“Maybe next time,” I said, paying the fare and tipping him generously.
“Hey, thanks, Mac,” he said, taking the money. He looked closer at me and said, “Naw, you ain’t a fag. Hope you didn’t take no offense.”
“None at all,” I assured him. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Anytime, Mac.”
He made a left turn on Twelfth and drove back down Fifty-fourth.
I turned and peered under the highway. The sun had just gone down and there was still some daylight left, but under the highway it was black as night.
“Shit,” I said to myself. In a few moments it would be just as dark everywhere else, and then I’d be a sitting duck.
Now why the hell did I think of that now?
It didn’t do my nerves any good, either.
Underneath the highway were parked cars, abandoned cars, debris from vandalized cars and from the highway itself, which was on the verge of collapse.
Somewhere in among all of that junk was either a frightened ex-trainer, or a brutal hit man.
Jesus, my hands were shaking and my knees were weak. It wasn’t love, so I knew I must be scared shitless.
It was getting darker by the second, and I was getting fidgety waiting for someone to make their presence known. If the man from the fifth row was already there . . . somewhere . . . he must have been able to tell by then that I had come alone.
Three different times I started to reach for the gun and then stopped myself. If my man was in there somewhere, the sight of a gun wouldn’t comfort him any. Then again, he was waiting so damned long to show himself that he wasn’t doing much for my comfort.
I finally got tired of waiting and decided to either leave or go under the highway after him.
The whole trip would have been worth shit if I left, so I went under the highway after him.
“Hello,” I called out.
The only answer I got was a slight echo.
It was colder underneath the highway, as if I were standing in a wind tunnel. I kidded myself that the chill that I felt was solely a product of that cold.
“Hello,” I called out again, still with no response.
I’d just about had enough and was ready to call it a bad meet when a thought hit me that maybe my man was there and unable to answer.
Maybe he was dead.
The chill I felt worsened as I decided to check inside some of the cars, hoping I wouldn’t find another body. Hocus might not be able to keep from putting the cuffs on me next time.
Instead of checking the parked cars, which would almost definitely be locked, I started to check some of the vandalized and burnt-out wrecks.
As I opened the door of one of them and prepared to stick my head in, I caught a movement from the backseat out of the corner of my eye and jerked my head away just in time to keep my throat from being cut.
“Oh, shit!” I shouted as I felt the tip tear at my throat. I felt the warmth of my own blood as it seemed to pour down over my chest. In my mind’s eye I could see that my throat was slashed wide open, as if it had been cloven with an ax; but that was obviously just in my mind, because I was still alive.
As I pulled back and away from the car I got my feet tangled and fell to the ground, putting myself in a very vulnerable position. Luckily my assailant had to get out of the backseat of the car by climbing over the front seat and was not able to take immediate advantage. I scrambled away from the car, scraping my hands and knees in the process. I was trying to regain my feet while also attempting to pull the gun from behind my back. I had almost gotten to my feet when I tripped over a large chunk of debris and went sprawling again.
Panic threatened to blind me, but I kept my head and kept rolling, trying to stay out of range of that deadly blade until I could get back to my feet and get the gun out.
He was out of the car by this time and advancing on me, just a shadowy figure whose face I couldn’t see.
The gun seemed to catch on the back of my jacket, and I tried to counteract that problem by yelling, “I’ve got a gun, I’ve got a gun!”
Hearing him laugh didn’t help my confidence any. I just about had the gun loose when I felt his foot catch me in my left side, sending me to the ground again. I used my hands to break my fall, managing to hold onto the gun somehow. I turned in time to see the shadow of his arm and the gleam of the knife as he swung it at me, and I felt the tip cut through my jacket and shirt and rip through the flesh of my side.
As I flinched in pain I accidently squeezed off a shot from the .38.
After that I could have sworn that the entire West Side Highway fell in on my head.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
No one could have been more surprised than I was when I woke up, because I would have called it a safe bet that I was dead.
The only reason I could think of to explain the fact that I was still alive was that Collins must have thought I was bluffing about having a gun, and when I squeezed off a round accidentally he must have then realized that I wasn’t and taken off.
Luckily, he hadn’t left me dead, but he did leave me cut up some. My chest was slick with the blood from my throat wound, and I could feel my shirt sticking to the wound on my right side. I didn’t know how much blood I had lost, but I was feeling very weak. Getting to my feet took a major effort on my part, and I didn’t think I could get very much further than that on my own.
Across the street from where I was there was a phone booth, and I set my mind on making it at least that far. I stumbled a few times—once slipping on a patch of my own blood, which is always a thrill—but finally made it to the booth, which was one of the older kind. It actually was a booth, but the door was missing and the light didn’t work. I could forgive it for that, however, as long as the phone worked.
I stuffed myself into the booth and grabbed the headset off the hook. The buzzing sound it made in my ear was one of the most welcome sounds I’d ever heard.
