The sound of water splashing on tile brought me back to life with a jolt. The bath had overflowed while I sat in a stupor. I was tempted to let the water find its own way out, especially since that would eventually be through Vinnie Buttone’s ceiling, but I made myself fetch a mop and a bucket and clean it up. The bath was tepid by then and the hot water tank empty. I gave a howl of frustration and flung the whisky glass across the room.
“Very smart, V.I.,” I said aloud as I knelt to pick up the pieces. “You’ve shown you can destroy yourself if you get angry enough—now figure out what you can do to Todd Pichea.”
When I’d finished picking up glass shards and mopping whisky I turned on the light in the living room and looked Todd Pichea up in the phone book. His home number wasn’t given, but he did list his office, at an address on North LaSalle that I recognized.
I hunted around the living room for my private address book, which was usually interleaved in the papers on the coffee table. In my cleaning frenzy Tuesday morning I had tidied things so violently that I couldn’t find it. After half an hour of going through every drawer in the place I discovered the book inside the piano bench. Really, it was a waste of time to clean.
I dialed Richard Yarborough’s unlisted Oak Brook number. He answered the phone himself.
“Dick, hi. How are you? … It’s me, your good old ex-wife, Vic,” I added when it was clear he hadn’t recognized my voice.
“Vic! What do you want?” He sounded startled, but not actively hostile.
My normal conversations with him begin with a little brittle banter, but I was too upset tonight for cleverness. “You know a boy named Todd Pichea?”
“Pichea? I might. Why?”
“The one I’ve met lives across the street from me. About five-ten, thirtyish, brown hair, square face.” My voice trailed away—I couldn’t think of any way to describe Todd that would distinguish him from ten thousand other young professionals.
“And?”
“His law office seems to have the same address as yours. I thought maybe he was one of your hot young lawyers champing at the bit.”
“Yes, I believe we do have an associate with that name.” Dick wasn’t going to give me anything willingly.
I hadn’t thought this phone call through before making it. Like everything else I’d done tonight, from ringing the Picheas’ doorbell to breaking a glass of whisky, it had been impulsive and perhaps stupid. I plunged ahead, feeling as though I were wrestling quicksand.
“He’s gotten involved in some extracurricular legal work. Extraterrestrial, really: made himself guardian of an old woman in the neighborhood who’s in the hospital, and had her five dogs collected by the county and put to sleep.”
“That’s not really any of my business, Vic, and I don’t see that it’s yours either. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re entertaining tonight.”
“The thing is, Dick,” I said quickly, before he could hang up, “the woman is a client of mine. I’m going to conduct an investigation into the process Pichea went through to become her guardian. And if there’s anything, well, unusual about it—I mean, it did happen very, very fast—then it will be in the papers. I just wanted you to know. So that you could be ready for phone calls and TV crews and stuff. And maybe warn your juniors not to let their enthusiasm exceed their legal judgment, or something like that.”
“Why do you have to come at me like a tank truck all the time? Why can’t you call up just to say hi? Or not call at all?”
“Dick, this is friendly,” I said reproachfully. “I’m trying to keep you from being blindsided.”
I thought I could hear him grinding his teeth, but it might have been wishful thinking. “What’s the old woman’s name?”
“Frizell. Harriet Frizell.”
“Okay, Vic, I’ve made a note of it. Now I’ve got to go. Don’t phone again unless you want to buy tickets to the next benefit we’re sponsoring. And even then I’d rather you spoke to my secretary.”
“Good talking to you too. Give my love to Teri.”
He snapped the receiver in my ear. I hung up, wondering what I’d done and why.… So Mrs. Frizell was a client of mine? Now what? More long hours of wasted time when I needed paying jobs so I could buy running shoes? And what did I really expect Dick to do to Todd Pichea—go tell him what a tiger I was, to watch his step and bring those dead dogs back to life while he was at it?
