Over the noise of the printer I hadn’t heard the door open. When a hand shook my shoulder I jumped, hard enough to ram my knee into the desk leg. The wraith from the basement stood behind me.
“Jessie needs a doctor,” she said. Her eyes were fierce and her chin jutted forward belligerently, but her hands, pressed into the sweaters swathing her bosom, trembled.
“Immediately? Is it an emergency?”
“She can’t hardly breathe. She just keeps gasping and heaving. I moved her upstairs, like you said, but it didn’t help her none.”
“Where is she now?” I was surprised she’d left the children alone, so fierce had been her hold on them last night.
“You show me how you help me, then I’ll tell you.”
I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty now. Lotty might still be at her clinic, but the thought of her angry words made me squirm.
“I’ll take you to the emergency room at ... ” I paused, trying to imagine which area hospital might be the least inimical to such a family.
“You can’t,” she burst in. “You can’t take her to a hospital. You know what they do: they call the cops, the cops arrest me for neglect, and who look after the children then?”
“You don’t have any relatives to care for them? What about their father?”
“What are you? The caseworker? Their old man beat on me, he beat me up plenty, but I could handle it. When he start hitting on Jessie, though, that’s when I draw a line, say enough. You take her to a hospital, that’s where they going to send her back, back to her old man because he can hold a job and he wants to look after her. I see the way he look at her, not after her, and she’s not going back there. Get that straight. You said a doctor, someone who would treat her for free, not a hospital.”
“Okay. No hospital.”
I went back to my desk, my knee still smarting, and called Lotty’s clinic. The answering machine referred me to the emergency room at Beth Israel. I hung up and started dialing Lotty’s home number. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not when she answered. I told her I’d found the homeless family and they needed urgent medical care.
She didn’t sound enthusiastic, but no one who works as hard as Lotty would welcome such a greeting. She wanted me to send them to Beth Israel, but when I explained that the woman adamantly refused hospital help she sighed in exhaustion and agreed to meet me at the clinic.
When she’d hung up I turned back to the woman. “Okay. A doctor—one of the best in Chicago. No hospital. No forms. Go get Jessie and meet me back here while I finish a few things.”
“You’re not calling the cops.” It was a command, not a question.
“No. I need to tell a friend that I’m going to be late. And I need to shut down my computer for the night.”
She stayed at my elbow while I spoke to Mr. Contreras, telling him something had come up and I wouldn’t be able to run the dogs after all. When I shut down the system the woman went to fetch her children. While they waited in the lobby, Jessie gasping for air, I took a cab across the Loop for my car.
5
Found—and Lost Again
“These children need a week in the hospital to recover from dehydration and malnutrition, let alone whatever underlying lung problems they have.” Lotty spoke uncompromisingly.
She had met us at the clinic, taken one look at Jessie, and—after giving her a jolt of epinephrine to control her wheezing—phoned Beth Israel to prepare for an emergency admission. She then told me to make myself useful by bathing the children while she examined them in turn. Stripped of their layers of swaddling and filth they had the gaunt boniness we usually see only on televised reports of remote famines.
While Lotty prodded joints and listened to chests I ran their clothes through her office washing machine. As I dumped the bundle in I found a yellow sweater that looked familiar, and realized with a shock that it was one of the pieces I had deposited behind the boiler. It already looked as filthy as the rest of their wrappings.
“The lady here promised me—” the mother began.
“Vic spoke from her heart but she’s not a doctor. I would be an absolute criminal if I allowed you to take these children back to whatever cellar you want to hide them in.”
The mother let out an anguished “no,” but didn’t add to it. I summarized what she’d told me about the children’s father.
“There must be someone who you could turn to, at least for an address,” Lotty said. “I’m not asking you to give up your children to an abusive man, but you must see how bad it is for them, living the way you do.”
“If there was someone, don’t you think I’d be with that person?” The woman dashed angry tears away.
