Bitter Medicine (13 page)

I leaned out my car window to call to the uniformed men in the car. “What’s going on down there?”

With usual police informativeness, the driver answered, “Street’s closed, lady. You’ll have to go down Seeley.”

I ended up parking four blocks away and found a pay phone on a corner as I walked back over. I tried Lotty’s apartment first, convinced that she hadn’t come in to the clinic. When there was no answer, I rang her office. The line was busy.

I came at the building from the south. Here the crowds weren’t quite as heavy, although there was another police car at the far end of the block. The air was filled with shouts coming through a bullhorn and indistinguishable chants. The sound was familiar to me from my student-protest days long ago—a demonstration. I noticed uneasily that the closer I got to the clinic, the thicker the crowd became.

I obviously wasn’t going to get to the front door without a struggle, so I cut through a lot to the alley and went to the back entrance. The mob out front, playing to the cameras, hadn’t come here yet. It took me considerable pounding and shouting to get a response, but Mrs. Coltrain, Lotty’s receptionist, finally came to the door. She cautiously opened it the length of a chain. Her face cleared when she saw it was me.

“I’ve never been gladder to see you, Miss Warshawski.
Dr. Herschel has her hands full and the police are no help. No help at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were in collusion with the marchers.”

“What’s going on?” I came inside and helped her reestablish the chains.

“They’re out there yelling awful things. That Dr. Herschel is a murderer, that we’re all going to hell. And poor Carol, just back from her sister’s funeral.”

I frowned. “Anti-abortionists?”

She nodded her head worriedly. “I raised six children and I’d do it again. But my husband made good money, so we could afford to feed them all. Some of these women who come in—they’re no more than little girls themselves. No one to help them feed themselves, let alone a child. And now I’m a murderer?”

I patted her arm sympathetically. “You’re not a murderer. I know you’re not happy with the idea of abortions, and I admire you for sticking with Lotty even though she includes them in her practice. And defending her, too…. Who’s out there? Is it the Eagle Forum or IckPiff or don’t you know?”

“I couldn’t tell you. We had a poor young girl come in at eight this morning, and they were already waiting. How they knew who it was I couldn’t say, but as soon as she arrived they started their yelling.”

The back of the clinic was used as a storeroom, everything very tidy and sterile. I followed Mrs. Coltrain through to the front. The shouting was much more audible there, and I could make out the individual screams.

“You don’t care if babies die! Freedom of choice, what a lie!”

“Murderers! Nazis!”

Someone, probably Mrs. Coltrain, had drawn the blinds in the front windows. I separated two slats just enough to peer between them.

In front of the clinic, holding the bullhorn, was a thin, hyperthyroid man. His face was flushed with the earnestness of his feelings. I’d never met him before, but his picture had been in the papers and on TV numerous times: Dieter Monkfish, head of IckPiff—the Illinois Committee to Protect the Fetus. His supporters included a number of college-age young men, all fervently committed to carrying their own pregnancies to term, and a variety of middle-aged women, whose faces seemed to say: My life was made miserable by maternity, and so should everyone else’s be.

Lotty came up behind me and repeated Mrs. Coltrain’s greeting. “I’ve never been gladder to see you, Vic. What a mob! I’ve had a few people leafleting once or twice, but never anything like this. How did you hear about it?”

I shook my head. “I came here by chance, hoping to get Malcolm’s keys from you. Then I saw the crowd in the street and got worried. Why did they all converge at once? Was anything special happening here?”

Her thick brows snapped together over the prominent nose. “I performed a therapeutic abortion this morning—but I do three or four a month. And this was
not a special case. Eighteen-year-old girl with one child, trying to get her life together a little. First trimester, of course—can’t do anything else in the clinic.

“I’m telling you, Vic—I’m scared. There was a night in Vienna when a Nazi mob gathered in front of our house. They looked just like this—animals, oozing hate. They broke all the windows. My parents and my brother and I fled through the garden and hid at a neighbor’s and watched them burn our house to the ground. Never did I expect to feel that same fear in America.”

I gripped her shoulder. “I’ll call Lieutenant Mallory. Maybe he can get some more active police up here than you seem to have. What about your patients?”

