V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 23

Mr. Contreras erupted with the dogs. Mitch broke away from him and launched himself at Lemour. The detective punched his head. Mitch yelped and huddled on the ground. Lemour started to kick him, but I threw myself between his foot and the dog. We went over in a heap of leash, detective and me, with Peppy joining in to mew worriedly at her son.

"That's it, Warshki," Lemour panted from the pavement. "I'm adding resisting arrest to the kidnapping charge. You'll be lucky if you're home in time for Christmas. And I'll have this dog put to sleep for a.s.saulting me."

Homebound commuters began to crowd around to see what the show was. One young woman said she thought it took a lot of nerve to beat a dog and then threaten to put it to sleep.

"He's obviously perfectly friendly and he's on a leash, aren't you, good doggy."

She scratched his ears, carefully avoiding looking at me.

"Shut the h.e.l.l up unless you want to be arrested for interfering with the police," Lemour said savagely.

She backed away as the sheriff's deputy once more muttered an ineffectual intervention.

My hands were cuffed behind me. I'd fallen hard on my side and lay there on the walk, the wind knocked out of me, my right cheek smarting from grazing the concrete. Mitch climbed to his feet and shook himself like a boxer who's taken a bad blow but is ready to go back in the ring. Peppy licked him anxiously. He's a big ugly dog, half black Lab, half golden Peppy, and I've never been crazy about him, but right now his attempts to grin, wag his tail, show there were no hard feelings, made my eyes smart.

I rolled forward onto my knees. Mr. Contreras anxiously helped me up, keeping one eye on Lemour, who was brus.h.i.+ng concrete crumbs from his suit, his face patchyred with rage. When he got to his feet the dogs started toward him.

"Mitch, Peppy! Stay!" I was gasping for breath, but the dogs for once paid attention and sat. "Get them inside before Lummox here loses his head completely and shoots them," I said to Mr. Contreras. "And take my handbag before this cretin steals my wallet. Can you call Freeman for me? Also, will you get a message to Morrell? I'm supposed to meet him for a picnic tomorrow. In case I can't get out on time, will you call and tell him? His number's in my electronic diary, there in my bag."

Mr. Contreras was looking so bewildered I wasn't sure he'd heard me, although he did pick up my handbag from where Lemour had dropped it. I started to repeat myself, but Lemour, furiously trying to straighten his tie, grabbed my arm and jerked me down the walk. He tried to throw me into the back of the squad car, but he wasn't big enough to get the right leverage. The Du Page sheriff's deputy took my left arm and whispered something apologetic as he pushed me behind the cage.

"Uh, Doug, uh, can you give me the key? I need to lock her to the seat, and she can't ride with her arms behind her."

Lemour ignored him and climbed behind the unmarked car's wheel. The sheriff's deputy looked at me uncertainly, but as Lemour started the engine he quickly shut the door on me and got into the pa.s.senger seat. Lemour took off so fast that my head banged into the metal cage.

Rage was building in me. I knew I had to keep it down. I was helpless-physically and in the situation-and if I let my fury ride me I'd give Lemour the opening he wanted to pound me into the ground. When he stopped at the light on Addison, I maneuvered my body so that I was sitting sideways in the narrow s.p.a.ce with my legs stretched out across the width of the backseat. My shoulders were beginning to ache horribly.

The day had started so well, too. When I got back from swimming with the dogs, young Robbie was up and willing to make timid overtures to Peppy. Mr. Contreras prepared his breakfast specialty, French toast, and Robbie relaxed visibly as the old man urged seconds on him: perhaps it was the first time in his life his every mouthful hadn't been monitored and criticized.

I drove north to Morrell's place in Evanston. In the theme of SpyCounterspy, I wrote out a note explaining my visit to Coolis yesterday and how imperative it was that I talk to Seora Mercedes. Morrell frowned over my message, then finally decided-whether because of my dogged determination, my impeccable logic, or my nicelooking legs-to take me to see Nicola Aguinaldo's mother. We rode the L, since that was the easiest way to check for tails, first in and out of the Loop and then over to Pilsen on the city's near southwest side.

