Ghost Country

by Sara Paretsky

  The best that Sandstrom could come up with was a drunk man who rocked back and forth on his heels, laughing. “That Starr, she somethin’, man. Whew, she touch that bread and it turn into ham sandwiches, fried chicken, whatever you most got a taste for. Everybody got some, must have been two hundred people lined up for dinner. She suck out of that beer bottle and hand it around, and, boy howdy, it turn into enough Colt 45 to drown everybody’s thirst.”

  The station didn’t think the footage with the drunk made an attractive impression, so they only ran a report of the rumor, and an interview about it with Monsignor Mulvaney and the Orleans Street Church’s Pastor Emerson. Both clergymen were outraged by the blasphemy that Starr and Luisa—and Mara Stonds—were stirring up.

  “It’s one thing for women to believe that the Virgin is hearing their prayers,” Mulvaney said, “but quite another for this creature Starr to pretend to recreate the miracles Our Lord performed at Galilee. This is blasphemy, bordering on witchcraft. I strongly urge you to stop publicizing this woman’s activities—it only encourages her.”

  Naturally Channel 13 wasn’t about to stop its broadcasts—its ratings had never been higher. Unfortunately for Don Sandstrom, he and his camera weren’t on Lower Wacker Drive the day Pastor Emerson and Monsignor Mulvaney decided to take matters into their own hands and confront the women in person. They were joined by Dr. Hanaper from Midwest Hospital, who had met the two clerics on numerous television shows that discussed the women at the wall.

  Midwest’s psychiatric wing was doing land-office business with the people who were flocking to the wall. The summer heat, the expectations tourists brought with them, the strangeness of the city for foreigners or country dwellers, all exacted a toll from miracle seekers. A family from upstate New York, overwhelmed by the vastness of the city and the cavernous reaches of Lower Wacker Drive, jumped into the Chicago River together, all nine holding hands. Other visitors developed amnesia, or fancied themselves as incarnations of the Messiah, or the Virgin Mary. At least once a day, sometimes more often, police on Lower Wacker had to summon a Fire Department ambulance to escort a frenzied tourist to the hospital.

  Hanaper, conducting rounds, listening to tales of the wall, to tales of Starr—her electric energy, her eyes that saw into the bottom of your soul, her miraculous cures—listening to vivid fantasies about Starr, wanted to see her for himself. He went to the wall several times, stopping on his way to work or drifting over during lunch, but Starr was never there when Hanaper arrived, and he had to rely on television footage, or the garish snapshots tourists on the ward managed to take.

  Starr was a clear example of feminism run amok, Hanaper told his residents and medical students. Her extreme sexuality, bordering on nymphomania, made her expose herself to men in the hopes of personal validation through sexual fulfillment. “You’ve seen her a number of times yourself, haven’t you, Dr. Tammuz? You’re the expert on Freud. Wouldn’t you agree? She rouses the latent appetites that the women who seek her out have repressed.”

  Hector, seeing the glitter in his chief’s eyes, realized that Hanaper’s own latent appetites were close to the surface. I’ll protect you from him, Starr, he whispered to himself, and when Hanaper asked Hector for the most likely time to encounter Starr and her entourage, that ragtag troop of Luisa, Mara, Jacqui, and Nanette, Hector sent him at noon or dawn, never at sundown.

  It was just a fluke, then, that brought Starr to the wall one day at noon when Hanaper, Monsignor Mulvaney, and Pastor Emerson were there as well. The monsignor explained to the police who he was, that he had come with a doctor and a Protestant minister to try to talk some sense into these deluded creatures. The police promptly escorted the men through the crowd so that they stood in front of Starr and her friends. There was a ripple of indignation from women who had been waiting since dawn for a sight of Starr, but none of the men paid any attention to it.

  Hanaper whistled appreciatively under his breath. Just as he thought: her body, a handicap for the poor creature, probably had been made to feel self-conscious in adolescence and had adopted a provocative posture as a defense mechanism, the attitude of “if you can’t lick your tormentors, join them,” then the adage set off a vision of himself licking those breasts, cream flowing into his mouth…. Hanaper’s glance flickered upward to the woman’s face. He had a momentary illusion that she could read his mind, as if his fantasy were written on his face.

