Deathbed fk-8

by William X. Kienzle

  Because of the exemplary behavior of these four, they were among the first to be sent to Van’s Can.

  It was their transfer from DeHoCo to Van’s Can that Bruce Whitaker was now recalling. At first it had seemed to them a large leap toward eventual freedom. But soon they realized that this impression was due entirely to the freshness of the new facility. Here there were no leftover odors, memories, or ghosts. Those would come later.

  Some of the sounds were growing louder. The shift that had been eating in the Big Top, the central refectory, was done.

  A guard summoned him. Whitaker knew the way from the reception area to the combination auditorium/gymnasium well. He had walked it many, many times. But he obediently followed the guard through the various cell-block doors. There was no alternative. As he often reflected, this procedure was like passing a ship through the locks of a waterway. No door unlocked before the previous one had been relocked.

  Whitaker and the guard entered the vaulted room. Trustees and medium-security prisoners were allowed to receive their visitors in the gym. Those in maximum security were confined to a long, narrow, screened-off room in the basement where they could communicate with visitors only by phone.

  Whitaker immediately found his three friends. They were seated at a picnic table, on a long bench whose uneven legs made balance precarious at best. They seemed pleased at his visit. He had no trouble believing they were pleased.

  The guard left Whitaker at the table, then moved to a nearby wall where he kept them, as well as other inmates and visitors, under casual surveillance.

  “So, how are things in the world?” the First Man asked.

  “You shouldn’t ask,” Whitaker, the Second Man, said. “I can see now why some of the guys here don’t want to leave. And why when they do leave they want to get back in.”

  “You’re forgetting what it’s like in here,” the Third Man said. “You always did have a convenient memory.”

  “Now, now,” the Fourth Man said in a conciliatory tone, “There’s no use our getting off on the wrong foot. Let’s hear what he has to say. How did it go in the hospital? Were you able to get in?”

  “It was easier than any of us imagined,” Whitaker replied. “I just applied to become a volunteer and they took me.”

  “No questions?”

  “Oh, yes, there were some . . . but we anticipated everything the interviewer wanted to know. I’m not even sure whether she checked my story about part-time janitorial work at the Back Porch Theatre. But if she did, she found out that’s true. There were just a few papers to fill out. But, again, we anticipated everything they wanted to know.”

  “No one recognized you?” asked the First Man.

  “No, not that I know of. I try to stay aware of being recognized. But I don’t think anyone has.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said the Fourth Man. “It was a long time ago that our pictures were in the papers.”

  “Yes. And nothing was published about my parole. So, no one expected to see me.”

  “Besides,” said the Fourth Man, “your disguise is very good. Those horn-rimmed glasses and your toupee make it difficult for even me to recognize you.”

  “Couldn’t you afford a better rug?” the Third Man asked. “It looks cruddy. It looks like a small dog died and you had to decide whether to bury it or wear it. And you made the wrong decision.”

  “It’s not my fault.” Whitaker seemed genuinely aggrieved. “They gave me only a pittance when I got out of here. And do you think an amateur theater group pays a part-time janitor a princely sum?”

  “It’s all right,” the Fourth Man assured them. “It doesn’t matter what its quality is. The important thing is that it’s a good disguise . . . it is a good disguise, don’t you think?”

  The First and Third Man concurred, the Third rather grudgingly.

  “All right,” the Fourth Man continued, “you’ve penetrated the hospital’s security. That’s very good. Are you able to move about at all?”

  “That’s the best part. . . .” Whitaker sniffed about fastidiously; there was some odor. . . . “I’ve tested that identification badge in almost every section of St. Vincent’s. No one questions it. Hardly anyone even looks at it. Sometimes people walk around the hospital with their ID badge flipped over and no one questions it even then.”

  “Do you think you’ll need that theology diploma so they will accept you as a Protestant chaplain?” asked the First Man.

  “Not necessary.”

  “What about our plan to have you carry around a stethoscope so you can masquerade as a doctor?” the Third Man asked.

  “I thought about that. But, no, not yet anyway. That might cause more problems than it cures.”

  “All right,” the Fourth Man said. “Then what have you learned? Is it as bad as we feared?”

  “Oh, yes. It is very, very bad. God knows what-all they’re doing. But just in one day I located their clinic. And I can only tell you the place is a veritable cesspool.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “Such as . . .?”

  “Birth control!”

  “Artificial?”

  “Very!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “How do you know?” the Fourth Man was barely controlling himself. In this, he was doing much better than his companions.

  “I saw with my own eyes the pamphlets they’re handing out for distribution to women. Indiscriminately!”

  “No!”

  “With pictures?”

  “Yes! Illustrated!”

  “Did you bring any?”

  “No. I was afraid I’d be searched.”

  “Of course.”

  “But that’s not all!”

  “There’s more?”

  “Oh, yes. They even have devices they give out free of charge!”

  “Devices?”

  “Yes. What do you call them, prophylactics?”