When I met Abuelita Mercedes I realized I'd been carrying the unconscious stereotype of her t.i.tle of "granny"-I'd been expecting an old woman in a kerchief, with round red cheeks. Of course, a woman whose daughter was only twentyseven was still young herself, in fact only a few years older than I. She was short, stocky, with black hair curling softly around her ears and forehead and a permanent worry crease worked between her brows.

Tagalog was her first language, but she could get by in Spanish, which Morrell spoke fluently-although his was the Central American version, not always in sync with Filipino Spanish, he explained. Abuelita Mercedes's English was limited to a few social phrases, which she used upon his introducing us: Seora Mercedes, le presento a la Seora Victoria. He a.s.sured her that I was a friend worried about Nicola's death, as well as a lawyer committed to justice for the poor.

Sherree, Nicola's surviving child, greeted Morrell with an eager cry of "To!" but she chattered away in English to him. After a formal reception, with strong black coffee and little fried donuts, we began to broach the subject of Nicola's death.

With Morrell translating Seora Mercedes's Spanish and Sherree reluctantly a.s.sisting with a Tagalog phrase or two, Nicola's mother made her halting way through Nicola's story. She explained that she knew very little of what had happened to her daughter in prison. Seora Mercedes couldn't afford a phone, so it wasn't possible for her to talk to her daughter except at very wide intervals: she would get permission from a neighbor, often Seora Attar, to use her phone, so that Nicola could call collect on a prearranged day. But then it depended on whether she was able to get a letter in to Nicola or whether Nicola could get phone privileges on that day.

She had to write in Spanish, which neither she nor Nicola wrote well, since anything she wrote in Tagalog was automatically turned back. Even so, the Spanish letters were often sent back. Coolis, out in the rural white countryside, had only one or two Spanishspeaking guards, despite the large number of Hispanic inmates. They often refused to let Spanishlanguage mail in or out, with the excuse that Seora Mercedes could be providing gang information to her daughter.

Now that Sherree was in third grade she wrote English-very good in English-but Nicola hadn't written English well enough to send out detailed news.

When the baby died, oh, that was terrible. Seora Mercedes couldn't go to Coolis: she didn't have a green card, she didn't know what papers you had to show, and what if they arrested her when she was visiting her daughter? Then, too, everything cost money, the bus fare to Coolis, it was all too much. So she sent a letter in Spanish, Sherree sent a letter-the priest helped her write it in English, this was before Seor Morrell became a friend or he would surely have helped-but she never heard from her daughter again, she didn't even know if Nicola learned the news about the baby's death before she died herself, and now here was poor Sherree, no mother, no sister, father dead in the Philippines.

Sherree seemed to have heard this lament before. She frowned over the dolls she was playing with and turned her back on her grandmother as Seora Mercedes went into detail about the baby's death. The poor baby, the cause of so much misery, needing money for the hospital, causing Nicola to steal, but then, those employers, so mean, not letting her get away to be with her own baby in the hospital, not lending her money, it was wrong of Nicola to steal, but Seora Mercedes could understand why she did it. And then, five years in prison? When men who did far worse crimes were there for much less time? Here in America it was all terrible. If not for the money, for the chance to have Sherree get a good education, they would never stay.

We took a break to let Seora Mercedes recover her poise before I asked what I most wanted to know: about Nicola's work in the prison shop. That was good, her mother said, because she got paid two dollars and fifty cents an hour. It was for sewing, sewing s.h.i.+rts, and Nicola was very fast, her little fingers so-so nimble, yes, that was the word, the best on the floor, the bosses at the prison said. It was piecework, but Nicola was so fast she made the top rate.

What kind of s.h.i.+rts? I asked, but Seora Mercedes had no idea. Of course she'd never seen her daughter's work. Even if she had visited her daughter, she would not have seen her work. s.h.i.+rts, that was all she knew. She pulled out a letter from Nicola to show me.

With Morrell leaning over my shoulder to help translate, I stumbled my way through the text, which had been heavily censored: My dear Mama, I am well, I hope you and Sherree and Anna are well and happy. I am working now in the sewing shop, where I can make very good money. We sew (crossed out), I make more than anyone else in an hour, the other girls are jealous. For a higher rate you can work the (crossed out), but it is too heavy for me.