“Look,” Lotty said. “There are some shelters for women with children. I’ll do my best to get you space in one of them. And I promise you I won’t turn you over to the police. We’ll use Vic’s address for you—you can be their aunt, my dear—that should be appropriate for you.”
“Touche, doctor. Fine.” I turned to the woman. “I’ll be your children’s auntie. But you must follow Dr. Herschel’s advice. If your children die you will be bereft forever, you know, not just for the time they’re in someone else’s care.”
The woman didn’t like it, but she saw we weren’t going to budge. Lotty even got her name out of her while we waited for the clothes to dry: Tamar Hawkings. While Hawkings watched, eyes bright with suspicion, Lotty called the best of the shelters for women with children and explained Tamar’s plight. They were crowded past any hope of taking on another family, but promised to put the Hawkingses high on the waiting list.
“Vic will carry on tomorrow finding you a place to stay. But for now, off to the hospital with you.”
The mother’s face took on a bleached, hopeless look. When Lotty called Beth Israel again, going over the children’s situation in detail with the attending emergency-room physician, Hawkings listened with painful attention, as if to make sure Lotty wasn’t arranging instead to turn them all in to the state. Myself, I felt certain the hospital would call Family Services: no one could look at those distended stomachs and bowed legs without reporting child abuse. And after that? Would they be forcibly returned to their father?
Lotty started locking up. “Dr. Haroon is the attending physician and he’s promised to speak to the admitting nurse. If you have any trouble, ask for Rosa Kim. I’ll check on the children in the morning. And where are we going to put Ms. Hawkings tonight?”
I made a face. “I guess she can come home with me.”
Tamar Hawkings shook her head vigorously. “No, you don’t. You don’t trick me like that, putting my children in the hospital away from me. I know my rights; I know the mother can stay by her children in the hospital room.”
She didn’t speak again during the short drive to Beth Israel. It had started to rain, a freezing rain mixed with sleet that made driving treacherous. Behind me I could feel the children’s fright. Infected by their mother’s terrors, they didn’t talk, but the tension in their small bodies made the tendons in my neck ache.
Since Tamar Hawkings had neither a green card nor a financial guarantor, our first few minutes in the emergency room were chaotic. I finally found the admitting nurse, Rosa Kim, who took over the situation with brisk if impersonal authority. Beth Israel was the major health care provider in Uptown; Kim was used to uninsured emergencies of all kinds. When she assured Tamar that she wouldn’t call DCFS unless some unexpected problem emerged, I thought it was safe to leave.
I called Lotty from the building lobby to thank her.
“Vic, when you saw them yesterday, why didn’t you get them help? Those children are in shocking condition.”
“I offered her help and she didn’t want it. The only thing I could have done at that point was to call the cops, which would have been a real violation. And anyway, she did a good job scuttling out of there—I didn’t see her again until she chose to appear at my door.”
“Even so, calling the cops would
have been the responsible act in this case. You know I’m not a friend of police intervention in people’s lives; but, Vic, you just can’t continue to set your own judgment up as God’s in these kinds of situations.”
“Hey, Lotty, ease up. Over a two-day period Tamar saw she could trust me, so she came to me of her own accord. The kids are getting the help they need now. I don’t think that’s acting like God; that’s doing their mother the courtesy of thinking her judgment is as good as mine.”
“But last night you could have talked to Deirdre about getting them into one of the Home Free shelters. Now I don’t think the hospital will release the children into Hawkings’s care. Frankly, I wouldn’t.”
I bit back a hot retort. Maybe Lotty was right. Maybe I was only fighting with her because I couldn’t admit I’d made a mistake on Monday.
“I’ll ask Deirdre at dinner tomorrow night. The evening sounds like a prelude to hell—maybe she can do something useful and salvage it.”
Lotty gave a dry laugh. “In fact, you’ve thought of the perfect hostess present. I’ll check on the children in the morning when I make rounds.”
On that more pacific note we hung up. The last twelve months had been filled with moments like this—hot exchanges, painful temporizings.