  “Condoms?”

  “Rubbers?”

  “No! Prophylactics!”

  “Same thing!”

  “Oh.”

  “How about abortions?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do they do them?”

  “Abortions?” Whitaker repeated.

  “Yes, dummy, abortions!” The Third Man never had possessed a long fuse.

  “Not to the best of my knowledge. I mean, I didn’t actually see anything like that. But I’ll keep looking.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, yes. I don’t know exactly what was going on . . . but from the way the doctor was handling it, it seemed like it probably was wrong.”

  “Whatinhell are you talking about?” the Third Man demanded.

  “Watch your language,” the First Man admonished.

  “My God, we’ve been in prison for years,” said the Third Man. “You’d think your vocabulary would expand a little.”

  “Just because we’re in the mud doesn’t mean we have to wallow in it,” the First Man retorted.

  “Will you two calm down,” the Fourth Man said. “Now, tell us, what was it you saw?”

  “It was a woman—I’m pretty sure she wasn’t married—who’s had lots of kids, I suppose out of wedlock. Anyway, the doctor tested her and said she wasn’t pregnant. But he wanted to make sure she never got pregnant again.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Fitted her with one of those devices, I’ll bet.”

  “A device?”

  “An Inner Uterine Device! An IUD!”

  “They’ve got them. The doctor mentioned that. For one reason or another, the IUD—whatever—didn’t work for this woman. No, this was going to be a foolproof way of avoiding pregnancy again.”

  “What was it, for the love of God!”

  “I didn’t understand the doctor very well. It sounded something like a ‘tutu migration.’ I tried to look it up in their medical library, but I couldn’t find it.”

  “A tutu migration? A tu
tu migration! My God!” exclaimed the Third Man. “He’s talking about a tubal ligation!”

  “What’s that?”

  “When they tie off the woman’s Fallopian tubes. Then neither an egg or the sperm can get through,” the Third Man explained. “Why do we have to depend on this idiot to do our work for us?”

  “Because he’s the only one of us who’s free.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “But what about the tubal ligation?”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” said the Fourth Man, “it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All these things—birth control information, devices, and now sterilization—all of them are in direct violation of Church teaching. We’ve got to do something about this!”

  “Are you sure?” Whitaker was almost pleading. “The last time we were trying to come to the defense of Holy Mother Church and look what it got us: prison!”

  “Look back over history, brother,” the Fourth Man admonished. “It was always the same. Peter imprisoned, then crucified—upside down, mind you. Paul imprisoned and executed. All the Apostles except John. And they certainly tried hard enough with John. Anyway, martyrdom down through the centuries has been the lot of true Catholics. Nothing has changed.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” the First Man said. “I don’t know that I’m really cut out for martyrdom. I think, all things considered, I’d rather be a confessor or a virgin or something. Martyrdom hurts.”

  “I can’t say I disagree with that,” Whitaker said.

  “Yellow-bellied sapsuckers!” the Third Man spat.

  “Now, now,” the Fourth Man cautioned, “we’ve got to stick together. We’re surely not doing this for ourselves. We’re doing it for God’s Holy Church. We’re doing it for the Holy Pope of God! Besides, we aren’t courting martyrdom. We’ve got to make very clever plans so that this hypocrisy that’s masquerading as a Catholic hospital will be exposed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the only reason these mortal sins are going on in a Catholic hospital is because the authorities are not aware of what’s going on.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Of course! Cardinal Boyle is just not informed of what some of his pinko priests and nuns are up to. If he were informed, he’d do something to clear up the situation.”

  “Are you sure?” asked the First Man. “Sometimes I get the impression that Cardinal Boyle doesn’t want to know what’s going on in the inner city.”

  “It doesn’t matter, really,” the Fourth Man explained. “Even if you’re right, once it is made known, what’s really going on in St. Vincent’s Hospital, whether Cardinal Boyle wants to do something about it or not, he has no choice. The pressure from the universal Church, from the Vatican, will force him to make things right.”

  “You mean the Vatican will know what we’ve done?”

  “You mean we’ll be that famous!”

  “Absolutely!”

  “But what in hell are we going to do?” the Third Man wanted to know.

  “How about blowing up the clinic?” the First Man suggested.

  “Sounds good to me,” the Third Man agreed.

  “No, no,” the Fourth Man protested. “That would just win sympathy for them.”

  “Well, then, what?”

  “It’s a matter of doing something that will get St. Vincent’s Hospital into the news. And not in any complimentary way, either. Something that will get their evil practices publicized.”

  “But how can we do that?”

  “I have a plan,” said the Fourth Man, to the relief of the others.

  “Before you get into your plan,” Whitaker said, “I just thought of something else.”

  “What?”

  “When you asked if I’d been recognized by anyone—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, no, not really. The disguise seems to be effective. But there is one girl . . . she didn’t recognize me, but she noticed me.”

  “Noticed you?”