You must not worry about me, even though I am small (two lines heavily crossed out). Seora Ruby is a sweet old lady who takes care of me, and now that people see she looks after me the big women (crossed out). The food is good, I eat well, I say my prayers every day. Please give many many kisses to Sherree and to Anna.

Nicola Anna had been the baby's name. There were six letters in all, all Nicola had been able to send in fifteen months, and most of them with large sections excised.

When we moved onto more delicate ground-namely, Nicola's love life-Seora Mercedes either knew nothing, or there was nothing to know. When did Nicola have time to meet a man? her mother demanded. She worked six days a week for those cruel people. She came home on Sundays and spent the day with her own children.

Nicola worked, Seora Mercedes worked on the night s.h.i.+ft at a box factory, all so that Sherree and Anna could have a good life. A man named Lemour? No, Seora Mercedes never heard Nicola mention him. And Mr. Baladine, Nicola's employer?

Nicola didn't like him but the money was good and she tried not to complain.

Sherree, busy on the floor with her dolls, didn't seem to have anything to add to the story.

We had been talking for two hours. Morrell took us down the street to a tacqueria for lunch. Over burritos and fried plantain Seora Mercedes told me about the day that Nicola died.

"I didn't know she was dead until the next day. My own daughter. Because on Monday the marshals came and Seora Attar, a good woman even if a different religion and a different language, woke up and saw them before they could arrest me and Sherree. She told these officers I was her own mother. What a good woman!

But of course I had to move away at once."

I interrupted Morrell's translation to ask for a detailed description of the men. There were two. And how were they dressed? In suits. Not in uniforms?

"What's the point?" Morrell asked, when I pushed for as accurate a description as possible.

"If they were state marshals, they would have been in uniform. INS, who knows, but these men sound expensively dressed. I don't think they were with the law, except the one unto themselves."

"Que?"Seora Mercedes demanded of Sherree."Que dicen?"

Sherree refused to look up from the dolls, who she'd brought to the tacqueria and were now climbing on top of each other in a fearful tangle of arms.

"The lady thinks they were not with the law, but perhaps men who had an evil intention toward Nicola and her family," Morrell said in Spanish.

That was as far as we could take matters. Seora Mercedes had seen Seor Baladine drive her daughter home, perhaps four times during the years she worked for him, but he always stayed in the car, she had no way of recognizing his face. If he had been at her home the day before Nicola died, she didn't know. I would have to dig up photos of Baladine and Trant to see if Seora Mercedes recognized either of them.

We left the tacqueria with copious thanks for the seora's time. Morrell bought Sherree a frozen mango on a stick from one of the pushcarts we pa.s.sed on the way back to their apartment. On the L north, Morrell and I went over the conversation from as many angles as we could but couldn't squeeze any more out of it.

As for Nicola's body, that, too, remained a mystery. Morrell said he'd talked to Vishnikov, who hadn't been able to track it down. Vishnikov had also reported on Frenada's autopsy: the man had died by drowning-the water in his lungs made that clear.

"Frenada was out at the Baladine estate the night before he died," I said.

"Robbie Baladine saw him there. I'd love to know whether the water in his lungs came from a swimming pool or Lake Michigan."

Morrell pursed his mouth in a soundless whistle. "I'll ask Vishnikov. I don't know if it's too late or not-the morgue released the body to Frenada's sister yesterday afternoon. Now, since I've been a good collaborator, taken you where you wanted to go, found out what news there was to learn about Lucian Frenada, will you do something for me?"

"If it's in my power, sure."

"Join me for a Fourth of July picnic tomorrow. I'll supply the food. We can use the private beach up the street from me-I know one of the families who lives there."

I laughed. "That task sounds well within my capabilities. Thank you."

I was still smiling when I got home and walked into Lemour's arms. It was a long time before I smiled that freely again.

34.

Fourth of July Picnic I spent Friday night at the Rogers Park police station. When we got there I was fingerprinted and searched. Stripsearched while Lemour looked on. His eyes were glistening, his lips white with spittle. All I could do was hold myself aloof.

The dissociation that all prisoners practice. I would become expert at it in the weeks ahead.

