Part 28 (1/2)
Once when I woke, the woman in the sweater handed me my father's watch and helped me strap it onto my wrist. I was relieved to have it back but still felt upset, as if I were missing something of even greater importance. The woman in the sweater urged me to drink miso broth. I was getting stronger-in a few days I'd be able to have rice, and then I'd be strong enough to remember what was troubling me.
I was too tired to think. I gave up worrying about the watch and drifted between waking and eating and struggling upright: the wound in my abdomen made sitting up an exquisite pain. It was only three days, in fact, between my first waking up and my shaky progression from bed to chair and a tour of the hallway, but the pain and the painkillers stretched time's pa.s.sage in odd ways.
On the day that Mr. Contreras helped me into a chair so that I could eat my rice and watch the Cubs, Lotty came in. Sammy Sosa had just hit his fortysixth home run, but Mr. Contreras muted the television and with rare tact left us alone.
When Lotty saw me out of bed and in a chair, she burst into tears and knelt with her arms around me. ”Victoria. I thought I was going to lose you. Oh, my dear one, I am so thankful to have you back.”
Close to her I could see how much gray was in her hair; for some reason that made me cry as well. ”I thought you would chew me out.”
She blinked back her tears. ”Later. When you're strong enough to fight back.”
”She mustn't have too much agitation, Dr. Herschel,” the nurse said.
Lotty pushed herself to her feet. Despite the gray hair, she still moved with easy agility. I smiled foolishly at her. She didn't stay long but the next evening she returned with Morrell. The two together told me my story.
A state trooper had found me on the Belmont exit ramp to the Kennedy around three on Sunday morning. The boxes that tumbled out of the back of the truck when CO Polsen drove off had saved my life: a motorist, swerving to avoid them, noticed me lying in the road and called the cops. The state troopers rushed me to Beth Israel, where Dr. Szymczyk-the same surgeon who'd been on call the night I found Nicola Aguinaldo-patched me together.
I had been luckier than Nicola on several counts. When Hartigan kicked me, I'd managed to twist away enough so that my ribs took the main force of his blow. He had badly bruised my intestine and I had developed a severe infection, which accounted for my fever, but when the state trooper found me, the wound had only just begun to perforate the peritoneum. Nicola already had such advanced peritonitis when I came on her that she didn't have much chance for survival.
And then, unlike Nicola, I was in good physical condition and I was used to defending myself, so that despite the jolt from the stun gun-which was what Hartigan shot me with-I was able to s.h.i.+eld myself from the worst of his blows. I had apparently managed to put my hands over my head, so that the kick that knocked me out broke the fingers in my right hand but didn't do serious damage to my skull.
”You were lucky, Vic,” Lotty said. ”But you also don't have the habit of victims.”
”But how did I end up here instead of in the hospital? The Grete Berman Inst.i.tute is for torture victims, isn't it? That isn't really me.”
”I didn't think you should be moved from Beth Israel until you were more stable, but Morrell persuaded me that the man Baladine could get access to you in a hospital if he was looking for you. I wanted to bring you to my home, but the Berman Inst.i.tute is secure and fully staffed, so I finally agreed to let you be moved here as soon as you were out of surgery. But besides that, you-” Her voice cracked and she steadied it. ”You were in a helpless situation, at the mercy of the law, shot with an electric weapon, beaten, and then chained to a bed. I think you were tortured, Victoria.”
”She needs to rest now, Dr. Herschel,” the nurse intervened.
Over the next several days, as I got back on my feet and began to get some exercise in the Berman Inst.i.tute gardens, Morrell put together the rest of the story for me. He had called Freeman Carter when he got back to Chicago from Coolis that last Thursday, urging him to try to get me a bail hearing in Chicago on Friday; Morrell told Freeman he was worried that Baladine might not let me survive the weekend. Freeman was skeptical at first, but Morrell managed to persuade him.
Freeman spent all day Friday shaking up the judicial system trying to find me.