“Mrs. Coltrain called to reschedule appointments. Surely these hoodlums won’t be back tomorrow. Emergencies we’re routing to Beth Israel. But two women fought through the mob with their children, and I don’t think I can lock up—I can’t have my patients abused and not be here to help them.

“Besides, we still have the young woman who seems to be the precipitating cause of all this. She’s doing fine, but she’s rather shaken up, not up to walking through these frightening animals. And the police—the police just sit. They say there is no problem, no peace being disturbed. Of course, the neighborhood thinks it’s better than a circus.”

Carol came out to the waiting room. She’d lost weight since she’d last had her uniform on; it hung slackly across her hips and breasts.

“Hi, Vic. Protestors sent by God to keep our minds off our own troubles. What do you think?”

“For the moment, they’re just harassing, playing to the TV cameras. Any warning that this might happen? Hate mail? Phone calls?”

Lotty shook her head. “Dieter Monkfish has come around a couple of times passing out leaflets, but since most of the people coming in here are women laden down with children, even he has felt a little foolish about lecturing them on the sanctity of life. Brave people send us a few anonymous hate letters every month, but no bombs or anything like that. This isn’t really an abortion clinic, you know, so it doesn’t attract much attention.”

I went over to the reception area to use the phone. All the lights on the console were on. Mrs. Coltrain bustled up behind me to help me to a line.

“I put all the phones on hold because we were getting flooded with nuisance calls. Most of them obscene. I hope no one’s trying to get through with an emergency.”

I dialed the Eleventh Street police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Mallory. A long series of clicks and transfers, and Bobby came on the line.

I dutifully asked after Eileen, their six children and five grandchildren, and explained where I was.

“They’re intimidating patients away from the clinic, and the local precinct just has two cars observing the street. Can you get someone to move these people away from the front of the door?”

“No way, Vicki. Not my territory. That’s something they’re deciding locally. You should know by now that you can’t just call the police to run errands for you.”

“Bobby, darling. Lieutenant Mallory. I’m not asking you to run an errand. I’m asking for protection for a tax-paying citizen whose patients are being threatened with grievous bodily harm if they try to come into her office.”

“You see anyone being threatened?”

“At the moment, the marchers have such total command of the street that no one can get close enough to be threatened.”

“I’m sorry, Vicki—but it doesn’t sound like a serious problem to me. And even if it was, you’d have to call the local precinct. If they try to murder anyone I’ll come over.”

I supposed that was his idea of a joke. If it affects women or children, it can’t be serious. Furious, I tried Detective Rawlings.

He gave a sarcastic little chuckle when I finished my speech. “You give us a little grudging cooperation on a murder case, and then you want us to come running when you’re in trouble? Typical, Ms. W., typical. Citizens won’t help us—then they shriek and howl at the first hint of danger—where’re the police?”

“Spare me the public-spirit lecture, Detective. As I recall, I’ve agreed to press charges against your pal Sergio—against my better judgment. You pick him up yet?”

“We’re still looking,” he admitted. “But he won’t have gone too far. Someone told me that little punk Fabiano got all beat up—you know anything about it?”

“What I heard, he was driving too fast and smashed into his tough Eldorado windshield. Least, that’s what they told me at the funeral yesterday…. Can we get the street cleared here a bit?”

“I’ll talk to my watch commander, Warshawski. Not my call. But don’t expect any miracles unless they start blowing up the place.”

“Exactly the moment at which help will be most useful,” I agreed sardonically, and hung up.

“What we need are some federal marshals,” I told Lotty and Carol. “But maybe we can patch something together instead. Protection, not confrontation. Can Paul and Herman help out? And I suppose Diego?”

Carol shook her head. “They had to lose too much time from work last week because of Consuelo. I thought of them, but I can’t ask it of them—they could well lose their jobs.”

I bit my thumb while I thought. “Can we meet people at either end of the street and have an escort bring them down the alley?”

Lotty hunched a shoulder. “It’s better than nothing, I suppose—though I don’t know how people will find out where to come.”