The police have rules governing interrogation, but if they breach them it's hard to do anything about it-especially on a Friday night before a holiday with your lawyer whoknowswhere. I tried to insist on my right to phone counsel, but Lemour and the charge officer ignored me.

I was put in an interrogation room where I sat for hours, without water, while Lemour screamed meaningless questions at me. When would I confess to cocaine possession? How had I gotten hold of Robbie Baladine? Alternating questions and punches. Every now and then he would leave and a uniformed man would come in and say, Tell him what he wants to know, honey; it will only get worse.

At first I kept repeating that I would answer questions only in the presence of my attorney. I kept praying for Freeman's appearance. Had Mr. Contreras understood my plea to call him?

After a time I stopped speaking altogether. Lemour's fury mounted, until a final blow knocked me to the floor. I'm not sure what happened next-the charge sergeant pulled Lemour out of the room and came back for me.

"You sleep it off," he advised. "It'll look better in the morning."

"What will?" I muttered through bruised lips. "The charge of police brutality against Lemour?"

The sergeant took me to the station lockup, where half a dozen other women were waiting. One of them looked at me with shock that was half admiration. "What'd you do to Lemour, girl, refuse to pay him his shakedown? I seen him go insane more than once but never nothing like he did to you tonight."

I tried to say something, but my mouth was too swollen for me to speak. She banged on the cage demanding water. By and by a matron brought a paper cup of tepid tap water. I swallowed as best I could and sat down, gingerly rubbing my sore head and shoulders. I tried to thank my benefactor, but only parodies of words came from my bruised mouth.

I spent a sleepless night. One woman was chainsmoking, the one next to me on the floor spewed curses as the ashes floated on her, while a third roommate moaned over the fate of her baby. Roaches paraded across us all night. We were transients; they owned this room.

In the morning a matron came into the cage, forcing all of us to our feet. The lights in the room were too bright, but when I shut my eyes the room around me spun in nauseating spirals. I held on to the wall for support and felt my stomach heave. I didn't want to throw up, not on myself, not in public, but I couldn't hold it in.

"Jesus Christ, you wh.o.r.es come in here with a load on and then foul up the cell.

Come on, wash it off, put these on, let's get going."

I was cuffed to another woman who'd also been sick. We were taken to a tiny toilet where we cleaned ourselves as best we could. I put my head under the sink tap and let water run through my hair and mouth until the officer dragged me away.

"You there, Warshki, get moving."

"I need a doctor." I coughed hoa.r.s.ely. "I have a concussion."

"You need clothes. Put these on. You're riding out to Coolis."

"Coolis?" I couldn't raise my voice above a whisper. "Not Coolis. Only arrested, not convicted."

The policewoman pulled me away from the sink. "You have a bad fall or a rough john or what last night? Put this s.h.i.+rt on."

The s.h.i.+rt was a bright yellow that made my eyes smart. On the back was stamped IDOC-Illinois Department of Corrections. "Your detective Lemour, he's got to be the roughest john in Chicago. This was all his handiwork. I'm not going to Coolis. I'm waiting for my attorney. Post bond."

"Look, Warshki, I don't have time for games. I got four girls to get on a bus, including you, and you're not in shape to do anything but say yes, ma'am. It's a holiday today, no bond court; your lawyer if he calls will be told where you are. Coolis has the overflow jail for Cook and Du Page County, and we are filled to the brim with all you girls turning tricks up and down the city, so you get a bus ride in the fresh country air, which is more than I'm allowed on the nation's birthday, let me tell you."

I put the s.h.i.+rt on. I didn't know what other choice I had. I had been so sure Freeman would be here this morning to post bail that I was too disappointed to react. Only four of us out of the cage were being sent to Coolis-did the others get a free pa.s.s, and if so, why?

The matron cuffed me back to my bathroom partner and marched us out to the street, where an old white bus painted with the Department of Corrections logo waited. Our escort exchanged a few jovial words with a guard as she handed us over to the state. I got my watch back and the six dollars I'd had in my jeans, but my keys were a potential weapon and were handed to the guard in a sealed envelope together with my paperwork.

