Steve Martini - The Arraignment

I claw my way out from under the bench and kneel, peering over the top of the balcony out toward the sea.

The ultralight wings out over the surf, climbing for altitude. The gunman looks back, craning his neck, trying to get a glimpse around the flashing propeller and the tail section, to see if he got me. When he sees my head above the balcony, he slaps the pilot on the shoulder, frantically motioning for him to come around again.

I feel something warm dripping on my shoulder. I reach up, and there is blood dripping from by earlobe, where I’ve been nicked.

I watch the small plane. The gunman wants him to turn around. The pilot can’t, gesturing with his hands toward the other ultralight flying across his path, heading up the coast trailing the sign:

SENOR FROG — FREE T — SHIRT WITH DINNER.

The gunman, his arms waving, gestures in frustration in the jump seat. The pilot powers down. I can hear the whining engine drop to a purr, as he gives the other plane plenty of room to pass.

They clear the trailing end of the sign, and he throttles up, dips his nose, and lowers a wing for speed in the turn. I can see the pilot clearly now, looking this way, trying to get a quick fix on me.

I stand so he can see me.

The gunman points, using his arm, flexing it at the elbow, back and forth, directing the course of attack.

As soon as I see this, I move laterally across the plaza, running north along the balcony over the beach. I keep my eye on the plane until I reach the spot. Then I stop and turn toward him.

Like a game of dodgeball, the pilot has to guess which way I’ll go. He is focused, eyes riveted on me. He adjusts his course a little to the left, lowers the nose for more speed, closing fast now, hunched over the stick, both hands and feet on the controls.

He is focused on me and does not see the cable just a few yards away, tethering the parasailer to the tow boat. The force of the impact throws him forward with enough force that I can see the tubular frame supporting the wing over his head actually bend. The left wing crumbles like brittle paper, fabric tearing as the fiber frame twists around the cable.

A good three hundred feet above them, the rider in the parachute gets an unexpected thrill, being jerked and dragged thirty or forty feet through the air by the impact.

The driver of the tow boat sees what’s happened and cuts the engine, his bow dropping down into the water.

I watch as the ultralight spins out of control, its motor now racing. The propeller hits something, and I flinch with the impact as the plane comes apart in the air.

What is left of the wing separates. The frame, its engine, and passengers, drop like an anvil, plummeting into the water just beyond the surf.

Pieces of the wing and tail section trail after it as they float and tumble like leaves. They splash one after the other into the sea.

The parasailer glides down, settling smoothly into the water, the tow boat swinging around to pick him up.

When I look back, everything from the plane is gone except a sheen on the surface as it rides the undulating deep blue just beyond the waves.

My body shaking, hands trembling, I turn and look toward the hotel where Harry is still lying motionless under the cabana.

Within minutes after arriving, the paramedics have Harry stabilized, an I.V. in his arm, bandages around his head, and an oxygen mask over his face.

With cops crawling all over the hotel, some of them with guns drawn, the medics carry Harry up the stairs and wheel him on a gurney through the lobby. It is crowded with police and a few people who have wandered in off the street to see what has happened.

I look for Julio’s security man. I don’t see him. No sign of Julio or Herman.

I consider using the house phone and calling Adam in his room. But the gurney is moving too fast. I want to be with Harry at the hospital in case something happens.

Outside, they collapse the gurney and roll Harry into the back of the ambulance. I pile in behind the attendant, and as soon as the door closes, we roll down the driveway leading to the boulevard out in front. Another crowd has gathered here, but two traffic cops are holding them back. They have cordoned off the driveway and move some traffic cones to let us by.

The paramedic tells me that the hospital is not far, a few miles.

Everything is a blur as I notice the fingers of Harry’s left hand move, then his right arm. He opens his eyes, blinks, searches the ceiling of the ambulance, then sees me.

“You’re going to be all right. Just stay still. We’re almost to the hospital,” I tell him.

He smiles, tries to say something, but he can’t with the mask over his nose and mouth.

He nods, but I don’t know if he believes me.

Four minutes later, they roll Harry out of the ambulance and into the E.R. A nurse in scrubs with a paper mask down around her chin screens me, peeling me from the side of the gurney as we enter the emergency entrance. She gets some basic information, then tells me to go to the lobby, to the admitting desk. The swinging door closes in my face.

The lobby is crowded. People sprawled in chairs, some of them looking as if they’ve been here all night. Kids are playing, crawling on the floor.

I wait in line twenty minutes, then fill out forms and get in line again. It takes another half hour, leaning against the counter and answering questions on medical insurance, the health policy from the firm. I give them a business credit card to guarantee payment. This from the soggy wallet in my hip pocket. Harry’s watered-down blood all over the front of my shirt.

When I’m done, I spend another forty minutes standing and pacing, occasionally looking at my watch. I have called the hotel twice. Nobody answers at the desk. Mass confusion.

All the chairs in the waiting room are taken. People looking at me, blood on the shoulder of my shirt from the nick on my ear. I look at my watch again, wonder what’s taking so long, knowing that with each passing minute the chance of bad news increases.

Then a voice. “Anybody here with Mr. Hinds?”

I turn and see a young Hispanic man in green operating scrubs standing by the counter.

“I am.”

He has one of those faces you can’t read, the only apparent emotion being fatigue.

“I’m Doctor Ruiz.” He looks at my bloody shirt. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. How is he?”

“Mr. Hinds is resting comfortably. We did an X ray looking for fractures, bullet fragments, chips of bone from the skull in the brain. We didn’t find anything. It appears that the bullet only grazed the skull.”

“So, he’s going to be all right?”

“He has lost a lot of blood. It took a number of stitches to close the scalp. I cannot say for sure. We will have to watch him for the next twenty-four hours, to make sure there is no swelling of the brain. We’re going to hold him at least overnight. We’ll see how he is in the morning.”

“Can I see him?”

“For a moment. He needs to rest. Right now he is sedated for pain. He’s going to have quite a headache when the meds wear off.” He tilts his head to my right and looks at my ear. “Do you know you have been wounded?”

Absently I reach up. Touch it. “Yeah. It’s nothing.”

“If you like, I could have one of the nurses clean it.”

“It’s all right. I can take care of it when I get back to the hotel.”

He leads me down a hall and through a set of double doors to one of the emergency trauma rooms. The door is open. Harry is lying on a gurney in the center of the room, a blanket covering his body, his head bandaged.

The doctor tells me they will be moving him to a room upstairs in a few minutes. I thank him and he heads to his next patient.