A Death in Pilsen

Chapter 13

Lido Cappelitti was one of the best photographers on the Trib staff — maybe the best. He was damned good company as well, as I learned from the few times I’d worked with him over the years.

His battered green Dodge with its dented right front fender and cracked rear window never fully came to a stop in front of Police Headquarters. I jumped onto the running board and swung inside as we tore away to the screeching of tires.

“How you doin’, Snap? It’s been awhile,” he jawed out of the corner of his mouth, as he lighted a Chesterfield, and steered with his knees. Lido couldn’t have been more than five feet six, but when he was on the scene of a story, he had the voice and presence of a burly six-footer. You could hear him a half block away, bellowing orders, telling people how he wanted them posed, or hectoring a cop to “give me some space to take my shot here, will ya, Sarge?”

He wheeled the whining Dodge through the streets of the near south side, ignoring traffic lights and leaning on his horn with the confidence and panache of a driver who had a newspaper press photographer’s card clearly visible on the inside of the windshield. Soon we hit Ogden Avenue, which would take us all the way out to Naperville, located in the farmlands some 30 miles west.

We finally cleared the Chicago city limits and raced through what seemed like an endless string of suburbs: Cicero... Berwyn... Lyons... Brookfield... LaGrange... Western Springs... Hinsdale... Downers Grove. Once we finally got to Naperville, Lido seemed to know where the wreck site was.

“I been in this burg before,” he told me through clenched teeth that held the fifth Chesterfield of the drive. “Didn’t ever expect to be covering a story like this here, though.”

Never having set foot in the town, I was glad he knew his way around. We turned south off of Ogden into a residential street and soon found ourselves at a police barricade. “Road closed from here to the tracks,” a uniformed local cop told Lido.

“We’re with the Tribune. We need to get through right away,” the photographer told him brusquely, gesturing to the press card on the windshield. “We’re on deadline, and every second counts!” But, it was obvious that a mention of the newspaper and its immediate needs did not carry the same weight out here as it did in the city.

“Sorry, sir, but this is as far as the car goes,” the cop responded, calm and unimpressed. “You’ll have to walk the last block or so. Won’t kill ya.”

Lido scowled and swore under his breath, but we were left with no option. Sirens blared from all directions, and cops, firemen, and just plain civilians were running in every direction. I stuck my press card in my hatband and, as we were getting out of the car, a silver-haired woman in a housedress and bedroom slippers ran by us crying, “It’s awful, awful! Somebody do something! For God’s sake, do something!” I tried to stop her, but she pushed me away like a football player stiff-arming a tackler and kept on running, yelling, and waving her pudgy arms, her slippers going “flap, flap, flap” on the pavement as she ran.

I followed the squat, camera-toting photographer, stepping over fire hoses and weaving through the increasingly dense crowd of onlookers. When we came within sight of the tracks, we both put on the brakes.

It was a scene I never hope to view the likes of again. What I soon learned was that the last passenger car of the lead westbound train, the Advance Flyer, had been cleaved in half by the second train, the Exposition Flyer, whose silver diesel locomotive was embedded deep into the wreckage, with dust and smoke still rising from the destroyed coach.

Groans and screams came from the shattered car even now, some two hours after the crash. Bodies, some of them children, were sprawled along the tracks.

Firemen and other rescuers picked their way through the shambles, hauling passengers — many of them corpses — out through the windows of the train car or through the gaping holes where the sides of the car used to be.

Crews used acetylene torches, cutting away the metal to reach those who were trapped. The survivors, many of them blood-spattered and maimed, were being trundled on stretchers over to waiting ambulances. Lido was right there with his camera, snapping pictures and barking at rescuers to stop blocking his shots.

I spotted our general assignment reporter, Dean Phillips, talking to a fireman, and I joined him. “Any idea how many fatalities, Chief?” Phillips asked, notebook in hand, as he nodded his recognition to me.

“Too soon to tell yet,” the grim-faced firefighter replied, wiping his grimy brow. “I know they’ve taken out at least twenty bodies so far, and there are lots more in there. Right now, we’re mainly trying to get the rest of the living out of that hellhole. Some of them are pinned in pretty badly, as you can hear. I gotta go,” he said, turning away and heading toward the trains.

“Snap, glad to see you here,” Phillips said. “You’re doing the sidebar stuff, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll start looking for eyewitnesses.”

“Good, you ought to find plenty of ’em. I’m off to talk to the cops and also somebody from the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy line to find out what the hell went haywire. See you later.”

He went off as I watched members of the rescue crews moving into and around the passenger cars, which were strewn along the tracks at crazy angles like a kid’s electric train that had derailed on a living room floor around the Christmas tree.

