He first met Lila Nellie Smith on the day his second month's rent was due, December 5. It was late, after nine o'clock, and he was still in his office on LaSalle Street in Chicago. LaSalle Street was known as “Lawyer's Row,” for any lawyer who was anybody kept their offices on LaSalle Street. Plus it was a short walk to the state and federal courts.
His office consisted of one room in the Adams Building, on the seventh floor. His desk was pushed up against the north wall, so when clients entered he could glance up from work and look right into their eyes and greet them. Except there had been no clients, at least not yet. No one had any money back then; the business cycle of Chicago had fallen into the holiday lull, and so he found things to do to fight off the boredom.
Like the night he met Lila Nellie Smith. He was hard at work on his forms book, typing up forms he would need when he filed his first lawsuit. There were several flavors of complaints, covering everything from slip and falls to breach of contract to automobile accidents, plus all the ancillary documents such as interrogatories, deposition notices, requests for jury trial and the local Cook County forms. All told, he was keeping very busy. As he finished with a form he would hole-punch it and insert it into his formbook, kept neatly organized with plastic tabs for each section of the book.
Then he heard scratching at his locked door. He looked up and stared at the smoked glass door. He heard it again, as if a key were being inserted in the lock. He was just about to get up and investigate when he saw the lock turn a full turn and then the door slowly eased open.
There stood a cleaning woman, in uniform, clinging to her wheeled trash bin and pulling it inside. Her head was turned as she angled the bin just so in order to navigate the doorway.
"Can I help you?" he said.
The woman literally jumped and spun around.
"Sweet Jesus, my Lord!" she exclaimed. "Mister, you made me wet my knickers."
"I'm sorry."
He sized her up. She was short and stout with a huge girth. Her round face was slick with sweat and her lips were glossy with a ruby red shade of lipstick. She was wearing nylon stockings which seriously lightened the skin on her legs, a pale blue dress, with name tag, and, for some reason he never did fully grasp, a hair net. She was, what was called at that time, a Negro.
"Lord, have mercy," she said, and shook her head.
"So you're here to clean? Should I leave now?"
"Mmm-mmmh. You get cleaned Wednesday and Saturday. This here's Monday."
"Well, if you're not cleaning, why are you in my office?"
"God's truth? I was coming in to go through your drawers. I need a quarter and I left my change purse in my dresser drawer at home."
"Twenty-five cents? No need to go through my desk. I happen to have a quarter," Lodzi said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his own change purse. He unsnapped the black leather pouch and pulled out a quarter. He held it up and extended his arm.
"You are a life saver," she said. "But it's just a loan. You draw up an IOU and I'll sign. This ain't no gift, just so's we're clear on that."
"All right." He bent to his desk and on a yellow pad wrote, "IOU 25 cents. Signed:"
"Name's Lila Nellie Smith. You can call me Lionel. Everyone does."
"Okay, Lionel. Spells like it sounds?"
"Mmm-hmm. Like the kids' train. That's right. Where do I sign?"
He slid the paper across the desk. She helped herself to a client chair and retrieved her glasses from a waist pocket in her uniform. She plopped the eyeglasses on her nose and began reading. "Looks genuine to me," she said. "You really are a lawyer." She burst into laughter at this and Lodzi felt his face redden.
"If you say so," he said, and smiled at her.
"I got a flow of blood and the Kotex machine in the ladies' wants a quarter for a sanitary napkin. Outrageous."
"Sorry to hear. Well, I hope the—the quarter helps you out. Now, you’d better head on down to the ladies' and take care of things. I'll get back to my work, Lionel."
"Because the God-blessed doctor left a sponge in my uterus."
Lodzi peered across the desk. His eyes narrowed.
"Say again? What doctor?"
"Doctor Jonas Craig. My baby doctor. He done my Caesarean and left a sponge inside when he sewed me up. Now I got a flow of blood."
"You've had this ever since the C -Section?"
"You bet your booties I have. Ever since. Nothing helps. So I just keep changing things down there and try to stay dry."
