We joined the throngs and climbed down the rocks to the lake. At the water’s edge the crowd diminished and we found a spot to ourselves. I slipped off my sandals and dangled my feet in the water. The lake had warmed up again and lapped against me in a gentle caress.
Burgoyne wanted to know how I proceeded with an investigation.
“Oh, I talk to people. If they get angry, then I think they know something. So I poke around and talk to more people. And after a while I’ve learned a whole lot of stuff and some of it starts fitting into a pattern. Not very scientific, I’m afraid.”
“A lot like medicine.” In the moonlight I could see his knees hunched up to his chin with his arms wrapped around them. “Although we have all this incredible technology, most diagnosis is still a matter of asking a lot of questions and eliminating possibilities…. With Tregiere’s death, who are you talking to?”
“People who knew him. People who might have known him in the wrong context.”
“That isn’t how you got your face cut open, is it?”
“Well, actually, yes. But I’ve been hurt worse than this—this is just scary because no one wants to be disfigured.”
“What was Tregiere’s relationship to Dr. Herschel?” he asked curiously. “Was he her partner?”
“Sort of. He took the clinic three mornings a week so she could make rounds, and he had an office there for his own patients. He was board-certified in obstetrics, but was completing a fellowship in perinatology.”
“So she’s pretty upset by his death?”
“Yeah, you could say that. It also puts her into a major bind with her workload.” I swatted at some mosquitoes that were beginning their high-pitched hum around my face.
He was quiet for a minute, staring out at the lake. Then he said abruptly, “I hope she doesn’t blame us for Consuelo’s death.”
I tried looking at him, but couldn’t make out his face in the dark. “You worry too much,” I said. “Send her the report you mentioned and try to put it out of your mind.”
The mosquitoes started to bite more seriously. My face, with its scent of blood close to the surface, was particularly attractive to them. I swatted a few, then told Burgoyne I thought the time had come to leave. He helped me to my feet, then put an arm around me and kissed me. It seemed perfectly natural; I swatted away another few bugs and kissed him back.
As we walked arm in arm up the rocks, he asked how much danger it would take before I dropped an investigation.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think in those terms. There’ve been a couple of times when people have tried to kill me, and not in pleasant ways. So I figure my job is to think faster than they do. When I can’t do that anymore, or move fast enough, then it’ll be time to move to Harrington and start taking aerobics classes.”
“So I couldn’t suggest that you back out of it so you don’t get hurt worse?” he said tentatively.
“You can suggest anything,” I said, pulling my arm away. “But you don’t have any claims on me and it would piss me off in a major way to have you butting into my business.”
“Well, I don’t want that—I like you better in your non-pissed-off state. Can we erase the last minute or so of tape?”
He took my hand again tentatively. I laughed reluctantly and put it back around his waist.
Mr. Contreras came out into the hall as I unlocked the front door. He was carrying a pipe wrench. He looked at our linked arms and spoke ostentatiously to me, ignoring Burgoyne.
“We didn’t have any visitors tonight, if you know what I mean, doll. You have a good time?”
“Very, thanks.” I pulled my arm away from Burgoyne, feeling a little foolish.
“I’m turning in now—just wanted to make sure you got home okay…. You want to make sure that front door closes all the way when you go out, young man. The catch doesn’t lock unless you pull it hard. I don’t want to get up in the morning and find we’ve got a lot of trash in the front hall because the bums could find their way in.”
He looked Burgoyne over fiercely, swinging the pipe wrench suggestively, bade me a final good-night, and retreated into his apartment.
Burgoyne gave a soft whistle of relief as we headed upstairs. “I was afraid he was going to come up with us to supervise.”
“I know.” I made a rueful face as I unlocked my apartment door. “I haven’t felt like this since I was sixteen and my dad waited up for me.”
I pulled out two of my mother’s red Venetian glasses and poured a couple of brandies. We took them into the bedroom with us, where I summarily dumped everything that was on the bed onto a chair, and lay down in the crumpled sheets. Burgoyne was either too much of a gentleman, or too inflamed with my manifest charms, to comment on the chaos.
We drank and necked, but my mind was half on the glasses—it had been a mistake to get them out. Finally I took Peter’s and put it carefully under the bed with mine.
“This is the only real legacy I have from my mother,” I explained. “She smuggled them out of Italy in the one suitcase she could carry when she left, and I can’t think about anything else when I’m worrying about them.”
“Just as well,” he murmured into my neck. “I can’t think about two things at once, anyway.”
For the next hour or so he demonstrated the value a good knowledge of anatomy can have in the right hands. My detective experience came in handy, too.
We fell asleep in a damp heap. Burgoyne’s beeper woke me with a start at three—a patient had started labor but his associate was covering. At six his watch alarm twittered urgently; even a suburban doctor has to be on duty early. I woke up long enough to lock the door behind him, and went back to bed.
At nine I got up again, did some exercises to keep loose while my face healed, and dressed for work: jeans, oxfords, loose shirt, and gun. I anointed my face, put on a wide-brimmed straw hat, and went out to greet the day. Before hunting out Fabiano I drove over to Lotty’s clinic to get the key to Malcolm’s apartment.
