by Dave Barry
Then I saw Buddy. He was skittering cross the highway, a little blob of fur, heading directly toward me.
Next I saw Horkman. I guess when the chopper went down, the cops forgot about him, because he was back on his feet, looking kind of dazed. While I was looking at him, he spotted Buddy. He yelled something, which I couldn’t hear, and then he started running after Buddy, which meant he was running directly toward me. Cops were yelling at him, but I don’t think he could hear them.
Then, over all the racket, I heard popping sounds, like firecrackers. I felt some splinters fly off a tree near where I was standing. More popping.
Suddenly I realized what was happening.
The fucking cops were shooting at me.
Or maybe they were shooting at Horkman. Or both of us. Or even all three of us, if you count Buddy. I wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I turned, sprinted up the embankment, jumped over the wall, and started looking for somewhere to hide in Manhattan.
CHAPTER 11
Philip
Here was the sequence as I remember it: a cop stomped on my back, I farted, a helicopter dropped out of the sky. Causes and effects? Possibly. But while I’m certain the downward force of that heavy boot induced the sounding of the rectal trumpet from my unsuspecting sphincter, I honestly can’t say whether the resultant wind breakage was strong enough to prompt the airborne whirlybird to spin like a broken dreidel that came this close to crash-landing in the Hudson River.
No matter what, the ensuing commotion made it possible for me to stagger to my feet and take off toward an embankment—first because I saw the lemur running in that direction. And then because the cops started shooting real bullets at me, which, for all intents and purposes, reclassified me to be as endangered as the lemur. Perhaps even more so, because, and I would bet money on this, a lemur can run a lot faster than a middle-class family man with a soft cast on his left ankle.
So it quickly became apparent that I would have to implement Plan B as soon as I could figure out what it was. In fact, if you want to parse things, since none of this was considered beforehand, technically there was never a Plan A. So what I did was call out to that idiot Peckerman, who at this point was only a few steps ahead. I thought I’d appeal to whatever modicum of decency he might possess in that ill-fated soul of his, thinking that he’d momentarily put aside our squabble and lend me a hand. Literally. All I needed was for him to stop running, reach back with an outstretched hand that I could grab on to and help me with my last few steps up the embankment. The whole effort would’ve taken maybe five seconds and, when we reached the top, if we still hated each other, we’d go our separate ways. But he didn’t stop. Maybe he didn’t hear my cries of “Help me, Peckerman! Please help me!” over the sounds of all that gunfire, or maybe he did hear my cries of “Help me, Peckerman! Please help me!” and just ignored them because he’s, you should pardon my language, a scoundrel.
Either way, he just kept going, so I now had to figure out Plan C (or maybe this was actually Plan B) because the cops were getting closer, but I never had a chance to give the plan much thought because after hobbling two more steps, my left ankle gave out, so I lost my balance, fell to the ground, and rolled back down the embankment.
To this day, I truly believe it was because it was a moonless night and I was wearing a black shirt that the cops didn’t see me and kept advancing up the embankment as I rolled past them, about forty feet away, down the embankment, over the curb, and back onto the Henry Hudson Parkway until I finally came to a stop against the front tire of Denise Rodecker’s Range Rover that was just sitting there in the middle of the road. With her inside. Semi-conscious. Slumped over the steering wheel with what looked like strawberry Turkish Taffy issuing from the corners of her mouth.
So once again I found myself staggering to my feet, got inside Denise’s black Range Rover, pushed her immense body over onto the passenger seat and slowly drove away, before exiting at 79th Street, where I easily blended into the crosstown traffic.
Where to go? Daunting question, as I knew it was just a matter of time until the cops caught up with me. Surely they’d run the plate number on my Prius, and then distribute my name and picture. Maybe they’d done that already? So I dashed any thoughts of leaving the city because I’d watched enough episodes of Law & Order to know that when the police are on the lookout for people they believe brought down a police helicopter, the first thing they do is set up checkpoints at all tunnels and bridges.
What to do? What to do? I became paranoid of every squad car I saw. And then of all cars in general, as I thought they might be undercover cops. I was getting more and more nervous. I needed a Plan D (I think) but couldn’t think of anything. I was sweating. I needed help. But from where? I’m not a religious man, but divine intervention would’ve been nice.
And then I heard it. The voice of God? Not exactly. It was more like the grinding of gears on a tractor-trailer when it’s slowing to a halt. It was the sound of Denise Rodecker stirring back into consciousness.
I once read somewhere (Reader’s Digest, I think) that great men overcome dire situations by making the cards they were dealt work for them. Well, on the seat next to me was a huge card. Denise was sick and in need of a doctor. Badly. If one of the pets at The Wine Shop was in her condition, I would have it put down. So I got excited by the thought that Denise Rodecker could be my ticket out of this mess. All I had to do is get her the medical attention she so obviously needed and then, once she was healthy, she could tell the cops what had actually happened.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Denise,” I told her. “I’m going to take you over to Lenox Hill Hospital and they’re going to make you feel better.”
And then I gave her a reassuring smile.
And then she said, “I love you.”
And then I said, “Do you know if Lenox Hill is on Third Avenue or Lexington?”
