by Renée Rosen
“It was really a brilliant operation D’Arco had going,” said Ahern. “They’d take a perfectly fine automobile and dismantle it, bang it up good so that it looked like it had been totaled. They could get about six or seven claims off one staged smashup.”
I asked a few more questions and jotted down my notes.
Ahern reached for my notepad and scribbled down a name and telephone number. “That’s who you need to talk to. He’s in the state’s attorney’s office. He’ll talk to you, but you can’t use his name in the piece. He has to remain anonymous. That’s the agreement.” Ahern slid the notepad across to me. “No names. We’re clear, right?”
“No names.”
“And you need to move quickly on this if you want to break the story,” he said as he stood up. “I don’t know how much longer they can keep it quiet, and you know as soon as word gets out it’ll be all over the place.” Ahern dabbed his mouth with his napkin and turned up his collar. The bells above the door chimed when he walked out.
As soon as he left, I stubbed out my cigarette, rushed to the nearest pay phone and called the number Ahern had given me. I spoke to the contact, assuring him that I would not print his name. In exchange he spoon-fed me the story. With the receiver cradled between my ear and shoulder and my pad pressed to the phone booth’s wall, I wrote upside down and sideways. He gave me the real license plate numbers and the fake plate numbers, too. He gave me the names of the crooked adjusters and the insurance companies they had swindled.
I made more calls until I ran out of change for the pay phone. But by then I had spoken to an insurance adjustor who corroborated everything my first source said. I was still looking for more backup and had left messages for everyone I could think of. No one wanted to talk, and those who did, didn’t want their names mentioned. By four o’clock I was waiting on one of the insurance adjusters to call me back. Another fifteen minutes and I knew I couldn’t hold out any longer. The clock was ticking and I had to get the story out before D’Arco was subpoenaed and this scoop would become yesterday’s news. I raced back to the city room, fed the typewriter a set of copy sheets and cranked out the story.
It was a few minutes after five and Mr. Copeland was already gone for the day, so I went straight to Mr. Ellsworth, catching him just as he was reaching for his coat and hat. “Wait—don’t go.”
“Excuse me?”
“Here—wait.” I held out my copy to him. “You have to take a look at this.”
He tossed his hat onto the horseshoe and unbuttoned his overcoat. “This better be good. I have dinner reservations at Fritzel’s tonight.” With one hand stuffed in his pocket, he stood next to the desk and read, his head nodding every few minutes. He read some more and muttered to himself before he looked up and said, “So D’Arco is about to be subpoenaed by a grand jury for operating a fake auto-accident insurance ring?”
“Involving city automobiles.”
He nodded again. “This is a good start. Get another quote and we’ll take a look at it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? No. Tomorrow’s too late.”
“No?” He gave me an indignant look.
“If we wait until tomorrow, this story is going to be all over the place. If we run it now, we can be the first. We can have it out in the bulldog edition.”
“No, we can’t.” He chucked the copy onto his desk and said, “I need another quote and if you get that, we’ll take another look at it tomorrow.”
“But we’ll miss our window.”
“Walsh, do you feel that?” He indicated the rumble beneath our feet. “The presses are running. The story will be there tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow when it’s old news.”
“Even if I were going to stop the presses, which I’m not about to do, there’s not enough here. It’s too thin. You need another quote.”
“But I have two sources.”
“Still not enough.”
“But didn’t you see the quote I have?”
“Yeah. I saw it. ‘An unnamed source inside the state’s attorney’s office . . .’ Hell, Walsh, you might as well have spoken to the cleaning woman.”
“But they confirmed the $70,000 worth of fake claims. That’s rock solid. And what about the fake license plates and the multiple claims for the same car?”
“Says who? Who’s your source?”
I knew this was coming. “I can’t say. But what about the insurance adjustor?”
