by Siegel, Andy
I make it to the Gansevoort Park and lean against the outside of the building to catch my breath. I don’t want Margo to think I’m too out of shape and have her thus infer it’s reflective of my sexual prowess. The inference would be accurate, but I have great stamina when it comes to receiving oral favors.
I also want to reach June before I go inside, so I can have a clear conscience when I mesmerize and moisten Margo with my coma tales. That I can still think of engaging Margo after my exchange with Carlton is no doubt a flaw in my character, which admission makes the thought no more justified or acceptable.
I lean there for another ten minutes, just taking in the scene. I’m watching everything around me. Nothing is slipping by without being assessed and accounted for. I’m looking for anything that even resembles Carlton Williams Jr., and if I see his brother from a different mother who lives in South Dakota, I’m not making the warning call to June, for both our benefits. I’m not even going to motion toward my inside lapel pocket where my cell rests until I’m certain the coast is clear.
I’ve had my law office in this neighborhood for over eighteen years and never took notice during all that time of local sights I’ve seen in the last ten minutes. For example, I never knew I could try a Chinese hair-straightening, have my back waxed, eat a buffalo burger, have the skin of my cracked heels shaved off with a complimentary green tea footbath, sit for a palm reading, join Jews for Jesus, get my vision surgically corrected to 20/20 without a blade and without making a payment for twelve months, or ask that my wife’s G-string be analyzed by a professional lab for evidence of extramarital semen.
I’ve never smelled the roses, and I’m just this moment realizing what that saying really means. What a shame.
I take a far look uptown, a far look downtown, and survey the entire square-block radius from where I’m standing. I take three deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth, repeating my calming chant. To the best of my knowledge, Carlton Williams Jr. is nowhere in sight.
I take out my cell and press the button that needs to be pressed to get June on the phone. I’m looking back and forth, scrutinizing, examining, checking, scanning, inspecting, and searching my environment for signs of danger as her cell rings once … twice … three times.
During this three-ring period, I recount that both Henry and June said Carlton was only murderous if he had a motive. He definitely has a motive to kill his daughter. I realize he gave himself a motive to kill me. I’m not safe.
June picks up midway into ring four. “Hey, counselor. Things go all right with Mr. Witness Protection flunk-out?”
“June, no time for jokes. Listen carefully. You got me? No kidding. Listen to me carefully.” Before I get my next word out—bang, bang—explodes and echoes from behind me. It’s a gunshot, point-blank, to the back right of my head. I lose voluntary control and find myself falling forward toward the roadway, vaulting over my crutches, and crash-landing onto the pavement. I sense I’ve been shot in the back of my head, but I’ve somehow miraculously survived. So far.
My head is hanging off the curb, face downward, between two parked cars. I can’t believe I’m still conscious. The GCS numbers 15, 14, 13, and 12 flash on my brain’s coma counter, reflective of my decreasing level of consciousness. Margo’s gonna love this shit.
I feel something running down my cheek like warm water. I want to wipe it away, but I can’t lift my arms. I see bright red blood, my blood, and a tiny piece of my shattered scalp floating downstream.
The turmoil around and above me sounds like white noise. It’s hard to make out what any one person is saying. I hear screaming, yelling, crying, arguing, directing, all with a common purpose: get help for the guy in the gutter with the back of his head shot off. The only thing I hear clearly is the voice coming from my cell resting on the concrete near what remains of my right ear. It’s June. “No! Oh my God! No!” Over and over again.
I watch the stream turn to a red river polluted with bits of ear cartilage. I love my wife. I love my children. I love my dogs. I also love Lily, who’s been such a big part of my life. I admit to myself she was right that the dangers of handling HIC cases are not a mere matter of isolated incidents, as she so perfectly defined that term.
Crap, I forgot to call my mom. I’ve been watching her die one cell at a time with dignity and courage over all these years, and now I’ve gone and got myself shot in the back of the head. I’ve now forced her to have to deal with the loss of a child after all she’s been through—and that ain’t right. This leads me to my next thought.
