Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  The windows had been broken long ago. The sills were covered with dust. I wandered from room to room, but found nothing except rat droppings and sneaker prints, probably from the teenagers below.

  I took Marvella’s sheet and looked at the address again. I hadn’t misread it. Marvella had said that abortionists moved around a lot. I wondered if this place was used occasionally as a surgery, maybe by some kind of appointment.

  I glanced out the window. More teenagers stood across the street, a number of them wearing red tams. They didn’t seem to be doing anything other than enjoying the sunny day.

  I turned around and walked to the door. No one had followed me inside. No one had noticed or cared that I had come here. In that way, this was the perfect place for an illegal operation.

  The drunk woman hadn’t moved from her position on the second floor landing. This time when I stepped over her, she didn’t even groan, but she did move enough so that I knew she was still alive.

  When I reached the front door, I made sure Marvella’s list was in my pocket. I stopped near the teenagers.

  “You guys know Ike Jackson from 407?” I asked.

  “Who wants to know?” One of the boys, not much older than Jimmy, leaned against the brick wall, and eyed me carefully.

  “I was told he could help my sister,” I said. I didn’t know where the sister thing came from. It just felt better than mentioning a girlfriend.

  “He ain’t been here for months,” the boy said. “You gots to go to Stony Island. I heard he moved down there.”

  “Where exactly?” I asked, as if I really were a concerned brother.

  “Hell if I know,” the boy said.

  “Then how do you know he’s there?” I asked.

  “That’s what he said.” The boy shrugged. “Figured anybody who gots to ask is probably a cop. Right?”

  I got that question often enough that it worried me. Especially on a case like this. I might need some help with it, someone who didn’t have whatever it was that made me seem official.

  “You know anybody else who can help me?” I asked.

  “You mean your sister?” one of the other boys asked. He was acne scarred and malnourished. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “You go see Sister Mary Catherine at the Salvation Army,” he said.

  “She’s a nun?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice.

  All of the boys laughed.

  “Hell, no,” the second boy said as the laughter died down. “She’s a sistah, you know. One of us. She works on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the Woodlawn store. You got that?”

  “I do,” I said, beginning to understand that this underground network was no different from any other I’d come across. “Thank you.”

  “You got it, bro,” the second boy said, and they all laughed again. I made my way down the steps before the smell of marijuana made me high.

  Mary Catherine at the Salvation Army. I would write that contact down. I suspected I would run into a lot of people who knew someone who knew someone else who maybe knew the person who could help a woman in trouble.

  I had been right; this search I was conducting for Marvella would be a long one.

  ELEVEN

  I DROVE PAST the Salvation Army store in Woodlawn, but it was closed. I still had time before I had to pick up Jimmy, but not enough to effectively pursue another lead. I could have gone home and finished the second report for Southside Insurance, but my mind really wasn’t on it.

  Instead, I decided to go to the hospital to see how Valentina Wilson was doing.

  Part of my decision to go was self-defense. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to survive. I wanted to be armed with the news when I saw Marvella again.

  The hospital parking lot was full when I arrived. I parked curbside across the street, and went in the hospital’s front door. The air was stuffy and smelled of disinfectant. Last night, I hadn’t noticed how hot it got inside. I suspect the warmth of the past two days had caught the maintenance people by surprise; they probably still had the heat running.

  I followed the signs past the gift shop until I got to the main desk. Several women staffed it this afternoon, most of them taking information from distraught-looking people who kept glancing down the hallway.

  A white woman stood behind the counter, thumbing through some charts. I walked up to her.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I’m looking for a patient brought in last night. She would either be listed as Valentina Wilson or Valentina Johnson.”

  The woman raised her carefully plucked eyebrows at me. “Why the problem with the name?”

  “The people who brought her in didn’t know her by her married name.” I figured that answer, while only partly true, was simplest.

  The woman nodded, as if that made sense to her. “You need her room number?”

  “If I could.”

  She went to the back and dialed the switchboard. I couldn’t hear what she had to say. As she looked up Valentina’s room for me, I leaned across the counter, to see if I saw her name on any files.

  I didn’t.

  The woman who was helping me had picked up a headset. She was talking to someone, a frown on her face.

  My stomach tightened.

  The woman hung up the headset, bowed her head for a moment, then came out from behind and stopped in front of me.

  “We have a Valentina Johnson who arrived last night.” The woman spoke softly.

  Her expression and her tone of voice made me brace myself for bad news.

  “I’m afraid she’s not in a room, though,” the woman said. “She’s still in recovery. They took her back into surgery this morning, and she hasn’t woken up yet. Are you family?”

  I shook my head. No sense lying about that, especially if there was family here.

  “Then I can’t tell you much more,” she said.

  “She’s a close friend,” I lied, making it sound like Valentina Wilson and I were involved with each other. “Can you tell me anything about her prognosis?”

  The woman looked down at the desk, as if she were consulting a file. She wasn’t. She obviously didn’t want to meet my gaze. “Her doctor will have to tell you that. Or you’ll have to talk with the family.”