“He doesn’t have a name either.” Mr. Ellsworth reached for his fedora. “Tomorrow, Walsh. Go get me another quote. And not from an anonymous source this time and we’ll look at it tomorrow.” He turned off his desk lamp and squared his hat on his head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have dinner plans tonight.”
I worked until ten that evening trying to get another quote, but it was late and no one was at their desks. I tried home telephone numbers, too, but I couldn’t reach anyone. By eleven o’clock I had no choice but to accept defeat.
The next morning Ahern telephoned, and I cringed when he asked what happened. “Where’s the story?”
“My editor wouldn’t run it. I tried. It was too late. The presses were already running.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that Mr. Ellsworth thought the piece was too thin.
Ahern sighed into the receiver. “I’m doing what I can to help you, Walsh, but I’m afraid you blew it this time.”
Later that morning I saw that very same story on the front page of the Daily News. As soon as I started reading the article, a tightness settled into my chest as the blood rushed to my face. I was consumed with jealousy. The Daily News had that extra quote I had so desperately needed. What’s more, they had documented $120,000 in fake claims, not just $70,000. Their reporter had scooped me.
Ahern was right. I had blown it. I should have worked smarter, faster. I shouldn’t have waited around for callbacks. I should have moved on and found other sources. I should have gotten in front of Mr. Ellsworth sooner. After I beat myself up, I promised that I’d never let something like that happen to me again.
Chapter 16
• • •
About a month later, I was working on a piece for White Collar Girl about “Popular Lunch Spots for Busy Secretaries.” Mrs. Angelo had just made her rounds, causing Gabby to hang up in the middle of a phone call with her sister so she could make believe she was working.
Gabby had been on the phone with her sister all morning. From what I could gather, one of the kids had a fever. She must have spoken with her sister half a dozen times that day.
It was almost five o’clock and I was about to pack up when the wire room bells sounded. Those bells meant a news bulletin was coming in. Something was happening. Something big. A shooting, a fire, something overseas. You never knew what it could be. The peal of those bells reverberated throughout the city room, getting everyone’s heart racing. I stopped packing up my things and froze in place, waiting.
Even before Mr. Ellsworth rushed over, we heard the news crackling over Peter’s police radio: “El car derailed. In the Loop. Lake and Wabash. Fatalities expected. Ambulances en route.”
All eyes were on Mr. Ellsworth. He was scrambling, looking for people to send to the scene. He ran a hand through his hair before he held his arm straight out and snapped his fingers. “Peter, Henry, Benny, get down there. Take Russell and another photographer with you. If you need more cameramen let me know. And you”—he looked at me—“Walsh, go talk to the victims.”
Half a dozen of us raced out of the city room and headed toward the Loop. It was snowing and blustery cold that day. One of the first accumulating snows of the season. Raw energy pumped through me as we rushed over the bridge at Wacker and Michigan and headed another two blocks to Lake Street. Before we’d reached Wabash, just a few blocks to the west, we heard the sirens barreling down the street. You think you’re immune to that sound. After all, sirens were the melody this city danced to. But just then those sirens sent a chill through me, far more penetrating than the wind. I st
uffed my hands inside my pockets, gripping my fountain pen nestled against the lining.
As we turned the corner, I let out a gasp. An el car was hanging off the overhead track, swinging back and forth. Another car had jackknifed, and the one behind it had uncoupled and crashed, bottom-side-up on the street below. A fourth car had reared into another and was folded up like an accordion.
We picked up the pace, going from a jog to a full-blown run, traversing the patches of ice on the sidewalk. There was black smoke billowing up from the cars that had caught fire. Rows of people crowded in, gawking, crying. Victims were walking around with blood gushing from the gashes on their foreheads, their arms and legs. The ambulances were just arriving on the scene, and fire workers were using crowbars and blowtorches, trying to free passengers still trapped inside the cars. People were down on the sidewalks, lying in the street, groping for someone, anyone to help them. A few doctors, nurses and Good Samaritans jumped in to help treat passengers who had been thrown from the train.