I hate Henry Benson and I hate Carlton Williams Jr., who are jointly responsible for my more-than-likely impending death. But I have to take responsibility here. Once I realized what these HICs were all about, I made a business decision to keep on representing them for the money.
I slowly feel myself falling into Glasgow Coma Scale 11, then 10, as I make my way down, hoping to avoid GCS level 3.
“You’re going to be fine, I promise,” I hear a sympathetic little girl’s voice say, or so I think as I slip deeper into nothingness. It’s a sweet voice, a kind voice, a caring voice. A voice I have heard before. I search for the source of this familiar voice. Rummaging about with my mind’s eye, which is slowly losing its acuity.
“Just relax, you’re going to be just fine, no worries,” the soothing voice reinforces. My jaw drops in surprise—no, bewilderment. There, kneeling over me, as I lie with blood trickling out of my head, is Suzy. Is my brain playing tricks on me? She looks like a perfectly normal, healthy, and thriving twelve-year-old child. As if nothing ever happened to her. Wearing that yellow party dress she wore in the video of her fifth birthday party. And she is beautiful, just like her mother.
“Is that you, Suzy?” I ask now, somehow face-to-face.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“You can talk?”
“Yes, in this place I can talk.”
“What place is this?”
“Between the universes of here and there. The place you told Ginger and Margo about at the Gansevoort bar.”
“How do you know about that?”
She smiles, as if it were a naïve question.
“So, I’m not going to die?”
“No, Mr. Wyler, you’re not going to die. Like I said, you’re going to be just fine.”
“Please, Suzy, call me Tug.”
“That would be disrespectful, you’re an adult. My mother always told me to address adults in a proper way.”
“I could see her telling you that.” She smiles again. “Can I ask you something, Suzy?”
“Of course, that’s why I’m here. And to comfort you the way Nurse Braithwait consoled my mother and me early that morning before she electrocuted me. She’s a caring lady. Please make sure she never finds out what she did to me. She would never be able to recover from it if she knew.”
“I’ll never tell her, Suzy. I promise. And I’ll call the Weasel and make sure she doesn’t, either.”
“Good. We don’t need any more unnecessary suffering, now, do we?”
“No, no we don’t.”
“So, what is it that you want to ask me, Mr. Wyler?”
“Well, in my law practice I represent many victims of traumatic brain injury. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, Mr. Wyler, I most certainly do—you know, given my condition. Go on.”
“Just checking, sorry.” She smiles. “Anyway, one of the items of damage that I get money for, to compensate the injured, is known as conscious pain and suffering.” I pause to see if she needs explaining.
“Yes, go on, Mr. Wyler, I understand. Go on.”
“Well, I just wanted to know, when you’re as brain damaged as you are, stuck there in a wheelchair, staring out into space, with no control over the movement of your body, drooling, seemingly unaware of what is going on around you, with the whole world assuming you can’t understand a thing—well, is that really the case? Or are you conscious of your environment and aware
of the fact that you have been severely injured and permanently compromised? I always wanted to know the answer to that question. And more so in a case like yours, where you seem to respond to things with the appropriate sch-weets and not sch-weets.”
Suzy smiles, the kind one gives when asked an intelligent question particular to the circumstance. She folds in half the napkin that somehow materialized in her hand and dabs the sweat off my forehead in a caring way. Just as she is about to answer, I slip further into unconsciousness, leveling at GCS 9. As I do, Suzy, in a snap, disappears, vanishing into thin air.
18.
After an undetermined period of time suspended at GCS 9, I start to become consciously aware of my surroundings. I’ve ascended back to a GCS 14 and see a paramedic on my left. He’s finishing his work on me with the skill and expertise of a tenured veteran. I’m still on the ground, but they’ve turned me over so I’m facing up at a circular line of very interested New York City bystanders who are surrounding me.
I know there are rows of people behind the front line, but I can’t see them because of my fixed position. My body is secured on a restraining board and my neck is in a plastic brace. My head is wrapped in what I’m certain is a red-soaked bandage. From his movements and the soft sound of cloth sliding against cloth, I decide the paramedic must’ve just finished tying and securing my head to the board for immobilization.