All the way home on the icy streets I kept wondering what I should have done when I first found Tamar and her children. The question haunted my dreams; I awoke feverish from interrupted sleep to a world encased in ice. It glazed the trees in front of the apartment so that every twig, each nascent bud, seemed dipped in crystal, but on the sidewalk below people skittered and fell. As I shivered at the window I saw two cars slither into each other at the intersection of Barry and Racine.
My first appointment today wasn’t until ten. By the time I had to leave the roads might be more passable. I slipped on jeans and a sweater and went down to the lobby for my newspapers. Behind Mr. Contreras’s door the two dogs, Peppy and Mitch, heard me and set up a hearty cry. The old man opened the door and the dogs bounded out, tails thrashing against me. I caught their forepaws as they leapt up on me and let them lick my face.
“I know, I know,” I said to Mr. Contreras. “They need a run. But look at the street—we can’t go out in this. It should warm up during the day—it’s April, for pity’s sake. I’ll run them tonight. Scout’s honor. No matter what eleventh-hour crisis flings itself at my door. ... I’m making coffee. Want to come up for a cup?”
“I got some hot, doll. Why don’t you come in and have some of mine?”
The old man’s coffee tastes like tar laced with gasoline. Improvising desperately, I told him I’d left water on to boil upstairs and needed to get back to it. Ten minutes later he joined me in my kitchen, a plate of sticky buns in hand, the dogs circling his legs.
That was the last joy I had all day. At noon, between meetings, I tried to flagellate myself into an interest in Phoebe and Camilla’s problem. I turned on the computer and tried to organize some questions, but my mind seemed to be a chalky waste. I watched a clerk sort papers in the building on the other side of the tracks. The unending flow of paper, out of the mail, into file folders, back into the mail, seemed like my own dreary routine. Lay out the questions, make appointments, survey Lexis, get the SEC reports. Another train passed. The pigeons flew up again, obscuring the clerk.
When the phone rang I welcomed the interruption—until Lotty gave me her bad news. “Your friend Ms. Hawkings disappeared. She took her children, along with some shoes belonging to other families in the ward.”
For a moment my brain refused to absorb the information. When Lotty repeated it, sharply, I dully asked for particulars.
Apparently a social worker had come up around ten to interview Tamar and the children. She acceded to the mother’s demand that the father not be informed, but said that until Tamar could prove she had a stable home for the children, even a shelter, they would have to go into foster care.
“Great,” I said. “The magic words. When I left last night I thought I had a clear understanding with the staff that they couldn’t use that as a threat. Tamar has gone to considerable lengths to keep her children with her. She’s not going to give them up now.”
“It wasn’t a threat, Vic. It was reality. They don’t want to take her children from her, but she can’t go on living in basements with them.”
“Unfortunately Tamar Hawkings doesn’t agree.” My shoulders felt as though someone had tied lead bricks to them. “I’ll see if she’s come back here. And call the cops to start a missing persons search. But short of putting her in jail I don’t know what we can do to keep her from taking off again. Unless we can find a place that will house her children and her together.”
“The Chinese have a proverb for this,” Lotty said at her driest. “’If you rescue someone from drowning you’re responsible for them forever.’”
On that ominous note she hung up on me.
6
Touch of a Scumbag
The rest of the day turned into a blurred nightmare, culminating with its chef d’oeuvre, Deirdre’s dinner party. Any hopes I had of solving Tamar Hawkings’s problems there disappeared within minutes of seeing my hostess.
I got to her South Side mansion an hour past the invitation time, and I was lucky I wasn’t later than that. After hanging up with Lotty I called Kevin Whiting, an officer I knew in Missing Persons. Of course, as he explained to me, Tamar didn’t technically count as a missing person—she’d only been gone an hour. But he promised to notify the Loop foot patrols in case she came back to the Pulteney.