Mr. Ellsworth said I should talk to the victims, but I was looking for anyone I could get a statement from—riders who’d been on the train, people who’d been walking by and had seen it happen, workers in nearby buildings who’d witnessed it from their office windows. Anyone.
“I was just standing there,” said a woman who’d been in one of the front cars. “I was waiting for a seat to open up. We were going around the curve and I felt a jolt. I lost my balance. So did everyone else. Then people started screaming. . . .”
I tried to get to the conductor and the motorman, but both had been too badly injured and had already been taken to the hospital. The site was filled with police and investigators. I ran into Danny Finn, but he had no information for me. Said he’d just gotten there himself. Everywhere I looked I saw reporters from the other papers and the wire services as well as the radio stations.
Finally the chief of police made an official statement to the press, saying: “We’re going to conduct a thorough investigation as to how and why this tragedy occurred. . . .”
There was a flurry of questions as reporters vied for the chief’s attention. I was the only woman in the pack and couldn’t even get him to make eye contact with me. I was invisible.
I went through the crowd then, talking to cops and ambulance drivers, trying to get a count on fatalities, but all I had were conflicting reports. An AP stringer was saying two dead and another stringer from UPI was saying at least thirteen. The whole downtown area from Madison to Kinzie and State to Michigan was blocked off. Ambulances came and went and circled back to get more victims.
After I’d exhausted the crash site and had spoken to everyone I could find, I called Higgs, the rewrite man at the city desk who worked the night shift. Mr. Copeland eventually got on the phone.
“Get your butt over to the hospital, Walsh. Talk to the victims and bring me back some stories.”
I’d been afraid he was going to say that. I hated hospitals, especially Henrotin Hospital. The last time I’d been there was the night Eliot died.
“And make sure you take a photographer with you, Walsh.”
I hung up with Mr. Copeland, found a cameraman and went to Henrotin over on Oak Street where the victims had been taken. Mr. Copeland had sent me there to get the human side of suffering, and like it or not, that’s what I had to do.
As soon as we arrived, Charles, the photographer, went about getting pictures. I headed into the waiting room and found families of the injured sitting around, looking like they didn’t know what day it was. Waiting in that room to hear of a loved one’s fate was nothing new to me. I’d been in their shoes. The tiled walls, the harsh overhead lights, the row of blue chairs, their upholstery torn from having been worried by those waiting—it was still haunting to me now even two and a half years after I’d lived out my own tragedy in this very room. But now it was my task to bring back the sob stories. I had to talk to these people, pry the gut-wrenching details from them that would tug at the readers’ heartstrings. I found the task repulsive. I felt like a vampire feeding off their blood.
I remembered when Eliot was in surgery. My mother had stood before that same vending machine—where an older man now leaned. She had bought cups of coffee because she didn’t know what else to do. My father had sat across the room, in that very chair where a woman was now with her sleeping child in her lap. He had smoked his Lucky Strikes down to their last puffs and tapped his foot to the floor while I alternated between picking at my mosquito bites and chewing my cuticles. None of us spoke to one another. We needed each other then more than ever, but we were already separating, retreating into our own worlds. Forty minutes later, the doctor had come out to speak with us. Forty-five minutes later we walked out of the hospital in a state of shock, my father carrying a bundle wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with string: Eliot’s personal effects. It was all we had left of him. We’d lost one of our family members, and it was like having an arm cut off.
“Come sit down,” someone said.
The words pulled me from my trance. I looked up and there was a woman speaking to me, patting the chair next to her.
“You have to be strong at a time like this. Don’t let your mind run wild on you,” she said.
I nodded and accepted the seat.
She continued talking. “My son was on that train,” she said. “He’ll be nine next month. First time he ever rode the el by himself. He wanted to ride down on the train to surprise his grandmother.”
I looked at her and clutched my heart.
“Don’t worry for him. Harley’ll be fine. That’s just all there is to it. So whoever you’re here for, don’t worry; they’ll be fine, too.”
