by Todd Cohen
“Will you marry me?”
THE END
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Dawson’s Next Book!
Chapter 1
Which way is Grand Street?” I asked two local female hipsters in SoHo. The two lovebirds were staring into the designer window, both holding hands.
“Just a few more blocks down Greene Street and you’ll eventually hit Grand,” the taller, sleeker hipster replied. She was six feet two inches tall, of Asian descent, with long black hair, wearing a cashmere sweater, skinny jeans, and holstering a Prada shoulder bag. Her shorter partner looked equally hip, with her matching long black hair and a slightly smaller tote that also said, Prada.
“Two peas in a pod,” I thought.
I made my way around a black Nissan SUV, climbed under some rolled-up tape, and saw one of my favorite stores, Design Within Reach. And right there in the window was the exact chair that Amy and I had been looking at yesterday at Vintage Thrift on Third Street between Twenty-Second and Twenty-Third. Vintage Thrift had a set of six chairs available for $100 a pop.
Those chairs would look great, around our Knoll kitchen table, in our new apartment in Tribeca. It was the Eames Molded Fiberglass Armchair, a classic in its own right! As I looked through the window, I saw a five hundred dollar price tag hanging from the chair. We could buy all six of those chairs at Vintage Thrift for a little more than the price of the new one in the window.
“What a steal at Vintage Thrift,” I thought. Wanting Amy to see the showcased beauty, I quickly pulled out my iPhone and headed right onto the sidewalk in front of the store’s window to capture the chair’s essence.
SNAP!
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!” shouted the oversized beast of a police officer as he grabbed my elbow. His smaller partner started in on me as well.
“Didn’t you see the police tape?” said the other officer with more anger than disdain.
“No, Officer, I was so focused in on taking a photo of the chair I . . . I . . .” I just could not get my words out. Stuttering was a problem I thought I had overcome in elementary school. Three years with a speech pathologist named Mae Parsons. I used to call her Aunt Mae. But stress would bring out those bad memories, and I occasionally regressed and began to stutter again.
I pulled out the iPhone and opened the Photos app, looking for the designer chair. I opened the photo and started to zoom into the chair to show the officer. On the bottom left-hand corner of the window was something I had not seen previously, I was so focused on that stupid chair. The image was of a silhouette or black stencil image of a rat, wearing a beret with a star and holding a spray can spraying the color red. How did I miss this? The image was typical of the mysterious English street artist called Banksy. Nobody has ever seen the artist. “What could it mean?” I thought to myself. I changed gears quickly, zoomed out, and showed the officer the photo of chair.
“Here, Officer. This is the chair,” I said.
“Let me see some identification?” demanded the first officer.
I opened my wallet and gave him my license, as well as the Suffolk PBA card given to me by Officer John McElroy of the Westhampton Beach Police Department. McElroy and I had shared a special bond. We both had gone through tough times. But as my mom always said, “Tough times don’t last—only tough people do!”
“Why are you giving me a police card?” asked the officer. He looked down at my license and then said, “Matthew Dawson, MD. That name sounds familiar. Now I’m putting two and two together. You were the doctor that was on the front page of the New York Times. Killed an heiress and stole a painting!”
With one full swoop, the other officer started in again at me. “Do you know that you entered a crime scene.” I looked around and saw a wide taped-off area, with no one within the area. The tape said, police, but was essentially illegible since it spiraled around between each post. Maybe a “P” and a part of an “O,” or an “L” and a part of an “E.” But the word “Police” was not easily discernable.
“Don’t you see the body? You’re standing in what’s left of the dead man’s head! A head blown to smithereens!”
I looked down and saw that I was standing smack in the middle of what may have been confused remotely with tossed-out spaghetti and meatballs. Not an uncommon sight in New York City. But upon closer examination it wasn’t spaghetti and meatballs at all. Parts of it resembled the cingulate gyrus of the cerebral cortex that I studied back in med school. And the tomato sauce wasn’t tomato sauce at all either, but rather the blood and guts contained within a skull.
