The policeman looked at Monica. “Do you feel as if you might have been pushed?”
“Yes. Yes, I do, but it couldn’t have been deliberate.”
“We don’t know that,” the policeman said, soberly. “There are mentally ill people who shove people in front of trains or buses. You may have just come in contact with one of them.”
“Then I guess I’m very lucky to be here.” I want to get home, Monica thought. But it was another fifteen minutes, after telling the cop she was a doctor and could take care of her scrapes, then giving her name, address, and phone number for the police records, before she was able to get into a waiting cab and escape. Her crushed shoulder bag beside her, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
In an instant, she was reliving the sharp pain in her arm and leg as she slammed onto the pavement, then the acrid smell of the bus as it bore down on her. She tried to calm herself but the cabdriver had seen the commotion and wanted to talk. Trying to keep from trembling, she answered in monosyllables to his sympathetic diatribe that there ought to be a way to make sure crazies took their meds regularly and didn’t end up going off half-cocked and hurting innocent people.
It was when she was finally in her apartment, with the door closed and locked, that the full impact of having come so close to death hit her. Maybe I should have gone to the hospital, she thought. I don’t have a single thing in the medicine chest to calm me down. It was then, with the blood now crusted on her hand and leg, that she realized she had forgotten that Ryan Jenner was coming for the Michael O’Keefe file.
I have his home phone, she thought. He gave it to me the other night. I’ll call and apologize. Will I tell him what happened? Yes, I will. If he offers to come over I’ll take him up on it. I could use some company.
I could use Ryan’s company, she told herself.
Okay, admit it, she thought.
You’re attracted to him, big-time.
His apartment and cell phone numbers were now in the small address book she always carried in her shoulder bag. Wincing at the sight of her crushed compact and sunglasses, she fumbled for the book. Still sitting at the table with her coat not yet off, she dialed Jenner’s apartment number, the first one she had listed. But when a woman answered and said that Ryan was changing his clothes, Monica left the message that she would send the file to him in the morning.
She had just replaced the receiver when the phone rang. It was Scott Alterman. “Monica, I was listening to the radio and heard that you were almost run over by a bus, that someone pushed you?” She was surprised that reporters had released her name, and wondered how many friends and colleagues had also heard the report.
Scott’s voice was shocked and concerned, and Monica found it comforting. It brought back the memory of how kind Scott had been to her father when he was in the nursing home, and that he had been the one to phone her with the news that her father had passed away.
“I just can’t believe that it’s true,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I mean that I was pushed, that it wasn’t an accident.”
“Monica, you sound pretty shaken up. Are you alone now?”
“Yes.”
“I could be there in ten minutes. Will you let me come?”
Suddenly feeling her throat tighten and tears welling in her eyes, Monica said, “That would be nice. I could really use some company right now.”
38
Everything had been going so well. Sammy Barber had collected the money from Dougie-the-Dope Langdon, driven to the storage building in Long Island City, and stashed all those beautiful hundred-dollar bills in his safe in the space he rented there. Then, feeling on top of the world, at five thirty he had called Monica Farrell’s office, giving his name as Dr. Curtain in honor of a guy who had been his jail cell mate while he was awaiting trial. The secretary had told him that Dr. Farrell had canceled all her appointments because of an emergency at the hospital.
He had the money. He was set for life. He was feeling good about life, in fact. Sammy was convinced that it was his lucky day and he wanted to get the job done. That was why he had rushed over to the hospital and found a parking spot across from the main entrance, the one the doctor had used the couple of times he’d tracked her before. He had changed his mind and decided he would try to push her in front of a bus.
He waited for about an hour and a half until he spotted Farrell coming down the steps. There were two cabs passing, but she ignored them and turned right toward Fourteenth Street.
Ten to one she’s gonna walk back to her office, Sammy thought as he reached on the passenger seat for his gloves and dark glasses. He slipped them on, got out of the car, and began to follow her from a distance of about a quarter of a block. She wasn’t walking fast, at least not as fast as she had last week when he had trailed her. There were a lot of people on the street tonight, and that was good, too.
At Union Square he saw his chance. The light was turning red but people were still scurrying across the street trying to beat the oncoming traffic. A bus was charging across Fourteenth Street heading for the bus stop. Farrell was at the edge of the curb.
In an instant Sammy was behind her and, with the bus only a few feet away, gave her a shove then watched in disbelief as she somehow managed to roll out from under the tires as, brakes screeching, the bus skidded in a useless attempt to stop. He knew the old lady standing next to him had seen him push Farrell and, trying not to panic, Sammy ducked his head as he hurried past her and headed downtown.
At the end of three blocks, he turned right and took off his gloves and dark glasses and pushed back the hood of his sweat jacket. Trying to look casual, he walked at a normal pace back toward his car. But when he got to where he could see it, he stared unbelieving at the sight of it, wheels clamped, being hoisted onto a police department carrier.
The meter. In his rush to follow Monica Farrell, he had forgotten to feed the meter. His impulse was to go and argue with the driver of the tow truck, but instead he forced himself to turn away and start walking home. I know they bring the cars to some dump near the West Side Highway, he thought, trying to stay focused. If that old lady talks to the cops about Farrell being pushed and describes me, I can’t show up in these clothes to claim the car…
He felt his forehead breaking into a sweat. If the old lady
Stay calm. Stay calm. Sammy walked downtown to his Lower East Side apartment, and changed into a shirt, tie, sports jacket, slacks, and polished shoes. From his prepaid cell phone he called information and, after being savagely irritated by the computer voice droning, “I’ll pass you on to an operator,” obtained the number he needed.
A bored voice told him to be sure to have his license, insurance card, and registration and to bring cash in order to claim his automobile. Sammy gave his license number. “Is it there yet?”
“Yeah. It just came in.”
After twenty frustrating minutes in a cab crawling along the narrow streets of downtown Manhattan to West Thirty-eighth Street, Sammy was presenting his license to the clerk at the pound. “The insurance and registration are in the glove compartment,” he said, trying to sound friendly. “I was visiting a friend in the hospital and forgot about the meter.”
Should he have said that? Was the clerk looking at him as if he knew he was lying? Sammy was pretty sure the young cop was giving him a steely-eyed once-over. But maybe I’m just nervous, he thought, trying to comfort himself as he walked to his car to get the insurance card and registration. Finally he completed the paperwork, paid the fine, and was able to go.
He had driven barely a block before his cell phone rang. It was Doug Langdon. “Well, you botched that one,”
