“WHEN YOU SHAKE THE tree, the fruit falls down,” Franco mumbled to himself. “I’ll be a son of a bitch. Doc Wellby.
“This is what we’re gonna do,” Detective Polatrano instructed. “My guess is that the Doctor is right now telling the pigeon to fly away. Probably on the next flight out of Dulles to nowhere. If he heads for the airport, we pick him up. If he does something else, we follow and find out what. You lead, I back up. If he panics, that’s OK. If he comes back here, I get on the horn with some friends in the department, and they get to visit Doctor Wellby with a warrant. They will like that very, very much.”
It sounded reasonable. It was his town. I agreed with it.
About forty-five minutes later the garage door opened. A full-sized black Buick came out. Franco and I ducked as it went past. I had enough of a glimpse of the men inside to know that Alexander Jr. was not one of them.
Twenty minutes later, the garage opened again. This time it was the pigeon and the Firebird.
He took it easy, as if the Doctor had instructed him not to do something dumb, like get picked up for speeding. We followed a roundabout route, with me fairly far back. I lost him once, but Franco, behind me, figured it out from the beeper. We started north, then back south, and Alexander led me into Rock Creek Park. It was a beautiful night, aromatic with trees, flower scents I didn’t recognize and the smell of fresh-cut grass.
We went down Beach Drive, through the center of the park, east on Military Road, then south on Ridge Road. It was hilly and twisty, and suddenly he floored the Pontiac. I put the pedal to the metal, I juiced the goose. But we just didn’t have it. I was losing him.
Which was the way it was supposed to go. I called Franco to tell him that the suspect had made his move, but there was no answer. I tried a second time. As I did, I caught some movement off to my right.
A large black shape was roaring at me and I knew we were headed for a collision. I tried to avoid it. That took me up on the shoulder. It wasn’t until my wheels were skidding on the grass that I realized it was deliberate and they were going to keep on coming.
Their car was heavier than mine. Worse, I was already going in the direction they wanted me to, over the edge.
I was bashing against saplings and shrubs when they leaned into me. I tried the brakes. It was right about then that the left side wheels tried to ride on air.
The car tumbled in slow motion. I had the leisure to see the leaves caught in the turning patterns of my headlights. I had time to think about seat belts. About why I wasn’t wearing mine. As I clutched the wheel to keep my head from bashing on the roof beneath me, I could not think of a single valid reason not to wear a seat belt.
During the next roll, the walkie-talkie came by. I grabbed it in passing and yelled, “Mayday, mayday!” I released it when my head hit the side window. But on the next half-roll the walkie-talkie came back by itself and hit me dead center in the crotch. I very much hoped Franco was on his way.
The car kept rolling until the front end hit a large tree. That stopped the tumble, which was nice even if it stopped wheels up. We kept moving, in a kind of spin and slide, riding on the roof, banging from tree to tree.
When it finally stopped I was sort of hanging upside down, severely hunched, with the weight of my body on my neck and my chin attempting to penetrate my breastbone. I twisted over sideways, untangled my legs from the steering wheel and came down with a thump on the roof.
I felt panic, the kind you feel underwater without enough breath left. The driver’s side door was stuck. I tried the passenger side. The handle worked and the door cracked open. Unfortunately there was a tree just outside.
I wriggled over to the driver’s side. I told myself to suppress fear, to be calm, to be rational, to be professional. It was then that I decided to pull up (down?) the dumb little lever that keeps the door locked. When I did that, I could open it.
The tree on that side was farther away, but not farther enough.
Finally I had a stroke of genius. At another time it might have been a perfectly average thought, but at the time a comic-strip light bulb went on over my head: windows!
I could roll down (up?) the window. The conflict between phraseology and reality plagued me. Which way was up? Why did I care? The conflict had to be resolved. And it was. I decided to roll the window to “the open position.” That is how the mind of a pro operates under stress.
