Bitter Medicine (15 page)

“Cleo—V. I. Warshawski.”

We exchanged news of the ten months or so it’d been since we last talked; then I explained my problem.

“They threw everyone into the holding cells at the district, and they’re taking them down to bond court later on this evening. Can you find out who’s on duty for Legal Aid? I’m going to come down and appear as a character witness.”

“Oh, jeez, Vic. I might’ve known you’d been involved in that clinic assault this afternoon. What a horror—I thought Chicago was being spared the violent wing of the lunatic fringe.”

“I did, too. I hope this isn’t the signal for a concentrated
attack on the city’s abortion clinics. Lotty Herschel is pretty upset—for her it’s a replay of what the Nazis did to her childhood home in Vienna.”

Cleo promised to call back in a few minutes with a name. My bath had taken the edge from my fatigue, but I still felt dopey. Breakfast had been many hours ago; I needed protein to restore myself. I scrounged dubiously in the refrigerator. It had been almost a week since I’d been to the store and there wasn’t much that looked appetizing. In fact, there were a number of items of uncertain provenance, but I didn’t feel like a cleanup job this evening. I finally settled for eggs, making a quick frittata with onions, one of Mr. Contreras’s tomatoes, and the remains of a green pepper.

The phone rang as I was swallowing the last few bites—Cleo calling back with Legal Aid’s man at bond court tonight: Manuel Diaz. I thanked her and headed down to Eleventh and State.

Parking presents no problems beyond the deserted south end of the Loop in the evening. By day it’s an area filled with ramshackle businesses run out of warehouses and the antiquated coffee shops that serve them. At night, the Central District Headquarters is the sole source of life in the area; most of the visitors aren’t driving their own cars.

I parked the Chevy close to the building and walked inside. The halls with their peeling paint and strong smell of disinfectant brought nostalgic memories of visits to my father, a sergeant until his death fourteen years ago.

I found Manuel Diaz smoking a cigarette in one of the conference rooms next to the courtroom. He was a stockily built Mexican. Although I didn’t remember him, he looked old enough to have been with Legal Aid when I was there. His heavy face was scored with deep lines. A smattering of pockmarks gave his cheeks the appearance of freckles. I explained who I was and what I wanted.

“Mr. Contreras is in his seventies. He’s a machinist who used to mix it up in his union days and he decided to relive his youth this afternoon. I don’t know what they’re going to charge him with. I saw him go after someone with a pipe wrench, but he was mauled pretty well, too.”

“They haven’t brought the charges over to us yet, but they probably just booked him for disturbing the peace,” Diaz responded. “They arrested eighty people this afternoon, so they weren’t being too particular what they charged them with.”

We chatted for a while. He had been a public defender for twenty years, first out in Lake County, now in the city. He lived on the South Side, he explained, and the commute to the North Shore got to be too much for him.

“Although I miss our quiet old times out there. You get pretty jaded here—I suppose you know that.”

I grimaced. “I only stayed with it for five years. I guess I’m too impatient, or too egotistical—I want to see some results from my hard labor, and as a trial
lawyer I always felt somehow that the situation was no different when I finished with a client than before—or sometimes maybe things were a little worse.”

“So you went into business for yourself, huh? That how you got your face cut open? Well, at least you’re getting some results. I’ve had some pretty wild clients, but they’ve never attacked me with a knife.”

I was spared answering by the arrival of a clerk with the charge slips. Manuel went through them with the speed of long experience, segregating the simple ones—disturbing peace, disorderly conduct, vagrancy—from the more serious. He asked a bailiff to bring all the disturbing-the-peace and disorderly cases in as a group.

Nine men came in, including Mr. Contreras and his friend Jake Sokolowski. They were by far the oldest in the group. The others, young middle-class men in various stages of disarray, looked both scared and pugnacious. Mitch Kruger, the third machinist, had disappeared—hadn’t been arrested, Mr. Contreras told me later. With the bandage around his head and his work clothes torn, the old man looked like a skid-row derelict, but the fight seemed to have added new fuel to his abundant store of energy and he smiled jauntily at me.