  ’These women belong in a hospital,” Hanaper said to Monsignor Mulvaney.

  Mara, hearing him, was frightened: they’ll lock me up, they’ll lock up Starr. She pulled on Starr’s arm, then besought Luisa to explain the danger they were in, but Starr only laughed and Luisa said, Oh, don’t worry, they’re just here to show how important they are.

  The three men lectured Starr about her pernicious influence on impressionable women. Faced with those unwinking black eyes, Pastor Emerson faltered in the midst of a plea to let the miracle seekers return to their homes and families.

  I’m sure you don’t mean to, Emerson said, but you’re inspiring unreachable fantasies in all these people.

  Dr. Hanaper said, no, she can’t help it, this is the kind of condition modern medication is designed to control.

  Oh, nonsense, the monsignor snapped. We use medical conditions as a shield, to avoid taking responsibility for our actions. She knows exactly what she’s doing—look at her expression.

  And while the men argued among themselves, and lectured Starr, none of the three could take their eyes from her body, the full red lips with their promise of fuller lips below, the arms like bronze cradles that could rock you close. Faces shining, trouser fronts bulging, all three men talking louder, harder, to overcome their treacherous bodies. And then Dr. Hanaper, furious at Starr’s laugh—a raucous blast that echoed from the steel girders like an elephant’s trumpet—announced he would have the police bring her by force to the hospital. But when the doctor ran over to summon one of the patrolmen he suddenly collapsed, gasping for air. By the time the police found someone to give Hanaper first aid, Starr, Luisa, and Mara had melted through the underground alleys into the dark stretch of land along the river.

  Pastor Emerson blamed Mara Stonds for exacerbating the situation. He summoned an emergency session of his parish council. The church felt a personal responsibility for the situation, since the initial uproar about the wall was caused by women at their shelter. And Mara Stonds, who was really the group’s ringleader, had been baptized in this very building.

  Everyone on the parish council had some memory of Mara’s shocking conduct over the years or the extravagant stories she made up. The time she’d spread news of Harriet’s wedding, and Mrs. Thirkell bought Harriet a silver chafing dish; the time she told them her grandfather was getting the Medal of Honor for his work as a cold war spy; that her mother was imprisoned in a Russian labor camp because of Dr. Stonds; the time that … the time that … Rafe Lowrie, more in sorrow than anger, recounted numerous occasions Mara had led his own precious Cynthia astray (Cynthia’s eye healing from her last beating, she was back in church, more breathless and nervous than ever).

  The parish council should be able to stop Mara Stonds from embarrassing the Stonds family, the church, and the city. A few members thought the tale of Starr feeding the multitude might be true—Starr might actually be a witch, performing perverse parodies of biblical miracles. (Jesus fed people with loaves and fishes—whoever heard of fried chicken and malt liquor in connection with a divine wonder!) Remember, Rafe Lowrie said ominously, in Leviticus it says you shall not suffer a witch to live.

  Nonsense, Mrs. Ephers said—there’s no witchcraft here, only Mara Stonds, showing off as per usual, trying to make mischief. I’ll talk to the doctor about this. He needs to get her shut up in the hospital where she belongs: that will put a stop to this nonsense.

  In the meantime, the council agreed on two things: the Friday psychotherapy clinic must be stopped for the time being. Hector Tammuz only encouraged the homeless
women in their support of Starr. If the church really wanted to end this blasphemous activity in Chicago, they needed to root it out from their own parish. They couldn’t on the one hand tell Dr. Stonds to get his daughter off the streets if at the same time they were providing a forum for the homeless to plan further perversions.

  The council’s second decision was to hold a special parish service of penitence and communion a week from Saturday. Rafe Lowrie was conducting his Family Matters seminar then, his meeting of businessmen who wanted to reclaim their God-given authority over their families; Pastor Emerson should hold a family service beforehand.

  Pastor Emerson had not previously been a supporter of Rafe or his Family Matters group. He resented Rafe’s efforts to show Emerson how to run the church, and didn’t like the books and pamphlets Rafe showered him with on a better interpretation of Scripture than Emerson used in his sermons.