A group of students from nearby North Central College had arrived to help with the injured, as had employees from the big Kroehler furniture plant that overlooked the crash site. I interviewed one of the college kids, a red-haired twenty-year-old North Central sophomore, who had been a stretcher-bearer and was understandably teary and distraught about the agony he had witnessed. There was no shortage of help, but getting the injured through the crowds of onlookers at the scene and off to hospitals seemed to be the biggest challenge at the moment.

An elderly fellow in a flat cap and lightweight jacket sat with his head in his hands on the curb of a street that adjoined the crash scene, his black-and-white cocker spaniel at his side.

“Are you all right, sir?” I asked, crouching next to him.

He looked up, dazed, shaking his head.

“Were you on the train?”

He shook his head, slack-jawed. “No, oh my, no. I live just a block from here. I was walking Bogart.” He motioned toward the tail-wagging dog, which seemed unconcerned about the frenetic activity swirling around him. “We always take our walk at the same time every afternoon. I like to watch the trains come through, and so does Bogart. But today...”

“So you saw what happened then?”

“It was like watching the end of the world.”

“I’m a reporter with the Tribune,” I told him, gesturing to the press card in my hatband and pulling out my notebook. “Tell me what you saw.”

He looked down at the pavement. “It was different today,” he muttered. “For some reason, a train was stopped on the tracks, and these limiteds don’t usually stop in Naperville. This is mainly a commuter train station. There musta been some sort of signal problem. Me and Bogart, we didn’t think nothing of it. Then we could hear this other train a’coming. Sounded like it was moving awful fast, but there’s three tracks here, and I figured it must have been on another track.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Still looking down, he shook his head vigorously. “No, sir. It started blowing its horn, and then you could hear all this hissing and screeching... the brakes, I suppose. And then... it was like a sound I never heard before. A lot of sounds, really — a sort of squealing, this was probably the brakes and the wheels and all the steel smashing together, and then the breaking glass. I had to put my hands over my ears, and Bogart was barking and whining and all.” He hugged himself and groaned at the memory.

“And you watched it?”

He let out perhaps the saddest sigh I’ve ever heard. “The engine, it just... it just ripped into the back end of the stalled train and tore it apart, like it was some kind of giant can opener. When the awful noise stopped, then... then it was even worse. You could hear all the screaming.

“Oh, my God, it was terrible. All those poor people.” He started sobbing, and his faithful dog nuzzled his cheek with its nose.

I had scribbled down his narrative, and I got his name and age, which was seventy-eight. I could only hope that after this experience, he would make it to seventy-nine. As I walked away, he was still on the curb, sniffling and rocking, and cradling Bogart in his lap.

I walked on along the tracks to the west, passing cops barking orders, firemen and flashing lights, and ambulances. Farther from the point of impact, the cars of the front train didn’t seem as badly damaged, but that may have been deceptive, given that when the crash occurred, passengers all through each of the two trains surely were thrown around like rag dolls and ended up bouncing off the walls, floors, and maybe even the ceilings.

I came upon a grandmotherly woman in a brown dress who was wringing her hands and crying softly. A small brown suitcase rested on the ground at her feet. “Are you hurt?” I asked, gently clasping her arm.

“Oh, no, no, thank you, I’m all right. Just shaken up,” she said weakly, looking up at me through rimless glasses and trying without success to force a smile.

“You were on the train?”

“On the Advance Flyer, yes, sir. I was walking along the aisle and got knocked down onto the floor, bumped my head, but it’s not bad,” she told me, indicating a small bruise on her forehead.

“I was one of the lucky ones, maybe because I was toward the front of the train. Although the woman in the seat in front of me, who was riding on to Denver, I’m afraid she might be... But right now, I’m very worried about my sister.”

“You mean she’s still in there?” I said excitedly, pointing to the train.

“Oh no, she’s out in Omaha where we live, expecting me home tonight. But when she goes down to the station there to meet me, she’ll find out about the wreck and will be terrified about what happened to me.”

“Why don’t you just telephone her?”

“Where would I do that?”

“Come with me,” I said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the red brick Naperville depot. Inside, three people were lined up to use the lone pay telephone in the waiting room. The woman at the phone was yelling into the mouthpiece that she was stranded. “Yes, yes, a crash — dead people all over the place! I’m in — what’s this town?” she asked the man behind her in line, who told her. “I’m in a place called Naperville, somewhere west of Chicago. I’m in their station. What? Yes, I’ll wait here... You’ll drive? How long? Three hours?” She sighed. “Well, all right, if I have to, I just have to. I’ll be right here then, on one of these hard wooden benches. Where else am I going to go? What choice do I have?”