By the time we got to the emergency room at Lenox Hill (it’s on Lexington, by the way), Denise Rodecker said she loved me four times. I didn’t take it seriously, figuring that these were merely the incoherent murmurings of an obese insulin-depleted nymphomaniac who just happened to be looking in my direction as I drove at my new preferred speed of thirty-four mph so as not to call attention to the car.
And I also didn’t take it seriously when she insisted I hold her hand as the bald male nurse with a mole on the top of his head wheeled her into the treatment room. I obliged, figuring it was innocuous. A mere comforting gesture to a nervous patient. Done all the time. Like writing “love” at the end of a letter to someone you couldn’t care less about.
“She your wife?” asked the bald male nurse with a mole on the top of his head.
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“She’s just a neighbor,” I told him.
“Interesting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you two seem rather close for just being neighbors,” he said.
“Why? Because I’m holding her hand?”
“No, because she’s flashing her left breast at you with her other hand,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I asked, before looking down and seeing that Denise had opened her hospital gown and was now exposing what I could only presume was a breast given its location on her massive chest—although any positive ID that a nipple would provide wasn’t visible as it was hanging over the other side of the gurney. Still, the bald male nurse with a mole on the top of his head saw my face redden with horror, which he, unfortunately, mistook for embarrassment.
“See what I’m saying?” he asked with a sneer that was just begging to be mauled by a Doberman from The Wine Shop. “She’s hot for you.”
“Oh, that’s just the diabetes talking,” I told him.
“Diabetes doesn’t talk,” he insisted, his sneer getting more sneerish. “
High fevers talk. Alzheimer’s talks. Certain infectious diseases don’t shut up for a second. But diabetes? No. Diabetes comes stag and pretty much sucks the air out of the party.”
“Okay, then it’s the insulin that’s talking!” I shot back. “I’m telling you, she has no idea what she’s saying.”
“Insulin doesn’t talk, either,” he countered. “Serotonin talks. Dopamine talks. Ultracet. A lot of your ADD and ADHD medications can be quite chatty. As can certain kinds of marijuana, cocaine and other street drugs. But insulin? Hell no. As boring as diabetes is, it’s a veritable one-man band compared to insulin.”
“Well, something other than this woman is talking!” I shouted. “Can’t you see she’s sick? Just look at her! At her skin color and at that stuff that looks like strawberry Turkish Taffy dripping out of the sides of her mouth.”
“That is strawberry Turkish Taffy,” he answered. “Her coat pockets were stuffed with wrappers when she came in. I’m telling you, she knows exactly what she’s saying.”
Great, I thought to myself before taking another glance at Denise Rodecker who, once she saw I was looking her way, furtively opened the front of her gown, revealing the entire festival that was going on underneath. Needless to say, I was mortified and, for the sake of not having nightmares for the rest of my life, turned my head, and when I did, I caught a glimpse of the television in a patient’s room across the hall.
I guess it stands to reason that it’s newsworthy when a police helicopter lands on the Henry Hudson Parkway after its pilot is shot in his scrotum. So there it was, with the newscaster saying that the cops suspect that this was the handiwork of armed terrorists. And then they showed a picture of that idiot Peckerman, and then they showed a picture of me, and I knew right then and there that I should come up with a Plan E or whatever the hell letter I was up to because I, Philip Horkman, was now officially on the lam.
CHAPTER 12
Jeffrey
I couldn’t believe the asshole Horkman actually wanted me to help him. A day earlier, I was a successful man with a comfortable lifestyle as one of the top three or four forensic plumbers in northeastern New Jersey. Now, thanks to this lunatic, I’m running from cops who are shooting at me with actual fucking bullets. Help him? I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.
So I left Horkman behind and kept running. I lost track of Buddy, but at that point my feeling was that Buddy was on his own.
It was dark, and I had no idea where I was, except somewhere in Manhattan. I heard a lot of shouting behind me, ducked into an alley, crossed to another street, then into another alley. I stopped to catch my breath, sweating like a pig. I could hear shouting, sirens, more helicopters, but no more shooting, thank God. I kept moving, walking now, alley to alley.
While I was walking, I was trying to come up with a plan. I decided step one was call Donna, tell her to get hold of a lawyer. I felt for my phone.
Fuck. No phone. It was back in my car.
So I thought, Okay, find a pay phone. But here’s the thing: There’re no pay phones left in Manhattan, at least that I could find. I swear I walked two miles, and I kept seeing places where there used to be pay phones, but all there is now is the smell of piss. There’re times when New York City seems like one giant urinal, and this was one of those times.
I was trying to avoid people, but I decided I had to go into some business that might have a pay phone. I was mid-block on a quiet street, and I saw this little sign that said THE CAMEL’S NOSE, next to some steps leading down to a door. I went in. It looked like a typical shithole bar with three guys—a bartender and two customers—clumped together under a TV. They all turned and looked at me, not friendly. I would describe them—and I’m not being racist, I’m just describing—as swarthy.
“You got a pay phone?” I said.
Nobody answered, but while they weren’t answering, I noticed a pay phone at the end of the bar.