  “Well, we met earlier in the day.” Whitaker neglected to mention that their meeting had involved a collision that resulted in someone’s lunch ending up all over the floor and wall. “And then we met again later in the pharmacy.” He didn’t mention that this meeting was occasioned because his white coat was slowly being dyed blue. “She used my name. But I’m pretty sure she read it off the identification tag.”

  “Was she the only person you met?”

  “Yes, just the girl—twice.”

  “You’d better check up on her,” the Fourth Man advised. “If she does know who you are it could ruin what we’re trying to do.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Get to know her a little bit better. Find out what she knows.”

  “All right. I’ll do it. Now, what’s your plan?”

  “Wait a minute,” the Third Man said. “I smell something.”

  “Yeah,” Whitaker agreed, “so do I. As a matter of fact, I’ve been smelling something peculiar for a long time now.”

  “What is it?” the Fourth Man asked. There was a moment of silence as each of the men looked at one another.

  “I guess it must be me,” the First Man confessed.

  “You!”

  “Well, you know we’re not supposed to take any food out of the Big Top. . . .”

  “Yeah, we all know that.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “What in God’s name did you take?”

  “Some cheese.”

  “Cheese! My God, man, you might just as well have left an Indian trail to follow. Where is it?”

  “Under my armpit.”

  “On second thought,” said the Third Man, “that’s just about the best place you could have hidden it. There won’t be that much difference in the smell.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Listen, it won’t be long before one of the guards notices it’s beginning to smell like a cheese factory in here. You’ve got to do something.”

  “But what?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” the Fourth Man said. “There are only three guards in here so far. And there’s only one anywhere near us. I’ll go over and talk to him . . . distract him. Meanwhile, see that heat register near the floor there? You go over, slip the cheese out of your shirt and stick it behind the grate. See? The thing’s loose; you won’t have any trouble. You’d better come with me,” he said to the Third Man.

  “But what about my cheese?” the First Man protested.

  “Never mind the cheese!” said the Third Man. “You’ll be lucky not to lose any good time. Let’s do it. Now!”

  It must be some law of physics, thought Whitaker. Probably the Seesaw Principle. Some sort of natural law that states that when a weight is abruptly removed from one end of a plank that is unevenly balanced, the other end of the plank goes down. In any case, as the Third and Fourth Men stood up, the First Man hit the floor hard, with the bench clattering down with him.

  The guards tensed. But when they recognized who was responsible for the commotion, they relaxed. It was by no means unusual for that bunch. Then, while the Third and Fourth Man engaged the nearby guard in conversation, the First Man did manage to slide his slab of cheese behind the heating grate. Following that, the Fourth Man barely had time to explain his plan for the hospital before the gym was evacuated while the guards searched for an errant skunk.

  * * *

  The Detroit News was rare if not unique among big-city newspapers. The present building was erected in 1917 and had not been substantially altered in the intervening years. If, in the spirit of a young Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, some kids had wanted to stage the 1928 classic, The Front Page, they could have credibly used the city room of the News as their set. Not that much would have to be changed.

  The ceilings were anachronistically high. Genuine wood paneled the walls. There were
no cubicles, no partitions separating one desk from another. Not one desk was decorated with a word processor terminal.

  Install some outdated phones, restore some of the old oak furnishings, bring back a few of the old-fashioned desks and one could be in the Roaring Twenties.

  Adjacent to the city room was the sports department and the news room, with desks positioned in claustrophobic proximity. In an outside row that provided a bit more breathing room, was seated Patricia Lennon. On her desk were several open files she seemed to be studying. Actually, the files were no more than props, permitting her active mind the luxury of wandering over a number of potential stories she might develop.

  Gradually, Pat became aware of someone standing beside her. She looked up. It was Leon London, city editor of the News. He was smiling at her. It was difficult not to.

  “Pat, if you’re not working on anything else right now, we could use some help developing that story on the disturbance at Cobo Hall last night.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am, Leon.” Her mind raced through the stories she’d been considering. Any one would be better than covering the Cobo Hall incident. That story could write itself. Bring in a top rock group, provide less than adequate law enforcement personnel, and you’re likely to get a riot. That was about the size of what had occurred the previous night at Cobo Hall.

  London was now genuinely interested. “Oh? What’ve you got going?”

  It was the moment of truth. She would have to pick one of the many possibilities she’d been considering. “I’m developing a piece for the Sunday magazine.”

  “Oh?”

  Which one? “Old St. Vincent’s Hospital, downtown.” The die was cast. “It’s coming up on its one-hundred fiftieth anniversary, and it’s a really interesting place with a fascinating history. It was the original hospital in the city and, of course, the first Catholic hospital. And it’s one of only two Catholic hospitals remaining in the city.”

  “That old! I hadn’t realized.”

  ‘And it may not be there an awful lot longer. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s on really hard times. Without some more research, I couldn’t tell you how it’s managed to stay alive as long as it has.”