I slithered out. It wasn’t graceful, but it was out.
There was blood in my eyes, salty, stinging and obscuring my vision. I wiped it away. Then I started checking for injuries. Then I heard the noises. I looked up the hill and saw two men coming. They had guns, and neither one was Franco.
They saw me at the same time I saw them. One kept coming; the other raised his weapon. I dived; he fired. He missed. I did an imitation of a snake, writhing with my head and body as close to the ground as they could get.
I moved behind a boulder, an excellent defensive position. With one hand I reached up to clear the debris from my eyes; with my other I reached for my gun. It wasn’t there.
It had fallen, I assumed, when the car was tumbling.
I was alone, at night, in the woods. Two large people with guns were chasing me. My own gun was lost and they were between it and me. It was the stuff that dreams are made of, and I did exactly what I would have done in a nightmare-panicked and ran.
“I hears him,” I heard, and I dove for the ground. Whatever type of shooter he was using, it went off like thunder, the sound rolling down the slope, across the bottom and up the other side. I imagined the bullet going where my body had just been. It may have.
I started crawling again, trying again to believe what I had heard about Indians, that it was possible to move without cracking a twig. Once again, myth shattered on the rock of reality. Fortunately they made more noise than me.
The gun boomed again. Using the sound for cover, I dashed a few yards and dived.
“Did you see something to shoot at?”
“Mebbe I did, yeah,” the shooter said.
“That fucking cannon, too fucking loud. Ain’t you got a silencer?”
“No.”
“Then don’ use it less you got a good shot, you gonna bring someone down on us.”
“Where the fuck he gone to?” the other one mumbled.
What a reassuring inquiry, I thought, wondering the same about Franco.
“You head that way, I go this. …” said the one with the silencer.
Now that they were split, I thought I might have a chance of jumping one. I didn’t actually want to, but it was possible that I was going to run out of choices. As I went along on all fours, I found all sorts of fallen branches, all waterlogged, soft and moldy, and not of weapon caliber.
I heard the crashing coming closer.
My knee hit something hard. It turned out to be a piece of pipe. Normally I would have been upset to find it there. I think trashing public parks is the worst sort of antisocial behavior, and I never liked James Watt. But context is everything, and I fell in love with that piece of iron. It was just a bit over two feet long, like a squash racket.
I went creeping through a new set of bushes. They had thorns and I didn’t enjoy it. Finally I came out the other side, kind of rolling over and looking up. There he was: a mountain with muscles and a gun.
I gathered my feet under me. He heard the movement and began to turn. As he did, I stepped in and swung, aiming my racket at the gun. One thing I am good at is keeping my eye on the ball. Otherwise you swing where you think the ball is going to be, rather than where it actually is.
I connected. The gun flew.
It was far from over. He had size on me. I’m sure he was often embarrassed when people mistook him for a wall. He was also very fast. He started swinging before I was even ready for a second shot. His fist, with his weight behind it, caught me low in the ribs and I went over backward.
He came swarming, playing sack the quarterback. I rolled. He kicked. It caug
ht me on the ribs again. He brought his foot back for another shot. I saw the boot coming at my head and lifted my shoulder up and in the way. He connected and lifted me off the ground. I flipped over again.
I continued the roll and somehow came up on my feet out of his immediate reach. When he charged, I went sideways and back, my shoulder hitting a tree. I rolled around the trunk and started running. He shifted direction and came after me.
I stopped abruptly, planted my foot, dropped low. As he came in, I swung a perfect backhand pipe to his knee.
It went with an audible crunch. An immensely gratifying sound. He went over tumbling. He shrieked. It felt very good to know he was crippled, I hoped, for life.
His partner was still armed and dangerous. The scream would bring him fast enough. I ran like a rabbit. The cannon fired. And again. I dodged trees and hopped ground-flung branches. Just before the third shot, I took a dive. Something tore across my arm and helped throw me down.
