“Miss Swanson, will you please state your full name.”

“My full name … my full name … my real name is Reverend Daniel Pike.”

Carson Calloway was seldom surprised by anything. A crime of biblical proportions or the smallest infraction that managed to blow the lid off a completely different case. Nothing ever fazed him and shock was not a word in his vocabulary … until that moment. In fact, if Calloway could speak, he’d have stated that there was now an all new word in his vocabulary … flabbergasted.

Jack Vincennes didn’t move a muscle, didn’t blink an eye or draw in breath. He just looked at the test subject and searched hard for anything that might have given it all away. The Reverend Daniel Pike looked better than the girl Jack had schtupped the very night before, for Christ’s sake!

Bud White’s mind went blank … clean as the driven snow because if it hadn’t, he’d have leapt over the table and beat the living shit out of the fucking man. What the fuck? He flexed his fists, drew in a cooling breath, but his blood was near boiling and he knew it. “I’m leaving,” he grunted.

“You stay right where you are, White,” Calloway growled and if it weren’t for the fact that Bud respected the detective in charge, he’d have been long gone.

Stensland, already drunk as a skunk, wasn’t nearly as easily controlled. He stood, laughed aloud then spat across the room, splattering his whiskey reeking spittle onto Pike’s cheek before he stumbled out of the Victory and into Bud White’s back seat.

Edmund Exley was speechless. He thought that he knew everything about perversions. He was in the war in Asia, after all. But this?  This was beyond anything he’d ever heard of, or more to the point, experienced. It was appalling that this man could deceive all of them so convincingly. They were as jaded as any LAPD detectives could be. And what about this man’scustomers? Did they know her secret or were they as deceived as the detectives?

He studied Miss Swanson, squirming in her, or was it his, chair. Clearly uncomfortable, nervous, with a look of apprehension and terror on his face. Obviously, this man had a lot to lose if this ever got out beyond the Victory and that got Ed to thinking. What would make him risk so much? He thought of several possible reasons, but none of them rang true. This was a reverend, a respected member of the community. Something like this couldn’t be a lost bet or the result of a prank. This man’s makeup was flawless, noticeably applied with care and practice. His attire was chosen carefully, cut and designed to suggest curves and bulges that weren’t there and hide those that were. The whole package intended to be both alluring and deceptive.

He glanced at the remaining detectives, openly shocked and uncomfortable with the interview subject. They all were boldly staring at the man sitting before them. Even Calloway was astounded. None of them dared to speak, much less ask a question. So, Ed gulped and jumped in.

“Miss … er, Mr. Pike, why are you a female prostitute?”

Off towards the corner, Jack Vincennes’ thoughts were caught somewhere between revulsion and humor; while he didn’t have the guts to ask the first question as the weasel had, he had to admit to being curious as to the good Reverend Pike’s answer. After all, it wasn’t likely that he’d been picked up on his way to a costume party dressed as Uncle Milty.

Reverend Pike knew what they were all thinking; it wasn’t like they had tried to hide their reactions. So, what was this? Some sort of LAPD training session on how to deal with deviants?

Please Lord, only with Your help I can survive this evening …

He squared his chin and forced himself to meet Exley’s gaze. “I’m not a prostitute of any kind, Officer.”

“Then what the fuck were you doing, parading around like some sort of freak?” Bud’s voice was full of undisguised menace, and he leaned in closer, his eyes hard and even …frightened … judging from Reverend Pike’s perspective, although he doubted the large man would ever admit to such an emotion.

“Easy, stick to the prescribed questions.” Calloway warned, suddenly doubting the wisdom of interviewing this particular subject at all. It might be far safer for the man if they ended this whole fiasco.

“I don’t think your friends at UCLA considered that we’d come across a situation like this.” Vincennes stated. “But I’ll give it a go.” He leaned his shoulder against the wall behind him and examined the list for a suitable follow up question. “Ah, here we are, number one …Tell us about your childhood. Where were you born?”

Reverend Pike relaxed a little as he considered his response. Although he was trying to be brave in facing these men, he felt his resolve faltering. “I was born in New York, but I grew up in Iowa. My father died of tuberculosis when I was five and we, my mother and I, moved in with my grandmother to help make ends meet. She owned a ladies’ apparel shop in Dayton and we lived directly above it.”

A silent expression of A-HA seemed to reverberate through the room and Calloway threw out the next question. “Was it a happy childhood?”

“I suppose you could say it was an average childhood. I didn’t have a lot of friends although I knew that my mother and grandmother loved me.” Reverend Pike considered his answer after he spoke, recalling how his mother often left him in the care of his grandmother for several days at a time. He hadn’t discovered until much later that his mother was an alcoholic and that his grandmother had forbidden her from seeing either of them whenever she was on a bender. In the beginning he was told that his mother was out of town looking for work, but he soon realized that when she finally returned home, she never had any money to show for it.

“Were either your mother or your grandmother abusive?” This again from Vincennes who along with Calloway was doing his best to keep one eye on White. The burly detective’s lips had been pressed into a thin tight line for several minutes and the officers present knew White’s volatile nature all too well.  

