Trusting Evil

by Mary Leo

  “Aren’t you more the brunette type? And speaking of brunettes, too bad Mr. Denthead wouldn’t shave. He was perfect,” I say.

  “Poor bastard. He seemed so shy. What could he have done? Maybe he just got caught in the crossfire or something.”

  Captain Bob interrupts, saying, “He’s a member of the Gangster Disciples. He was trying to give gang signals on that picture. That’s why I had to rip it up. Man’s in for rape and attempted murder. Don’t let that ‘yes, ma’am’ talk fool ya. He’s trouble.”

  I gaze over at Mike. I can tell he’s in shock. Like he never would have guessed in a million years what the kid did. Funny. I thought his crimes might have been worse. Much worse.

  We enter the tunnel through the open doorway and head for the three gates. The only sound is the clack clack of our feet on the cement. Almost there. Almost free.

  Just then, an alarm of some sort goes off. It seems to be coming from all the towers and from inside the buildings. Loud. Almost ear shattering.

  “Now what?” Mike asks Captain Bob.

  “It’s a lockdown. Just relax and stay where you are. We can usually get through these things in a short time. Nobody goes anywhere until all the inmates are accounted for.”

  For some reason, I notice that Captain Bob has one of those thick Chicah-go accents. Perfect casting.

  “Just remain calm. It shouldn’t take too long,” Warden Evans offers with an apologetic grin.

  I crack a smile and groan my defeated acceptance. The alarm stops. Other guards rush around us. Their feet pounding the cement floor like thoroughbreds on a racetrack.

  There’s a screeching sound coming from the guy with the cart behind us. One of the wheels probably needs oil or something. I turn to get a better look. Familiar. Seems as though I know him, but I can’t place him—maybe a crew member from that River Phoenix movie we did a few months back. A carpenter. The guy kept following me around. Wanted to be an extra. What was his name? Annoying guy with a short name…what was it?

  Jim, that was it. Carpenter Jim.

  While I’m sort of smiling at the warden and proud that I remembered the guy’s name, I turn to ask Carpenter Jim a question. Maybe he can tell me something about this lockdown thing. Maybe he’s already been through it while he was building the set.

  I turn, smiling. As soon as I do, he spots me. A slow, crooked smile cuts across his face.

  I recognize the smile, that particular smile.

  The screeching wheel on the cart intensifies with each rotation. It becomes louder than the alarm was, bouncing off the walls and piercing through my brain. I have to cover my ears to protect myself.

  Bells. The warning bells on a drawbridge.

  The wind—a ship’s horn.

  I tell myself to just breathe. Pull the air in. Out.

  I move up to the front of the line where Warden Evans says something to the guard on the other side of the gate.

  “I have to get out of here,” I say, but the words don’t come out right. I’m shaking too much.

  “Try to remain calm. There’s nothing to get nervous about,” the warden answers while he turns to look at the man behind us.

  “There’s Richard now,” he says as casually as that. Like a friend has just arrived. The warden turns back to the guard and adds, “You know Speck’s number, right?”

  I take a millisecond to try to convince myself I’d heard wrong. This can’t be Speck. Not now. Not this close.

  But I heard right.

  Richard Franklin Speck stops the cart about two feet away from me. He wears his hair in a weird, early Beatles’ haircut, and I swear there are breasts bouncing under his paint-stained overalls as he bends over to straighten something on his cart. He’s a big man, thick in the middle from years of neglect. The veins in his hands prominent. A splash of gray paint sticks in the folds of his somewhat swollen fingers. His nails, dirty. Those hands. His murderous hands only inches from my throat.

  A thin film of sweat binds my clothing to my skin. My stomach churns. Nausea overwhelms me.

  I turn away from the group, run past Speck and down to the doorway we just entered. Once out in the courtyard, I lean over and vomit on the manicured lawn.

  My name is Valentine Passion, Tina to my friends.

