White Collar Girl (15 page)

•   •   •

A
bout 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 stuffed 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.

•   •   •

T
he 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,
ooh
ing and
ahh
ing 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.

Mrs. Angelo appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and made an exaggerated point of looking at her wristwatch. “Don't you ladies have some work you should be doing? By the way,” she said, grabbing hold of me with her eyes, “congratulations.”

We dispersed and went back to our desks, back to writing about our recipes and celebrity sightings and secretarial tips. Thankfully, I was working on a series of small follow-up articles about the el derailment.

The investigators had determined that the accident was caused by human error. The motorman was reportedly going twenty miles per hour over the regulated speed limit. He was consequently fired and was now facing manslaughter charges. The total number of fatalities had climbed to thirty-four, and the funerals and memorials were held back to back.

The derailment had happened nearly two weeks ago, and since then the city had moved on, but I couldn't. I was beginning to think I was the wrong person to have covered this story. I couldn't stop thinking about those thirty-four lives lost and the thirty-four families for whom Christmas would be torture this year. And for every year going forward.

Later that day I visited Harley's mother. Not to write anything more about her, but just because I couldn't stay away.

“Look at this,” she said, walking me into his bedroom and pointing to a glass beaker, test tubes and a microscope. “This was his science-fair project for school.” She traced her fingertips over
the surface of each item on his dresser. “He'd been working on it for more than a month.” She smiled faintly.

I knew this was the exact type of story Mr. Ellsworth wanted me to get. He would have had a photographer there in an instant, taking pictures of the deceased boy's room. It would have been a nice piece for me, but I wasn't going to exploit a mother's grief. No, unfortunately, there was no shortage of other stories to write about from the derailment.

“He was so close to finishing his science project,” said Mrs. Jackson. “And now it's just been left undone forever because”—her voice cracked—“I can't finish it for him. You can't imagine what that feels like. Having that unfinished edge left hanging in my mind.”

Oh, but I knew exactly how that felt. At the time my brother was killed, he'd been working on a big scoop. I didn't know all the details, just that there was a racket in Chicago passing off horsemeat as beef. He had been working on it for nearly two months and was close to piecing it all together. He said he'd never eat another hamburger again in this town. And that was true. He didn't. He was killed, run down before he got to finish his article. No one at the
Sun-Times
picked up on the story and attempted to complete the investigation, which I always thought was a shame. But for whatever reason they let the whole thing die right along with my brother.

•   •   •

A
few days later, I sat at my desk, finishing up a piece on the best festive holiday centerpieces.
Oh, the things you could do with pinecones and cranberries.
The city room was caught up in its usual buzzing.

Walter was puffing on his pipe, shouting out of the corner of his mouth at Benny, who was frantically trying to track down some information for his afternoon story about a citywide air-raid
test with simulated H-bombs. Immediately following the sirens, every TV and radio station would switch from their regular programming to the CONELRAD system created to broadcast civil-defense information. Meanwhile Randy was humming
Winter Wonderland
and I was just about to rip my copy from the typewriter when I got a telephone call.

“Jordan? Jordan Walsh?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I was expecting a man.”

I rolled my eyes. I'd lost count of all the people who thought Jordan was a man. And they always seemed so disappointed. So much for my mother's theory. I was used to this reaction, only this time it was coming from another woman. A woman who didn't want to give me
her
name.

“So what can I help you with?” I was skimming over my copy, but as soon as she said she was with the Chicago Transit Authority, I gripped the phone tighter. I could hear the trepidation in her voice. “Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I shouldn't have bothered you.”
Click.
She hung up.

I was still staring at the telephone when it rang again.

“It's me,” she said. “I didn't mean to hang up. Well, maybe I did. I just didn't realize you were a female reporter,” she said again. “You see, I've been following the articles you've written about the el derailment and . . .”

I switched the phone to my left ear and covered the right one to block the background noise. “Go on.”

There was a long pause. “Do you think maybe we could talk? Over coffee? I'd rather do this in person.”

We agreed to meet at a Wimpy's on State Street in the Loop, not far from Wabash and Lake where the accident had occurred. It was cold and snowing that day with the kind of biting wind
that got right down inside your bones. The weather didn't deter the holiday shoppers though. They packed the streets, scurrying in and out of stores, their arms loaded down with packages. The el track had been repaired, but it still gave me an eerie feeling each time I was near the site where so many people had died. I turned up my collar and stuffed my hands inside my pockets, fingering an ever-growing hole in the lining.

It was quiet when I stepped inside Wimpy's. The lunch crowd was already back at work. Other than a couple of waitresses behind the counter and two ladies surrounded by green Marshall Field's bags, I didn't see anyone who could have belonged to the voice on the telephone. I slipped into one of the booths along the side for privacy, ordered a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette to pass the time.

Finally a woman appeared inside the doorway, hovering next to a life-size cutout of Popeye's friend Wimpy with a caption that read
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
The woman was a bit heavyset and had light brown hair that rested on her cheeks, curving upward like two fishhooks. She looked to be in her mid – to late forties. She clutched her pocketbook with both hands and scanned the room. When we locked eyes I gave a slight nod, and she came over and slid into the booth.