“My grandmother was a very strict and religious woman, but she never raised her hand to me unless I deserved it. My mother had a very sweet disposition with long periods of deep depression.” Reverend Pike recalled the heated and often violent arguments that his mother and grandmother often had and how he’d hide from both of them until it was all over. He’d try to comfort his mother afterwards by climbing into bed with her and telling her that everything would be all right, and she’d cling to him, calling him her little man. 

“If you’re not prostituting yourself, then why do you dress up like a woman and go out in public?” This question came from Exley, who despite his own sense of revulsion couldn’t help but wonder what was driving the Reverend Daniel Pike to put himself in such jeopardy. The man was a seemingly respected member of the community with a responsibility to lead by example and the whole situation just didn’t make any kind of sense. “Are you a homosexual?”

Bud snorted an angry laugh, his knuckles growing white from gripping the back of his chair. “Of course he’s a fag. Why else would he get off on dressing like this?”
 
“I’m married and have two children; a boy who just turned eight and a daughter, six. My wife is a good woman and I love her. I dress up like this because … it makes me feel good. I wasn’t trying to solicit any illegal activity. Sometimes I just like to go out in such a manner.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Jack Vincennes hadn’t intended on asking any questions outside those presented on the list, but his curiosity had a morbid streak and he couldn’t resist. “Do you get some sort of kick out of this kind of behavior?”

“My grandmother often used me as a dressmaker’s dummy of sorts and she’d have me stand for hours while she made alterations for whatever dress she was working on. I guess it started not too long after my mother and I moved in with her. I don’t know if I get a kick out of this whole thing, if one could call it that. It’s just part of who I am, and I can’t expect you or anyone else to understand when I hardly understand it all myself.”

“But you’re a minister; don’t you see the obvious conflict?” commented Exley.

“This is fucking bullshit and a waste of my time.” Bud stood up so fast that his chair tipped over. “This fag needs to spend a night downtown, locked up with a few others so he’ll see what happens to freaks like him.”

“I’m not the one casting the first stone or acting out in anger, Detective.”

Bud lost it and lunged for the Reverend, but Calloway had been on his guard and quickly put himself between the two men while Vincennes moved in to offer backup. After a momentary scuffle with Calloway, Bud threw up his hands and backed off.

“I’m finished with this.” He shot a murderous look at Reverend Pike and turned to go, his shoulder bumping hard against Exley’s as he went out the door.

w

Calloway watched the entire detail crumble before his very eyes. What the hell did he expect anyway? The strange test subject was bound to bring out the worst in them all. But Carson’s mind was going deeper. It was questioning the whole fucking thing. Putting the study into perspective, he realized that he was completely frustrated and ready to throw in the fucking towel.

Was all this doing any good? For anyone? Hooker or detective? That evening it was about to ruin the Reverend Daniel Pike’s life; White was back to being a sullen, brutal bastard; Stensland was so far off the wagon his drunken snore could be heard from outside the Victory; Vincennes had returned to his showboating ways and once again, all his focus was on himself and his own cases. Only Exley seemed to be gaining anything positive from the detail and that could easily be because the weasel was so damn pliable.

Calloway took one last look around the filthy, ugly motel room and everything inside of him knew it was time to call it quits. He didn’t even bother announcing an end to the session. Detective Carson Calloway, disillusioned and more pissed off than he’d been since playing defense for his high school football team, gathered up the tape recording equipment and left the Victory without another word. And he was hoping that someone would take the transvestite back to the fucking station.

w

Jack always suspected that lady fate had a strange sense of humor and she was exercising it with a vengeance at that very moment. In the front seat of his car sitting directly across from him was Daniel Pike, AKA, Irene Swanson. Seemed that he pulled the short straw for the evening and had the dubious honor of driving the evening’s interview subject back into Hollywood. What happened to him after that was hardly his concern.

The night air was damp and his front window had fogged over. While he waited for his car’s heater to warm up he tried not to breathe in too deeply lest he get too strong a whiff of his passenger’s perfume. It figured that the good reverend would wear something as distinctive as Shalimar. It also happened to be Linda’s favorite and while Jack could still see the amusing side of the evening’s events he realized that just maybe fate was doing him a favor; from that night forward, he doubted that he’d equate the scent of that particular fragrance with his soon to be ex-wife ever again. Emblazoned on his psyche was the vision of Irene Swanson. That would be enough to make any normal man think twice before buying a drink for an attractive woman sitting alone in a darkened bar.

“Don’t touch that.”   

Reverend Pike had reached up to tilt the rearview mirror in his direction, his hand holding a tube of lipstick. “I’m just trying to make myself presentable, Detective.” He reached up to fluff his wig, spending more time than was necessary with straightening the fringe of ebony bangs across his brow.

Jack wished that he’d had the Reverend sit in the back seat instead, but then he’d have to worry about seeing his reflection in his mirror. He wasn’t sure what was more unnerving: the simple knowledge that he was sitting next to a man who was pretending to be a woman, or his own fear of being pulled over for some off the wall traffic violation and all the shit he’d have to put up with afterwards. “Listen, what you do to get your kicks isn’t any of my business, but could you give it a rest, Reverend? “