Rogers Park was the last stop for the bus, which had picked up women from various lockups on the west and north ends of town. There were twentynine of us altogether. The guard pushed me into a seat, attached leg and hand shackles to me, connected them to a central pole, and signaled to the driver to take off.

As we lurched west to the expressway, the diesel smoke and the hard seats made my empty stomach heave again. A pregnant woman two seats in front and on my left begged the driver to stop, in halting accented English. No one paid any attention. She threw up, trying to cover her mouth with her manacled hands.

"Can you stop?" I called through my bruised lips. "There's a sick woman in here."

No response from the armed guard.

I shouted again. Several prisoners stamped their feet. A guard yelled through the loudspeaker that they would halt the bus and make us stand at attention on the side of the road for an hour if the noise continued. Everyone subsided, including me-I didn't want to be the one who made this group of women stand in the midday sun.

"f.u.c.king a.s.sholes," the woman next to me muttered as the bus waited in line to get on the tollway. "Don't let you go to the john, then bounce you around hard enough to make you pee over yourself."

She wasn't talking to me, and I didn't answer. She'd kept up a stream of invective since the guard attached us. She was twitching, her eyes a telltale yellow. As the day wore on, flecks of spittle appeared around her mouth, but she couldn't stop talking.

At noon we halted for a rest stop at the place where Mr. Contreras and I had our picnic with the dogs two weeks ago. We were unshackled two at a time, the bathroom closed to the public while we were escorted in. It was hard to walk past the people stopping for food or walking their dogs, their jaws gaping, trying not to show how avidly they were staring.

We were given fifteen minutes to relieve ourselves and buy something at the vending machines. I used one of my six dollars to buy a can of juice, which I had to drink in quick gulps under the intense glare of a guard: they would confiscate any metal we tried to sneak onto the bus.

While we waited for the driver, some of the women exchanged small talk with the guards. When we were finally loaded back on, the smart talkers got to move closer to the front, away from the diesel fumes. I got to move closer to the back. My reward for trying to speak up for the pregnant woman.

It was three when the bus pulled in through the main gates at Coolis. A heavily armed force supervised our unbuckling from the pole and emergence into the prison yard. I ended up behind the pregnant woman. She was small and dark, like Nicola Aguinaldo, and deeply ashamed of the vomit down her front. She tried timidly to ask for help but none of the guards responded. They were busy counting us and comparing lists. It was here that the sheep and the goats were separated-some bound for prison, some for jail.

"This woman needs help," I said to one of the guards near me.

When he ignored me I repeated myself, but the woman next to me hissed and stepped on my left foot. "Shut up. They only start over from the beginning each time they're interrupted, and I need to use the john."

A smell of urine now came from the pregnant woman and she began to weep. The guards ignored her and began the count again. Finally, when the heat of the sun and the long wait made me wonder if she might faint, they started calling us forward. My traveling companions disappeared one by one into the building.

Another half hour went by. I badly needed a toilet myself, but they were taking us in alphabetical order. There were three of us left when they called me.

"Warshki."

I shuffled forward in my chains. "Warshawski, not Warshki."

I should have kept quiet-speech was their license to kill. They sent me back to wait, took "White" and "Zarzuela" while I compressed my thighs as best I could for the chains. And finally was called again. Not "Warshki" this time but "Wars.h.i.+tski."

At the door I was unlocked, printed again, sent under double escort to an interior room where I once again took off all my clothes, squatted, coughed, tried to remove myself from the burn of shame at my exposure, and the dribble of urine I couldn't help releasing. A guard barked me into the shower, where hair and a whitish film of soap covered the floor and sides. I was given a clean IDOC uniform, the pants too short on my long legs and riding too tightly in the crotch, the s.h.i.+rt big enough for three of me. At least it covered my waist so I could leave the pants unzipped.

On this far side of the gates my shackles were finally removed. A guard took me through a series of locked corridors to the jail wing. At five I joined the line to the refectory and had a Fourth of July special: hardfried chicken, over boiled green beans, corn on the cob, and cooked apple slices on something that looked like cardboard. It was too tough to cut with the plastic utensils we were issued, so most of the women picked it up and ate it by hand.