Having established that the phone worked, I set about trying to find a dime, but came up empty. To my credit—take a bow, Jacoby—I did not panic. You do not need a dime to dial the operator, so that’s what I did.
“Operator,” a dehumanized female voice promptly answered.
“Op—” I started to say, but that was as far as I got. It was the first time I’d tried to speak since waking up, and the words stuck in my throat. My neck was tremendously sore from the knife wound, and I tried to clear my throat so I could speak clearly.
“Hello?” the voice asked. “This is the Operator. Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I was finally able to rasp. “Operator, I’m in a, uh, pay phone and I don’t have a dime. I’d like to—to make a call and charge it to—to my home number,” I told her haltingly.
“Hold on, please,” she told me. A couple of clicks later another female voice came on and asked me if she could help me. I cleared my throat and went through my request again.
“What is your number, sir?” she asked.
I gave it to her, and then she asked me a hard one: What number did I want to call?
I hadn’t thought about that.
What number did I want to call?
“What number do you want to call, sir?” she asked me again.
“Uh—” I said, just to let her know I was still there while I frantically searched my brain for a number.
I finally gave her the only one I could think of.
“I’ll connect you, sir. You will be billed at your home number. Have a nice evening.”
The phone rang twice and then was answered.
“Hello?”
It was Julie, and I hadn’t even realized that it was her number I’d given.
“Hello?” she said again.
“Julie,” I finally managed to say, hoping I didn’t sound too much like a frog, or an obscene caller.
“Jack, is that you? I’ve been frantic! You didn’t give me a chance to say anything when you called—are you all right?”
“I need a little
help, Julie,” I told her.
“What happened? Are you all right?” she asked again.
“I need to be picked up. Can you get a cab and pick me up?” I asked her.
“Jack, what happened, for God’s sake—”
“Don’t ask any questions now, Julie, please. Can you do it?”
“I can—yes, I can borrow a car, my girlfriend’s car, but—”
“Do that, then,” I said. “We won’t have to deal with a cab driver. And bring a blanket.”
“A blanket? What for?”
“Julie, honey, just get over here. I’m on Fifty-fifth Street, by the West Side Highway. Spread the blanket on the backseat. I’m, uh, I’m losing some blood—”
“Blood? Oh Jack, I was afraid of something like this—” she hesitated, not saying anything more but sounding as if my getting hurt was something she had expected all along.
“Julie, I really need you over here as soon as possible,” I told her urgently.
“I’m on my way, darling,” she said, and hung up.
I didn’t even have the strength to hang up the phone. I just let it go and slid to the floor of the booth to wait for her to come. I sincerely hoped she’d arrive before I bled to death.
I must have passed out, or dozed off, because I didn’t even know she was there until she was shaking me with both hands, trying to wake me up.
“Jack!” she was shouting, shaking me violently. “Jack, wake up!”
“Julie?” I asked, squinting my eyes at her until her face came into focus.
“Oh, thank God!” she breathed. “I thought you were dead.” It was then that she noticed that her hands were sticky with my blood. “Oh, God,” she said quietly. She wiped her hands on her pants and said, “C’mon, we’ve got to get you in the car and to a hospital.”
A hospital, I thought, and she literally dragged me to my feet and stuffed me into the backseat of the borrowed car.
Jesus, why the hell hadn’t I thought to call an ambulance or the cops, for Christ’s sake, instead of calling her and alarming her?
Why was her number the only number I could think of when I was in trouble?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It wasn’t until we were inside the hospital, underneath the bright lights, that Julie saw just how much blood I was covered with.
Hell, I didn’t even know how much blood I had been covered with. Between the wound to my throat and the one on my side, I was almost covered with red stains from head to toe.
“Jesus, Jack!” she whispered as we entered the emergency room.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I told her.
“Christ, I hope not.”
When we finally got a doctor to come out and take me into an examining room, Julie said, “I’ll wait right here.”
“I’ll be out soon,” I assured her.
The doctor stretched me out on an examining table and began to remove my shirt.
“Ouch,” I said as he pulled the shirt away from my side wound.
“How did this happen?” he asked.
I explained that I had been the victim of an attempted mugging, and had been cut when I tried to fight.
“Your money’s not worth your life,” he told me wisely.
“I guess not.”
While he sewed me up I had nothing to look at but his face. He was about fifty or so, with dark bushy eyebrows and a mustache to match. His hands had an antiseptic smell that was making me feel sick.
“Your throat isn’t too bad,” he told me. “It just bled a lot. It’s stopped by itself.”
It was my side that needed sewing up, and as he was finishing he said, “This took about twenty stitches. You should stay in the hospital overnight, but that’s up to you.”
“I’d rather go home to bed,” I told him.
“As long as you stay there. You do too much moving around and you’re going to bust these stitches wide open.”