“You come to rescue me, cookie? Knew I could count on you—that’s why I didn’t bother calling Ruthie. You think I look bad, you shoulda seen the other guy—”

“Listen,” Manuel interrupted him. “The last thing I
want any of you to do is boast about your accomplishments. Just keep your mouths shut for the next couple of hours and with luck you’ll all sleep in your own beds tonight.”

“Sure, chief, whatever you say,” Mr. Contreras agreed cheerfully. He nudged Sokolowski in his large stomach and the two of them winked and grinned like a pair of teenagers eyeing a girl for the first time.

Six of the other seven defendants had also been arrested at the clinic, fighting the good fight to protect fetuses. The remaining man had been found singing in the middle of the executive offices of the Fort Dearborn Trust earlier in the evening. No one knew how he had gotten past the security guards, and when Manuel asked him he smiled happily and announced that he had flown there.

Manuel interrogated Sokolowski and Mr. Contreras together. He decided they would argue self-defense, that they were trying to help Lotty keep her clinic open and had been attacked by the mob. When Mr. Contreras protested indignantly against so passive a role, I backed up Manuel’s pleas that he remain silent.

“You were hero enough this afternoon,” I told him. “You’re not going to do anyone any good by mouthing off to the judge and getting thirty days or a big fine. It’s not going to diminish your manhood if the judge doesn’t know every single detail of your antics.”

He finally agreed, reluctantly, but with a mulish expression that made me feel sorry for his long-dead wife.
Sokolowski, while not as fit as his friend, was just as eager to figure as the baddest, biggest man on Damen Avenue. But when Mr. Contreras finally agreed to plead self-defense, he followed suit.

I wasn’t allowed to stay for the interrogation of the six clinic invaders. After the bailiff took Mr. Contreras and Sokolowski back to the holding cell I wandered into the interior of the station to see if Lieutenant Mallory was in. I talked my way past the desk sergeant and went down the hall to the homicide detectives’ area.

Mallory wasn’t there, but Rawlings’s pal Detective Finchley was. A lean, quiet black man, he got up politely when I came in.

“Good to see you, Ms. Warshawski. What happened to your face?”

“I cut myself shaving,” I said, weary of the subject. “I thought your pal Conrad Rawlings told you all about it; thanks for the read you gave him on my character.” It was Finchley who told Rawlings that I was a pain in the ass who got results. “Lieutenant Mallory gone home for the day? Would you tell him I was in? That I hoped to have a chance to discuss what happened at Dr. Herschel’s clinic this afternoon?”

Finchley promised to give him the message. He looked at me straight-faced. “You are a pain in the ass, Ms. Warshawski—cut yourself shaving, my aunt Fanny. But you care about your friends and I like that in you.”

Surprised and touched by the compliment, I made
my way back to the courtroom with a bit more energy. I needed it to muscle my way to a seat. While the daytime courts scattered around the city attract a certain number of observers who want to pass the time of day, the night bond courts don’t meet at a convenient time—they’re usually empty. But tonight a large force of anti-abortionists, all carrying roses, sat waiting for the judge.

Because so many people had been arrested for destroying the clinic, a large crowd of lawyers was seated up front waiting for their clients. A good ten or so uniformed cops were seated there, too, and a couple of the newspapers also had people in the room. I knew one of them, a junior crime reporter for the
Herald-Star,
who came over when she saw me sit down. I told her Mr. Contreras’s story. It had a nice human-interest touch, which might help crowd anti-abortion coverage off the front page. Chicago’s papers and TV stations are blatantly anti-choice in their news coverage.

At length the bailiff mumbled something, we all stood up, and the court was in session. As docket after docket was called, various lawyers came forward, sometimes Manuel Diaz, more often one of the private attorneys—this was an unusual session for the judge, who wasn’t used to so many paying patients.

My attention wandered, but my eyes kept returning to the back of one of the lawyers’ heads. He looked elusively familiar. I was wishing he would turn so I could glimpse his face, when he twitched his shoulders
in an irritated gesture. It brought his name back to me immediately: Richard Yarborough, senior partner at Crawford, Meade, one of the city’s largest law firms. I’d gotten used to that impatient twitch of the shoulders in the eighteen months we’d been married.

I let out a soundless whistle. Dick’s time was billed at two hundred dollars an hour. Someone mighty important had been arrested today. I was speculating on it fruitlessly when I realized with a start that my name had been called. I made my way to the front of the room, said my piece to the judge, and was pleased to hear my unrepentant neighbor dismissed with a warning.