  But the pastor was angry with the homeless women, with Mara Stonds, and especially Starr, for the humiliations he’d suffered at the wall. It was time the parish exerted its authority. On Sunday he announced the special service from the pulpit, and preached ferociously on a text from First Timothy: “If a man does not know how to manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way, how can he care for God’s church?”

  Emerson told the congregation that he would open Rafe’s meeting with a community service of penance and communion, to show God they were truly sorry for their role in encouraging the breakdown of public morality: after all, it was the women at Hagar’s House who had first started the hysteria about the wall and Starr. It was their own Mara Stonds who had become a ringleader down there. The whole debacle showed that they had not done their job as a parish in guiding their young people, because wasn’t Mara a product of twelve years in Orleans Street Sunday schools? And yet they had failed to provide her with the bulwark of faith to withstand a dangerous cult leader like Starr. The parish had become too focused on material wealth—looking pointedly at Rafe—and on substituting trendy social causes for faith—here talking directly to Sylvia Lenore—and forgotten the Lord: It was He who made us and not we ourselves.

  After the service, men began signing up for the retreat. All the following week the phone in the church office rang with men eager to assert their God-given authority. None of this idiotic Ironman stuff, going off into the woods, sitting around naked pounding drums, but the kind of sober Christian seminar a businessman could understand.

  Dr. Stonds knew, from Mrs. Ephers, how upset the parish council was with Mara as one of the ringleaders of the women at the wall. When he heard Emerson’s sermon, his own fury with Mara swelled. Every grievance he’d ever felt against his granddaughter bounced through his head. How dare she expose him like this to public censure?

  After Hector’s useless attempt to bring Mara into the hospital last month, Dr. Stonds had washed his hands of Mara: she refused help, then let her rot, as her mother and grandmother had before her. But the public gossip was intolerable. He finally agreed with Hilda Ephers, it was time to do something. And if she emulated Beatrix further, well, so be it.

  But it was not that easy to unearth Mara. Starr never went to the same park two nights running. Dr. Stonds was not about to lower his dignity by hiking along beaches and rocky inlets looking for his granddaughter, even with police in tow. He did consent to send two men from the hospital’s private security force to the wall in the evenings when Mara was most likely to be there, but by the time they had forced their way through the crowd of women who gathered in front of Starr and Luisa, Mara had fled into the alleys behind the hotel garage.

  Day thirty on Underground Wacker, day thirty-one …

  40

  Show Us Some Cleavage, Honey

  GIAN PALMETTO, PRESIDENT of the Pleiades, is beside himself. The Pleiades’ cancellations stand at over fifty percent: clients seeking quiet and anonymity don’t want to fight their way past women praying the rosary, women douching themselves in rusty water from the wall, women nursing their howling infants, not to mention the build-up of garbage as all the miracle seekers drop their McDonald’s wrappers and Starbucks cups in the road. True, these out-of-town visitors need a place to sleep, but they go to cheap motor lodges by the expressway, not luxury hotels where rates start at a hundred eighty a night and float skyward.

  Palmetto’s corporate masters have phoned, faxed, and now arrived in person. At the law firm of Scandon and Atter, meetings take place between Mervin Clinator, head of the Olympus Group, and Leigh Wilton, the senior partner. On Thursday afternoon Harriet, in disgrace for not somehow controlling events, sits at a remote end of the table, relegated essentially to paralegal status. Taking notes, doing research, not venturing an opinion or suggestion. Gian Palmetto is at the other end, equally disgraced for letting homeless women ruin the Pleiades’ bookings.

  A senior lawyer from the city—with entourage—is also present. The Olympus president fretfully wonders why the police can’t keep people away—they’re trespassing, not to mention littering and loitering.

  The corporation counsel is sympathetic. The city knows how much the Pleiades has invested in arts in Chicago, not to mention gifts to the mayor’s election funds. The city is detailing extra Streets and Sanitation crews to keep the public areas free of litter. And they’ll certainly station police down there twenty-four hours a day to keep crowds from blocking access to the Pleiades garage.

  Not good enough, Olympus president Clinator snaps. We want that area cleared.

  Look, says the corporation counsel, if it were only homeless women down there we’d urge the cops to move them on. Of course that statement stays inside this room. All the men nod, sure.

