Deadlock

11 Grounded

Dinner at Louis Retaillou’s Bon Appetit was delightful. The restaurant took up the ground floor of an old Victorian house. The family, who all played a role in preparing and presenting the meal, lived upstairs. It was Thursday, a quiet night with only a few of the inlaid wooden tables filled, and Louis came out to talk to Bledsoe, who was a frequent guest. I had the best duckling I’ve ever eaten and we shared a respectable St. Estephe.

Bledsoe turned out to be an entertaining companion. Over champagne cocktails we became “Martin” and “Vic.” He regaled me with shipping stories, while I tried to pry discreetly into his past. I told him a bit about my childhood on Chicago’s South Side and some of Boom Boom’s and my adventures. He countered with stories of life on Cleveland’s waterfront. I talked about being an undergraduate during the turbulent Vietnam years and asked him about his education. He’d gone straight to work out of high school. With Grafalk Steamship? Yes, with Grafalk Steamship-which reminded him of the first time he’d been on a laker when a big storm came up. And so on.

It was ten-thirty when Bledsoe dropped me back at the Lucella to pick up my car. The guard nodded to Bledsoe without taking his eyes from a television set perched on a shelf above him.

“Good thing you have a patrol on the boat-anyone could get past this fellow,” I commented.

Bledsoe nodded in agreement, his square face in shadow. “Ship,” he said absently. “A boat is something you haul aboard a ship.”

He walked over with me to my car-he was going back on board the Lucella for one last look around. The elevator and the boat-ship-beyond loomed as giant shapes in the dimly lit yard. I shivered a bit in my corduroy jacket.

“Thanks for introducing me to a great new restaurant, Martin. I enjoyed it. Next time I’ll take you to an out-of-the-way Italian place on the West Side.”

“Thanks, Vic. I’d like to do that.” He squeezed my hand in the dark, started toward the ship, then leaned back into the car and kissed me. It was a good kiss, firm and not sloppy, and I gave it the attention it deserved. He mumbled something about calling when he got back to town and left.

I backed the Lynx out of the yard and onto 130th Street. Few cars were out and I had an easy time back to I-94. The traffic there was heavier but flowing smoothly-trailer trucks moving their loads at seventy miles an hour under cover of darkness, and the restless flow of people always out on nameless errands in a great city.

The night was clear, as the forecast had promised Bemis, but the air was unseasonably cool. I kept the car windows rolled up as I drove north, passing slag heaps and mobile homes huddled together under the shadow of expressway and steel mills. At 103rd Street the highway merged with the Dan Ryan. I was back in the city now, the Dan Ryan el on my left and a steep grassy bank on my right. Perched on top were tiny bungalows and liquor stores. A peaceful urban sight, but not a place to stop in the middle of the night. A lot of unwary tourists have been mugged close to the Dan Ryan.

I was nearing the University of Chicago exit when I heard a tearing in the engine, a noise like a giant can opener peeling a strip off the engine block. I slammed on the brakes. The car didn’t slow. The brakes didn’t respond. I pushed again. Still nothing. The brakes had failed. I turned the wheel to move toward the exit. It spun loose in my hand. No steering. No brakes. In the rearview mirror I could see the lights of a semi bearing down on me. Another truck was boxing me in on the right.

Sweat came out on my forehead and the bottom fell out of my stomach. I pumped gently on the brakes and felt a little response. Gently, gently. Switched on the hazard indicator, put the car in neutral, leaned on the horn. The Lynx was veering to the right and I couldn’t stop it. I held my breath. The truck to my right pulled out of my way but the one behind me was moving fast and blaring on his horn.

“Goddamn you, move!” I screamed at him. My speedometer needle had inched down to thirty; he was going at least seventy. I was still sliding toward the right lane.

At the last second the semi behind me swerved to the left. I heard a horrible shattering of glass and metal on metal. A car spun into the lane in front of me.

I pumped the brakes but there was nothing left in them. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything. In the last seconds as the car in front of me flipped over I hunched down and crossed my hands in front of my face.

Metal on metal. Wrenching jolts. Glass shattering on the street. A violent blow on my shoulder, a pool of wet warmth on my arm. Light and noise shattered inside my head and then quiet.

My head ached. My eyes would hurt terribly if I opened them. I had the measles. That was what Mama said. I would be well soon. I tried calling her name; a gurgling sound came out and her hand was on my wrist, dry and cool.

“She’s stirring.”

Not Gabriella’s voice. Of course, she was dead. If she was dead I couldn’t be eight and sick with the measles. It hurt my head to think.

“The steering,” I croaked, and forced my eyes open.

A blur of white figures hovered over me. The light stabbed my eyes. I shut them.

“Turn off the overhead lights.” That was a woman’s voice. I knew it and struggled to open my eyes again.