“I’m not waiting on anyone. No one in particular,” I said. “I work for the Tribune.” I was ashamed when I explained why I was there.
“Well, everybody in this room has got a story for you.”
“I just don’t want to intrude at a time like this.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and said, “For some of us it helps to talk. I know it does for me.”
“Does it?” Coming from a family that never talked, this was a foreign concept to me.
“What is it you want to know?”
So I took out my notebook and took down her story. Her full name was Harriet Jackson and her son’s name was Harley Jackson Jr. The man next to her, Alfred Paine, overheard me asking questions and he chimed in with a story of his own. His brother was visiting from Indianapolis and Alfred was on his way to meet him at the Clark and Lake Street stop. He got as far as Wabash and saw the whole thing happen.
“At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me,” he said. “And then I knew it was happening. The first car was coming off the rails and I just started praying. . . .”
I sat with Harriet Jackson and Alfred Paine, listening more as a fellow human being than as a reporter. I was right there with them when the doctor came out in his bloodstained gown.
“Harley Jackson? Anyone here for Harley Jackson?”
Harriet raised her hand like she was in a classroom. The doctor came over, and before he’d said a word, his face told it all. Harriet let out a shriek and began to cry.
“We did everything we could,” said the doctor. “I’m sorry.”
All I could do was put my arms around her and let her weep onto my shoulder. Other people in the waiting room, strangers up until then, huddled around her, too. When I felt I couldn’t breathe, I slipped away and let the others comfort her. Charles was in the thick of it, taking pictures. I turned away, unable to watch. My collar was still damp from the tears of Harley’s mother.
With my heart in my throat, I returned to the city room after eight that night and worked until eleven, confirming notes and quotes, facts and fatalities with Higgs and the copy editor in order to make sure we were ready for the morning edition.
I went home at a quarter past midnight but sat up in my living room with a glass of bourbon until well after two. I had telephoned
Jack earlier, but he hadn’t answered. So I called Scott. We talked for almost an hour. He’d offered to come over, but I said no; I was okay. And yet I was still upset, even after we’d hung up. How was I supposed to sleep after all that? It was hard to get the faces out of my head, to separate the facts from the lives that had been lost or shattered in an instant.
But wasn’t life just like that? When I think back on all the stupid things I’ve worried about and fretted over, wondering if I’d forgotten to sign my rent check, or if Mrs. Casey had given me a weird look, or if I’d be fined for a late library book—silly things that never came to pass or amounted to much—and then the one thing you never expected, that you never saw coming, like an el car derailment or a hit-and-run, blindsides you and changes your life forever.
Chapter 17
• • •
The week before Christmas Jack and I officially became engaged, with his grandmother’s ring to prove it. The stone was modest but still it glinted and sparkled with every move of my hand.
The day after the proposal I was getting a cup of coffee when Gabby noticed my ring in the way that only other women of a marrying age notice these things. She squealed, hugged me and summoned M and the other sob sisters into the galley kitchen. They circled around me, taking turns reaching for my hand, oohing and ahhing over the stone.
“Have you set the date yet?” Gabby asked.
“Where are you going to live?” asked M.
“Who’s going to be your maid of honor?”
“What about the honeymoon?”
“Did you find a dress?”
They were asking things I hadn’t yet contemplated. Honestly, I didn’t care about the dress or the honeymoon. All I knew was that I wanted to spend my life with Jack Casey. He wasn’t perfect. He snored like a freight train and sometimes drank the orange juice straight from the bottle. But he had come into my world and filled in all the thin spots, all the places that weren’t whole. And it wasn’t just him. It was his family, too. I’d lost mine, but his was there, ready to embrace me. They showed me what my future could be—birthdays, anniversaries and holidays would be celebrations, and I longed for that. I wanted to have children with Jack and raise a family of our own. Oh, how I wanted a taste of that Casey lifestyle for myself.