It was nine o’clock now. I was grubby and tired, and I wanted my dinner. On a Friday night there wasn’t much I could do to track down actions at a probate court. I sponged myself off with the tepid bath water and put on clean cotton pants so that I could go foraging for food on Lincoln Avenue.
12
Whom Bruce Has Led—Welcome to Your Gory Bed
I spent six hours in bed, mostly as a way to pass the time until morning, since I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t wanted the burden of looking after the dogs, so I’d forestalled Mr. Contreras from suggesting we take them in. I’d even been sharp and a little condescending when I spoke to him about it. And now they were dead. I tried not to imagine their stiff bodies in some dump, or wherever the county sends dogs it’s destroyed, but I felt ill, feverish, as if I myself had lined them against a wall and shot them.
On sleepless nights it seems as though the sky will stay black forever, that it’s only sleep which makes the day come. I must have finally dozed for an hour or two, because suddenly my room was filled with light. Another splendid June morning, just the weather for telling old women with fractures that their beloved dogs were dead.
I had a friend from college, Steve Logan, who was a psychiatric social worker at Cook County Hospital. We used to work together a lot when I was with the PD—he evaluated some of my less socially acclimated clients. There was even a year when we thought we were in love. We couldn’t sustain it, but the memory of our affair warmed our friendship.
Since our work paths stopped crossing we only managed to get together a couple of times a year, but he would probably arrange for me to see Mrs. Frizell. I waited a long two hours until nine o’clock when I could decently try calling him.
Steve sounded pleased to hear from me and clicked his tongue consolingly over my tale of woe. He agreed to locate Mrs. Frizell and take me to see her if I’d meet him in half an hour—it was his day off and he was using it to take his children to the zoo.
I dressed in a hurry and snuck out without Mr. Contreras hearing me. I felt too flayed to tell him what had happened—and to listen to his reproaches.
Cook County Hospital lies on the near west side, just off the Lake Street el, between a VA hospital and Presbyterian-St. Luke’s. The latter is an enormous private hospital with the most modern of facilities and an on-going building program that threatens to swallow the surrounding community. Prez, as the locals call it, has no connection to the county hospital, except when their patients run out of money and have to be rolled down the street to be picked up by the taxpayers.
County had been put up around the turn of the century, when public buildings were supposed to look like Babylonian temples. Following its creation the public has declined further acts of generosity. We continue to put money into the county jail and courts, building ever bigger annexes to support ever more law enforcement, but the hospital languishes. Every six months or so the papers spread an alarm that the hospital will lose its accreditation—and its federal money—because the building is so far below code—but then the feds relent and the place continues to hiccup along. The fact that the operating rooms aren’t air-conditioned and the hospital has no sprinkler system seems like trivial reasons to deprive the poor of one of their few remaining sources of health care.
In response to Prez and the University of Illinois, which has a campus nearby, a lot of tidy little town houses have sprung up immediately around the hospitals. Even so, I was reluctant to leave the Trans Am on the street. As I pulled it into one of the private hospital’s lots I wished I’d stuck to a car more in keeping with both my income and
the kind of neighborhoods I visit. If I’d bought a used Chevy I could have afforded new Nikes.
I’d arranged to meet Steve inside County’s main entrance on Harrison. It was a strange lobby, with a statue of a naked woman and two children in one corner, and a large square of blue light tubes overhead. I wondered if it was a bug zapper or just ultraviolet tubes to kill wandering germs. If that was the case they were fighting a losing battle with the grime on the floors and walls.
People straggled down the hall eating potato chips and drinking coffee. The waiting area, whose chairs filled several alcoves, was practically empty. On weekdays every seat is taken as people wait their turn in the outpatient clinics. On Saturday morning only a couple of drunks were stretched out on the chairs, sleeping off their Friday nights. The hospital is a monster, built like a large E with seven stories. Homeless people, kicked out of O’Hare Airport, slide in through the side entrances and curl up in the endless corridors to get through the night.