After a good-luck last tug, ensuring the knot is taut and my head fixed, the paramedic moves his face over mine and we lock eyes. He has a kind and familiar face, perfect for a lifesaver. “I’m paramedic Jim Henson. You were shot in your head. The bullet went in the back on an angle and out the side, tearing part of your right ear off, but you’re going to be fine. You’re a lucky man.”
I ignore the great news and instead ask a question. “Did you say your name was Jim Henson?”
“Yes, I did.” I can tell by his apprehensive expression he knows I know that’s the name of the guy who invented the Muppets. Maybe that’s why he looks familiar; the Muppet guy has joined the celebrity-turned-paramedic fad. Wait a second. Jim Henson’s dead. I somehow recall seeing a tribute show to his life and genius. My paramedic just looks like the real Jim Henson and shares his name, that’s all.
Jim Henson responds to my thank-you. “Just doing my job.” Then he speaks to one of several other paramedics that have crossed my view. “This one’s alert, stable, and ready for transport.”
Now I hear another paramedic, who by the sound of things is only a few feet away, say something startling. “This other one’s gone. I’m calling his unofficial time of death at nineteen-twenty-four. We should bag him.”
“We can’t,” Jim Henson replies. “This is now a crime scene for a murder investigation. I don’t know what’s taking the detectives so long, but they have work to do before you can take your transport to the morgue.”
Oh, man. Some poor unfortunate bystander took the bullet that went through my head and was killed. Damn you, Henry!
Two more paramedics come over. By the angle of their approach I know they are neither Jim nor the guy he just spoke to. They kneel in the same spot Jim kneeled. One of them moves his face directly over mine. “We’re gonna take you to Bellevue. You need medical care.”
“If I need medical care, then why would you take me to Bellevue? No city hospitals for me! You’re taking me to NYU Langone Medical Center on Thirty-Fourth Street or you can just leave me here.” He moves out of my face. He conferences with his colleague, then leans over me again. “No can do. Gunshot to the head requires a level-1 trauma center.”
I start yelling. “Get Jim Henson over here! I want to speak to Henson now!” The paramedic who said “No can do” looks at me questioningly. “Jim Henson? The Muppet guy?”
“No, not that Jim Henson. That Jim Henson is dead. I want to speak to Jim Henson the paramedic. The guy who fixed me up and restrained my head.”
“That’s me,” he states. “I’m the guy who fixed you up. My name’s Steve Bruckner. There’s no paramedic here named Jim Henson. Listen, you sustained severe head trauma. Take it easy. We’ll take you to NYU Langone. Just calm yourself down, or we’ll do it for you.”
Now I’m really scared. I hallucinated the guy who invented the Muppets was the paramedic who fixed me up. I’m not sure how Margo’s gonna take this. Maybe Bellevue’s the right destination after all.
“I’m sorry. I’m just a little stressed out. It’s been a tough couple of weeks, even without getting shot in the head.”
“Understandable. Just take it easy. We’re gonna get you out of here.”
“Okay, but tell me something. Is there a dead guy next to me? Or did I hallucinate that, too?”
“No, you didn’t hallucinate that. There’s a dead guy three feet from you. He took one in the head, too.”
“The bullet that left my head caught the guy?”
“Separate shooting,” Bruckner responds. “According to the crime scene detectives—”
“I thought the detectives didn’t get here yet,” I interrupt.
“The detectives were here before we arrived and our response time was six minutes.”
“Sorry, I thought I overheard Jim … I mean, uh … never mind. Go on.”
“Anyway, according to the crime scene detectives, five people heard two separate and distinct gunshots.” That explains the gunshot echo I heard, which was no echo at all. But who’s the dead guy? I guess Carlton silenced a nearby eyewitness who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
An instant later, a mobile stretcher is parked between me and the dead guy. Paramedic Bruckner puts his face over mine again. “We’re gonna pick you up and put you on this stretcher on the count of three.”