"Good grief. Have you told this to Dr. Craig? Did he offer to help?"
"Told me it would be three hundred dollars to get another operation to take it out. Mister, I got three hundred dollars like you got an office full of clients."
"How do you know how many clients I have?"
"No trash in the wastebaskets. The busy lawyers, they fill theirs up. You ain't got nothing 'cause you got no one coming in and blubbering about divorce and filling your basket with Kleenex."
"Good grief. Aren't you the observant one?"
Lionel touched the side of her head. "God gave me two good eyes."
Lodzi smiled. He looked at her out of his good eye and saw two of her out of the other. He knew all about two good eyes—and the lack thereof.
"What do you say I help you with this?" he said.
"Like what, loan me three hundred dollars for the operation?"
"No, I would write Dr. Craig and ask him to do the operation without charge. And pay your hospital bill. He owes you that."
"You reckon? I dunno."
"Trust me. He'll pay up."
She cocked her head to the side. "You seem pretty sure."
Lodzi smiled and nodded. "I'm sure."
She waited while he pulled the client retainer from his formbook, freshly typed. He would get one-third of whatever he got from Dr. Craig; she would get the rest. She read it over, suddenly in a hurry, signed, and gave him Dr. Craig's address. Then she excused herself and headed for the ladies' room.
Lodzi sat back and eyed the fresh signature on the contract. His first ever client. Already he was drafting the letter he would send to Dr. Craig. He would type it up tomorrow. For tonight he wanted only to take the late L-train home to Anne-Marie and give her the good news. The first client was snared. Soon they would have enough money to make a down payment on an FHA house of their own.
He was certain of it.
* * *
Four months later the doctor's insurance carrier hand-delivered a check to Lodzi. It was made out in the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, in full settlement of all claims. He and Lionel signed the back of the check and he deposited it in his trust account. Three days later he wrote her a check and wrote one to himself for one-third.
They celebrated that night with wine that cost $2.49 a bottle—a high quality wine. Anne-Marie cooked chicken and noodles in the pressure cooker.
Two days later they made a down payment on their FHA house in Schaumburg, and had enough left over to easily support them for an entire year. The train was two blocks one way and the neighborhood grocery two blocks the other way. Life was good.
Anne-Marie knew she was pregnant later that night. A woman knows those things, she told Lodzi the next morning. Mark it on your calendar, she told him. Mark it down and see if I'm not right.
Nine months later he had all the proof he needed. A son named Malachi Ashstein. They would call him Mal.
Lionel had the sponge removed and the flow immediately stopped. She celebrated by quitting her job, purchasing a second-hand van, and opening her own cleaning business. On the night Malachi was born, she was supervising her nine employees as they cleaned the Adams Building.
Lodzi had gone to his landlord to help her land the account.
"Now your wastebasket is full each time we come," Lionel told him.
He smiled and nodded. "Thanks to you, word's gotten around. The practice is growing every week by one or two more. Thanks to you."
"Here," she said, and held ou
t her hand.
She presented him with a quarter, twenty-five cents, and asked for the IOU.
He found the IOU in her file and made a show of shredding it in front of her.
"Now," Lionel said. "That's more like it. We even."
Chapter Fifteen
In late August of 1968, Lodzi locked up the office and took the elevator down sixty-eight floors to the lobby. His practice now took up five thousand square feet of prime office real estate, consisted of six attorneys and a support staff of eleven, and was the fastest-growing general practice in the City of Chicago (Chicago Daily Law Journal, "The Small 100," August 24, 1968).
One block over, the Democratic National Convention was in full swing. It had been an interesting convention so far; Lodzi had watched much of it from home on a brand new Zenith TV. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated and President Johnson had announced he would not be running for re-election, so a spirited campaign and a freewheeling Convention were underway at full steam.
The Convention was held at the International Amphitheater on Halsted and Forty-Second Street, a low-income neighborhood where one did well to watch one's step.
Lodzi decided he would drive past the Amphitheater, taking a circuitous route to the freeway, and see for himself what the entire hubbub was about.