The other calls were in a similar vein, including one from a woman who was asking a neighbor to check on her cat. “She’ll be expecting me,” the woman said of her pet. “She won’t know what to think.”

Finally, the little lady from Omaha had her turn at the instrument. “Oh, dear,” she said, fishing in her purse. “I don’t believe that I have enough quarters.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a pocket full of them,” I assured her. She hooked up with the long-distance operator, and together we fed the requisite amount of silver into the slot. She reached her sister and filled her in on the situation.

“Well, I do feel better now,” she said after hanging up. “Thank you so much for all of your help. Now I’ll have to figure out where I’m going to stay tonight.”

“I noticed a Red Cross truck just outside,” I answered. “They probably can help you. I’m sure there must be some hotels nearby, maybe in Aurora, which is only a few miles west of here. The Red Cross people should be able to provide transportation for you. There are going to be a lot of folks in the same predicament as you, and with a little luck you can probably get a train to Omaha sometime tomorrow, assuming they get these tracks cleared.”

I tried to press a few dollars on her, but she refused politely, thanking me again and giving me a hug. I went outside into the pandemonium to find more eyewitness accounts from other passengers and onlookers.

After I had gotten a few more quotes, I phoned the city desk from the depot’s pay phone and dictated my piece to Williamson, one of our rewrite men. It ended up running on Page 3 along with the continuation of Phillips’ headline story.

It was long after dark when Lido dropped me off at home. He’d already sent several rolls of film back to the office with a courier that the paper had hired. I had called Catherine to let her know where I was, and she held dinner for me.

“You got a call from a Marge Blazek,” she said as we sat down at the table. “Said you should call her tomorrow at the store where she works. She’s the one from that tavern that you mentioned, right?”

“Yep. As I told you before, she and Edwina apparently got pretty chummy from hanging out in Horvath’s.”

“But from what you said, it seems like it was Edwina who was getting all the attention from the men in there.”

“True. Which is interesting, because I would say Marge is at least as attractive as Edwina, maybe more so.”

“Really?” Catherine said, raising one eyebrow.

“Don’t you go getting any ideas,” I said, grinning and holding up a hand. “My interest is purely professional, or I guess I should say familial. It’s with her help that I hope to get Cousin Charlie off the hook and out of the clink.

“As for why Marge didn’t have the boys at Horvath’s falling all over her, I think it’s because she’s still mourning her husband’s death, and it shows. She’s got this aura of sadness about her, I guess you’d call it. Anyway, from what she told me, she’s not ready to start dating anybody yet. It’s been less than two years since D-Day.”

“Uh-huh,” Catherine said. “Back to Charlie. Has that hotshot LaSalle Street lawyer you got been any help?”

“McCafferty? Not so far, but then he’s not getting a lot of cooperation from my dear cousin. It seems like Charlie has just given up and doesn’t give a rap about what happens to him.”

“He probably never was what you’d term a dynamo,” Catherine observed. “I don’t know him all that well, of course, but from what I’ve seen, he seems very passive, letting himself be swept along by circumstances rather than taking any kind of a positive stance in his life.”

“True. He has always been that way, as long as I’ve known him. Probably goes back to that domineering mother of his. She ran the poor guy’s life, as well as his father’s.”

“Well, he had darn well better get himself some gumption now,” she said heatedly. “If he doesn’t cooperate with that lawyer you hired, he’ll likely be finished — really finished. From what you’ve said, it sounds like he still idealizes Edwina, despite the way she treated him.”

“I’m not sure about that, but I’ve said a little myself to McCafferty about what she was like. Remember this: If Edwina gets painted in a really negative light, particularly as to how she treated Charlie, it will have the effect of fueling the state’s case against him. As in, ‘long-suffering husband finally reacts violently against wife who constantly nagged and carped at him.’”

Catherine nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a good point, Steve. How bad do you think it is for Charlie?”

“Really, really bad. He has absolutely no alibi, other than ‘I was on my way home from work.’ There were no fingerprints on the knife, which means nothing in itself because whoever did the stabbing would have wiped it clean. And the only prints the cops found anywhere else in the apartment were Charlie’s and Edwina’s. So the only evidence is circumstantial, but that’s the case in a lot of crimes where there’s a guilty verdict.”

“So you’re left to find another candidate?”

“That’s pretty much the situation, and I have to keep at it with these guys at Horvath’s. They’re the only hope, as far as I can see right now.”

Catherine reached across the table and put a slender hand on my arm, squeezing it affectionately. “Please, please, be careful. You don’t know what you’re playing with here.”

“You’re right, but I’d hate myself if I didn’t do everything I could to help Charlie. As we both are all too aware, he doesn’t seem to be capable of helping himself.”