Bitter Business Page 4

  Dagny’s office was off by itself at the end of the hall. At the threshold she stopped so suddenly that I literally ran into her. My automatic apology dried up in my throat as I saw what it was that had stopped her dead.

  “Oh my God,” said Dagny, the rising note of alarm in her voice turning my stomach to lead.

  Facedown on the blue carpet in front of Dagny’s desk, her hair splayed around her head and her short skirt hitched up to reveal red satin panties, lay the inert form of her secretary, Cecilia.

  4

  “Cecilia?” called Dagny, her voice hovering somewhere between bewilderment and alarm. “Are you okay?”

  There was no response from the motionless figure on the floor. For a minute we just stood there, two women in business suits caught completely off guard. Then Dagny ran to her desk and picked up the phone. Silently praying that Cecilia had just fainted or, better yet, had passed out drunk, I dove and knelt beside the prone figure on the blue carpet.

  Shaking her gently, I called out her name. Nothing. I shook harder. Her body was inert, eerily unresponsive. I felt a tightening in my chest and knew that it was fear.

  “Call nine-one-one,” I commanded Dagny, who by then was already on the line with the police dispatcher.

  I checked Cecilia’s wrist for a pulse and found none. Pushing aside her long hair, I searched frantically for the carotid artery. I found the spot but there was no pulse.

  I took hold of her shoulders. She was surprisingly heavy, and as I turned her over onto her back, her head lolled sickeningly to one side. I bent my face over hers but felt no whisper of breath. Her skin was pink and felt warm against my hand. But there was something about her eyes, open yet unfocused, that chilled me.

  Trying not to think, I checked her mouth for foreign objects. Then I pinched her nose closed with one hand, placed my lips over hers, and exhaled. I moved both my hands over her breastbone, wondering desperately if I was even close to the right spot, and began the series of compressions I’d learned in CPR.

  When they brought in the Red Cross to teach classes in cardiopulmonary resuscitation at Callahan Ross, everyone joked that it was a clear case of self-interest. The older partners just wanted to make sure that when they had their big heart attacks everyone would know exactly what to do. I swear that when I signed up for the course I never dreamed that I’d ever use what I’d learned.

  “One and two and three and four and five,” I counted out loud. “Go to the front of the building and wait for the paramedics,” I ordered Dagny. She hesitated. Then, nodding tensely, she disappeared out the door as I began the next set of compressions.

  I do not know how long it took. At some point, like a distance runner in “the zone,” the world just went away. I was aware of nothing, not the passing of time or the accumulating ranks of Superior Plating employees who began crowding into the doorway. Five compressions and a breath, five compressions and a breath, that was what my world had narrowed down to—my face pressed against the face of a woman I’d barely met. Now I felt the thin fabric of her blouse under my hands, felt the resilient softness of her skin, smelled the lush flowers of her perfume....

  I did not hear the paramedics come. At some point strong hands grasped my shoulders and pulled me away.

  A man’s voice spoke, but at first I didn’t register the meaning of his words. Gradually the adrenaline released me from its grip and I saw the room as if for the first time.

  On the floor in front of Dagny’s desk a half-dozen blue-uniformed emergency medical technicians swarmed around the still-motionless body of her secretary. One of the paramedics, a woman who wore her glossy hair in a French braid that made me suddenly think of horses, began asking me questions: What was her name? When did I find her? How was she lying? Did I move her? How long did it take me before I started CPR? Did I know whether she had any history of heart disease? Diabetes? Drag use?

  As I stammered out my replies another paramedic, a black man with a bald head, slid some sort of tube down the unconscious woman’s throat. Another EMT took a thick needle and started an IV drip.

  “Pupils dilated and unresponsive,” said one voice. “Blood pressure is zero.”

  “Defib?” demanded another.

  “We’re so close to the hospital, let’s just keep her ventilated and get her in,” replied the black paramedic, who seemed to be in charge.

  The woman with the French braid turned to me. “You can ride with her in the ambulance. Let’s see if somebody can find her purse.”

  I sputtered an incoherent protest, but no one paid any attention. They were already bent over the stretcher. I looked around the room desperately for Dagny, but she "as nowhere to be seen. As we were walking out the door someone shoved Cecilia’s battered black shoulder bag into my hands.

  * * *

  The siren wailed and throbbed above us as we navigated the narrow city streets. I wondered which hospital was nearest and decided it was probably Michael Reese. Cecilia, still unconscious, lay strapped to the stretcher while the black paramedic kept up his ministrations— shining a penlight into her eyes, taking her blood pressure, checking the IV line.

  I sat on a narrow bench, crouching thigh to thigh with a second paramedic, one I hadn’t noticed back in Dagny’s office. He was good-looking in a beefy sort of way, with a lantern jaw and what I knew instinctively must be a quick eye for the ladies.

  “Nice work in there,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did she do drugs, do you know?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “So you don’t work with her or nothin’.”

  “No. I just had an appointment with her boss.”

  “What kind of place is that back there where she works? It’s some sort of factory, isn’t it?”