It was the third night of the convention. Riots had plagued the first two days, magnified by the police strong-arm-tactics used by Mayor Richard J. Daley in a misguided effort to quell the protesters by brute force.
The police were dressed out in the full battle regalia of helmets, face shields and fat batons, and when Lodzi first arrived on the scene, he was immediately transported back in time twenty-five years to the days of the Nazi soldiers strong-arming the Jews who were actually offering little resistance and were being attacked solely because they were Jews. Likewise, Lodzi had watched the protesters being attacked because they were loud, rude, offensive, and because they had the gall to stand up to Daley's Chicago Police Department, known across the country as one of the most military-style PD's in history.
At the corner of Halsted and Forty-First, he encountered probably four-hundred protesters, half of whom were standing in the crosswalk, taunting the police who were stepping in the street to force the protesters back up onto the sidewalk. Lodzi's car was stopped at the light first in line, and he found himself suddenly surrounded by a sea of jeering, name-calling young people, most of whom he guessed were students. They beat on his car and even rocked it from side-to-side, but Lodzi was coolly mindful of the youthful age of those surrounding him and he just smiled and waved at them while waiting for the light to change. Without warning, his driver's door was suddenly yanked open and he found himself being dragged onto the hot summer asphalt and held down by two men and a third with his foot on the side of Lodzi's face.
"What the hell?" he said, and squirmed beneath the heavy boot pressed against the old wound to the ridge of his damaged eye socket. He tried to turn his face away and tried to plead for sanity, but he was only yanked up onto his feet while two of the officers chased after another trio of protesters and the third continued to restrain him.
"Look, I'm not resisting," Lodzi said to the cop, whose age he estimated at twenty-five. "I'm a lawyer on my way home from work. Now I see I shouldn't have come this way. Please let me climb back into my car and I'll disappear."
That being said, the young cop suddenly raised his baton over his head and clubbed the side of Lodzi's head. The blow was so severe Lodzi sank down to his knees and shook his head, trying to maintain consciousness. More than anything else, just then, he knew he mustn't pass out. He reached out for the cop's utility belt to pull himself back up onto his feet. But he didn't touch the belt. Before he knew it, his hand was curled around the cop's service revolver and he had pulled it from the holster. Now he stood facing the cop, who was again raising the baton with the clear intention of battering him a second time. Without another thought, Lodzi held out the gun to the cop, intent on returning it and making a surrender so he wouldn't be hit again. Instead of taking the gun, the cop chopped down with his club on Lodzi's gun hand. In a blink, his finger involuntarily pulled the trigger and the gun roared. Suddenly the crowd, as one, turned and looked at him. With a look of utter horror etched on his face, Lodzi watched the cop take one step toward him, stumble and fall to the ground. He crumpled, actually, is how Lodzi would later tell the story in court, "Crumpled like a paper doll."
Before he could say or do anything else, a baton clubbed Lodzi behind the right ear, sending him sprawling across the downed cop's body. The two of them were now in a heap and, as the lights went out for Lodzi, he noted a look of incredulity on the cop's face as he held up a hand covered in blood. Just then, both men lapsed into unconsciousness.
When Lodzi came to, he was inside a cubicle of a room and there was a nurse there, holding up a finger and asking him to tell how many he saw. She looked to Lodzi like several faces, swimming in a vertical circle as he tried to focus.
His ears were ringing and his head pounding. He found he was sitting on the lower bunk of a bed without a mattress, the front of his white shirt matted with blood, and his watch and wedding ring were gone from his hands. He tried to get up and smacked his head against the overhang of the upper bunk. A violent pain shot through his head and he reached out to the side with both arms and lowered himself back down.
"Whoa!" cried the nurse. "Don't do that! Sit!"
Lodzi flopped back on the bed, nodding as he went. His head flew back and connected with the wall at the side of his bunk. The springs beneath him squeaked and he tried to catch his breath as he was having difficulty breathing. Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt and looked at his chest and upper arms. Large bruises were developing, and he knew from his time in the extermination camp he had been severely beaten.