“Fine, but I want to see who the dead guy is lying next to me.”
“No can do,” he responds in knee-jerk fashion. He apparently likes that phrase.
“Listen, Bruckner,” I plead, “if, God forbid, you were the survivor of an attempted double homicide, you’d want to see who the actual dead guy was before being taken away, wouldn’t you?”
“Let me ask the detectives,” he says, then moves out of my sight.
A moment later, Bruckner’s face is above mine again. Next to him is a detective. You could tell this guy’s a cop from a mile away, and here he is, about six inches from the tip of my nose. “We were gonna talk to you at the hospital, Mr. Wyler,” the detective tells me, “but since you and I want the same question answered, we’re gonna accommodate your request.”
“Thanks, detective,” I respond, “but please, call me Tug.” He nods.
“Okay,” Bruckner informs me, “we’re going to pick you up by the board and tilt you to your left so you can get a glimpse. Then we’re gonna set you on the stretcher for transport. Listen, I’ve got to warn you. The guy’s a mess. A large-caliber bullet came out the front.”
“Just let me see.”
The two paramedics lift and tilt as the detective pulls the tarp off the dead guy in a way so as to curtain him off from the surrounding crowd. I see Carlton Williams Jr. sprawled out in a twisted and very unnatural position with a giant hole in the side of his head. I’m confused. Why would someone try to kill both him and me?
“Had enough?” Bruckner asks. “You’re kind of heavy.”
“Not so fast,” the detective interjects. “You know the guy?”
“Yeah, I know him,” I confirm.
“Name?”
“Carlton Williams Junior.”
“Relation to you?”
“He’s the father of one of my clients. I’m a lawyer.”
“Do you know why he tried to kill you?” the detective asks.
Now I am more confused. “How do you know he tried to kill me? It seems like someone tried to kill us both.”
“No. He was your shooter.”
“How do you know?”
The detective pauses—the kind when someone’s trying to decide whether to tell someone something or how much of that somet
hing to tell someone—then gives a small sigh. “By his positioning relative to yours, by the discharged gun found in his hand, by the rough field ballistics match between his gun and your wound, and by the witness standing right over there who told us he saw the whole thing.”
“That sounds reliable,” I conclude. After using a pause of my own to collect myself, I take a deep breath. “What did the witness say?”
“The witness said your Carlton Williams Junior got the trigger pulled on him just as he was pulling the trigger on you; like someone was trying to protect you. Why’d he want you dead?”
“Because I was going to tell his wife that he was going to kill their daughter.”
“That’s a different motive,” the detective comments. “Usually, it’s money.”
“Did the witness say anything about Carlton’s shooter?” I ask.
“Black male, average height, fast runner. That narrows things down,” the detective answers in a sarcastic tone. He looks to Bruckner. “You can take him now.” He looks back at me as if to finish a thought. “We’re going to have more questions for you, Tug,” he apprises me as if I didn’t know, then walks away.
The stretcher pops up and they begin wheeling me toward the flashing lights. The bystanders are all vying for position to get their glimpses of me. I can see them jockeying their heads up, down, back, and forth to grab a good look. Everybody in the crowd—black, white, Hispanic, Asian—meshes into a sea of bobbleheads as they move in all directions to catch a glance. All I see is head motion except for two people whose stillness sets them apart from the throng.
One flashes a twinkle out of her right eye, a distinctive flicker of radiant beauty. Margo. She’s standing motionless with her arms at her sides. When we approach, she gives me a sympathetic smile and slowly waves. I smile back as I’m being rolled past her and closer to the other motionless person whom I definitely don’t know.
He’s a black guy wearing a black baseball cap, which somehow accentuates his stillness. He has an unobstructed view from three rows deep, and that seems odd since everyone else is jockeying for position. I’m wheeled toward him and observe the slow swivel of his head as he follows the path of my stretcher. As we pass him I can see the raised embroidery gold lettering of the insignia on his baseball cap. It reads: THE FIDGE.