  We begin to learn English in the Philippines when we first go to school; therefore it is natural that most of us want to go to America as soon as we get old enough to be on our own. A person can make a lot of money in America. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to help my family with that money, for we were very poor.

  I graduated from Manila Central University School of Nursing in 1965. Almost immediately I tried to come to the United States with the nurses exchange program, but twice there were problems with my passport. Finally, in April of 1966 everything cleared up. I arrived in Chicago the following month. The drive from O’Hare airport, through the city, to the Southeast Side was, perhaps, the happiest moment of my life.

  Even though I missed everyone and would sometimes cry myself to sleep, I wrote home to tell my sister Aida, that I wished I could stay forever. I knew she would understand because she had wanted to come to the United States as much as I did.

  There were two men who wanted to marry me. I wrote to each one as much as I could. Sometimes, I liked them both the same, and other times I liked the dentist more than the doctor. He liked Jerry Vale. So did I, but marrying either one of them would force me to return to the Philippines. Unless, of course, one of them, perhaps the dentist, would come to Chicago. We would have bought a small house, not too far from South Chicago Community Hospital. I wanted to go on working there and raise a family. With both our incomes, we would have sent a lot of money home and eventually brought some of my sisters and brothers to Chicago. That way, I wouldn’t have been so lonely.

  By July, I had managed to send my parents more than three hundred dollars, almost half of my salary. I wanted them to use the money to fix up the house, but they never had the opportunity.

  My father received a phone call from the State Department on July 15 telling him that his twenty-three-year-old daughter had been a victim of a mass murder.

  While my hands and feet were still bound, Richard Speck dragged me across the wooden bedroom floor to the back bedroom. Once there, he knelt down behind me. Terrified, I tried to yell out. He slit my throat and pushed me face down onto the floor, careful not to get any of my blood on his clothes. Then, when it was over, he slowly and systematically washed his face and hands in the bathroom sink.

  The three hundred dollars I had sent home arrived just in time to pay for my burial expenses.

  Chapter Six

  I’m reclining on a small sofa in Vivian’s crowded office, struggling to get control of my spastic stomach while Mike rests a cool, wet towel on my forehead and tries to convince me to drink some tea. “It’ll settle your stomach.”

  “I don’t want any, thank you,” I tell him.

  Vivian peers over me. “But sweetie, it will make you feel better,” she coos.

  “No, thanks. I just need to get out of here for awhile,” I tell her, forcing out a smile. I mumble to Mike, “Like for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t do that just yet. Relax. Try sitting up. Sometimes that helps,” Vivian says.

  Mike agrees. “Maybe she’s right.”

  I feel like I’m trapped with Bert and Ernie, each going along with the other for the sake of agreeing.

  I sit up, if for nothing else but to get them to be quiet.

  “There. Isn’t that better?” Vivian asks.

  Immediately the room starts to spin. I grab my purse and run off to the bathroom.

  “Poor dear,” Vivian says while I make my way out of her office and down the hall. “Some women just have a terrible time—” Her voice fades into a weird sort of sing-song thing, like the bells on a drawbridge and I’m back in South Chicago.

  • • •

  Just as we arrived on the corner of 100th and Commercia
l Avenue, the bells started ringing on the bridge signaling a passing ship. We ran the rest of the way, yelling and laughing. Lisa lagged behind, struggling to keep up. Sharon and I turned back every now and then just to make sure Lisa didn’t pass out or anything. It was a pretty hot day.

  “Come on, you slow poke, you’re going to miss it,” Sharon yelled back to Lisa as she ran up the block.

  “Oh, go on,” Lisa shouted, waving her hand. “There’ll be another one.”

  Sharon and I ran off without her. There were times when one of us had to be sacrificed for the common good of the group. This was one of those times. The ship could be from England.

  We crossed the first street weaving in between the waiting traffic, then the next, all the while screaming fantasies to each other using our best English accents.

  “I’ll have to bring Ringo here, you know. Just to remind ‘im of ‘ome,” I chanted, almost out of breath. Sharon laughed as she reached our special vantage point next to the brown gatehouse. “Then I’ll be bringing Paul as well. The lads might get a kick out of it.”