"They must've beaten me while I was down. I was really out, because I didn't feel a thing."
It was then he noticed the nurse had a blood pressure cuff encircling his upper arm. She squeezed the black ball several times, inflating the cuff, and he thought he would cry out in pain.
"Whoa, 160/105. You're elevated friend, not good."
"Where am I?"
"Cook County jail. My name is Rhonda Martinez and I'm the nurse here."
"How long have I been here?"
"When I got here you were asleep on the bed without a mattress under you. I went to the front desk and demanded a mattress. It's on the way. I don't know when you were brought in, but this is Monday night."
Lodzi's eyes grew wide and he felt the shock pulse through his system. Monday night! He had been going home on a Friday night when the incident at the intersection took place a block away from the International Amphitheater.
"Why am I here? Why aren’t I in a hospital?"
"Brother, this place is so backwards. There's at least two-hundred new people here from the Democratic protests. You're just one of many pretty faces."
"Where are they, if there are two-hundred?”
"They are all out in the general community area. You're in here because you shot a cop. You're being held on a charge of attempted murder. Did you know that?"
"How in the hell would I know that? I've been unconscious since Friday night. The first moment I'm out of here, I plan to sue this place for failing to obtain medical care in a timely fashion. I don't intend to make you a witness, so please don't stop helping me."
The nurse unwrapped the blood pressure cuff and put it away in a tool belt she wore around her waist.
"I can only assume someone called my wife. You know anything about that?"
"I know nothing about that. Like I said, I'm just a nurse, and I'm contracted to the Cook County jail. I'm not an employee here and don't have the inside dope on people. Sorry."
"I've got to get out of here. I have a wife and young son. I need to see them."
He blinked several times and accepted a large paper cup of water when the nurse offered it to him.
He gulped half of it down, and nodded with gusto. He thanked her for the water and thanked her for taking care of him. She stood up, and put the other tools of the trade into the utility belt she was wearing. She brushed a lock of hair off her forehead and looked him in the eye.
"I don't know how much you know about the Cook County Jail, but you want to be very careful in here. Some of these jailers are Nazis."
At which point, despite himself, Lodzi burst into laughter. He shook his head and stamped his feet.
"So I said something funny?"
He shook his head side to side. "It's an inside joke. You would have to be on the inside to even begin to understand."
"Mr. Ashstein, I'm glad I could bring some levity into your cell. You're going to need all of that you can get."
She turned and called for the deputy who was standing outside the cell, up against the wall, keeping an eye on several prisoners at once. The deputy stepped up and unlocked the cell door. The nurse left without another word.
Chapter Sixteen
The police officer lived, for which Lodzi was grateful beyond all else. There was no lawsuit because the officer was covered by workers' compensation. Still, at Christmas, he made an anonymous gift to the officer's children of $5,000.
Plea negotiations were very difficult. The charge was attempted murder. The District Attorney and the Police Department were being very hard-nosed about the case. As with all police departments, you couldn't shoot a cop and expect to just walk away from it.
His own law firm, attorney Tommy Thompson at the helm, defended Lodzi. The first plea offer was five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Discovery then proceeded and it became clear neither the police officer nor Lodzi believed Lodzi meant to shoot the officer. In fact, the officer, in a moment of absolute honesty, testified at his deposition he thought Lodzi was reaching for him to pull himself upright after being clubbed in the back of the head by another officer. Lodzi gave similar testimony at the pre-trial hearing.
Plea negotiations resumed following discovery, and the District Attorney relented, especially in light of the fact Lodzi was an upstanding member of the community, had no prior record at all, and was on his way home when he was pulled from the car. Because of this history and how it happened, an offer of battery was made and accepted, and it was agreed Lodzi would spend 364 days in jail. There would be no loss of law license, no fine, and restitution would be limited to the amount of the officer's medical bills. The court accepted the plea on December 4, 1968, and Lodzi surrendered for confinement on December 11, 1968 at the Cook County jail. He was taken into custody, rebooked, mug shot taken again, and issued the standard orange jumpsuit.
Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers) Page 12