  “Is there any family here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but if there is, they’d probably be in the waiting room down the hall.”

  Where I had been the night before. I thanked her and walked toward the waiting room, thinking I might find Marvella. I would tell her how my first encounter went and see if she had any other ideas.

  The corridor seemed different in the daytime, smaller, narrower, filled with people. Nurses, attendants, security guards, and people like me who seemed to have no purpose there at all.

  The waiting room was full, the air so clouded with cigarette smoke that I could barely make out the people inside. A few were reading. A man sat near the door, chain-smoking, and another paced, with cigars in his pockets, obviously waiting for fatherhood.

  I didn’t see Marvella and I was about to go back to the car when a solitary figure caught my eye.

  In the very back of the room, a large man sat, his hands folded between his knees. It was Truman Johnson.

  That tight feeling returned to my stomach. I wanted to walk past as quickly as I could, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I did.

  Johnson had always seemed like a strong man to me, but the man in there didn’t look strong at all. He looked like he had lost everything.

  I pulled the door open, and clouds of cigarette smoke billowed over me. My eyes watered, and I resisted the urge to cough as I walked into the blue haze.

  Once I passed the chain-smoker, the air cleared a little. There was room on the couch beside Johnson and I took it, putting a hand on his shoulder as I did so.

  He jumped, startled, and the look on his face before he masked it was sheer panic.

  “Gri
mshaw,” he said, and there was gratitude in his voice. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn the night before and, if anything, they looked even more wrinkled than they had then.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “They found more bleeding this morning. Something that didn’t get sewn up or that got nicked in the—you know—in the thing that brought her here, and it didn’t get caught. She almost didn’t make it. I mean, if I hadn’t asked how come she was looking so gray, then maybe they wouldn’t’ve noticed. I want to move her, but Marvella says there’s no place better.”

  I had no idea if that part was true. But I did know that a lot got missed in hospitals and, at times, that there was nothing a doctor could do.

  “Have you had your doctor come in?” I asked.

  “The guy Marvella went for last night?” Johnson asked. “He’s not our doctor. He’s just someone I know who specializes in, you know.”

  I nodded.

  Johnson’s eyes were red-rimmed and he looked exhausted. He kept looking down at his scuffed shoes as if they held a secret all their own.

  “What’s the prognosis?” I asked.

  “The prognosis is that it’s a goddamn miracle she’s still breathing, so I should stop asking what the prognosis is. They act like I’m in the way.” He folded his hands again, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

  He probably was in the way. If he used any of his detecting skills, he was probably irritating the doctors and the nurses.

  “Where’s Marvella?” I asked.

  “Talking to those pricks Val works for, trying to find out if she has any insurance.” Johnson glanced at the door.

  I had no idea how he could see through the glass. I could barely see to the glass, what with the chain-smoker starting his second pack since I entered the room.

  “She’s still covered on my policy, but Marvella says that’s not right. I figure let her keep busy, and I’ll take care of things my way.” Johnson rubbed his eyes with his right hand.

  “Have you been home yet?” I asked, even though it was clear from his clothing he hadn’t left the hospital at all.

  He shook his head. “Called in this morning, let them know that I have a family emergency. If they don’t like it, that’s their problem.”

  He was talking about the precinct now. He wasn’t tracking. I had a hunch he hadn’t slept or eaten anything since I had left him the night before.

  “Let’s go down to the cafeteria,” I said. “You can fill me in.”

  “The doc expects me to be here.”

  “And if he needs to find you, he’ll look in the cafeteria for you around mealtime. That’s how these places work,” I said.

  Johnson sighed. “All right,” he said after a minute, “but only because I want to talk to you, too. I got a proposition for you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I glanced at the watch the pacing man was wearing. I still had a few minutes before I had to pick up Jimmy. I would make sure Johnson had something to eat, and then I would leave, using Jim as my excuse.

  Johnson and I threaded our way out of the waiting room, past the pacing man, a woman in tears, and the chain-smoker. The chain-smoker didn’t even seem to see anyone else. He kept lighting cigarettes with the butt of the previous cigarette and staring at the smoke he was creating.

  As Johnson and I stepped into the corridor, I asked, “How long has he been doing that?”

  “All day,” Johnson said. “His daughter was in a car crash this morning. They’re rebuilding her legs. The only time he’s been out of the room was to go to the gift shop for more cigarettes.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to clear my lungs. I had only been in the room for a short while, but I carried the odor of cigarette smoke with me. Johnson probably smelled like a smoker himself.

  “I can give you the lowdown on everyone in that room if you want,” he said. “The expectant father—he’s afraid of twins. It happened the last time and this time was an accident. The crying woman, her mother’s got a brain tumor. Not expected to survive the surgery. Then the quiet teenager in the corner—”

  That startled me. I hadn’t even noticed him.

