“A fatal accident on the Dan Ryan Expressway took the life of a twenty-four-year-old woman this evening. According to witnesses, the car veered out of control, skidded across the median, and hit an oncoming truck.”
I jerked my head up and looked at the TV. Rain lashed the camera lens, blurring everything except for a swirl of blue and red lights. The picture cleared, and I saw a cop standing on the shoulder of the highway. Behind him was a car, the front end crushed and mangled. The camera panned over to two paramedics loading a gurney into the back of an ambulance. The body was covered by a plastic sheet but a corner flapped in the wind, revealing a piece of blue and white polka dot material.
Chapter Fourteen
It’s usually around three in the morning that rational thought disappears, leaving dark conspiracies to hatch in its wake. The storm fell off to a soft rain, the sound of each drop distinct and perceptible, almost like the crackle of burning paper. I tossed and turned, my mind doubling back on itself.
A young woman covers up important information about the night of a murder, and a man who is probably innocent is convicted. Soon afterward the woman bares her soul to a video producer, telling her stories about boats and gunshots and fears that she’s being followed. That night she dies in an automobile accident.
True, it happened at night, when drivers can be tired and less than careful. True, a storm made the roads slick. True, Rhonda Disapio might have been a rotten driver.
Still.
At six in the morning I ran across the grass for the paper. As if to apologize for last night, the sun was bright, and droplets of water sparkled like jewels on the grass. Mist rose from the ground, winding around the evergreens. The yard looked like an ancient fairyland. I took the newspaper in and brewed a pot of coffee, waiting for an elf or wood nymph to hop past the window.
I spread out the paper, dumped in a packet of sweetener, and sipped coffee from my “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Shopping” mug. Maybe it should say shoplifting. The steam from the coffee tickled my nose. Did cracking jokes about it mean I was cured?
The accident happened too late to make the morning edition, and TV didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I thought about calling the state police, our version of the highway patrol. But they probably wouldn’t disclose anything unless I had a compelling reason, and with my luck, I’d end up with a grumpy Broderick Crawford on the other end.
After dropping Rachel at school, I went upstairs, sniffing my coffee. Why is it the smell is always better than the taste? Don’t get me wrong—if it tasted any better, I might have to get a new husband, clean the house in a shirtwaist dress, and greet him after work like a good little Maxwell Housewife.
In my office, I dug out my client list. The only other slow work period I recall was during the early Eighties, and I made an effort to hustle business. I culled through every corporate index at the library, wrote letters, sent demo reels. I even went on informational interviews—the kind where you know and they know there’s no possibility of getting any work, but you go through the motions anyway.
I still think the only thing all that effort produced was the illusion that I was in charge. I had a plan. Kind of like the duck and cover drills the government made kids practice during the Cold War. About as effective, too. When the economy picked up, my work would, too, and it would come in the way it always has: word of mouth.
I started making calls anyway. I didn’t expect anyone to call me back; mornings are a hassle for most people. I left messages, figuring I’d start to get callbacks that afternoon. I was rinsing my coffee cup in the sink when a thump sounded at the kitchen window.
Susan waved at me through the glass. “How about a walk?”
I grabbed my shoes and threw on a sweater.
Susan Siler and I are yin and yang. A tall, willowy redhead who always manages to look as if she’s stepped out of Vogue, she’s a gourmet cook, has impeccable taste, and seems to glide through life without the bruises, blows, and jagged edges that perforate mine.
The cool, rain-washed air was overlaid with the tang of pine and woodsmoke. We skirted a couple of puddles left behind by the storm.
“Did you hear about Phyllis Hartford?” Susan asked.
“What?”
“George moved out last week. After twenty-seven years.”
I didn’t know Phyllis well, except for her baked goods. No holiday, school function, or community event ever took place without a plate of her pastries on hand. It was her knee-jerk response to life cycle events.
“She has no idea what she’s going to do.”
“She can make lemon squares.”
Susan shot me a fierce look. “Watch it. I have the recipe.”
We made our way to the bike path that cuts a swath through the forest preserve. The leaves were just starting to turn, and the trees were shot through with glints of red and yellow. A carpet of newly fallen leaves, still holding their colors, muffled our steps. I found myself treading more respectfully, trying not to disturb the balance of nature.
“Speaking of baking, Rachel had a meltdown last night.” I told her about the clothes on the floor, the shoes in the trash, the demands for new ones.
Susan giggled.
“You think it’s funny? I just bought her some fall things. Including a really nice suit.”
“Hormones, Ellie. Get used to it. It only lasts another forty years.”
“Yeah? Well, get this.” I told Susan about her budding friendship with Carla and Derek. “She just turned thirteen, started eighth grade, and she’s already talking about driving in cars with boys.”
“So find something for her to do.”
“She already takes piano lessons and plays field hockey. But hockey ends in October.”
“What about one of those after-school programs? Justin took a great photography class last year.”
“Do you know what it’s like to sustain the interest of a thirteen-year-old girl whose brain has been corrupted by MTV?”
She flashed me her Mona Lisa smile. “I’m sure you’ll find something.”
