaufman's car.
...
get out
of
Irvine ... miserable creep . . . pack your bags
...
the fuck out. . . rapist,
raper, human swine . . . don't come back . . . keep on going . . . filthy
animal. . . don't sleep or we'll bum your place down with you in
it. . .
"Middle America snarls," whispered Kaufman as he swung open
his car door and guided Colesceau in. "You're just this week's entertainment."
A moment later Colesceau's
head pitched forward as Kaufman backed out of the driveway and swung wide, then
shifted into drive and gunned it down the street.
Kaufman suggested a
family-style restaurant on a busy boulevard up in Costa Mesa. He spoke to the
waitresses by name and seemed expected. Colesceau was shocked to be introduced
and not see them recoil in disgust. Pratt and his sneaky sidekick Garry had
told all their customers about him before he even started work there,
apparently, and rarely did he meet someone who failed to register morbid
interest. You could see it in their eyes.
The booth was back in the
corner by the rest room hallway. It was large and private and upholstered in
vinyl. Plastic ferns hung above it from thin chains. There was a bus tray piled
high with dirty dishes across the aisle from the table in front of them, but
other than that the table was fine.
He studied the lawyer for
the first time: a pretty man of perhaps thirty, physically fit, sandy brown
hair and very blue eyes. Pretty in the sense that he was so vibrantly groomed:
teeth and gums sparkling, fingernails coated with clear polish, casually
perfect hair. Colesceau, no stranger to fine menswear—at least as a window
shopper—priced out Kaufman's tie at $80. It made absolute sense to him to be
represented by a lawyer who was successful.
First Kaufman told him what the ACLU was, how it
stood for protecting individual constitutional rights, often from those very
agencies that were supposed to guarantee them— government, law enforcement, the
courts of law, and so on. There was no charge for their representation. All
ACLU attorneys were paid an annual salary, modest at best. They had been behind
some of the biggest decisions ever made in this country, and had successfully
defended men and women from small civil courtrooms to the Supreme Court in
Washington, D.C. Kaufman personally saw his organization as the best and final
weapon a citizen could use against the powers of the state. A weapon against
fascism, racism, the abridgment of personal liberties. A sort of David to the
state's Goliath.
Kaufman spit all this out
in a hurry, and Colesceau had the impression he'd said it a million times
before. The waitress took their orders.
"Are you willing to
speak to me frankly?" Kaufman asked when she was gone. "I have
nothing to hide."
The lawyer studied him
with his cool blue eyes. "Did you bring the protocol for the hormone
treatment?"
Colesceau withdrew the
document from his coat pocket and handed it to Kaufman.
Kaufman unfolded it and
smoothed it out against the tabletop. "Have you had all the injections,
every week?"
"Every
week."
"What's it feel
like? To have that hormone in you."
Colesceau looked hard at
the lawyer, then out toward the bus tray of dirty dishes still sitting in the
aisle, then to the stout redhaired waitress busying herself under the
flickering fluorescent light behind the counter. She glanced at him with
exaggerated indifference.
"Don't answer that if
you're uncomfortable. I just remember reading the Assembly floor analysis of
AB 3339—the chemical castration bill—and thinking what a goddamned barbaric
thing it was."
Colesceau almost liked this man. "It feels
terrible. It turns you into a woman very slowly. But not all the way. I have
gained weight and my genitals got small. My breasts have grown unnaturally. The
hair on my face turned to fuzz. I'm irritable and emotional in a way I never
was before. I feel like my soul has been asked to change. I feel like I am
being forced to become a person different than the one I was born."
Kaufman had produced a
narrow notebook and was writing in it now. "What's it done to your sex
drive? Do you get erections?"
"Almost
never."
Colesceau looked at the
lawyer. This lawyer is really no different than anybody else, he thought: he's
nosy, impudent, disrespectful and gleefully fascinated by the plight of my
testicles. Colesceau imagined his own right arm in a short, chopping motion,
totally unexpected, delivering an ice pick straight through the expensive cotton
shirt and through the attorney's stunned heart.
What's it feel like? To have that pick in you?
"Can you describe to
me what it
feels
like to be
chemically castrated, then to see attractive women, or to be around
them?"
At this point the soft
drinks arrived and Colesceau went into that strange state in which he both
observed and participated. He watched himself sitting there, as if he were
looking in from the other side of the window. He saw the top of Kaufman's head,
as if he were a bird perched in the fake fern above them. He heard himself
chattering away now, laying it on thick for Kaufman, being as humble and
misunderstood and innocently wronged as possible.
"...
and you can understand the great disappointment of
my mother. Without her love and attention, without her support, I truly think
I might die."
He was careful to use the
word
support
because Americans
loved to use it so much, as if friends and family were actual structural
elements that held them in place, as if they were so physically fat and
mentally weak they'd collapse without
support.