  From around the bend we could see the ship heading straight for us. A small tugboat pulled it along the river. The drawbridge was completely lifted, its street and sidewalks pointing to the sky. I loved to stand right next to the sidewalk and pretend I was lying down on it, arms outstretched, head tilted up. It felt strange to see the sky at the end of the sidewalk, almost as though if I stood up I could walk straight up to heaven. That way I could simply ask God to let me marry Ringo. It seemed much easier than going to Mass every morning and hoping that He heard my prayers.

  “Can you see where it’s from?” Sharon asked as she strained to make out the ship’s flag. “Is it British? Oh please let it be from England.”

  I left my heaven sidewalk and joined her on the side of the bridge. “I can’t see a flag anywhere.” I climbed up on the small ledge to get a better look.

  The ship slowly made its way toward us, blasting its horn every now and then. Next to a Beatles song, there wasn’t a more pleasurable sound than the combination of the bells from the bridge mixed with a ship’s bellow.

  “It’s from Germany,” Lisa said while standing behind us. “There’s the flag.” We all looked at each other and screamed.

  “That proves it then,” Sharon proclaimed. “It’s a sign from God. We have a real German sailor staying right next door to me. He probably got off that very ship.”

  We all screamed again.

  The ship was right beside us by then. So close we could see the faces of the men who stood on her deck. Four sailors screamed something to us in German, each vying for our attention, waving, jumping up and down, and whistling. Sharon and I leaned over the railing as far as we could and yelled, “Have you met the Beatles? Do you know the Beatles?”

  The men recognized the word Beatles and started rattling off lyrics, “I want to hold your hand, yeah, yeah, yeah, please, please me, just seventeen, you know what I mean…Help, I need somebody!” All the while they yelled they mimed several heart-throb poses, such as going down on one knee or clasping their hands over their heart. We waved back and when they were right beside us Sharon sang out, “I want to hold your ha-a-a-nd. Baby slow down, ooh baby you move too fast,” to which one guy almost fell overboard trying to get to us.

  The ship passed under the bridge and we ran over to the other side to give our final farewell. Lisa whistled. She had one of those loud, guy-type whistles. The sailor who almost fell overboard whistled back a catcall. Lisa’s whole face lit up and she whistled again and again until the ship crossed under the Chicago Skyway and headed for the 95th Street bridge. All the while Sharon and I sang “I’ve just seen a face. I can’t forget the time or place where we just met…” and we waved and waved. So did the sailors. Everyone seemed happy, especially Lisa.

  “You gotta be able to stay overnight, now. That ship was a definite sign,” Sharon said. “First we meet that German sailor and then there’s a German ship. Something wonderful’s going to happen. I can feel it.”

  I said, “Maybe that guy we met is our connection to the Beatles or something.”

  “And maybe he really does know the Beatles and he can get our letters right to them,” Sharon chimed in.

  “Oh, come on, what are the chances of that?” Lisa taunted.

  “Well, why not? You said so yourself that they met in Germany at the Kaiserkeller Club,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I made that up for my story.”

  “So, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be true. What about Flash Gordon? Somebody made him up and look, now we send rockets to the moon. The next thing you know we’ll find out that the evil Ming has a battle station up there.”

  “Carly, you—”

  Sharon interrupted, “I think she’s right and sometimes you just have to have faith. Right? Isn’t that what Sister Martha says when she can’t answer a question. That we just have to trust in God. Well, I for one am trusting.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  We stared at Lisa, waiting for her answer.

  “Okay, I guess so, but we have to ask Ronald tonight to be sure, and that means that you have to stay overnight ‘cause we need three people for him to answer. He never shows up when it’s just Sharon and me.”