A few minutes later Whiting phoned back: there was already a bona fide missing persons search for Hawkings on file. Leon Hawkings, of an address on West Ninety-fifth Street, had notified them six months ago that his wife had disappeared, taking their three children with her. So if anyone on the beat found her, they would call her old man first.
“Oh, no, Kevin—you can’t do that. She ran away in the first place because he was beating up on her and the kids.” I assumed she was telling the truth about that—why else would she live as she was these days? “Can you check to see whether you guys responded to any calls at that address—domestic violence, disturbing the peace, that kind of thing?”
“You gonna put me on your payroll, Warshawski? You know we’re not automated. No way I can look that up here. You have to go out to the precinct and ask.”
I chewed my lower lip. “Until I know for certain, can you call off the dogs? I don’t want to add to her misery.”
“They’re still missing, ain’t they? So why bother the husband now? You just trot your little heinie over to Chicago Lawn and ask at the precinct. If any Loop patrols see a likely-looking family I’ll get you to look at them before we bring in her old man.”
“Thanks, Kevin. You’re a prince.”
The truth was he was lazy. If he didn’t have to notify a worried spouse, with all that implied for meetings, forms, and follow-up, he was just as happy. I called Chicago Lawn, but I didn’t know anyone at that remote outpost and they weren’t giving free tips away to private eyes that day. I thought about roping Conrad into the quest, but decided against it. Finding out Tamar Hawkings hadn’t filed any complaints against her husband wouldn’t prove anything. Not every woman who’s been beaten up calls the cops. Most don’t, as a matter of fact. They just keep checking themselves into emergency rooms with tales of falling down stairs or running into doors.
I called Marilyn Lieberman, the executive director at Arcadia House. “You remember my mentioning a homeless woman camping out in my basement?”
“Oh, yes. You wanted to try to palm her off on me and I told you no. The answer’s still the same.”
“What if I told you she was running away from an abusive husband?”
“Would that be the truth?” Marilyn demanded.
“She says. And we’re in the business of believing women’s stories, aren’t we?”
Marilyn expelled a long breath. “Oh, Christ, Vic. We’re f
ull up right now, but if it’s a choice between your basement and doubling up with someone else, I suppose ... although if the kids have been on the lam for six months they’re going to be pretty wild. I just don’t know. Bring her over and let me set up an interview with Eva.”
Eva Kuhn was Arcadia’s therapist. “There is one small problem,” I confessed. “She’s disappeared for the time being.”
Marilyn listened to my Tamar saga with scant sympathy. “She needs more help than we can give her, Vic. But if she shows up again, and if you can persuade her to go anyplace else with you, I’ll get Eva to do a diagnostic intake. Talk to Deirdre, though: she’s got contacts at the shelters.” She hung up with a snap.
I took my second-best flashlight and went down to the basement. It was a forlorn hope. Even if Ms. Hawkings returned here she wasn’t going to hang around for me to find her. I even swallowed my fear of the rats and went behind the boiler, where I’d spotted the family on Monday.
The boiler was a great cast-iron monster that dated to the twenties, when the Pulteney had gone up. The furnace had been converted first from coal to oil, and then, early in my tenure, to natural gas. At some point, long before I moved in, a false wall had been built between the boiler and the foundation. It allowed just enough room for an average-size person to move—or six rats to walk abreast.
After the third one sauntered past me I shone the flash over the wall in a perfunctory way. Maybe the Hawkings were hanging out behind the false inner wall—that seemed to be where the rats were nesting—but I couldn’t see an opening. I retreated hastily and returned to my office. Even my dreary routine of reports and accounts was better than crawling around with rats behind the boiler.
I discovered that I’d done enough work in the last few weeks to generate some invoices. By three o’clock I’d gotten two thousand dollars’ worth of statements printed and stuffed into envelopes. I could do some work for Phoebe Quirk before going home to change. I tracked down an acquaintance at City Hall who might snuffle around to get some information for me on why the city had canceled Lamia’s permit.
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