  “They do metal plating.”

  “So you don’t work there?”

  “I have an office downtown.”

  “Whadya do?”

  “I’m an attorney,” I replied uncomfortably. The circumstances, I felt, were not ideal for small talk.

  “You’re kidding. I would never’ve taken you for a lawyer, on account of you being so young and good-looking and all.”

  We hit the bump of the curb and made a sharp turn into what I prayed was the entrance to the emergency room.

  “Save it, Frank,” snapped the black paramedic. “It’s show time.”

  I hate everything about hospitals—the smell of suffering mingled with disinfectant, the constant drone of unwatched TVs and babies crying, the way that tiny acts of compassion are overshadowed by the monumental cruelty of bureaucratic indifference. It is the same in every hospital I have ever been in. And I have been in my share.

  My husband died of brain cancer the year we both graduated from law school. The months that preceded his death were filled with painful tests and poisonous medications. They were months of bitterness, stoicism, and despair. By the time I came through them, I had used up a lifetime’s allotment of patience with hospitals.

  The paramedics wheeled Cecilia into the emergency room at a dead run and disappeared behind double doors marked NO ADMITTANCE, leaving me to battle a wearily indifferent admitting clerk through two inches of Plexiglas. I looked through the purse in my hands, not my own, but the one I’d been numbly clutching since we left Superior Plating. I turned it upside down on the Formica counter in front of me and scrabbled through the mess: bus transfers and used tissues, two condoms still sealed in their foil packets, a hairbrush grotesquely clotted with blond hairs, and a half-eaten candy bar.

  From the front of a tattered romance novel a barechested man stared up at me with unbridled lust. Thrust between its pages I found what I was looking for. Attached to an Illinois driver’s license with a paper clip Were four soiled dollar bills, a disconnection notice for an apartment in Uptown, and finally, a dog-eared insurance card, all in the name of Cecilia Dobson.

  Relieved, I passed the identification to the clerk, who disappeared to make
copies. Behind me a toddler with a runny nose played with the knobs of the candy machine while an old woman in bedroom slippers and a greasy raincoat sat in a chair by the door and sobbed.

  After the clerk returned I set out in search of the pay phones. I found them cleverly positioned between a blaring television set and the speaker of the public address system. Three of the four were not working and a girl who looked as though she was about fourteen was using the fourth. In one hand she cradled a very new baby and in the other the receiver.

  “But I don’t have no money for no bus,” she was insisting to whoever was on the other end.

  Back in the cramped waiting room I found a row of vinyl chairs that were bolted to the floor and sat down to wait. I tried hard to worry about Cecilia Dobson, but felt instead an unreasonable pang of longing for the quiet order of Callahan Ross, where clients wait among the brass lamps and the Chippendale. After a while my beefy paramedic returned, emerging from behind the steel doors of the emergency room with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand. On his face was a broad smile that I suspected of having been practiced in the bathroom mirror. My heart sank.

  “I’ve got cream and sugar in my pocket if you want,” he said, sitting down beside me and nodding in the direction of his chest. It was obvious that he spent his off-hours lifting weights. He wanted to be sure that I noticed.

  “Black is fine, thank you,” I replied. “Do you know if she’s going to be okay?”

  “They’re still working on her. They’ll come out and get you when they know anything. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  “Fine,” I replied primly.

  “You did a great job back there.” He moved a little closer. “Not many people woulda kept their heads the way you did.”

  “Thank you,” I said, pressing my knees together and wishing he’d go away.

  “I know how upsetting something like this can be. You know, I see a lot of stressful things on my job. I handle life-and-death situations every day.” He leaned so close to me I could smell what he’d had for lunch. “I know how to handle it. I can help you deal with the stress....” I gritted my teeth and grimly evaluated my options. I was debating whether to declare myself HIV positive, a lesbian, or both when the doors to the emergency room swung open and a tired-looking nurse in pink scrubs motioned to us.

  “They want to see you now,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze. “You want me to come with you?”

  “No,” I replied hastily, scrambling to my feet.

  “If I’m not here when you get finished, I want you to call me. All you have to do is dial nine-one-one and tell them you need Frank.” His last line had the polished delivery of a professional.

  The doctor’s name was Kravitz, and despite the camouflage of her white coat, I could see that she was pregnant. She saw me in a cramped supply room with a folding chair in one comer. Through the open door I could see doctors in their shirtsleeves and tennis shoes doing their weary dance from treatment room to treatment room while a metallic voice from the PA system urged Dr. Patel to report to the oncology service.

  “Are you a relative?” Dr. Kravitz asked.

  “No, I’m not. I’m just one of the people who found her.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  I described how Dagny and I had found her as best as I could.

  “They said she worked in some sort of factory. What kind was it?”

  “It’s a plating plant.”

  “Did she work near any chemicals?”

  “No. She worked in the office.”

  “And after you found her you immediately called nine-one-one?”

  “Her boss made the call. I turned her over and started CPR.”

  “Had she vomited?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Was there any sign of injury or violence?”