  But now there are three problems—the television cameras, the tourists, and the suit filed by the First Freedoms Forum. The hotel can’t be sued for violating the miracle seekers’ First Amendment rights, but the city can. Olympus president Clinator and senior partner Leigh Wilton have to understand, given the high visibility the situation has right now, the city must observe the public forum doctrine and keep the street and sidewalk open to the miracle seekers’ expressive activity.

  What about just tearing down the damned wall, putting in new plumbing, and ending the story? the Olympus president asks.

  The corporation counsel draws a circle on the table with his finger. An excellent idea, if the hotel can wait out the current frenzy. It will just look so bad for them to be callous about the faith of very religious women, one of whom is the sister of an important bishop, another married to the head of a construction firm that gives a lot of money to the mayor’s campaign chest.

  And what if the frenzy never dies down? Olympus demands.

  Leigh Wilton pulls out his trump card. He says he’s spoken to Clyde Hanaper over at Midwest Hospital. There’s a drunk, used to be a great singer, who hangs around the wall, seems to be a lesbian, having an affair with that big woman—what’s her name, Harriet?—Starr, that’s right, gal who’s kind of a ringleader for the group. Anyway, the drunk’s brother is fed up, thinks she’s corrupting his teenage daughter, wants to get her off the streets into a clinic someplace. If the brother will pay for the drunk, Scandon and Atter could kick in something for Starr, send her off for a psychiatric exam, maybe put her in a locked ward over at Midwest.

  The problem is, this Starr seems to have a mesmerizing effect on the women at the wall. So they can’t pick her up during the day, when the crowds are most intense, or when the camera crews are likely to be there. Also, she isn’t always at the wall and they don’t know where she sleeps at night. But the hospital thinks they can track her down, through a resident who’s been working with the homeless women. They’ll try tonight, maybe catch the women while they’re asleep. If this Starr’s out of the way …

  The head of the Olympus chain laughs. I’d like to catch that broad while she was asleep. From the photos, those knockers of hers could give you a TKO with one blow.

  Gian Palmetto and Leigh W
ilton neigh with laughter: the head of the hotel chain is making a joke, the tension is suddenly lessened. The meeting breaks down into general ribaldry as the men try to top one another’s jokes. Harriet feels herself disappearing. Not a person, not a lawyer, a note-taking thing for the first three hours, now a body thing as the Olympus president rakes her own bosom with greedy eyes, looking past her pale green suit jacket, her silk shirt, to her small breasts, even though as always they’re shielded by a bra. Hers is the only female presence, besides the corporation counsel’s paralegal, and as the discussion becomes more graphic, they all watch her, wanting to know if they are shocking her, scaring her. She rises without moving her hips and heads for the door.

  Ah, honey, can’t you take a joke? Olympus president asks.

  Harriet turns in the entryway. Was that a joke? Forgive me—I never had the advantage of a schoolboy’s locker room to learn humor.

  She leaves, and is cornered later by Leigh Wilton. These are important clients who are undergoing a major shock. They need our support, and that includes letting them vent steam through jokes which you or I might not personally find funny.

  “Don’t I get any support from the firm, Leigh?” Harriet asks. “You’re making me the whipping girl for a situation that no one could have managed. And when the client starts demeaning me by making comments about women’s genitals, I’m supposed to laugh. Suppose I had shared a female joke—a belly laugh over how all you men measure your penises, terrified that one is shorter than the other, and the amusement women feel over your anxiety. Would that have been the same?”

  “What’s gotten into you, Harriet? You used to be a reliable team player. The partnership vote will be taken after Labor Day. You’ve been on a fast track for six years. Don’t make me start to wonder whether you really have a permanent home at Scandon and Atter.” Leigh Wilton stares at her, his eyes so wide they seem about to pop from his head. “Now I’m going to forget about your behavior this morning. Just let me have the meeting minutes before six. And get me cases and precedents under Section 1983 to see if we have any maneuvering room. Meanwhile I’m going to talk to that guy Hanaper over at Midwest Hospital. I think it’s worth our while to cover this Starr creature’s medical bills for a few days if that will defuse the situation.”