I dodged a couple of bumblebees hovering on some goldenrod. Happily, they’d be gone soon. I don’t like flying objects with stingers. As we rounded a corner, I told her how Rhonda Disapio had accosted me in the mall.
“Do you believe her?” Susan pushed her sleeves up to her elbows. “I mean, if she committed perjury on the stand...”
“I don’t think she would have tracked me down and come all this way just to make it up.” I hesitated. “But there’s something else that kind of makes me believe her.”
“What?”
“She died in a car accident last night.”
Susan’s eyes widened and then narrowed.
I explained what happened.
“It was a pretty bad storm,” she said carefully. “The power’s still out in some places.”
“She kept saying she thought she was being followed.”
It had to be at least sixty degrees outside, but Susan shivered. “So what are you going to do?”
“I thought of calling the state police to see if they consider it an accident—”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I—I’m not sure. But even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t tell me. I’m not a relative or a friend— I hardly know the woman. And since the trial, I doubt many people would believe much of what I said.” I shrugged. “But I did talk to Brashares. You know, Santoro’s lawyer.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. In fact, I don’t think he’s pursuing the appeal all that aggressively. For example—” I stopped short.
“What?”
I didn’t answer.
“Ellie, what just happened?”
“I—I’m not sure. It’s probably nothing.”
“What is it?”
“I was just thinking that I told Brashares about my conversation with Rhonda as soon as I got home from the mall, and a few hours later, she was dead.”
Susan slowed and arched her eyebrows. “Ellie…”
“You don’t have to say it.” I held up my palm. “I’m not jumping to any conclusions. In fact, I’m not even getting involved.” I skipped a few steps ahead of her. “See? I’m fine. In fact, when I get home, I’m going to try to land some work.”
We reached the end of the bike path and turned down Sunset Ridge. Ahead of us, a dark-colored SUV slowly turned the corner. I stopped and stared after it, shading my eyes with my hand.
“Now what?” Susan asked.
As it disappeared around the bend in the road, I felt my heart pumping. “Nothing.” I couldn’t say anything. Susan doesn’t buy into conspiracies; she was just a baby when JFK died.
Chapter Fifteen
My mother always claimed I was a resilient child. I always bounced back, like one of those inflatable dummies. Though I prefer to model myself after the Black Knight in Monty Python, who kept challenging the king to battle even when his arms and legs were chopped off, by afternoon I convinced myself to move on with life. Put Santoro, Mary Jo Bosanick, and Rhonda Disapio behind me. Under the circumstances, I didn’t see what I could do. Maybe Rhonda’s death was just an accident. Maybe Santoro really did kill Mary Jo.
I called around to park districts and schools. Most of the popular after-school classes—acting, soccer, photography, computers—had been filled since July, but I did find two with space: Let’s Learn Latin and Science Club. Neither would be high on Rachel’s top ten, but I jotted them down.
I checked my machine. No callbacks yet. I eyed my Rolodex, wondering whether I’d have to cast a wider net. I wasn’t looking forward to it; the leap from friendly voices to cold calls is a big one. I picked up the clothes from Rachel’s floor and did a few loads of laundry.
The phone finally chirped around four. It was Karen Bishop, my longtime client from Midwest Mutual.
“Karen, how are you?”
“Good. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, Ellie. What’s up?”
“Just checking in to see if there’s anything I can help you out with. We haven’t spoken in—”
I heard an exhalation of breath. “I had a feeling that’s why you called.”
“Excuse me?”
Karen and I have worked together for five years. A working mother herself, she’s a no-bullshit person who’s managed to survive, even flourish, in a corporate environment. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what came next.
She hesitated. “Ellie, I can’t use you. In fact, I don’t think anyone will touch you with a ten-foot pole.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was your testimony at that trial. You attracted a lot of attention. People are a little leery of you right now.” She paused. “You know how it is.”
I gripped the phone and stared at a crack in the wall I hadn’t noticed before. “No. Karen. How is it?”
“You know the mentality around here. People don’t like anything that disrupts the status quo. That actually requires them to form an independent opinion. And you were kind of out there. Visible. Everyone saw you on the news—”
“Hold on. Am I being punished because I testified?”
“No, of course not. Even though Ryan did poke holes in your story.”
“Does that mean I’m no longer capable of producing videos?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying, Karen?”
She cleared her throat. “Frankly, Ellie, it’s the issue of consent. You released video that technically didn’t belong to you. At least that’s what I’m hearing from our attorneys.”
“Karen, the water district released it. They knew all about it.”
“But you were the one who initiated it. The lawyers say you overstepped your boundaries. It’s a bad precedent.”
“But there was nothing proprietary on it.”
“That may be, but the problem was you made the decision for them. No corporation wants their hand forced—especially by a third party. It wasn’t your tape to begin with. No one’s going to do anything about it, but they are saying it’s indicative.”
“Indicative of what?”
“Of—well, let’s just say they’ve lost confidence in your professionalism.”
I stiffened. “I can’t believe this. What do you say?”
