Another truth is that I originally got into mall security by accident. One spring day in 1977, when my one-man operation, Carr Investigations and Security, was suffering an all-time record absence of new clients, the family bank balance got me desperate enough to head out with the idea of soliciting business. Through luck or fate or divine intervention, I hadn’t been driving for more than three or four minutes when I found myself cruising by a new shopping mall that was being built about eight blocks from my office. The place was called Speedway Mall because it was located on the site of a long-defunct half-mile race track, and when I saw a sign reading “Grand Opening September 1977. Mall Office Now Open,” I dropped my plans to cold call an industrial complex out in Niles, made a U-turn and followed the arrows through a curbed but unpaved lot to a temporary entrance, parked the car, and strolled inside.
I expected to find half-completed chaos and a cigar chomper using a construction crate for a desk, but instead I discovered that this particular portion of the mall was all but finished, and the mall offices, lining one side of a brick-and-glass walled corridor, were filled with modular furnishings and a staff of at least five, four of whom were using telephones as I walked in the public entrance. The fifth was a long, slim blonde wearing a youthful, intelligent expression and a cornflower blue dress. I handed her one of my business cards across the service counter and said, “Hi. I’d like to talk to someone about your security program, or if no one’s here who deals with that subject, I’d like to arrange an appointment.”
She looked at me slowly — without fear, you might say, since I’m oversized and not handsome — then she stood up and walked to the door of an interior office, commenting over her shoulder, “I’ll see what I can do.”
That’s how I met Judy Pilske, and even though she didn’t play any further role in my getting around a pair of skeptical supervisors and into directing the setup of security at the mall, I judged her to have assessed me positively when she took that first look, or I would never have made it past the counter. So to some degree I owed my entry into mall security work to her, and when she was promoted to office manager a few years later at the ripe age of twenty-two, I was pleased to see her sitting in with the security chief at Speedway when I came by every couple of months to review the mall’s records and procedures.
Judy was a graceful and reasonably attractive young woman, and like a lot of Northwest Side girls she was a live-at-home Catholic looking hard for a husband. Husband material in the late seventies and eighties was in as short supply as ever — even for long, slim blondes — so, before she finally did get engaged and then married, after all this happened, she spent half her time in the mall office fending off passes from the usual gang of suspects, some of them higher-ups in the Speedway Corporation. Being a Northwest Side girl, however, meant that she could handle it.
Over time we got to be fairly good acquaintances — I guess that’s the real point — enough at least so that we knew each other’s stories. I put up with her cigarettes at our review meetings, and she put up with whatever I did that was irksome. I enjoyed dealing with her because she was smart and hardworking, unlike a couple of the security chiefs Speedway had in those early years.
Exactly none of this was on my mind, of course, the evening in December, 1983, when I got back to the three-flat a good hour ahead of schedule from a one-day job up in Wisconsin. Ginny had taken the kids to her sister’s place in Niles, and so, being on my own for once, I decided to dial up my office answering machine for messages, something I hardly ever did back in those primitive, pre-voicemail days. The first couple of calls didn’t amount to much, but then this one came on:
R. J., this is Judy Pilske at Speedway Mall. Something strange is going on here that we need your help with. Please call back today if at all possible, and only talk to me. I’m on from twelve to nine today, so if you don’t hear this till evening, I’ll still be around. Thanks.
After listening to the message a second time, I decided that I didn’t care for the “only talk to me” portion very much. It probably meant that Frank Malin, the acting security chief at Speedway, thought he could handle the problem alone, whereas he struck me from the beginning as the kind of guy who would rather perform an appendectomy on himself than see a doctor.
The time was only ten to eight, and our three-flat was a short drive from the mall, so on the spur of the moment I decided to run over in the car, see Judy, and possibly even do a little Christmas shopping afterwards. I made quick time to and through the mall to the same glass-and-brick corridor, but when I poked my head into Judy’s office she wasn’t in evidence, and the reception area twenty yards farther along the way appeared to be abandoned as well. While I stood there with the reception door open, wondering whether to call out or try another office, I heard a strange, high-pitched sound, almost like a whistle, coming from the far end of the corridor. I stepped out looking, the way you do, and there, running toward me, shrieking nonstop, was a young girl, maybe fifteen years old, dressed in early-eighties high-school chic — tight Levi’s, aviator’s jacket, and a pint each of eye makeup and hairspray. Behind her near the entrance to the women’s washroom was a second girl, similarly dressed, retching and screaming.
I stepped into the first girl’s path — I had to, in order to stop her — and grabbed her by both shoulders. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Tell me — I’m with mall security.”
She went limp and started hyperventilating. Between gasps she said, “Blood — in the restroom — a woman all bloody—”
By that time the screams had attracted a handful of curious people. One of them was a competent-looking middle-aged woman, and on an impulse I said, “Ma’am, could you please take these girls—” the other one had come up to us “—into that office? There’s a phone on the counter. Call the Speedway Security Office — it explains how right there — and tell whoever answers to get an ambulance over here because there’s been a severe injury in the washroom by the mall office. It’s an extreme emergency.”
I steered the first girl in her direction, then took off at a run toward the washroom, afraid of what I was going to find. As I dodged around the blockoff at the entrance I could smell a whiff of recent gunfire, and then I saw that I was right: on the floor at the far end, between a row of stalls and a row of sinks, Judy Pilske lay face downward in a pool of blood. I hurried to kneel by her and then adjusted her head to let her breathe easier, but I was afraid to do anything else. She’d been shot twice — in the lower back and the right shoulder — and the bruise on her forehead made me think that she’d fallen headfirst against the base of the wall. Her pulse at the neck seemed thin and fast to me, and her respiration light and slow.
I brushed the hair away from her face while I thought dark thoughts, then stood up and hit the wall with my fist.
After that I looked around belatedly to make sure that no one else was in the washroom before I went back outside to see if anything else was happening. I discovered a young and extremely green mall security guard standing by the entrance, but he told me he was embarrassed about entering the ladies’ restroom, so I suggested that he simply keep guard instead, then went to a pay phone farther down the corridor and dialed the local district headquarters to report the shooting and ask for support. At about the time a dispatcher told me that a squad car had already been sent, I could hear sirens sounding in the far distance, so I went back inside the washroom to stand over Judy. I took off my overcoat and covered her with it, I remember, hoping that I was doing the right thing and wishing that I remembered more first aid.