13
Open Clinic
Lotty operates out of a storefront on Damen Avenue. Damen runs most of the length of the city, and a ride along it is a ride through the heart of Chicago’s identity, past sharply segregated ethnic communities—Lithuanians from blacks, blacks from Hispanics, Hispanics from Poles—as you travel north. Lotty’s clinic is on a tired part of the long avenue, with a mix of houses and small shops all straggling on the edge of decay. Most of the people who live there are retired, maintaining dilapidated bungalows on Social Security. It’s a quiet area, with not much violent crime and usually plenty of street parking. But not today.
A police car blocked the intersection where I wanted to turn right, its lights flashing. Beyond it, I could see hordes of people in the streets and on the sidewalks. A mobile television van stood out above the crowd; no other cars were out. I wondered if some local saint was being honored with a parade; perhaps Lotty hadn’t even opened the clinic.
I leaned out my car window to call to the uniformed men in the car. “What’s going on down there?”
With usual police informativeness, the driver answered, “Street’s closed, lady. You’ll have to go down Seeley.”
I ended up parking four blocks away and found a pay phone on a corner as I walked back over. I tried Lotty’s apartment first, convinced that she hadn’t come in to the clinic. When there was no answer, I rang her office. The line was busy.
I came at the building from the south. Here the crowds weren’t quite as heavy, although there was another police car at the far end of the block. The air was filled with shouts coming through a bullhorn and indistinguishable chants. The sound was familiar to me from my student-protest days long ago—a demonstration. I noticed uneasily that the closer I got to the clinic, the thicker the crowd became.
I obviously wasn’t going to get to the front door without a struggle, so I cut through a lot to the alley and went to the back entrance. The mob out front, playing to the cameras, hadn’t come here
yet. It took me considerable pounding and shouting to get a response, but Mrs. Coltrain, Lotty’s receptionist, finally came to the door. She cautiously opened it the length of a chain. Her face cleared when she saw it was me.
“I’ve never been gladder to see you, Miss Warshawski. Dr. Herschel has her hands full and the police are no help. No help at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were in collusion with the marchers.”
“What’s going on?” I came inside and helped her reestablish the chains.
“They’re out there yelling awful things. That Dr. Herschel is a murderer, that we’re all going to hell. And poor Carol, just back from her sister’s funeral.”
I frowned. “Anti-abortionists?”
She nodded her head worriedly. “I raised six children and I’d do it again. But my husband made good money, so we could afford to feed them all. Some of these women who come in—they’re no more than little girls themselves. No one to help them feed themselves, let alone a child. And now I’m a murderer?”
I patted her arm sympathetically. “You’re not a murderer. I know you’re not happy with the idea of abortions, and I admire you for sticking with Lotty even though she includes them in her practice. And defending her, too…. Who’s out there? Is it the Eagle Forum or IckPiff or don’t you know?”
“I couldn’t tell you. We had a poor young girl come in at eight this morning, and they were already waiting. How they knew who it was I couldn’t say, but as soon as she arrived they started their yelling.”
The back of the clinic was used as a storeroom, everything very tidy and sterile. I followed Mrs. Coltrain through to the front. The shouting was much more audible there, and I could make out the individual screams.
“You don’t care if babies die! Freedom of choice, what a lie!”
“Murderers! Nazis!”
Someone, probably Mrs. Coltrain, had drawn the blinds in the front windows. I separated two slats just enough to peer between them.
In front of the clinic, holding the bullhorn, was a thin, hyperthyroid man. His face was flushed with the earnestness of his feelings. I’d never met him before, but his picture had been in the papers and on TV numerous times: Dieter Monkfish, head of IckPiff—the Illinois Committee to Protect the Fetus. His supporters included a number of college-age young men, all fervently committed to carrying their own pregnancies to term, and a variety of middle-aged women, whose faces seemed to say: My life was made miserable by maternity, and so should everyone else’s be.
Lotty came up behind me and repeated Mrs. Coltrain’s greeting. “I’ve never been gladder to see you, Vic. What a mob! I’ve had a few people leafleting once or twice, but never anything like this. How did you hear about it?”
I shook my head. “I came here by chance, hoping to get Malcolm’s keys from you. Then I saw the crowd in the street and got worried. Why did they all converge at once? Was anything special happening here?”
Her thick brows snapped together over the prominent nose. “I performed a therapeutic abortion this morning—but I do three or four a month. And this was not a special case. Eighteen-year-old girl with one child, trying to get her life together a little. First trimester, of course—can’t do anything else in the clinic.
“I’m telling you, Vic—I’m scared. There was a night in Vienna when a Nazi mob gathered in front of our house. They looked just like this—animals, oozing hate. They broke all the windows. My parents and my brother and I fled through the garden and hid at a neighbor’s and watched them burn our house to the ground. Never did I expect to feel that same fear in America.”
I gripped her shoulder. “I’ll call Lieutenant Mallory. Maybe he can get some more active police up here than you seem to have. What about your patients?”