  “—his girlfriend is the chain-smoker’s daughter. They’re not talking. I think the kid was driving the car. He’s got a bruise on the side of one arm that looks like it needs medical attention.”

  Johnson coughed, as if he were clearing an irritated throat.

  “I can’t read, can’t sleep, can’t do anything but wait, but I can still assess people. That’s what I been doing all day, watching people come in and out of that room, figuring out what the crisis is in their lives. You ever been married, Grimshaw?”

  I would have thought that last question a non sequitur except for the way he glanced at me when he asked it. He meant that last sentence as a challenge.

  “No,” I said.

  “Never even come close?”

  “A few times,” I said.

  “What went wrong?”

  I led him around a corner, following the signs to the cafeteria. I really didn’t need to. The smells of boiled beef, reconstituted gravy, and industrial strength coffee pointed the way.

  “I don’t know what went wrong,” I said. “It was different each time.”

  All three times, all of them years ago. I hadn’t even given them much thought lately. I wasn’t even certain if I had told Laura about them.

  “Because you’re too private, I’ll bet. Keep things in, don’t want to worry anyone.” The present tense clued me that Johnson wasn’t talking about my past, but his. “She can read anywhere, you know that? Anywhere, any time. Doesn’t know why I watch people all the time. Says I don’t trust anybody.”

  “It’s kind of hard to trust in your job,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  We stepped into the cafeteria. It was large, filled with gray tables and wooden chairs that had seen better days. Along two walls were steam tables, manned by androgynous people wearing white, their hair hidden under nets.

  Interns sat in one corner, a pair of nurses in another. Some patients were scattered throughout the room, identifiable by their robes and slippers. It felt strange to see people wearing such private clothing in such a public place.

  Several other people, obviously visitors, filled the rest of the tables. About ten were in line, getting food or beverages.

  I led Johnson to the stack of trays at the beginning of the food line. At first he shook his head, but I grabbed one of the gray metal trays and forced it into his hands.

  He opened his mouth to argue with me, then seemed to think the better of it. Instead, he set the tray on the metal bars in front of the steam trays and stared at the food as if it all looked inedible.

  Actually, it didn’t look half bad. The macaroni and cheese had a lot of sauce, the mashed potatoes seemed to be real instead of a mix. The corn was pale from overcooking and the cooked carrots looked more like orange goo. But as I followed Johnson through the line, my stomach actually growled.

  I gave in when we reached the desserts and took a slice of chocolate cake that seemed to be fresh.

  Johnson reached for his wallet, but I had mine out. I paid for his meal over his protests. Then I got us both some coffee, before finding a table in one of the emptier sections of the room.

  “I can afford my own dinner,” Johnson said as he sat down.

  “It was my idea to come here,” I said.

  He didn’t argue anymore. Instead, he tucked into the beef roast, mixing the corn and mashed potatoes together with his gravy to make mush. Looked like he had been in the army, too, but I didn’t ask him about it—not because I wanted to spare him, but because I didn’t like talking about it myself.

  I ate the cake, which was surprisingly good, and drank the coffee, which wasn’t. Johnson shoveled food into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in years.

  After a few minutes, his plate was empty. He washed everything down with coffee.

  “Okay,”
he said. “I know. I should’ve done that hours ago.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “But this morning, I wasn’t thinking too clear.” He shook his head. “I kept thinking if she lived through this, I’d change. I’d win her back. I’d do everything she wanted.”

  He wiped his mouth and then tossed his napkin on his plate.

  “But I’m not sure she’s going to make it through, and if she does, I don’t know how she’ll be—you’ve seen stuff like this, right? You know.” His gaze met mine.

  I had seen cases like this. Women never came out of it the same.

  “Yeah,” I said quietly, giving no details.

  He burped, and did not excuse himself. Then he leaned forward, and I cursed silently. He had remembered his proposition after all. I had hoped, with the meal and the conversation, that he would forget.

  “There isn’t much I can do to make this better,” he said. “If she wanted me in her life, she would have asked for help. She would’ve let me go after that creep or find her a real doctor. She would’ve told me what was going on.”

  Then again, she might not have. A lot of women never told their husbands about the private things in their lives or things they were ashamed of, particularly strong, can-do husbands like Johnson.

  But I didn’t argue with him. After the conversation I had had with Marvella, I had a hunch Johnson was closer to the truth of his relationship with Valentina than he had been for some time.

  “She’s going to need a lot of love and support,” I said.

  “She’s got that. She knows she’s got that,” Johnson said. “I just can’t sit much more, you know. And I’m scared to leave, scared she’ll die on me and I won’t be here.”

  “You can’t be beside her right now,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’m here. I’m in the same building. Marvella wants me to go home, and maybe I will, but it’s like, I don’t know. I’ve got to do something. You know?”

  I did. I hated that helpless feeling as much as Johnson did. It was one of the reasons I had decided to help Marvella.

  I had known from the moment I met Johnson that we were similar in some ways. We both liked solving things, making problems go away, and we both knew that life wasn’t that simple.