I glanced over to what the officer referred to as the body, literally ten feet from where I was standing. But I did not see a body at all, just a pile of blankets.
“Officer, I was trying to meet up with my fiancée. I had no idea that this was a crime scene!”
“Tell me you didn’t see the police tape?” the officer asked sarcastically.
“I didn’t see it at all; it’s rolled up, so you can barely see the writing on the tape. And the body doesn’t even look like a body, but just a pile of blankets from some homeless guy in the city. And those brains, that I’m standing on, look like someone’s dropped leftovers!”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Dawson, that you are under arrest for violating and photographing a crime scene.”
“It’s not illegal to take photographs of a crime scene,” I muttered to myself. No point in voicing my opinion. The officer wasn’t listening to reason. Not after he heard my notorious name. The officer grabbed my arm, took my iPhone, and twisted my right arm behind my back, slamming on the handcuffs; he did the same with my other arm and hooked the other cuff to it.
“Can I make one phone call, Officer? Can’t I at least make one phone call?”
Chapter 2
I was shoved into the back of the NYPD police car and taken down to headquarters on Twenty-First between Second and Third Avenue. The 13th Precinct, to be precise! I was aggressively pulled up the steps into a dark and dingy room with just a table and two metal chairs, and an old-fashioned pull chain single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Opening my big fat mouth was not going to help anything! I learned my lesson the last time. I did not make a peep.
Then the questioning started. The officer’s badge read, “Detective Jose Lopez.” He had dark hair and was five feet eight. There were no introductions.
“Dawson, what the hell were you doing down in SoHo?” Lopez asked.
“Officer, aren’t I entitled to one phone call?”
“Answer my question,” he snapped.
“No, sir, with all due respect, this is what got me in trouble the last time. I am entitled to one phone call.”
“Okay, Dawson, have it your way. You have one phone call and only one phone call! That’s all you get.” Lopez seemed more frustrated than angry as he pointed to the old-style phone on the table and left the room.
And then I thought to myself, “Just one phone call.” I did not have my cell phone anymore. Just the old dial phone that rested on the table. Kind of a throwback to yesteryear. I didn’t even know these old things still existed. The officer was kind enough to walk out the door and give me what seemed like privacy. But for all I knew, this dismal room was bugged.
“Just one phone call,” I said again to myself. And whom did I call? It was like a reflex. I didn’t even think about it. It was instinctual. Did I call my fiancée attorney, who by now must be perplexed why I never showed up near Grand Street? She must be even more perplexed that I didn’t even give her a call! No, I didn’t call her. I phoned Shaw. He was always my point person in life. My savior. And then I remembered what he always told me:
“You don’t need an attorney, you don’t need a tax accountant, and you don’t need a financial advisor. All you need is me!”
I don’t know why I didn’t just call my damn fiancée, my wife-to-be, my soul mate, Amy Winter! She must be trying to reach me. If I’d had my iPhone, I would see a half dozen texts and voicemails on it. But no, I did
n’t call her!
No, I called Shaw, Alexiev Shaw!
About the Author
Dr. Todd J. Cohen is a renowned scientist, inventor, and cardiologist. He is an avid writer and editor, and has published many articles in medical journals including Circulation, JAMA, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He directed two of the busiest electrophysiology programs on Long Island over two-and-a-half decades, and currently serves as the Chief of Cardiology and Director of Medical Device Innovation at the NYITCOM. He is the Founder and Director of the Long Island Heart Rhythm Center located in Old Westbury, New York on the NYITCOM campus. He is an attending physician within the Catholic Health System on Long Island, and in the Mount Sinai Health System in Manhattan. He is also known for his Johns Hopkins Press 2010 Best Health Book entitled “A Patient’s Guide to Heart Rhythm Problems,” his book “Practical Electrophysiology,” currently in its third edition, as well as his many cardiac inventions including one featured in this book in which CPR is performed using a handheld toilet plunger (“active compression-decompression CPR”). He has a passion for art and has served on the Board of Trustees (and currently Chairs the Art and Exhibition Committee) at the Nassau County Museum of Art, in Roslyn, New York.