“Mrs. Coltrain called to reschedule appointments. Surely these hoodlums won’t be back tomorrow. Emergencies we’re routing to Beth Israel. But two women fought through the mob with their children, and I don’t think I can lock up—I can’t have my patients abused and not be here to help them.
“Besides, we still have the young woman who seems to be the precipitating cause of all this. She’s doing fine, but she’s rather shaken up, not up to walking through these frightening animals. And the police—the police just sit. They say there is no problem, no peace being disturbed. Of course, the neighborhood thinks it’s better than a circus.”
Carol came out to the waiting room. She’d lost weight since she’d last had her uniform on; it hung slackly across her hips and breasts.
“Hi, Vic. Protestors sent by God to keep our minds off our own troubles. What do you think?”
“For the moment, they’re just harassing, playing to the TV cameras. Any warning that this might happen? Hate mail? Phone calls?”
Lotty shook her head. “Dieter Monkfish has come around a couple of times passing out leaflets, but since most of the people coming in here are women laden down with children, even he has felt a little foolish about lecturing them on the sanctity of life. Brave people send us a few anonymous hate letters every month, but no bombs or anything like that. This isn’t really an abortion clinic, you know, so it doesn’t attract much attention.”
I went over to the reception area to use the phone. All the lights on the console were on. Mrs. Coltrain bustled up behind me to help me to a line.
“I put all the phones on hold because we were getting flooded with nuisance calls. Most of them obscene. I hope no one’s trying to get through with an emergency.”
I dialed the Eleventh Street police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Mallory. A long series of clicks and transfers, and Bobby came on the line.
I dutifully asked after Eileen, their six children and five grandchildren, and explained where I was.
“They’re intimidating patients away from the clinic, and the local precinct just has two cars observing the street. Can you get someone to move these people away from the front of the door?”
“No way, Vicki. Not my territory. That’s something they’re deciding locally. You should know by now that you can’t just call the police to run errands for you.”
“Bobby, darling. Lieutenant Mallory. I’m not asking you to run an errand. I’m asking for protection for a tax-paying citizen whose patients are being threatened with grievous bodily harm if they try to come into her office.”
“You see anyone being threatened?”
“At the moment, the marchers have such total command of the street that no one can get close enough to be threatened.”
“I’m sorry, Vicki—but it doesn’t sound like a serious problem to me. And even if it was, you’d have to call the local precinct. If they try to murder anyone I’ll come over.”
I supposed that was his idea of a joke. If it affects women or children, it can’t be serious. Furious, I tried Detective Rawlings.
He gave a sarcastic little chuckle when I finished my speech. “You give us a little grudging cooperation on a murder case, and then you want us to come running when you’re in trouble? Typical, Ms. W., typical. Citizens won’t help us—then they shriek and howl at the first hint of danger—where’re the police?”
“Spare me the public-spirit lecture, Detective. As I recall, I’ve agreed to press charges against your pal Sergio—against my better judgment. You pick him up yet?”
“We’re still looking,” he admitted. “But he won’t have gone too far. Someone told me that little punk Fabiano got all beat up—you know anything about it?”
“What I heard, he was driving too fast and smashed into his tough Eldorado windshield. Least, that’s what they told me at the funeral yesterday…. Can we get the street cleared here a bit?”
“I’ll talk to my watch commander, Warshawski. Not my call. But don’t expect any miracles unless they start blowing up the place.”
“Exactly the moment at which help will be most useful,” I agreed sardonically, and hung up.
“What we need are some federal marshals,” I told Lotty and Carol. “But maybe we can patch so
mething together instead. Protection, not confrontation. Can Paul and Herman help out? And I suppose Diego?”
Carol shook her head. “They had to lose too much time from work last week because of Consuelo. I thought of them, but I can’t ask it of them—they could well lose their jobs.”
I bit my thumb while I thought. “Can we meet people at either end of the street and have an escort bring them down the alley?”
Lotty hunched a shoulder. “It’s better than nothing, I suppose—though I don’t know how people will find out where to come.”
“Word of mouth, I suppose. Let’s reopen the switchboard—if patients call, give me a couple of hours to get some help together and start seeing them at noon.”
I spent the next half hour on the phone. Unable to get the Streeter brothers, who usually help me with heavy jobs, I reluctantly thought of my downstairs neighbor. As I’d feared, Mr. Contreras was delighted with a bugle call to action and promised to line up a few of his machinist pals—also retired but still, he assured me, glad to have a chance to use their muscles.
The rest of the morning I sat in Lotty’s office answering the barrage of calls. Most were from people worried about the clinic, not phoning for medical care. The legitimate patients I switched to Mrs. Coltrain. Unless someone had a serious problem, she urged them to call back later in the week. For some, Lotty listened to symptoms over the phone and called prescriptions in to a pharmacy. Emergencies were sent to Beth Israel.
The rest of the time I deflected obscene phone calls. The love of fetal life prompted people to the most incredible language. A little before noon, weary of the entertainment, we put the phones back on hold while I went out of the area to a hardware store to buy a whistle. A few loud blasts into an obscene caller’s ear might leave a more lasting impression. I also stopped at a grocery store for some food in case we had to sit through a real siege.
Bitter Medicine Page 10