  “No.”

  “To your knowledge, did she ever regain consciousness?”

  “Not while I was with her.”

  “And as far as you can tell, she never resumed breathing on her own?”

  “No. Is she going to be okay?”

  Dr. Kravitz looked at me for a moment. “I’m afraid she’s dead,” she said softly. “We pronounced her a few minutes ago.”

  I was quiet for a minute. I wondered how many times the doctor had to break this sort of news. I wondered if it got easier with practice.

  “How did she die?” I asked finally.

  “We don’t know yet. We probably won’t know until we get the autopsy results. I can send a social worker in to talk to you if you feel that would be helpful.”

  “No. I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I never laid eyes on her before today,” I answered woodenly. “She really was a stranger.”

  When I returned to the waiting room Dagny was there. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. We were trying to reach her family,” she explained breathlessly. “And did you get a hold of them?”

  “No, not yet. We checked her personnel file. She listed a sister as next of kin, but when we called the number it had been disconnected. We’re still working on it. Do they know what’s wrong with her yet? Is she going to be all right?”

  “She’s dead,” I said, wishing I could think of a less naked way to say it.

  “Dead?” demanded Dagny, staggering backward at the news as if from a blow. “How can that be? She was fine an hour ago. You saw her yourself. How could something like this happen?”

  “They don’t know. They’ll have to do an autopsy.”

  “Oh my God,” Dagny whispered, sinking into a chair. “She was so young, just a kid. I think she was only twenty-two. What could have killed her so fast like that?”

  “They wanted to know if there were any chemicals where she worked.”

  “There are chemicals in the plant, but we’re tremendously conscious of safety. Besides, she worked in the office. She’d never come into contact with any of them.”

  “They also wanted to know whether she used drugs.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Dagny replied, obviously still struggling to digest what had just happened. It was hard enough for me, but for Dagny, who had worked side by side with the dead woman, it must have been even worse.

  “I feel so terrible,” Dagny continued. “I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know where she lived or if she had a boyfriend. I was so concerned with the superficial things that annoyed me about her that I never took the time to find out the big things.”

  “You cannot start blaming yourself,” I said firmly. “Whatever happened, it isn’t your fault.”

  Dagny looked up sharply. “That doesn’t matter. Philip is still going to blame me.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I replied. “They don’t even know how she died. How can he be worried about whose fault it is?”

  “You don’t understand my brother. Placing blame is how he reacts to a crisis.” She cast her eyes vaguely around the waiting area. “Do you think we need to stay here for anything? I should get back to the office and see if they’ve been able to reach her family. I’ve got to tell everyone what’s happened.”

  “I don’t know.”

  As we discussed what to do, a tall, thin man in his late thirties approached us. He had thinning hair and a reddish-gold beard that gave him a vaguely professorial air. From the pocket of his tweed jacket he produced a gold detective’s shield. Leading us to a relatively quiet comer of the waiting room, he explained that the police are called in to investigate any case of death that cannot readily be explained by the person’s age or medical condition.

  Drawing a small notebook from his pocket, he asked us questions that took us efficiently through the events of the last two hours. We answered as best as we could, though I was surprised at the extent to which the crisis had fogged my memory. I had been so focused on Cecilia that there were a hundred things I seemingly hadn’t noticed—the time, whether anyone had been in the next r
oom when we found her, whether she’d had anything in her hand. Still, for a man whose job it was to question the newly bereaved, sobbing mothers and fresh widows, Dagny and I must have made for a pleasant, if unproductive change.

  In the end, his questions hadn’t taken very long, and when we were finished, I gave him Cecilia Dobson’s purse, for which he laboriously wrote out an evidence receipt. He also gave me one of his cards. I tamed it over in my hand. It read: DETECTIVE JOE BLADES—HOMICIDE.

  5

  When I got back to the office, Cheryl had already gone for the day. On Monday nights she had civil procedure and left at five o’clock on the dot. Shrugging off my coat, I dialed Daniel Babbage’s extension only to be told by the switchboard operator that he’d already left the office. I tried his home number but got no answer. I felt too restless to do anything but flip blindly through the message slips that Cheryl had left for me. From every available surface the stacks of files rebuked me for work undone, but I was powerless to begin. Cecilia Dobson might have been a stranger, but her death had dealt me a sucker punch nonetheless. Sitting impotently in my own office, I realized that I simply had no idea how to pick up the routine of my life after someone died.

  When the phone rang I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Please, God,” I whispered as I picked up the receiver, “let it not be my mother.”

  “Hey, Kate. It’s Stephen,” came a familiar voice, hollow from his speakerphone. “I just called to see what you were up to tonight.”

  “I’m going out to get drunk,” I replied. “You’re more than welcome to join me if you’d like.”

  In the wood paneled bar of the University Club I put as many scotches as I could between myself and the death of Cecilia Dobson. Stephen, who is six-foot-five and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds, can, as a rule, carry a bigger load of Chivas than I can, but tonight he didn’t even try to keep up.