I promised him I’d stay in bed.
“I’ll have to file a report with the police,” he told me as he helped me sit up.
“That’s fine with me,” I told him. “I’ll be making a report of my own in the morning, anyway.”
I got down from the table and started pulling on the tattered remains of my blood-soaked shirt.
“Thanks, Doc,” I told him.
“That’s okay. Just don’t ruin my work by breaking open those stitches. Leave your name and address at the desk.”
“Sure.”
When I walked out Julie ran to my side and grabbed my arm.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I took some stitches, but I’m okay.”
“C’mon, let’s go,” she told me, heading for the door.
“What about paying?”
“I took care of it,” she told me.
Outside the hospital I slid into the passenger seat next to her as she started the car.
“Jesus Christ!” I snapped when I realized that the gun and holster were no longer clipped to the back of my belt. “Oh, shit!” I added, for good measure.
“What’s wrong, Jack?” she asked.
“We have to go back,” I told her.
“Back where? To the hospital?”
I thought about it.
“No, not the hospital,” I decided. If I’d had it at the hospital, the doctor would have made some remark.
“Then where?”
“The phone booth,” I told her. “We’ve got to go back to the phone booth.”
“What for?”
“I lost something.”
“Something important?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”
“I won’t be,” I told her. “I promise—if we find what I lost, I’ll go right home to bed.”
Shaking her head she said, “All right.”
She drove us back to the phone booth on Fifty-fifth Street, by the West Side Highway.
“I’ll get out and look,” she said, starting to open her door.
“No!” I snapped, then when she looked shocked I said in a softer tone, “I’ll go and look myself. I know what I’m looking for.”
I opened the door on my side and gingerly stepped out of the car.
“Don’t bend over,” she shouted after me.
I walked over to the phone booth, but it was so dark inside that I couldn’t see the floor.
“Open that door again,” I told her, indicating the door on the passenger side which I had closed behind me. She leaned over and opened it, pushing it wide, and the light from inside the car fell on the floor of the phone booth.
There the little beggar was, all snug and covered with blood. I did a fancy, deep knee bend, one hand on my side and the other stretching out for the gun.
“Jesus!” I said as I felt a pain in my side, but my fingers touched the gun and I pulled it toward me.
“Did you find it?” she called from the car.
I turned to face her, clipping the holster to the back of my belt at the same time.
“Yes,” I answered, sliding into the car next to her, “I found it.”
“What was—”
“What do you say we pick up something to eat?” I asked.
“Are you sure you can eat?” she asked. “I mean, with your throat like that?”
I touched the bandage on my throat, then said, “I could force down some junk food.”
She shot me a wry look, then started the motor and said, “I’ll settle for Chinese.”
That’s what we did. We stopped off at a Chinese restaurant, and while I waited in the car she went in to get it.
“My place,” I told her when she came back and got behind the wheel.
“Nope,” she said, “my place.”
“My place is clean,” I argued, “I promise. No clothing all over the—”
“We haven’t talked about this yet, because you don’t want to scare me,” she told me, making my concern about scaring her sound ridiculous, “but someone obviously tried to kill you toni
ght. They can always find you at your place, Jack,” she pointed out, “but not at mine.”
She had a point.
“Okay, so you’re a smart broad,” I conceded.
She laughed and said, “I’ll also be able to look after you better there.”
“Who says I need looking after?” I demanded.
“Oh, did I say that?” she asked. “I’m sorry. One only has to look at you to know that you can take care of yourself just fine.”
I looked down at my torn and bloody shirt and decided to keep my mouth shut while I was behind.
“I hope I didn’t bleed on your friend’s upholstery,” I told her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll clean it before I return the car.”
She stopped the car in front of her building and said, “Now wait for me to come around and help you out.”
“I can get out—” I started to protest.
She put her hand on my arm and said, “Humor me? I mean, who came out in the dead of night to pick you up?”
“Okay, I’ll wait—but I carry the food,” I said, holding onto the bag possessively.
“Deal.”
I was glad that she was calling me “Jack” instead of “Miles.” It meant that all of that forced formality was gone from between us.
We went up to her apartment, and she insisted that I sit on the couch while she got some cups and plates.
“I’ll bring the food out here. I want you to relax.”
“Okay, you’re the boss.”
She spread everything out on the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor opposite me. We laughed and giggled like two kids as we scooped food out of the cardboard cartons and drank beer out of paper cups.
“We should be eating this stuff with chopsticks, you know,” she said at one point.
“I’d end up poking my eye out.”
When we’d both eaten enough she put the rest of it on top of the stove in closed cartons and made some coffee. Over coffee she asked me to tell her what happened.
I gave her the whole story, leaving out the part about the gun. I don’t know why; I just thought she didn’t need to know about that.
Eye in the Ring Page 14