David Mitchell? David and Prozac was it possible?
My eyes were riveted to the top of the great staircase as David, snapping his fingers as though to attract a wandering dog, moved into sight, flooded in the full light of the moon.
“Hey,” he called out again.
“Anybody there? Anybody see a Weimaraner loose around here?”
It was impossible to know whether he could see Goldman from his angle, but I was certain that he wouldn’t be able to tell that I was seated below her on the ground. She didn’t speak. I assumed that she hadn’t recognized him, but she had done so much research about me that I couldn’t be sure she hadn’t checked my building and neighbors as well.
“Yes!” I screamed out at the top of my lungs, and she swung around to stick the tip of her knife against the back of my neck, without uttering a sound.
David started down toward us at a trot.
“Great,” he was enthusing, ‘which way did you see her go?“ He was still acting as though he were simply looking for a lost dog, so it was impossible to tell if he had anyone else with him, or if he had identified the sound of my voice.
He was coming at us too quickly now, and I feared that Goldman wouldn’t let him intrude on our session without penalty. I could feel her body leaning over, from behind me, and although she was out of my range of vision, I was afraid she was going to make a move to reach for her holster.
“David!” I screamed out, ‘she’s got a gun.“
I lurched forward by my own motion and pulled one hand out of the rope. But it was my left hand, and as I broke away from Goldman’s grasp, I was useless to do anything to disarm her with it. My right one was still entangled in the cord. As she dropped the knife to the ground and reached for her pistol, four or five dark figures ran down the steep incline and the staircase heading for us, as David dropped to his knees in place.
I could hear Chapman’s voice yelling orders from somewhere in this small charging force. First at me, to stay flat, and then at the others to move in slowly, and next at Ellen to throw down her gun.
A shot rang out from just inches above my right ear and I looked for a place to shelter myself without success. I had no idea who Goldman was aiming at, but if she chose to focus her attention on me again, there was no way she could miss.
Someone on Mike’s team had apparently been waiting for Goldman to shoot first, and fired back in our direction.
I flattened myself on the ground, my face crushed against a sharp rock my left arm out to the side and my right one pinned beneath me.
Chapman shouted at her once more: “Drop it!”
Goldman fired again and again. I ached so badly from every bloodied joint and bruised skin surface that I wasn’t sure I would know if a bullet struck me or not.
Seconds later, I heard footsteps approaching Goldman from the rear a crunching on the dry leaves as someone ran down the slope from the north. She must have heard the sound as well, since she swung herself around to point her pistol in the direction of the man coming in behind her.
But he got a shot off first, and she screamed as she dropped backward, her body falling across my own.
The gun was still in Goldman’s hand as she lay writhing in pain, her body cushioned against mine. I couldn’t tell where she had been hit, but her legs were still twitching and kicking like a frog on a dissection table in a high school biology class.
I didn’t know whether to try to wrest the weapon from her grip, but within moments the cops were on her, and I was relieved of that decision.
I could see, from my limited angle of vision, that the shooter was the first to get to us, landing on her right arm with his foot and bending down to take the small pistol away from her as he pressed her elbow against the rocks with his heavy boot. I didn’t know who the guy was or whether I would ever lay eyes on him again, but I was certain I would be in love with him for the rest of my life.
Goldman was coughing and crying at once, and in an instant we were surrounded by six or seven other men, Chapman and Mitchell among them. They were all talking over each other, as two of them lifted her off my body and David leaned in to help me raise myself up from my awkward position on the ground.
“Where’s she hit?” I heard someone ask, while Mike got to his knees in front of my face, questioning me at the same time “Are you shot?”
I rolled onto my back, biting the corner of my lip to prevent myself from crying, and shook my head in the negative.
“Looks like the gut,” was someone’s answer to the question about Goldman, and the men carrying her between them started up the pathway to the street. Another guy was on a walkie-talkie ordering two ambulances stat to meet us at the pavement above the Bethesda Terrace.
David was on one side of me, asking where I was injured and checking my vital signs. He pressed my shoulder back against the ground as I tried to sit up, cradling my head in place with his sweater and stroking my hair to calm me, telling me not to try to talk yet. Chapman was on my other flank, working his cell phone, telling someone probably his boss where we were and what had gone down. He reached for my right hand, inspecting the abrasions and rope burns that covered its surface, and I grabbed him back, squeezing as hard as I could and holding on to him, because it was so much easier than saying anything aloud.
“Just rest for a few minutes,” David urged me.
“Listen to your doctor, Coop. We’ll explain it all later,” Chapman said, laying the phone on the ground and trying to muster up something that resembled a smile.
I closed my eyes, keeping hold of Mike’s hand and attempting to make myself breathe more evenly. The noise and commotion of people running up and down the incline continued to swirl around me, and I relished the sound of sirens coming closer and closer to the roadway above.
Within minutes, two EMS workers came pounding down the staircase, carrying a stretcher which they placed beside me on the ground.
“Which one we got here, the perp or the victim?” one asked.
“You got the victim,” Mike said, rising to his feet and flashing his badge at the pair.
“She’s a prosecutor,” he went on, summarizing the story in a couple of sentences.
“V.I.P treatment or else she’s likely to drop a dime on you.”
My mouth curled up in a grin as he used police lingo for ratting someone out.
“I’m a physician,” David added, “I’d like to ride with you.
She’s my friend.“ He began to describe his observations of my condition as they gently lifted me onto the canvas.
“I don’t need this, really. I can walk,” were my first words as they carried me toward the staircase.
“Relax, blondie. You’re going first class. You’re my case now I make all the decisions,” Chapman replied.
It wasn’t exactly Notorious, but I was every bit as grateful as Ingrid Bergman must have felt as my saviors swept me up the grand steps toward the waiting ambulance. It was almost 5 A.M. by the time I was comfortably settled into a nightgown and robe, sipping some warm, exotic combination of herbs that was prepared for me by Joan Stafford’s Asian housekeeper, after David had refused my request for a double Dewar’s. He had called Joan from the Emergency Room of New York Hospital, when I admitted that the only way I could get any sleep during the next few days was in the care of a friend I could trust.
Mike had known the triage nurse in the ER from years of working the same midnight shifts. She had taken me into an examining room after the domestic stabbing and before the alcoholic who cracked her elbow tripping off a curb. By the time the resident came into the cubic leto inspect me, the nurse had wiped all my scrapes with alcohol, determined that the wound on my thigh was too shallow to need stitches, and ordered that a set of x-rays be taken to make sure the injuries to my ankle were not serious. The doctor finished the once-over and prescribed some medication for pain and sleep.
Ellen Goldman had been taken to a hospital on the West Side. Mike was smart enough not to tell me which one, although I overheard him phoning the captain to say that her condition was critical but stable when she got out of surgery shortly after four, about the same hour of the morning I was released from the Emergency Room.
Mike and David drove me to Joan’s apartment, where she had dressed to meet us in the lobby.