  Ronald was our angel or our devil (we couldn’t quite figure him out) who answered our questions. We couldn’t afford a real Ouija board so we made one out of cardboard and a Coke bottle cap. The alphabet was written in a half-circle in the center, with a YES and a NO in either corner. We kept the board in our trunk so that Lisa’s mother wouldn’t find it. She thought the Ouija board was a passageway to Satan himself. So, whenever we had a real burning question about our future, we’d pull out the board, lock Sharon’s bedroom door and ask Ronald. He always had the right answer.

  After the bridge we decided to walk straight over to South Chicago Community Hospital where my mother worked. We needed to make sure that I could spend the night at Sharon’s house. There couldn’t be any problems with it now, and besides, we wanted to start setting things up as soon as we could.

  My mom ran the hospital switchboard from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon Monday through Friday. She took the job right after Dad got a promotion and some steady hours.

  Dad was a Chicago cop.

  Once we arrived at the hospital, Sharon, Lisa and I squeezed ourselves into the stuffy, green room where Mom, with the help of another woman, directed every incoming and outgoing call, plus any internal calls and emergencies made throughout the entire hospital. Unfortunately, Mom was the only one working. The other woman was on a break.

  Mom was a petite woman, no more than five-three, with bright red hair that lay in a soft flip on her shoulders. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and five pounds dressed in her warmest winter clothes. Dad could pick her up with one arm, twirl her around and carry her for hours if he had to. She always had a kind word for even the meanest person and her deep-blue eyes sparkled whenever she smiled.

  “You gotta let Carly stay, Mrs. Rockett. We won’t be able to sleep without her,” Sharon said in between Mom’s transferring of a call. I liked to watch Mom work. It seemed like such a nice job. I told her once that I wanted to grow up and be a switchboard operator. She told me that I was being silly. A switchboard operator was not something you wanted to be; it was something you were forced to be. I didn’t understand her answer.

  “You girls are always plotting something. What is it this time?” Mom asked with that distrustful tone to her voice that I knew so well. If there was even a hint of a lie, Mom could detect it in a heartbeat.

  I was just about to answer her in my purest voice, when a light flashed up on her board and she switched the key on her panel, pulled up a chord with a metal plug on the end and stuck it into the blinking spot on the board. “South Chicago Community Hospital…I’m connecting.” Mom pulled up a second plug and stuck that into a different hole on the board. Now the two people could speak to each other. It al
l seemed very complicated, but Mom said once you got the hang of it, working a switchboard was a snap.

  “I don’t like you girls sleeping outside at night. It’s dangerous. You never know who’s around. They could—”

  A light flashed again. It was so annoying to talk to her while she was working. Each sentence was a struggle, like listening to someone who stuttered.

  “How can I direct your call?” Mom said into her headset. “Sure, no problem whatsoever,” she said, smiling at the voice in the phone. Mom finished her transfer and turned back to us.

  “That was one of the student nurses. Her wedding’s coming up right after graduation and she’s so excited that she must call her boyfriend ten times a day. It’s cute. Now, what do you girls want?” Mom asked, still smiling. I was glad that the nurse wanted to make a call. She put Mom in a better mood, but then the nurses always put her in a better mood. She really liked them, especially the students.

  Once, while I was having lunch with Mom in the cafeteria, I overheard one of the nurses say that the switchboard operators were their best friends because they would put their calls through even though it was against hospital rules. The rules stated that the nurses, especially student nurses, could only use the pay phones for personal calls, but they rarely did. Not when they had a best friend like my mom working at the switchboard.

  “I’m going to get married as soon as I get out of high school,” Sharon said.

  Mom smiled.

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of young to be getting married?” Mom asked.

  “Oh, no. Paul will be twenty-eight by then and that’s just the right age for a man.”

  “I was thinking about you.”

  “Me? No, Mrs. Rockett, my mother was sixteen when she married my father. I’m only waiting until after graduation because that’s when we plan on going to England. I can’t get there any sooner or I’d marry him now.”

  “At thirteen?”

  “It’s legal to get married in Georgia when you’re thirteen,” Lisa said.

  “You girls still play with dolls.”