Chapter Two

I CALLED JENNA Adamcheck the next morning and let her know that James O’Keefe would no longer be a problem. For her sake and mine, I avoided detailing the previous night’s events. After reminding Jenna to call me should anything else go wrong, I hung up and thought further about the lie I’d told Amos. At age twenty-seven, I still didn’t fully know who the hell I was.

To be fair, there were some certainties. For my first twenty-two years as the daughter of Clair and Alan Luvello, I’d led a remarkably normal life in a remarkably normal midwestern town.

All that normality ended five years ago. Since then, I’ve been Terry Luvello, a transgender man working as a licensed private detective. While I hated the word transgender—it sounded like something from a bad Frankenstein movie—I’d made my peace with it long ago.

Had the last five years invalidated my first twenty-two? I never thought they had. Beyond gender, my true identity was a more complicated question. I’d been a daughter, a son, a sister, and a brother. I had a best friend who’d stuck with me through it all.

If pressed for an answer, I’d say I was an investigator. I loved solving puzzles, and that was true long before I received my detective’s license. It was what I liked to do, and I was good at it. Throughout all the changes in my life, it had been the one constant.

Not that being transgender didn’t affect my daily routine. Every transgender male or female had their personal list of annoyances. Depending on the individual, their list might include family rejection, employment discrimination, stereotypes, and other issues affecting the transgender community.

My own list had only one item. I called it “dealing with idiots.” While admittedly broad, it included an ever-growing list of subcategories.

That was no insult to my hometown. I’ve always believed living as a transgender person was easier in a city like Cleveland. Like most Cleveland residents, I complained about the city, its sports teams, its wildly variable weather, and its dysfunctional city government. Like most Clevelanders, I also wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else. My downtown studio apartment was in the middle of a high-crime neighborhood, but I lived in the heart of the city, and my neighbors left me alone. What more could I have asked?

Life in Cleveland was certainly far less glamorous than say, Los Angeles or Miami. On the plus side, it was also more real. People here were far too busy working, raising families, and dealing with the day-to-day realities of life to worry about a transgender male living in their midst.

Still, there were idiots. As a licensed private detective, I carried a gun for a living. For the most part, that made the idiots easier to deal with.

A phone call interrupted my moment of self-reflection. Expecting my friend, John, I picked up my cell phone without glancing at the screen. My mistake—the call was from my mother.

I loved my mother dearly, but she typically only called when she wanted to go clothes shopping. From the time I announced I was transgender, my mom took it upon herself to expand my wardrobe of male clothing, particularly in the area of men’s suits. While I never found an occasion to wear those suits, that never seemed to bother my mother. Regardless of the unwanted clothing and the logjam in my closet, I appreciated her support nonetheless.

To my surprise, this call was about something different. After inquiring about my health, Mom announced, “Your brother Paul is going to call you this evening. He wants to talk with you.”

“Mom, you know what happened the last time Paul and I spoke.”

Three years my senior, Paul was what one might charitably call a doctrinaire Catholic. Being anything but charitable, I once referred to him as the world’s first male nun. The fact that I said it to his face when he was standing next to his wife Lydia probably didn’t help. The conversation occurred when I was twenty-two, and Paul and Lydia had just begun a lecture on the evil of doubting God’s plan for my gender. Our relationship degraded from there, and Paul and I have barely spoken in the five years since.

“What could Paul possibly say to me at this point?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me anything. Just give him a chance, please?”

I agreed to hear Paul out. It was close, but I figured five minutes wasted on the phone with my brother beat a couple of hours in a clothing store. I considered just sitting back and waiting for Paul’s call but decided to text John and see if he wanted to come over and watch the baseball game.

John Travers became my best friend after we met on the playground at Saint Jerome’s Grade School. The playground had separate sections for the boys and girls, established with the typically nunnish idea that the two sexes should never interact. The church parking lot served as the boy’s section, while the girls played in a smaller, grassy field closer to the school building.

According to the nuns, this division gave the boys a larger area to play sports like football and baseball. While no one spoke about this openly, the different playing surfaces also served to minimize injuries for the girls and maximize attrition among the boys. For the nuns, that was a win-win.

Having no interest in jumping rope, I gravitated to the boy’s section, hoping to play football. John eventually talked the other boys into letting me play, and he and I have been friends ever since.

While I was a social outcast, John had girls flocking around him even in grade school. The other boys also liked John, and he was the center of virtually every social group. When we got to be teenagers, John went on numerous dates with an assortment of girls, but he still spent much of his time hanging out with me.

After college, John parlayed his skills into a career in advertising. It was a field I never much cared for, but he sought my input on every campaign. That continued even after I told him one of his logos—I called it “Fred, the wonder pigeon”—resembled a bird rising from a dog food bowl.

John was also the first person I told about my plan to transition. After hearing me out, he told me I’d always been a better male companion than his more traditional male friends. Later on, I made John stay in the room when I made the same announcement to my mother. Thinking back, that was probably not very fair—I was sure Mom assumed we were announcing our engagement.

Though he called me a wimp, John was also supportive when I changed my mind about the medical procedure that would make my decision permanent. It wasn’t that I intended to go back to being female, but hospitals terrified me. My father had died in one, and I could never quite forgive them for that. John was right though. I guess I was a wimp in thinking about it.

Unfortunately, John was unavailable for the game. Adding to my misfortune, Paul called just a moment later.

“Hey, Terry,” he said in his fake-jovial tone. “Did Mom tell you I might be calling?”

“Hi, Paul. I thought the church frowned on contacting the Antichrist.”

“Can we have a normal conversation? I’m asking for your help. I need you to go to my parish and speak with the pastor there.”

I couldn’t believe it. Five years with virtually no conversation, and Paul was calling to convert me.

“Are you insane? You know if I walk into a church, it will end badly for them and me.”

“This is about a case, not religion. Father Lawrence came to me because I mentioned that my sister, sorry, my brother,” he said hurriedly, “was a private detective.”

This was suddenly getting interesting. “What does he need me to do?”

“I don’t know. Father Lawrence wouldn’t tell me. He just asked if I could get you in to meet him at Saint Edmund’s as quickly as possible, preferably on Monday morning.”

“Tell him I’ll be there at nine o’clock.”

I hung up before Paul could respond.