“Word of mouth, I suppose. Let’s reopen the switchboard—if patients call, give me a couple of hours to get some help together and start seeing them at noon.”

I spent the next half hour on the phone. Unable to get the Streeter brothers, who usually help me with heavy jobs, I reluctantly thought of my downstairs neighbor. As I’d feared, Mr. Contreras was delighted with a bugle call to action and promised to line up a few of his machinist pals—also retired but still, he assured me, glad to have a chance to use their muscles.

The rest of the morning I sat in Lotty’s office answering the barrage of calls. Most were from people worried about the clinic, not phoning for medical care. The legitimate patients I switched to Mrs. Coltrain. Unless someone had a serious problem, she urged them to call back later in the week. For some, Lotty listened to symptoms over the phone and called prescriptions in to a pharmacy. Emergencies were sent to Beth Israel.

The rest of the time I deflected obscene phone calls. The love of fetal life prompted people to the most incredible language. A little before noon, weary of the entertainment, we put the phones back on hold while I went out of the area to a hardware store to buy a whistle. A few loud blasts into an obscene caller’s ear might leave a more lasting impression. I also stopped at a grocery store for some food in case we had to sit through a real siege.

At noon the first of the escorts arrived. Mr. Contreras was dressed in work clothes and had a pipe wrench slung on his belt. He introduced me to Jake Sokolowski and Mitch Kruger, both carrying weapons. Sokolowski and Mitch Kruger were close to Mr. Contreras’s age
but didn’t look as fit—one had a beer belly the size of a pregnant elephant’s and the other shook a little, from alcohol judging by the veins in his nose.

“Do me a favor, guys: Try not to start a riot,” I told them. “This is a medical clinic and we don’t want a lot of maniacs firing guns or rocks at it. We just want you to help patients get down the alley and into the back door. Carol will come with you to help you locate the right people.”

The plan was that Carol would wait at the top of the street. If she saw any of Lotty’s patients whom she recognized, she’d explain the situation to them. If they still wanted to see the doctor, she’d get the machinists to escort them in through the back. She took the eager men out into the alley while I did sentry duty at the back door. If anything went wrong and the escorts came back under attack, I would try to help out.

For a short while, things went smoothly. We took the opportunity to get the abortion patient out; Carol found her a cab and sent her peacefully home. But the crowd out front continued to grow, and the few patients who came in through the barricades became more and more nervous. Around one-thirty, the mob finally figured out that we were using the back entrance and poured into the alley with signs and megaphones.

Lotty reluctantly decided the time had come to shut down for the day when one woman, six months pregnant and suffering from toxemia, was physically barred from entering. Lotty went out in person to try to reason
with the crowd, a move that I felt might prove disastrous.

She used her trick of expanding her five-foot body into a major physical force and addressed the crowd, which quieted a bit at first.

“This woman is trying to preserve her own life, and that of her fetus. If you prevent her from receiving medical care, you may well be responsible for her death. Surely with your philosophy of life you should encourage her to look after her body, not stand in her way.”

She was received with jeers and shouts of “Murderer.” One brave young man came up to spit at her.

I found a Polaroid camera in Lotty’s office, which she used for taking pictures of mothers who came in to show off their new babies. I went out into the alley and started taking pictures of faces in the mob. They weren’t organized enough to make a grab for the camera. Instead they backed up the alley several yards. Anonymous haters don’t like their identities made public.

Carol used the momentary lull to bustle the toxemic woman into a cab, directing it to Beth Israel.

“Better take this chance to shut things up and get out. Otherwise we’re facing major trouble that we’re not equipped to handle,” I muttered to Lotty.

She soberly agreed. Mrs. Coltrain was visibly relieved—though prepared to stay until the bitter end, she had been more upset since the machinists had arrived. Mr. Contreras and his friends were not as happy.

“C’mon, doll,” he urged. “Don’t give up the ship so
easily. So we’re outnumbered—we can still give them a run for their money.”

“We’re outnumbered about fifty to one,” I said tiredly. “I know you guys once took on an entire police force and pushed them to their knees, but none of us here is ready for broken legs, teeth, heads, or whatever. We need to get real help, help from the law, and it doesn’t seem to be coming.”