“Ellie, come on. What do you think?”
Through my shock and anger, I could tell this was hard for her, too. “Jesus, Karen. The man was accused of a murder he probably didn’t commit. What was I supposed to do? Look the other way? Pretend it didn’t happen?”
“I know, I know. But you know as well as I do, whether you actually did anything wrong doesn’t matter. Appearance is everything. You weren’t a team player.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Karen sighed. “Look Ellie, I don’t have to tell you that people in corporations have blinders on when it comes to their own interests. Or perceived interests. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect themselves—and their jobs. The bad news is as long as I depend on them for my paycheck, I have to toe the line. But there is some good news.”
“Yeah? What?”
“It won’t last forever. Memories are short. A few months from now, this will all blow over. Call me in the spring, and we’ll talk. In the meantime, why don’t you take some time off? After what you went through, I bet you could use it.”
“Thanks.”
I disconnected. Now I understood why no one was calling me back. The Chicago video community is small, and word travels fast. Particularly when it passes through corporate communications. And, to be honest, the water district hadn’t been all that happy about releasing the tape in the first place.
But this was my livelihood, and spring was six months away. What if it didn’t “blow over”? I could be blacklisted indefinitely. They might never let me back on the “team.” Given that Barry’s child support was, at best, erratic, how was I supposed to make ends meet?
I started pacing, a white hot anger skimming my nerves. Years ago, I would have been lauded as someone who, by virtue of suffering at the hands of the power structure, had become a person of value. But those days were gone, and I needed the corporate establishment—at least their largesse—to survive. Damn the suits. Damn Kirk Ryan. And damn Chuck Brashares.
It took six hours of self-pity, a hot bath, and two glasses of wine before I realized that Karen was right. No one had coerced me onto the stand. I’d come forward voluntarily. In a way, I had initiated the chain of events that destroyed my credibility. Karen was right about something else, too: they didn’t care if I ever worked again. They had their interests to protect.
But I had mine.
I pulled back the sheets and climbed into bed. I’d gotten myself into this. I’d just have to get myself out.
Chapter Sixteen
You hear a lot about the North, South, and West Sides of Chicago, but no one talks much about the East Side, which was where I was going early Monday morning. Hugging Lake Michigan on its southeast side, the area includes working-class neighborhoods like South Chicago, South Deering, and Hegewisch.
A gassy odor filtered through the car as I got off the highway at 130th. If Chicago is the city of big shoulders, this is the meaty part. Farther east are streets with tiny bungalows, a bar on one corner, a church on the other, but 130th and Torrence is the industrial hub. Factories, warehouses, and cranes crowd together, abandoned rail cars line the streets, and smokestacks belch grit and God knows what else into the air.
I’d made a strategic choice. If the objective was to restore my credibility, I had a couple of options. I could try to verify Rhonda Disapio’s story. The problem was, I wasn’t sure how to go about it, short of setting up surveillance at the boat launch. Plus, if the boat men really did kill Mary Jo, I wasn’t anxious to put myself on their turf. The other option was to ferret out Santoro’s background, in an effort to prove he didn’t kill Mary Jo. I already knew his haunts: the bar and the docks.
It wasn’t a tough decision.
The Calumet River flows southwest from Lake Michigan to Calumet Harbor and eventually to the Mississippi River. Through yet another miracle of Chicago engineering, the harbor was dredged and transformed into a deep-water port so it could accommodate freighters from the St. Lawrence Seaway. Leading off the harbor are inlets that make the docks between them look like tines on a giant fork. It’s at these docks that commodities are off-loaded. Years ago they were transferred to rail cars and shipped across the country. Now most of the cargo travels by truck.
I threaded my way around the Ford plant at Torrence and turned on 122nd. Turning again, I drove down a road that had been patched and repatched, and from the groan of my suspension, could stand yet another go-round. A mile down the road, a battered black and white sign said I had reached the Ceres Terminal. I swung into a lot studded with chunks of broken concrete and stopped behind a shabby brick building with a roof of corrugated metal. Two cars were parked at haphazard angles in front.
It was a cool October morning, and condensation coated the cars’ windshields. Pulling on my Sox hat—I knew better than to wear a Cubs hat this far south—I wandered over to a group of longshoremen standing in front of a warehouse. Perched above them on a rusty steel scaffold was a fleshy, graying man with a clipboard. Most of the men looked old. Dressed in canvas coveralls and scuffed, steel-toed boots, several waved union cards in the air.
“Sorry, guys, that’s all I need for today,” the man with the clipboard said. “But I got a barge of steel coils coming in Friday. Be work for about a dozen of youse.”
A collective grumble went up from the men, but it was surprisingly docile, as if they were used to disappointment. I shouldered my way through to the man with the clipboard, but he climbed down off the hiring stand and pretended not to see me. Pulling a tin out of his pocket, he opened it and pinched a wad of Red Man with his thumb and forefinger.
“Excuse me,” I said as he packed it in his mouth. He squinted in my direction, one cheek plumped up like a chipmunk. “Do you know Johnnie Santoro?”
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