I grabbed the spot reflexively. The arm was there, but it was wet. All that was missing was a little skin off the top, like a circumcision.
The crip was still screaming, and the one with the cannon yelled back. “Where you at? Where you at?”
Figuring the shooter was going the other way, I was up and running. Suddenly I was out of the woods and onto cut grass. Ahead of me was a road, then more grass, then woods again. It was a no-man’s land, a free-fire zone. Praying that the cripple was occupying the gunman’s time, I went for it.
When I hit the woods on the other side, I collapsed. I crawled into the bushes and lay there panting. The shock and adrenaline were beginning to wear off. Breathing hurt. It grew worse, and I realized my ribs were broken.
I tore a piece of my shirt off. Using one hand and my teeth, I tied the rag around the wound in the arm. The only thing to do for the ribs, rest them, was not an available option.
When you’ve gone a certain distance by car and later back by foot, it’s amazing how much farther it is. Maybe getting kicked around exaggerates the sense of time and distance the same way cannabis does, but in a less pleasant way. I don’t know how long it took, clambering up rocks, sliding down loose earth into gullies, stumbling through branches, but it was the longest day of my life as well as a distinctly nonurban experience.
I found that I couldn’t think about progress, about getting to the top of the next hill or through the gully. All I could do was take one step at a time. There was a lesson in that, that I looked forward to forgetting.
Then I was at a road. I could see the park entrance not fifteen feet away.
I was scared.
It meant going out in the open, where if they found me I would be helpless. I lay in the dirt, to wait for a moment when no one was around. When the moment did come, I rose, got dizzy and blacked out.
I don’t think I was out long. When I came back, I dragged myself to a tree and crawled up the trunk. Things started going black again, but even in the darkness, I could feel the rough bark. When the dizziness passed, I was still standing.
I called myself a self-pitying wimp. I told myself that there was no need to descend into pseudo-delirium. I gathered up my self-respect and stumbled out into the city. I was not so whacked out that I didn’t understand why cabs wouldn’t stop. I was bloody, dirty, with my hair uncombed.
A patrol car cruised by. I waved to them. They waved back and rolled on.
There was something vaguely familiar about where I was. It was somewhere near Sandy. She had a phone. And water. I knew she had water. I wanted water very much.
The closer I got, the harder it was to keep going. My body was overeager to give up. Not that I blamed it. But I knew that once down, I was staying down. Even when I entered her building and buzzed her intercom I knew better than to sit down. I leaned against the door. I heard her voice, electronically mangled, and croaked mine back. Falling through the door snapped me awake. I had to grab at it to keep from crashing. That pulled the muscles across my ribs. It reminded me to move very carefully. I think I was crying.
In the elevator I couldn’t remember the floor. Eight sounded right, but there was no eight, so I pushed three because it looks like it.
Nor did I know which three it was, just that there were a lot of them. I was pleased to see she knew I didn’t know and was standing with her door open to show me which it was.
“Do you know it’s after one in the morning?” she said.
I shook my head no and kept on coming.
“Tony,” she said.
“Where the fuck was Franco?” I asked her.
“What happened to you?” she asked me.
“Who the hell is this?” her husband inquired generally.
“Call a doctor,” she said. I smiled. It was the most sensible idea I had heard all day.
“I doubt,” the husband said, “that his name is ‘call-a-doctor.’ It’s more likely ‘anotha-luvva.’”
“This is not the time for this,” Sandy said sensibly. I nodded in agreement.
“When a strange man arrives in the middle of the night in disreputable condition, and the two of you clearly know each other, I think I’m entitled to know who he is.”
“Please call a doctor,” she said.
“Police,” I said, but it came out “P’lease,” and she came to me.
“I’m sure that’s not his name,” the husband said again. It was a tasteless moment to be facetious.
“His goddamn name is Tony,” she snapped at him, “now call a doctor.”
“I’m going to have a brandy,” he said and walked away.
