“So only the bone was damaged? Isn’t that a little unlikely?”
Yancy shook his head. “Not particularly. They usually don’t get away scot-free-there is commonly some bruising of the nerves, as there is here-but that takes care of itself. Mr.”-here he referred back to the ER sheet to find the patient’s name-“Shattuck was a lucky man, comparatively speaking.”
“My understanding is that he disappeared five days after the surgery-faked being dependent on the bedpan so nobody would realize he could get around.”
Yancy returned to the file. “Really? I hadn’t gotten to that yet.”
“My question is, Could he have done that without help? I mean, he did just have his entire knee replaced.”
“Oh, he could have done it. The pain would be excruciating-no doubt about that-and he’d have had the stitches to worry about later, but it’s certainly possible.” He waved his hand at the photos. “There’s the proof, after all.”
“True, but that doesn’t say he walked out on his own. He could have been rolled out in a wheelchair by someone else.”
Yancy’s eyes widened. “Oh, I see what you’re saying. Well, he could have left the hospital on his own. There’s a physical write-up on him somewhere in here-they do that to see how fit a patient is for surgery-and he passes that with flying colors: athletic build, no medical problems, good chemistry… Apparently as healthy as a horse, barring the leg, of course.”
“Does it say whether he was right- or left-handed?”
Yancy looked surprised. “No. Why do you ask?”
“The skeleton was a lefty. How about any other personal information?”
He picked up a single sheet of the file, offering it to me doubtfully. “You didn’t see this? The Social Services report?”
I took it from him, remembering how Runnion and I had become sidetracked by the question of a gunshot wound being reported to the police. We’d never gotten this far into the file. I found myself reddening slightly as I looked it over now.
Yancy had the sensitivity to cover my awkwardness. He pointed to midway down the sheet. “It’s not complete-barely filled out, actually-but it has a couple of things you might find handy. These forms are usually done when more time is allowed before surgery; in fact, if I interpret this correctly, Social Services started the process without Shilly’s okay. See where it says ‘incomplete per phys’? Shilly obviously shut them down when he found they’d started the form; that’s his signature underneath the notation.”
“Why not just throw it out?”
“Turf. Social Services obviously didn’t want to catch flak later for failing to do their job, so they forced him to take responsibility. I can almost smell the animosity when I read something like this.”
“That’s not unusual?”
“Oh yes-the Social Services report is standard and useful, and it can sometimes be quite extensive. Depending on the physician, they’ll go so far as getting the names of pets and favorite pastimes, favorite vacation spots, all sorts of things.”
“What’s the point?” I asked, ruing Shilly’s interruption.
“The primary questions are medically relevant-possibly inherited conditions, like hemophilia, or an allergy to some drug, or a family history of stroke, or whatever. The secondary details are mostly so the various docs can be friendly with the patient. A crude example would be my checking a patient’s chart before visitation, finding out he had three collie dogs, and opening my conversation with him by alluding to my love of collies. It’s a fast and easy way of breaking the ice with people. Sounds a little cynical when I put it that way, but the intention’s honorable.”
I was still a little mystified, staring at the form. “This has virtually nothing on it. Wouldn’t Shilly have needed to know some of this?”
“He probably had most of it verbally. Patients are asked half a dozen times whether they have any past medical history or allergies. If I were to play at your job for a moment, I’d guess that this incomplete form is another indication that something was going on under the table between patient and doctor.”
I looked at the mostly blank sheet. Shattuck’s name appeared again, along with “no current address” and “deceased” under “next of kin.” “A. Salierno” was written next to “in case of emergency, contact,” with an address. I showed it to Yancy.
“That ring a bell?”
He raised his eyebrows. “No, but that doesn’t say much; I’m hardly a man about town. Give him-or her, I guess-a call; maybe you’ll get lucky.”
After my encounter with Shattuck, I was a little shy about dropping by people’s homes without researching them first. I did use the phone book in the lobby, though, just to see if A. Salierno was listed. I drew a blank.
I was, however, within walking distance of both the Chicago Tribune and its chief competitor, the Sun-Times, both of which flanked the two-winged Wrigley Building, making the latter look like a spread-armed referee, keeping two fighters apart.
Not that they were difficult to distinguish architecturally, one being as extreme as the other. But where the Tribune Tower looked like a keep without a castle or a Gothic spire in search of a nave, the Sun-Times Building, its southern wall almost flush with the riverbank, was reminiscent of a huge submarine with squared-off corners. I chose the Trib simply because my route down Michigan Avenue delivered it to me first.
Two hours later, I sat back in the plastic chair I’d been furnished and ground my aching eyes against the heels of both hands, glorying in the brief darkness following endless streams of flickering microfilm.
A.-for Angelo-Salierno, it turned out, had acquired a bit more than a clipping here and there. In fact, as thirty-year head of the local Mafia, he and his family-blood-related and otherwise-had earned enough coverage to merit a decent-sized encyclopedia. I had read hundreds of column inches linking the “Dour Don,” as the press had dubbed the unsmiling Salierno, to everything from racketeering in Cook County and all its neighbors to playing a major role in the creation of the Vegas mob. The don, who for years had worked out of a sealed and guarded compound in upscale River Forest-the same address listed in “Shattuck’s” hospital file-was apparently a cautious, reserved, publicity-shy, traditional leader from the old school.
Presumably, his antique style of leadership owed its endurance to an almost corporate stolidity, which served it well in times of crisis. Despite its 1920s machine gun-toting reputation, the Outfit, as the mob was called in Chicago, had come a long way when it came to discretion.
The low-key style, however, had not fitted all the Saliernos so comfortably. Angelo’s eldest son, Tomaso, predictably nicknamed “Tommy,” had strained at his father’s conservative leash. Indeed, it was Tommy and his private guard of henchmen who had usually landed the Salierno name on the front page, either by getting involved in deals of their own, which had a propensity for going sour, or simply by doing the wrong thing in the wrong place, as when Tommy took a bar stool to a window just as a free-lance photographer happened by. From my reading of his activities, Tommy Salierno was short-tempered, mean-spirited, egotistical, and ambitious. He was also neither smart nor lucky. He ended up facedown in a back alley with a bullet in his chest, the apparent victim of some inner-gang rivalry. The police nailed a minor family functionary for the crime-a numbers runner who’d reportedly lost his wife’s affections to Tommy. Angelo retreated even further into his heavily guarded shell, and the Salierno name slid from the headlines, gaining a mention only now and then in articles dealing with the Mafia in general. Angelo himself hadn’t been seen outside the River Forest compound in over twenty years, although he was reported to be still very much in charge. On the rare occasions that the Tribune was able to give a titillating glimpse of the Salierno hierarchy, it was invariably in the shape of Alfredo Bonatto, Angelo’s “adviser.” Balding, paunchy, slightly stooped, and wearing thick glasses and dark suits, Bonatto-who was also a lawyer-had become the inglorious image of an organization most people still connected in their minds to the likes of Al Capone.