“Lotty?”

She leaned over me. “So, Liebchen. You gave us a few bad hours but you’re all right now.”

“What happened?” I could hardly talk; the words choked in my throat.

“Soon I’ll tell you. Now I want you to sleep. You are in Billings Hospital.

The University of Chicago. I felt a small sting in my side and slept.

When I woke up again the room was empty. The pain in my head was still there but small and manageable. I tried to sit up. As I moved, the pain swept over me full force. I felt vilely ill and lay back down, panting. After an interval I opened my eyes again. My left arm was attached to the ceiling by a pulley. I stared at it dreamily. I moved my right fingers up the arm, encountering thick tape, then a cast. I poked the shoulder around the edges of the cast and gave a cry of unanticipated pain. My shoulder was either dislocated or broken.

What had I done to my shoulder? I frowned in concentration, making my headache worse. But I remembered. My car. The brakes failing. A sedan turning over in front of me? Yes. I couldn’t remember the rest. I must have plowed right into it, though. Lucky to have my shoulder belt on. Could anyone in the sedan have lived through that?

I started feeling very angry. I needed to see the police. I needed to talk to everyone. Phillips, Bledsoe, Bemis, the guard at the Tri-State elevator.

A nurse came crisply into the room. “Oh, you’re awake now. That’s good. We’ll take your temperature.”

“I don’t want my temperature taken. I want to see the police.”

She smiled brightly and ignored me. “Just stick this under your tongue.” She was poking a plastic-wrapped thermometer into my mouth.

My fury was mounting, fueled by the helplessness of lying there attached to the ceiling while being ignored.

“I can tell you what my temperature is: it’s rising by the second. Will you kindly get someone to call the police for me?”

“Now let’s calm down. You don’t want to get excited: you’ve had some concussion.” She forced the thermometer into my mouth and started counting my pulse. “Dr. Herschel will be by later and if she feels it’s wise for you to start talking to people she’ll let us know.”

“Were there any other survivors?” I asked her over the thermometer.

“Dr. Herschel will tell you what you need to know.”

I shut my eyes while she solemnly wrote my vital statistics into the chart. Patient continues to breathe. Heart operates. “What’s my temperature?”

She ignored me.

I opened my eyes.

“What’s my pulse?” No answer. “Come on, damn it, it’s my body-tell me what it’s doing.”

She left to spread the good news that the patient was alive and disagreeable. I shut my eyes and fumed. My body was still weak. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up the third time my mind had cleared. I sat up in bed, slowly and still painfully, and surveyed my body. One problem shoulder. Knees covered with gauze-doubtless badly scraped. Bruises on the right arm. There was a table at the bedside with a mirror on it. Also a telephone. If I’d been thinking instead of yapping earlier I would have realized that. I looked at my face in the mirror. An impressive bandage covered my hair. Scalp wound: that accounted for the headache, though I didn’t remember hitting my head. My eyes were bloodshot but my face wasn’t damaged, thank the Lord-I’d still be beautiful at forty.

I picked up the telephone and stuck it under my chin. I had to raise the bed to use it, since I couldn’t prop the phone against my right shoulder while lying down as long as the left one was attached to the ceiling. Pain shot through my left shoulder as I moved but I ignored it. I dialed Mallory’s office number. I had no idea what time it was, but my luck was in: the lieutenant was there.

“Vicki, you’d better not be calling to sweet-talk me. McGonnigal told me about you horning in on the Kelvin investigation. I want you out. O-U-T. It’s just my bad luck it happened in Boom Boom’s apartment.”

Ah, Bobby. It did me good to hear him ranting. “Bobby, you’ll never believe this, but I’m in the hospital.”

There was silence on the other end as Mallory collected his thoughts.

“Yup. Down at Billings… Someone else wanted me out of this case, too, and they took out my brakes and steering while I was at the Port yesterday. If it was yesterday. What day is today?”

Bobby ignored the question. “Come on, Vicki-don’t fool around with me. What happened?”

“That’s why I’m calling you-I hope you can find out. I was coming home around ten-thirty, eleven, when the steering went and then the brakes, and I ended up running into a sedan. I think a Mack truck had hit it and knocked it into my lane.”

“Oh, nuts, Vicki. Why can’t you stay home and raise a family and just stay the heck out of this kind of mess?” Bobby doesn’t believe in using bad language in front of women and children. And even though I refuse to do woman’s work I count as a woman with him.

“I can’t help it, Bobby; trouble follows me.”

There was a snort at the other end.

“I’m lying here with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion,” I said plaintively. “I can’t do anything-get involved in a mess or raise a family-for a while, anyway. But I would like to know what happened to my car. Can you find out who scooped me off the Dan Ryan and see if they examined my car?”

