Citizen Trudy and the Crackdown

Chapter 5

When Trudy got the police aboutcall she felt shocked and helpless. The officer explained that Ike her husband−victim had been an innocent bystander in a drive by gang shooting on Albuquerque’s infamous Big I. Reading the newspaper next day Trudy found an article describing the murder as “drug related.” Eyes swollen from grieving, she was numbly putting a couple of bottles of beer into her refrigerator when the telephone rang.

“This is Drucilla.” She was a neighbor two houses west, who had already brought a meal to Trudy when she heard about Ike.

“Hello. What’s up?”

“We need to elect a new Block Captain and some of us want you to be it.”

“What is it?”

“You’re responsible for keeping crime out of our block. You don’t have to do much except attend meetings at the community police center.

“That’s a couple of streets over, right?”

“On Louisiana. Right. You meet other block captains from our Southeast Heights area and hear speakers. In this city we have a lot of drug dealing and gang activity. Oh yeah, and you write a page or so newsletter of interest and deliver it to people on the block. If they are home, you get to meet several people. It’s great if you want to go into politics.”

“I haven’t seen any crime on our block and I don’t want to run for office, but okay.”

“Just say no.” Trudy thought of Nancy Reagan’s anti drug campaign.

As if she didn’t have enough to contend with. The nursing courses were demanding of her time; especially Pharmacology. Trudy hated having to memorize which drug did what. Their names were so similar and there were so many drugs. Each one had three designations: a chemical name, a generic name and a brand name. Many of the names were alike. What if a nurse made a mistake? That was what the little Physicians’ Desk Reference, or PDR, for nurses was for. Still, statistics flingers said a lot of mistakes were made when nurses gave the wrong drugs to patients. Nurses had to administer the Right Drug, at the Right Time, in the Right Dosage via the Right Route into the Right Patient. As Trudy began putting away her groceries she felt weighted down and overwhelmed. In fourth grade, when I memorized long poems like Lochinvar and If, it was easy because there was a complete thought and a little story involved. Pharmaceutical drugs are just lists of a bunch of pills, tablets and capsules.

Now, why did I ever accept that Block Captain idea?

Still, it could fill her empty life. Ike was gone. Their collie, Spirit, had been put down. Age and incontinence had taken him. His doggie ashes were in a white plastic box, waiting the day when Trudy, a new RN, would pack up and return to the Catskills. There, she would bury him beneath the laurel bush up in the South meadow. In her mind’s eye Trudy could see the old bush from the kitchen window of their home. The collie’s mother was buried there, and their cat. In spring pink and white blossoms covered the laurel bush growing in the hillside meadow. Her grandmother had planted that laurel bush back in l918.

There was another burial Trudy would have to do. Ike’s ashes were encased in an urn which she’d set to one side of their fireplace in a corner of the living room. Ike built the fireplace when they’d first moved to the house. They’d spent many delightful winter evenings enjoying the comforting warmth of piñon log fires.

Ike and she had wanted so much for her to have a child. Back in the Catskills she’d taken fertility treatments. They’d spent hundreds of dollars, driven hundreds of miles and gone through a lot of anxiety mixed with hope. After two years they gave up the treatments. Then along came the chance for Ike with Zia Airlines and the move to New Mexico. Trudy had continued to want a child. One night, sitting before the fire, they discussed a possible adoption. A day later Ike’s airline scheduled him to fly to Mexico City. The flight went well and the plane returned to Albuquerque Airport two days later.

Eager to get back home to Trudy, Ike drove onto the “Big I”, the East-West Interstate which would get him there faster. Unfortunately an accident blocked his exit ramp. Sighing, he resigned himself to wait in the long line of cars. There was increasing illicit drug trafficking from Mexico. Ike had read articles in the paper about the ongoing problem. He wondered if the traffic tie up could be drug related. Far down the road he could see an ambulance and two crumpled vehicles. Then he heard sirens and saw two police cars.

Suddenly a black sedan wheeled out of the line up ahead, turned and accelerated in the opposite direction, paralleling the long line of waiting vehicles. The sedan was in the wrong lane, but there was nothing blocking it, for traffic was halted on either side of the accident scene. The black sedan was coming fast toward where Ike’s car waited in the line of stalled vehicles. He saw the sedan slow up one car width before it would pass his car. He saw that the young dark haired driver wore a red and black bandanna over the lower portion of his face. The others in the car wore similar masks. The guy aimed a Glock out his open window.

What the hell was he aiming at? Ike turned to look. He saw the target was the car behind him. It pulled out of the line. In seconds it started to pass alongside Ike’s car. By now the black sedan coming from the other direction had slowed to about twenty miles per hour. The guy with the Glock half turned and leaning out of his window fired off a few shots at the car that had pulled out. It was slowly accelerating, just passing ahead of Ike’s car as the driver tried to escape the attack. It was the last thing Ike saw. One of the Glock’s bullets impacted his right cheekbone and tunneled up through his brain. He died instantly. With him ended his and Trudy’s plans for a baby.

After driving from the Catskills to Manhattan, Jack Stanton left his car in a contracted parking garage. He quickly walked the block and a half to his apartment house. Over a year ago he’d divorced. He borrowed money from a friend to rent a one room apartment with a small kitchen and a full bath. He was on the twelfth floor. The big feature was the outdoor patio with some kind of bushes growing in a rectangular stone container. He didn’t go out there much as it was hot during the day and soot from nearby chimneys got onto his skin and clothes. The soot smudged and left greasy residue.

As he showered Jake thought he rather enjoyed being free from matrimony. At least what experience he’d had of it. ‘A year from Hell,’ is what he termed life with Leah. He’d thought her attractive when he met her at an accident scene he was covering. She stood five feet two inches high and had short, shiny red hair. He’d seen her holding a bag of saline solution while a paramedic examined a bloody man on a gurney. After questioning some police and bystanders Jake got a little more information from her. Liking her blue eyes, freckled cheeks and oh yes, the rest of her anatomy, he asked for a number so he could call her for more details, ostensibly about the accident. He’d even stood there looking after the ambulance. He phoned her, invited her for dinner. One thing led to another until he asked for her hand in marriage.

After the honeymoon Jake realized he’d made a mistake. Leah flirted with anyone who wore pants. Jake knew, after a month or two, that she was cheating on him. He confronted her; she admitted her discretions. She even gave him her permission for him to stray. Shocked and outraged at her attitude, he told her he wanted out. Leah, carefree and uncaring, agreed to a divorce. She didn’t want anything of his−he’d accrued little in the way of possessions anyway. Leah soon latched onto an older man with plenty of money.