Эд Горман - Fools Rush In

“Pull over to the curb.”

“What for?”

“Pull over to the curb.”

“You bastard. Nobody pulls a gun on me.”

“I just did. Now pull over to the curb.”

I could see he was considering just flooring the Valiant and peeling away. But then he had to gauge how crazy I might be. You never know with people who pull guns.

He pulled over to the curb.

“Now turn off the engine and step out of the car.”

“You know, a cop could drive by here anytime, asshole, and your ass would be grass.”

“Turn off the engine and step out of the car.”

“You’re gonna regret this.”

“Not as much as you are.” But he finally turned off the engine. I opened the door for him. He stepped out.

Then I plucked his car keys from his hand.

And that was when I shot him right in the face. It was my mood, I guess. I didn’t even worry about the consequences. I felt my life was at an end and nothing mattered.

“You bastard,” he said.

He looked pretty pathetic there in his tight black suit with the pegged trousers and gold tie bar and porkpie hat, a denizen of a Chicago twist club if I’d ever seen one. And all that water running down his face.

“A squirt gun?”

“Yeah, I had a gunsmith modify a squirt gun so it’d look like the real thing.” I nodded to the DQ down the street. “Let’s go.”

“You know, they keep introducing all these new flavors and cones and malts and stuff. But if you ask me, you can’t beat your basic chocolate sundae. How’s your cone?”

“How’s my cone? This is how my cone is.”

We were sitting on a bench on the far side of the DQ so we could call each other foul names without offending all the moms and kids lined up for treats at the counters.

He took his cone and threw it hard against the blacktop parking lot. “That’s how my cone is. Now give me back my car keys.”

“You don’t want me to squirt you again, do you?” I was aggravating the hell out of him and enjoying myself. Life was good again. I would find the Right Woman after all.

I pulled my wallet out and showed him my two pieces of identification. One was private investigator. The other was court investigator.

“The last one’s the one you have to worry about. I have the power to arrest you.” I decided not to point out that every other American citizen has the same right. “So let’s cut the bullshit and you tell me who you are and what you were doing out at Neville’s cabin the other night.”

“And if I don’t?”

“And if you don’t, I take you right to jail.”

“For what?”

“For being at a murder scene and not reporting it.”

And that was when one of Cliffie’s finest pulled up next to where our cars had been pulled in, not with any great talent for careful parking, to the curb.

The car had the red lights flashing but no siren.

“Get over here, McCain. You’re getting a ticket.” He was a young guy named O’Brien and he was ticket-happy.

I made the mistake of turning to O’Brien to explain to him that I was working on a case for the judge when the man next to me damn near vaulted up from the bench and started running away.

“I’ll be back!” I shouted to O’Brien.

And O’Brien shouted: “Where the hell you think you’re going?”

There were three of us — Mr. Twist, me, and O’Brien, running across the parking lot toward the busy avenue that ran adjacent to the DQ.

And for a block, it was really a race. None of us was in danger of becoming a track star. None of us was in danger of becoming graceful. None of us was in danger of catching the others.

The sidewalk we were racing down was no beauty. A lot of cracks, a lot of places where the concrete had stove in to create jagged points.

So we stumbled a lot. And shouted curses at the other guys because somehow the stumbling was their fault.

We attracted our share of attention from the traffic streaming by at 40 mph. There was something about three grown men in pursuit of each other. And even more, there was something about a cop in uniform waving his gun in the air and shouting “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

You don’t get this kind of realistic TV on Dragnet, that’s for sure.

When it happened, it was over so quickly I had to wonder if what I’d just witnessed had actually taken place.

Mr. Twist had jumped from the sidewalk to the avenue and attempted to race across the street.

Insane on his part.

Cars going by fast enough and close enough that they were starting to resemble those streaming photographs where everything is a streaking blur.

And then he just leapt into the traffic stream.

But a streamlined, new two-tone blue Oldsmobile slowed him down instantly by hitting him at 40 mph or so and then punting him to the opposite curb, where he landed — from what I could see — next to a fire hydrant.

He’d screamed while still in midair. Or at least I thought I’d heard him scream. Maybe it was screeching tires, all the drivers trying to halt speeding cars.

The white-haired man in the Olds was out of his car and running to the opposite curb before O’Brien and I, who now stood side by side, could even start into the street.

O’Brien started using his traffic whistle and, holding his left arm up to stop traffic completely, gave us a chance to get to the mystery man.

I’ve never had any interest in seeing human beings ripped apart or smashed up inside and turned into a big blood-leaking chunk of human hamburger. A lot of people seem to regard a glimpse of stuff like this as a treat.

So I wasn’t all that hot on seeing what was left of our feckless friend who tried to outmaneuver tons of speeding Detroit iron.

But he didn’t look that bad.

His right arm was obviously broken. He was bleeding through a busted nose and ripped-up lips. And his left foot had somehow lost its shoe. But no human hamburger.

“Take over. I’ll call for an ambulance.” O’Brien started running back to his car.

“Stay back.”

The crowd was small for now. Maybe fifteen people from cars and the DQ. In a few minutes it would look like a movie opening.

Comments:

“Is he dead?”

“He looks dead.”

“Hell, he isn’t dead.”

“Oh, yeah, what’re you, a doctor now?”

I knelt next to him. His eyes flickered open a few times, but despite the moans, I wasn’t sure he was conscious.

I checked his wrist pulse and his neck pulse.

“How’s his pulse, mister?”

Might as well answer. “Pretty good. Better than I would’ve thought, in fact.”

O’Brien, breathless, sweaty, was back. “Ambulance on the way.” He haunched down next to me. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re sitting at the Dairy Queen talking to him and you don’t know?”

I didn’t want to discuss it with eavesdroppers around.

A siren worked its way from the hospital five blocks away, that sad scary sound. The nuns always had us say a prayer for the person in need whenever we heard a siren. Probably not all that bad an idea.

Two more uniformed cops.

“Let’s go back to our cars,” I said to O’Brien. I wasn’t going to tell him much, just enough to explain why I didn’t know the injured man’s name.

By the time we got back to the DQ, he seemed to be satisfied that this was all the result of some guy following me around in the white Valiant for reasons I didn’t understand.

He said, when we came into the stark, bug-swarmed fluorescent light of the DQ, “Think I’ll have a cone. You want one?”

“Nah. Got an appointment I need to keep.”

“Guess I won’t give you a ticket, after all.”

“Appreciate it.”

And then I was gone.