Bobby breathed heavily for a few minutes. “Yeah, I guess I could do that. Billings, you say? What’s the number?”

I looked at the phone and read him the number. I asked him again for the day. It was Friday, 6:00 P.M.

Lotty must have gone back to her clinic on the North side. She’s the person I list to call in case of emergencies and I guess she’s my doctor, too. I wondered if I could persuade her to release me-I needed to get going.

A middle-aged nurse popped her head through the door. “How are we doing?”

“Some of us are doing better than others. Do you know when Dr. Herschel is coming back?”

“Probably around seven.” The nurse came in to feel my pulse. If there isn’t anything else to do, make sure the patient’s heart is still beating. Gray eyes twinkled with meaningless jollity in her red face. “Well, we’re certainly a lot stronger than we were a few hours ago. Is the shoulder giving us any pain?”

I looked at her sourly. “Well, it isn’t giving me any-I don’t know about you.” I didn’t want anyone throwing codeine or Darvon at me. Actually it was throbbing rather badly.

When she left I used the phone again to call Pole Star and ask for Bledsoe. The helpful woman in his office told me he was over at the Lucella, which had a ship-to-shore line. She gave me the number and told me how to get an operator to connect me. This was going to be complicated-I’d have to bill it to my office phone.

I was in the middle of giving the operator the dialing and billing instructions when my middle-aged nurse came back. “Now, we’re not to do anything like this until Doctor says we’re up to it.”

I ignored her.

“I’m sorry, Miss Warshawski: we can’t have you doing anything to excite yourself.” She pulled the phone from my outraged grasp. “Hello? This is Billings Hospital. Your party is not going to be able to complete the call at this time.”

“How dare you? How dare you decide for me whether I can talk on the phone or not? I’m a person, not a sack of hospital clothes lying here.”

She looked at me sternly. “The hospital has certain rules. One of them is to keep concussion and accident victims quiet. Dr. Herschel will let us know if you’re ready to start phoning people yet.”

I was wild with rage. I started to get out of bed to wrestle the phone from her, but the damned pulley kept me attached. “Quiet!” I shouted. “Who’s getting me excited? You are, pulling that phone away!”

She unplugged it from the wall and walked away with it. I lay in bed panting with exhaustion and fury. One thing was clear-I couldn’t wait for Lotty. After my breathing returned to normal I raised myself up again and inspected the pulley. It was holding my shoulder steady. Again I explored it with my right fingers, this time gingerly. The plaster was hard. Even if my shoulder was broken, the cast would keep it in place without traction. No reason I couldn’t go home as long as I was careful.

I undid the wires with my right hand. My left shoulder relaxed against the bed with a spasm of pain so strong tears ran down my cheeks. After much ungainly fumbling with the bedclothes I managed to pull the left arm forward again. But helplessness compounded my frustration and I felt momentarily like abandoning the struggle. I shut my eyes and rested for ten minutes. A sling would solve my problems. I looked around doubtfully and finally found a white cloth on the bottom shelf of the bedside table. It took a lot of effort to move around and I was panting and red in the face by the time I managed to turn on my side, reach the cloth, and pull it up to bed level.

After a short rest I put one corner of the cloth in my mouth and slung it around my neck. Using teeth and my right hand, I rigged up a decent sling.

I staggered out of bed, trying not to move the left shoulder more than I had to, and opened the narrow lockers by the entrance. My clothes were in the second. The black pants were torn at the knees and the jacket was stiff with dried blood. Nuts. One of my favorite outfits. I pulled the pants on with one hand, ignoring underwear, and was tying to figure out what to do about the top when Lotty came in.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better, my dear,” she said dryly.

“The nurse said I shouldn’t be excited. Since she was agitating me so much I thought I’d better get home where I can rest.”

Lotty’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile. She took my right elbow and shepherded me back to the bed. “Vic, you must stay here another day or two. You dislocated your shoulder. You must keep it still to minimize the tear on the muscles. That’s the point of traction. And you hit your head against the door as your car turned over. It’s badly cut and you were unconscious for six hours. I’m not letting you take chances with your health.”

I sat on the bed. “But, Lotty, I’ve got so many people to talk to. And the Lucella sails at seven-I’ll miss them if I don’t get through soon.”

“I’m afraid it’s after seven now… I’ll get the phone back in and you can make your calls. But really, Vic, even with your constitution, you must keep this shoulder in a stationary position for two more days. Come.”

Tears of frustration pricked my eyes. My head was throbbing. I lay back on the bed and let Lotty undress me and reattach my arm to the pulley. I hated to admit it, but I was glad to be lying down.

She went to the nurses’ station and returned with the phone. When she saw me fumbling with the receiver she took it from me and placed the call herself. But the Lucella had already sailed.