It was three on Friday afternoon before the head of the circuit court granted Freeman permission to post my bail in a Chicago courtroom and have me released that afternoon instead of making us wait until a circuit judge rode out to Coolis on Monday.
At that point, although no one outside the prison knew it, I was already chained to a bed in the segregation wing, with a rising fever. Freeman couldn't get anyone at Coolis to admit to my whereabouts and finally was told that they lacked the administrative personnel to process my release after 5:00P.M. on Friday, that Freeman would have to come back on Monday.
Freeman went to the state appellate court and got an emergency writ requiring my immediate release. The prison then told him I had faked an injury at my work station and they had put me in the hospital. On Sat.u.r.day, as my fever rose, they played a sh.e.l.l game with Freeman, pa.s.sing him between the prison and the hospital, each saying the other had possession of my body.
Of course neither Freeman nor Morrell knew what discussions took place at the prison end of things, but the most likely guess was that the staff panicked.
Perhaps they thought I might die, and Freeman was making it clear they would face intense scrutiny if they didn't produce me in good shape. They probably figured they could repeat what had sort of worked for them with Nicola Aguinaldo: dump me in Chicago-where I'd either be hit by a car or die of my wounds-and put out word that I had managed to escape. Morrell showed me the HeraldStar 's report.
PRIVATE EYE, HELD ON KIDNAPPING CHARGE, FLEES COOLIS.
For the second time this summer, a woman managed to run away from the experimental jailprison complex operated by Carnifice Security in Coolis. This time, though, the hue and cry is much louder: the woman in question is notorious in Chicago, being private eye V. (Victoria) I. (Iphigenia) Warshawski.
Warshawski had been arrested on charges of kidnapping the son of Carnifice chief Robert Baladine and spent a month in the jail wing at Coolis after failing to post bail.
She was not an easy prisoner, Warden Frederick Ruzich said, often getting involved in fights with other inmates and ignoring orders from corrections officers, whose job includes trying to smooth the adjustment for women new to the Coolis system.
How Warshawski managed to escape may never be known. Her body was found at the foot of the Belmont ramp to the Kennedy. Although she is still alive, she suffered severe brain damage and may never speak again. Dr. Charlotte Herschel, Warshawski's physician at Beth Israel Hospital, says Warshawski is able to breathe on her own, which gives them hope for some partial recovery. She has been moved to a nursing home, but Dr. Herschel declined to tell reporters where.
Warshawski is best known for the work she did in tracking down the murderer of social activist Deirdre Messenger last year, but her successes in investigating whitecollar crime have earned her respect from many quarters in Chicago, including the Chicago Police Department.
Robert Baladine, the president of Carnifice Security, is angry at lapses in security at the Coolis complex, which have made escape begin to seem like a routine matter for the inmates. He promised a thorough investigation of security measures at the prison. Illinois House Speaker JeanClaude Poilevy (ROak Brook) says the legislature granted a number of tax breaks to Carnifice to get them to take on the women's prison and expects them to live up to their side of the bargain. (See Murray Ryerson's story on Page 16 for a summary of Warshawski's most notable cases.) The story included a map of Illinois, with a blowup of the northwest corner showing the town of Coolis, the prison, and the roads running to Chicago.
I put the newspaper lethargically to one side. I didn't even care what Murray had to say about me. I had remembered recently what was troubling me about my watch, and it left me feeling so futile that it was affecting my recovery.
”That minicamera that got me these wounds-it's disappeared,” I muttered to Morrell. ”I don't know if they took it off me when they put me in segregation or if it just got lost at the hospital, but it's gone.”
Morrell's eyes widened. ”V. I.-they were supposed to tell you when they gave you back your father's watch. I have it. I took it to the Unblinking Eye to get the pictures developed. I didn't mention it because they keep telling me not to get you excited, and I thought you'd bring it up when you were ready to look at the pictures. They'll be ready in another day or two.”
After that I felt giddy with relief. ”Did you and Lotty really think I might never talk again, or was that wishful thinking?”