While I waited for Steve a couple of large policemen brought a man down the hall in handcuffs and leg shackles. He was slender and tremulous, a leaf blowing between two branches, and his face was covered with a surgical mask. The mask was as incongruous as the shackles on his thin legs. Perhaps he was HIV-positive and had spat on the officers? Tuberculosis was on the rise at County too.
Steve came down the corridor at a run a little after ten, when I’d studied the inlaid pattern in the floor long enough to memorize it. He was in jeans and sneakers; with his lanky blond hair falling in his eyes he looked like a commercial for the great outdoors. I couldn’t believe he’d stayed with the county all these years without frying his brains, but he told me once that working here made him feel real.
He put an arm around me and pecked my cheek. “Sorry to be late, Vic. Just thought I’d check on whether we knew anything about your lady. We have a six-month backlog right now, so I wasn’t expecting anything, but it turns out there was some kind of emergency hearing on Thursday.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here. I have a damned yuppie neighbor who somehow got himself appointed the lady’s guardian, and in an amazing hurry.”
Steve’s thick brows disappeared under his hair. “That was a superhurry. She only came in on Monday night, right? Seems almost indecent. She leaving him something in her will?”
“Rabies, if she thought about it. The boy got the county to kill her dogs. Her life pretty much revolved around them; I don’t know how she’s going to react if she learns they’re dead.”
Steve looked at his watch. “Elaine is giving the kids breakfast and making sure they’re dressed. Let me just give her a call to let her know I’m running late—I want to see Mrs. Frizell myself. We can decide then the best way to tell her about the dogs.”
We went back up the hall. Steve tops my five-eight by five or six inches. He tried to shorten his stride, but I still had to jog to keep up. He ducked abruptly into a doorway and started up some stairs.
“Elevators,” he said briefly. “Only one is working today on this side of the building. I’m afraid we’re up five stories, but it’s really faster, believe me.”
I was panting slightly when we got to his office, but he didn’t seem at all winded. He phoned his wife, picked up a clipboard, and relocked the door all in one movement.
“Elaine sends her love. We go back down two flights and over to the orthopedic corridor. I called Nelle McDowell—she’s the charge nurse over there. She’s cool, she’ll let us talk to Mrs. Frizell.”
We met Nelle McDowell at the nurses’ station, a cubbyhole near the end of the corridor. A tall, squarely built black woman, she acknowledged Steve and me with a nod, but kept up a conversation with two nurses and an orderly. They were reviewing the previous night’s newcomers and trying to juggle the workload. We waited in the hall outside until they’d finished—the tiny room barely held the four people already in it.
When the meeting broke up, McDowell beckoned us in. Steve introduced me. “Vic wants to talk to Harriet Frizell. Is she in shape to see anyone?”
McDowell made a face. “She’s not the most coherent person on the ward right now. What do you want to see her about?”
I told my tale once again, about finding Mrs. Frizell Monday night, and then about Todd Pichea, the dogs, and why I cared.
McDowell looked me over like a captain eyeing a dubious new subaltern. “You know who Bruce is, Vic?”
“Bruce is—was—Mrs. Frizell’s number-one dog, a big black Lab.”
“She keeps moaning his name. I thought maybe he was her husband, maybe a kid. But her dog?” The head nurse pursed her lips and shook her head. “She’s not in good shape—she doesn’t answer questions and that dog’s name is about all she’s said since they brought her in. They couldn’t get any relative’s name out of her on Monday night—the docs finally had to sign her consent form for her. We tried finding a Bruce Frizell in the city and suburbs—if it’s a dog, that explains why we didn’t have any luck. If he’s dead, she’s not going to hold up too well. I’d rather not tell her until I’m sure she’s strong enough to survive.”
“I want to talk to her, Nelle,” Steve said. “Try to make an evaluation. One of our babies was there for the attorney hearing on Thursday, but I’d like to make up my own mind.”