“If you are seen on the street in the future carrying a pipe wrench or any other tool of similar size, it will be construed as violent intent and will constitute violation of your bond. Do you understand me, Mr. Contreras?”

The old man ground his teeth, but Manuel and I both looked at him gravely and he said, “Yes. Yes, sir.” He clearly wanted to speak further, so I took his arm, barely waiting for the judge’s “Dismissed” and gavel tap before hustling him away from the bench.

He was muttering to himself about how he’d rather go to jail than have people think he was a chicken shit when I cut him off.

“I’m going to drive you home,” I said. “But my ex-husband’s in court. It’s just vulgar curiosity, but I want to find out why. Mind waiting a bit?”

As I’d hoped, the news instantly took his mind off his grievances.

“I didn’t know you was married! Should have guessed. Guy wasn’t good enough for you, huh? Come to me next time—don’t make the same mistake twice. Like this young fellow you brought in the other night—looks like kind of a lightweight to me.”

“Yes, well, he’s a doctor—doesn’t do too much barroom fighting. The first one’s a high-priced lawyer—if I’d stuck with him I’d have a mansion in Oak Brook and three children today.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t a liked it. Take my word for it, cookie—you’re better off.”

The bailiff was frowning at us, so I urged Mr. Contreras to an unwilling silence. We waited through a variety of other cases, including the man who’d flown into the Fort Dearborn executive suite, who was remanded to Cook County for psychiatric evaluation.

Then the bailiff announced Docket 81523—the People versus Dieter Monkfish. Dick got to his feet and approached the bench. My brain whirled around so fast that the room spun. Monkfish and IckPiff with one of the city’s priciest lawyers? I couldn’t hear what passed between Dick and the judge, or the judge, the policeman, and Monkfish, but the upshot was Monkfish was released on his own recognizance, given a court date in October, and enjoined from disturbing the peace. If he complied, all charges would be dropped. He mumbled agreement, his Adam’s apple working, and the play was over.

Mr. Contreras came with me to wait in the hall outside
the lawyers’ conference room. Dick emerged after about fifteen minutes. I stopped him before he could head down the corridor.

“Hi, Dick. Can we talk for a minute?”

“Vic, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Gee, Dick, I’m glad to see you, too. How are you?”

He glared at me. He’s never really forgiven me for not appreciating him as much as he does himself.

“I’m trying to get home. What do you want?”

“Same as you, Dick—to make the wheels of justice turn more smoothly. This is Salvatore Contreras. One of your client’s buddies hit him over the head with a board this afternoon.”

Mr. Contreras stuck out a callused hand at Dick, who shook it reluctantly.

“You made a big mistake when you let cookie here go, young man,” he informed Dick. “She’s a great gal, tops in my book. If I was thirty years younger I’d marry her myself. Make it twenty, even.”

Dick’s face was congealing, a sure sign of anger.

“Thanks,” I said to Mr. Contreras, “but we’re both really better off the way we are. Could I ask you to step aside for a second? I want to ask him something he won’t feel like answering in front of an audience.”

Mr. Contreras obligingly moved down the hall. Dick looked at me sternly.

“Well? Now that you’ve gotten that old man to insult me, I’m not sure I want to answer any questions of yours.”

“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s sort of appointed himself my father—maybe he goes about it clumsily, but he doesn’t mean any harm…. I was surprised to see you with Dieter Monkfish.”

“I know you don’t agree with his politics, Vic, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t entitled to counsel.”

“No, no,” I said hastily. “I’m sure you’re right. And I respect you for being willing to represent him—he can’t be the most congenial of clients.”

He permitted himself a careful smile. “I certainly wouldn’t invite him to the Union League Club with me. But I don’t think it will come to that—he’s not that type of client.”

“I guess I wondered what type of client he was. I mean, here you are, one of the top corporate lawyers in town. And there he is, a fanatic with a shoestring organization. How can they afford Crawford, Meade?”

Dick smiled patronizingly. “Not your business, Vic. Even fanatics have friends.” He shot a glance at the Rolex weighting down his left wrist and announced that he had to get going.