Due Diligence by Michael A. Kahn Read Free Book Online

he hadn’t had the nerve to disclose during the job interview. To paraphrase the beer ad, it turned out that Jack Baird was everything I wanted in a legal secretary…and more. Specifically, he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. And in exactly twelve months, he explained, he would be traveling to a hospital in Colorado for the two-and-a-half-hour surgical procedure that would complete Jack’s transformation into Jacki. In order to qualify for the surgery, however, he was required (a) to live and work as a woman for a full year, and (b) to be on hormone therapy throughout that time. That meant, he had explained, that Jack was going to vanish forever over the weekend. He planned to spend Saturday and Sunday eliminating all traces—give away Jack’s clothes, cut Jack’s face out of all the pictures in the photo albums, take down all the books from the apartment bookshelves and add an “i” to the existing first name on the inside covers. With eyes averted he told me that he hoped that I would allow him to continue as my secretary, but that he would understand if I said no.
    I thought he was joking.
    When I realized he wasn’t, I also realized that I was trapped. How could I reject him without despising myself? I’m no angel, and I was certainly not thrilled at the prospect of having a secretary who looked like Dick the Bruiser in drag. Nevertheless , I told myself, how can I say no to him? Or her ? Jack had been a truly wonderful secretary during our three weeks together, and I had developed real affection for him. So I shrugged and I forced a smile and I told him that I was looking forward to meeting Jacki on Monday morning.
    I feared that the metamorphosis would produce a brassy drag queen, but the buxom blonde who showed up for work on Monday morning was just as earnest and sweet as the ex-steelworker who had departed for good the prior Friday afternoon. And now, three weeks later, we were far enough beyond our initial awkwardness that I hadn’t realized until after the fact that during our lunch today at a nearby restaurant the two of us had gone to the ladies’ room at the same time. Nevertheless, I did realize it on our way back to the office. It was a bit unsettling.
    â€œI assume you want to file those interrogatories today?” Jacki asked as I opened the Yellow Pages.
    I nodded. “Let’s serve them by mail.”
    She smiled proudly. “I already have the stamps on the envelopes.”
    As Jacki returned to her desk, I flipped to the heading for synagogues. There were listings for Beth Abraham and a Beth Hamedrosh, but none for Beth Shalom. On a hunch, I flipped back to the section on Cemeteries, Jewish . There was a Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol Cemetery, along with B’nai Amoona, Chesed Shel Emeth, Chevra Kadisha, but no Beth Shalom.
    Then again , I reminded myself, Beth Shalom could still be a synagogue or a Jewish cemetery—just not located in St. Louis .
    The other heading on the document was “Labadie Gardens.” That sounded local. There was a street in north St. Louis called Labadie. There was also a small Missouri town west of St. Louis called Labadie. I stared at the name. Labadie Gardens didn’t ring a bell. Maybe an apartment complex? Could these be lists of tenants? Again to the Yellow Pages, this time Apartments . There were listings for several Gardens, including one under L (Lavinia Gardens), but no Labadie Gardens. It was the same under Cemeteries : plenty of gardens—Bellerive Heritage Gardens, Chapel Hill Gardens, Laurel Hill Memorial Gardens, and St. Charles Memorial Gardens—but no Labadie Gardens. I flipped back to the listings for apartments. No Beth Shalom, either.
    If Labadie Gardens were local, if it were indeed named after the street in north St. Louis, then it was probably located near its namesake, which would put it in a section of north St. Louis that had been black for as many years as I could