McDowell threw up her hands. “Be my guest, Steve. And take the detective with you—I’ve got no problem with that. But don’t go doing anything to put her in a frenzy. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re shorthanded in this ward.”
She pulled out a chart with Frizell written along the side. “One thing maybe you can tell me—why the rush to get her a guardian? The times we’ve needed one appointed in here it’s taken us months of rigamarole just to get to court. But Thursday morning there’s a guardian ad litem as big as life, talking to the lady without a by-your-leave. I got security up, and they pulled him away until we hustled someone from the psych team in, along with that kid from your office”—she nodded at Steve—“but it made me plenty mad.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand it myself, except I know Pichea was itching to get rid of those dogs. I talked to her son myself on Monday night. He lives in California and had about as much interest in what was happening to his mother as I do in my cockroaches. I expect when Pichea called him he was ecstatic at being able to make Mrs. Frizell someone else’s problem.”
McDowell shook her head. “We get people in here with all kinds of problems, but I don’t ever remember a patient whose family wanted to dump her off on strangers before.… Mrs. Frizell’s down in the ward, third partition from the end. Let me know what you think, Steve.”
When we left the nurses’ station, Steve explained that the ward used to be open, but that they had built partitions around the beds a few years ago. “It’s not a great system—the walls are so close in you can’t make the beds, and the patients don’t have any way to attract someone else’s attention if they need help. But the county board decrees and we try to make the best of it.”
When I saw Mrs. Frizell my stomach turned cold and I felt faint. Even on Monday night, when she’d been lying half naked on her bathroom floor, she had looked like a person. Now her head was cocked back on the pillow, her eyes staring blankly, her mouth open, and the skin drawn taut across her bones a faint gray. She looked like a corpse. Only her restless, meaningless movements showed she was still alive.
I glanced fearfully at Steve. He shook his head, his lips compressed, but squeezed in between the bed and the partition wall. I moved to the other side of the bed.
I knelt next to the bed. Mrs. Frizell’s eyes didn’t seem to track either me or Steve. “Mrs. Frizell? I’m V. I.—Victoria. Your neighbor. How are you?”
It seemed like a foolish question and I felt rewarded for my stupidity when she didn’t answer. Steve made a sign that I should go on, so I plowed painfully forward.
“I have a dog, you know, that red-gold retriever. We run by your house some mornings and you and I someti
mes talk.” Sometimes she snarled at me, I amended in my head—maybe she’d never really noticed me. “And I found you on Monday night. With Marjorie Hellstrom.”
I repeated the name a couple of times and made myself keep talking, but I couldn’t bring myself to mention her dogs, the one thing that might have caught her attention. My knees were starting to ache from the cold, hard floor and my tongue felt like a furry clapper in a bell. I was starting to push myself standing when she suddenly turned her cloudy eyes to look at me.
“Bruce?” she croaked hoarsely. “Bruce?”
“Yes,” I said, forcing a smile. “I know Bruce. He’s a wonderful dog.”
“Bruce.” It looked as though she might be patting the bed, inviting a nonexistent dog to jump up and join her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “They don’t let dogs into hospitals. You get well fast, and then you can go home and be with him.”
“Bruce,” she said again, but she seemed to have a little more color in her face. A few seconds later she’d fallen asleep.
13
Filial Piety
When I got back to the car I stretched the seat out as flat as I could and lay there, limp. I’d thrown up after leaving Mrs. Frizell, a sudden spontaneous retching to purge myself from the lie I’d had to tell. Nelle McDowell had produced a woman with a mop who refused to let me clean up the mess for her.
“Don’t worry about it, honey; it’s my job. And it’s good to see someone care enough about that poor old lady to be sick for her. You just get yourself a glass of water and put your feet up for a minute.”
I felt ashamed to lose control in front of Steve and Nelle McDowell, and brushed off their offers of help. “Your kids are going to be furious if you stand them up much longer, Steve. You go on home—I’m okay.”
Guardian Angel Page 9