Sandy started to help me toward the couch. I rested my bad arm on her shoulder. It burned and ached and I felt the scabbing break, but it was far too much trouble to change sides.
“Once I’m down,” I explained, “I can’t get up.”
“That’s all right,” she said and helped me to sit. When the ribs are gone, the hardest moves in the world are the sequences from vertical to prone and back up again. Each move needs the muscles that pull across the ribs.
“Need help,” I said, and she let me use her as a brace.
The couch felt wonderful. The husband walked back in with his brandy. The brandy looked wonderful. We had not been formally introduced, so I felt uncomfortable asking him for some.
Sandy was calling a doctor. “It’s an emergency,” I heard her say. Then very patiently, “Will you please call him and have him call me?” Then she slammed the phone down. “Damn answering services.”
The husband swirled his brandy. He spoke to her although he was looking down his nose at me. “Is that the way you like them? A little rough around the edges, a slight touch of the gutter?”
“Oh shut up,” she said. “That son of a bitch Bernstein has his home phone forwarded to the answering service.” She dialed again. The service must have picked up because she slammed the phone down again.
“Perhaps the emergency room would be more apropos,” her husband said, “unless there is some reason you would like to keep him here.”
“Where the fuck was Franco?” I asked.
The phone rang. Sandy answered. “Allan,” she said, “I need you here. … Someone’s hurt … Allan, I don’t even know if he should be moved. … There’s blood and he has trouble moving. … Yes, Allan … thank you … I know you don’t … I know you need your sleep, but at least I didn’t interrupt your Tai Chi practice; now get your butt over here, please.”
She hung up and said, “Doctors!” It was an expletive. She came to my side and said, “Is there anything I can do?”
“A drink,” I suggested.
“All right,” she said and started to rush away. I grabbed her hand. “It’s not that bad,” I told her, “I’m gonna live.” Realizing that, I began to enjoy the drama of the situation.
She came back from the kitchen with a glass of brandy. Just like the one her husband liked to swirl. He noticed that too. I could tell by the way he looked at her that I was getting the private stock, not me stuff a
t the front of the liquor shelf for unwelcome guests.
I couldn’t drink in me position I was in and I couldn’t sit up. She put her arm under my head; she lifted me tenderly and put a cushion under my back to support me.
“What happened?” she asked. I took the glass from her. The alcohol cleared the clogs from my throat. I thought about it. What had happened? I had been overambitious. I had taken on something by myself that needed the police. I had been careless. I had not had the best of backups. In sum, I had not been quite bright.
“If you want to be an asshole,” I explained, “you have to pay the price.”
She laughed. I laughed. Laughing hurt; it made the muscles across the ribs jump. Each “ha” was a jab. Her husband understood that laughing hurts. So he didn’t.
“I better get you a little cleaned up,” she said.
“That is sweet,” her husband said. I agreed.
She ignored him. She went into the kitchen and came back with a bowl of warm water and some towels. He glowered. I winced as she began to wipe my face. Our arms tangled as I tried to drink more brandy.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” Sandy asked.
“Are you going to tell me who this is?” her husband asked.
“Would you believe,” I said to Sandy, “that I ran into a jealous husband?”
“Again?” she teased.
Sandy and I laughed again. It hurt again. It hurt her husband more. I held my side where the ribs were twanging. She rinsed the towel.
“I insist that you tell me who this person is and what he is doing here.”
“Tony was a friend, is a friend, from some years back. I suspect he’s here now because he’s hurt.”
“My own place was too far to go,” I said. He was building himself up to something, and I was helping too much, so I added, “I’m sorry if I intruded; it was the only place I could think of.”
The intercom buzzed and Sandy said, “Would you get that, please?”
“Come here often?” her husband said to me.
Sandy got up to answer the intercom.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said to her, examining me, “but I have the distinct impression that this is one of your lovers.”
No One Rides for Free Page 14