Morrell grinned. ”Alex Fisher from Global kept pumping me, so I thought I'd play it safe. When I told Freeman what she and I said, he thought it was such a good idea that he put it out in a press release. The only people who know the truth besides him and Dr. Herschel are Sal and of course your neighbor. Dr. Herschel thought it would be intolerably cruel to Mr. Contreras to imagine you in such straits. And it gives us some wiggle room to figure out what to do with Baladine and Global Entertainment.”
Yes. Baladine and Global Entertainment. I wanted to do something about them, but right now I couldn't imagine what. My first week at the Berman Inst.i.tute I was too tired and too sore to think about what I'd been through. As I grew stronger physically, I was bewildered by my wild mood swings. At one moment I'd be euphoric over my escape and the knowledge that I had managed to smuggle out pictures; the next I'd see a stranger coming toward me and think it was one of the corrections officers, Polsen or Hartigan. I'd start feeling unbearably helpless, as I had in Coolis, and would find myself moving away as fast as I could, my legs wobbly, as if I expected to be hit again with fifty thousand volts of electricity.
The inst.i.tute treated many people who had been held longer and in greater duress than I. I felt guilty for taking up room that someone from Rwanda or Guatemala could have used, but the psychologist who met with me twice a week told me the inst.i.tute didn't see it that way.
”Do you think our doctor shouldn't treat your broken hand because someone else has breast cancer and needs more intense medical attention? You deserve to make the best recovery you can from your experience.”
”But the other people here didn't choose to be tortured,” I burst out. ”I chose to stay at Coolis. If I'd followed my lawyer's advice and made bail, none of the rest would have happened.”
”So you blame yourself for your misfortunes. But many of the people here torment themselves in the same way: if I had not gone back to my home that morning, if I had followed my mother's wishes and gone to see her, if I had not signed that pet.i.tion. We wish we had power over our fates, and so we blame ourselves when something goes wrong. You wanted to stay in Coolis to try to understand what happened to a poor young woman you tried to help. I think that was n.o.ble. And you cannot blame yourself for the fact that men-and women-with unlimited power over the lives of others used that power in very s.a.d.i.s.tic ways. If Coolis were run along humane lines-well, your young friend would not have died to begin with.”
I tried to accept his advice, but my dreams were still so shocking that I often dreaded going to sleep. I knew if I could only rest properly, I would recover more rapidly.
”What will help you sleep?” he asked the next time we talked.
”If I could stop feeling so humiliated. I know I can't shut down Coolis. I can't change any prison anywhere in America. All these degradations will go on and on for any woman who lands there, the s.e.x talk and the rape and whatever else. The law makes it almost impossible for a woman to lodge a complaint, and even if she does, the guards have so much power they can stop her voice.”
Freeman Carter was filing lawsuits for me-one against the Chicago Police Department for the violence committed against my person and against my office by Douglas Lemour. The other was against the Illinois Department of Corrections for my injuries there. Bryant Vishnikov was studying the OR films of my injuries and thought he might be able to prove they'd come from a particular set of boots.
Such as those of the man Hartigan out at Coolis.
”But these cases will take years to work through the courts,” I told the Berman psychologist. ”By that time I could be out of business and too broke for a settlement to help me. I want Robert Baladine to pay a price now for siccing his bent cop on me and for having me arrested on a trumpedup charge. I want that cop out of the force, and I want Baladine publicly exposed. And of course I need him off my back if I'm ever going to run my business again.” Miss Ruby had told me if I wanted to eat revenge it would give me indigestion, but it seemed to me pa.s.sivity was making me sicker than revenge ever would.
The psychologist didn't exactly endorse my wish: he told me he thought it was helpful to imagine a recovery of my own power and see where that left me.
A recovery of my own power meant I needed to recover my physical fitness. I began working out in greater earnest. Four weeks after I was found on the expressway, I ran a wobbly mile, but after that my strength grew measurably every day. On the Thursday before Labor Day, as the El Nio heat finally subsided into a bearable warmth, I felt ready to move on.
43.