“I'm sorry I'm late. I—I had to make sure no one was following me.” She glanced around the restaurant.

“Who would have been following you?”

“Could have been anyone from work. I just can't take any chances.” She was nervous, curling and uncurling her paper napkin as she spoke. “I'll get fired if anyone finds out I'm talking to the press. And I can't afford to lose my job. My husband passed two years ago and I have three small children to raise.”

I knew she was reluctant to speak to me and somehow I had
to put her at ease. She didn't say another word in the time it took the waitress to pour her coffee and refill my cup.

I reached for another cigarette. “So, you wanted to talk about the derailment?”

The woman looked at me, on the brink of speaking but still hesitating. I thought there was a chance she'd change her mind, get up and leave.

“I won't quote you,” I said. “I won't even allude to you. I can keep you out of this—whatever it is. I promise.”

She bit down on her lip and her voice cracked. “I can't take it anymore. I can't keep quiet.” She shook her head as the tears ran loose. “All those people who died—I tell you it's eating me up inside, and I have to come forward and tell someone.” She dabbed her eyes with a napkin and went silent again, as if rethinking her decision to meet with me.

Again I feared she might back out. “Okay,” I said. “Let's start at the beginning. You work for the Chicago Transit Authority, right?”

She nodded and fiddled with the buckle on her pocketbook. “I'm a secretary to Anthony Briar, the Senior Director of Infrastructure and Maintenance.”

I lit my cigarette, waiting for her to continue.

“Someone needs to look into what happened,” she said eventually. “What
really
happened.”

“They did an investigation. They said it was human error.”

“I know for a fact that that's not true. It wasn't human error.” The tone of her voice and the look in her eyes set off alarms inside my head.

I exchanged my cigarette for my pen.

“The motorman didn't do anything wrong,” she said. “The train wasn't going too fast. The problem was in the tracks. I tell
you it was an accident waiting to happen, and they knew it, too. Take my word for it—it won't be the last one, either.” Now that she'd started speaking, she couldn't stop. It was as if she was purging herself of weeks of guilty silence. The details came gushing out, and I had my notepad out like a bucket to capture it all.

“The CTA has a subcontractor—J.T. Porter and Company. They do the routine inspections and conduct the maintenance on all the tracks. They've been doing it for the past ten years—for as long as I've been working there. During their last round of inspections, they had some concerns about the condition of the tracks in certain locations. They sent the directors a series of reports, recommending they shut down the track for maintenance. My boss, Mr. Briar, called a special meeting that afternoon, and by the end of business that day, they had fired J.T. Porter. And that was after ten years of service.”

“Did they say why they were firing them?”

“They were afraid they'd lose too much money on rider fares if they shut down the tracks.”

“I see.” My father used to describe that moment for a reporter when they knew they'd landed something big, like a fisherman who's hooked into a shark. I had that feeling now, so much stronger than I'd ever felt it before. My pulse pumped as fast as my pen would write.

“So they hired another firm,” she said. “Unger Brothers Iron and Rail. They said they were going with them and that they weren't closing down the tracks. I wondered how they were going to make the necessary repairs without doing that. My husband was an engineer, so I knew how these things worked. Then I happened to get a look at the Unger Brothers' bid. It was $7,000 more than what the other company charged.”

“So Unger was charging more than J.T. Porter?”

“That's the thing. It didn't make any sense—especially since they were worried about losing money. But then I realized that the owner of this new firm, this Lawrence Unger, was my boss's brother-in-law. I'm not stupid. I knew right then that this company—this Unger Brothers—was going to do a fraction of the work that J.T. Porter did and that Mr. Briar and his brother-in-law were going to pocket the difference.”

While she spoke, I wrote, not wanting to miss a word. In the back of my mind, I could hear Mr. Ellsworth asking for the quotes, the facts, the proof. I had a frightened woman before me who wouldn't go on the record with her name. I knew I was going to need more than that.

“I couldn't keep quiet anymore,” she said. “All those innocent people died for no good reason. And now the motorman is being blamed for something he didn't do. I saw the article in your paper yesterday about charging him with manslaughter and negligence. It's just not right. Those monsters inside the CTA are going to let an innocent man take the fall for this.” She paused, looking away. “And there's more.”

More?
My pen froze in place. What more could she possibly have?

“I wasn't even going to say anything about this, but with you being a woman and all . . .” She bit down on her lip again, pinched open her pocketbook and pulled out a trifold of papers. Without a word she passed the documents to me.

I shuffled through the pages and looked up at her, stunned. “How did you get these?”

“They were sent to my boss and all the department heads.”

I was holding a series of memorandums and reports from J.T. Porter and Company dated November 8, 1955. Less than a month before the derailment. It was page upon page of track
inspections and maintenance recommendations. Each one was stamped URGENT
 . . .
T
RACKS IN NEED OF CRITICAL REPAIR
. . . .
H
AZARDOUS CONDITION
S . . .
R
ECOMMENDATION: CLO
SE TRACKS
IMMEDIATELY
. . . .