“Found it, thanks,” I said, walking past them. They were still staring at me. To be honest, I was wishing I picked another place to go into, but at that point I couldn’t pussy out. So I went to the phone and of course it wasn’t a real pay phone belonging to the phone company; it was some phone company I never heard of operated by some raghead in Bangladesh who wanted my credit card number and probably charged me eighty dollars to call Jersey. But what choice did I have?
While the call was going through, I looked back toward the bar. The good news was, the Three Swarthy Stooges weren’t still looking at me. The bad news was, they were looking at the TV.
Which was showing my car.
It was an aerial shot of the Henry Hudson Parkway, and there had to be three hundred cops running around. I could see my smashed car, Horkman’s Prius, and the police helicopter, which had some smoke coming out. The bottom of the screen said: Terrorist Attack on GW Bridge.
Jesus Christ.
“Hello?” said Donna.
“It’s me.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in . . .”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Listen, Donna, just calm down.”
“DO NOT TELL ME TO CALM DOWN.”
I think I mentioned this before, but: Never tell a woman to calm down.
“Donna, just listen, okay?”
“No! YOU listen! Do you know what they’re showing on the TV RIGHT NOW?”
“My car.”
“They’re showing your car.”
“I know that. Listen, what . . .”
“Jeffrey, they’re saying you’re a terrorist!”
“Donna, if you’ll just . . .”
“Shut up a minute. What, Taylor? Oh my God! They’re saying you tried to bomb the George Washington Bridge!”
“Donna, I didn’t . . .”
“Quiet! What, Taylor? Oh my God! No!”
“What’d she say?”
“Oh my GOD!”
“What did she say?”
“You shot a police officer!”
“What? I don’t even have a . . .”
“Quiet! What, Taylor? OH. MY. GOD.”
“What?”
“You shot a police officer in the scrotum!”
“Donna, I SWEAR to you, I don’t . . .”
“Be quiet! Yes, Taylor, it’s a body part. On a man. I’ll explain it later. What? Oh my God. OHMIGOD.”
“What?”
“They’re showing your picture! On TV!”
I looked at the TV over the bar. It was showing my New Jersey driver’s license photo. Next to it was a photo of the Horkman asshole. The screen said Terrorist Suspects.
Now the three swarthy guys were looking at me.
“Donna,” I said. “Listen. You need to . . .”
“Somebody’s here! The police are here!”
“Donna . . .”
“Jeffrey, they’re at the door! I have to go. I’ll call you right back.”
“But I don’t have my phone!”
Too late. She was gone.
I started trying to get ahold of Bangladesh again so I could call back, when a swarthy hand grabbed the phone from me and hung it up. I turned and saw the bartender, with the other two guys right behind him.
“What the fuck,” I said.
The bartender pointed back in the general direction of the TV.
“You did this?” he said, except he had some kind of swarthy accent, so “did” sounded like “deed.”
“Listen,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”
He arched an eyebrow. “But that is you,” he said. “On television.”
“Yes, that’s me, but it’s a misunderstanding.”
He arched his eyebrow again. He had huge eyebrows. Like he was raising miniature porcupines on his forehead.
>
“Misunderstanding,” he said.
“Yes, misunderstanding. I’m not a terrorist. I live in New Jersey. I was following a lady who lost her insulin pump, so she took this guy’s lemur.”
“His what?”
“Lemur. It’s like a monkey.”
“There is no monkey on the television.”
“It ran away. The point is, it was all a big mistake. I’m not a terrorist.”
The bartender nodded. “Of course,” he said, “if you are terrorist, you will say you are not terrorist. Terrorists do not say, ‘Hello, I am terrorist.’”
“I know, but I’m telling you, I’m really not one. So if you’ll just let me make a call here, I’m going to get this all straightened out.” I reached for the phone, but he put his hand in the way.
“You are not using phone,” he said
“All right,” I said. “I’ll find another phone.” I tried to head for the door, but they blocked me.
“You can’t keep me here,” I said.
“We are not keeping you here,” said the bartender. “We are taking you somewhere.”
“What the fuck are you talking about.”
The bartender said something foreign. The other two swarthies grabbed me.
“Hey!” I said. “You can’t do this!”
But it turned out they could.
CHAPTER 13
Philip
Did the cardiac patient whose television I was watching have that fatal heart attack because he saw my picture on the news and then looked over to see the same man being identified as an armed terrorist standing next to his bed sipping a Diet Fresca? Hard to say. But the moment I saw him grab his chest, followed by those gurgling sounds, followed by that flatlined beep from the monitor on his night table, followed by a veritable stampede of doctors and nurses shouting “Code Blue!” I thought it wise to slip out of the room and give those dedicated professionals all the space they needed to revive that now very dead man.
Now in the hallway, my phone rang. But it drew no attention to me as it was, thank God, still on vibrate from when I set it just before the dance recital (hard to believe this was still the same night) started. The caller ID displayed my home number and I wanted to answer it. It had been several hours since I’d bolted from that auditorium in pursuit of Denise Rodecker and the lemur, and my guess was that Daisy, in the very least, was worried. And, at the very most, homicidal. Turns out she was neither.