Suddenly a wave of desperation swept over him. It was obvious he was up against something bigger than he could possibly handle. His old world with the daily headaches no longer seemed so terrible. He would gladly put up with a little boring routine if he could go to bed at night with Denise in his arms. He wasn't a religious person, but he found himself trying to strike a bargain with God: if He would rescue him from this nightmare, Martin would never complain about his life again.
He looked down at the paper and realized that his eyes had filled with tears. Why would the police be after him, of all people? It didn't make sense.
He went back to the phone and tried again to reach Denise, but she wasn't answering her page. In desperation he called the GYN clinic and spoke to the receptionist.
"Has Denise Sanger had her appointment yet?"
"Not yet," said the receptionist. "We expect her any minute."
Martin thought quickly before he spoke. "This is Doctor Philips. When she arrives tell her that I canceled the appointment and that she should see me."
"I'll tell her," said the receptionist and Martin sensed she was genuinely bewildered.
Martin walked back to the small park and sat down. He found himself incapable of any sensible decision. For a man who believed in order and authority, not to be able to contact the police after being shot at seemed the height of irrationality.
The afternoon passed in fitful sleep and wakeful confusion. His lack of decision became a decision in itself. Rush hour started and reached its crescendo. Then the crowds began to dissipate and Martin went back to the coffee shop for dinner. It was a little after six.
He ordered a meatloaf plate and tried paging Denise while it was being prepared. Still she didn't pick up. When he was through he decided to try her apartment, wondering if the police knew enough about him to stake her out.
She picked up the phone on the first ring.
"Martin?" her voice was desperate.
"Yes, it's me."
"Thank God! Where are you?"
Martin ignored the question and said, "Where have you been? I've been paging you all day."
"I haven't been feeling well. I stayed at home."
"You didn't let the page operator at the hospital know."
"I know I…" suddenly Sanger's voice changed. "Don't come…" she yelled.
Her voice was choked off and Philips could hear a muffled struggle. His heart jumped in his throat. "Denise!" he shouted. Everyone in the coffee shop froze; all heads turned in Philips' direction.
"Philips, this is Sansone." The agent had picked up the phone. Martin could still hear Denise trying to shout in the background. "Just a minute, Philips," said Sansone. Then turning away from the phone he said, "Get her out of here and keep her quiet." Coming back on the line Sansone said, "Listen, Philips…"
"What the hell is going on, Sansone," cried Philips. "What are you doing to Denise?"
"Calm down, Philips. The girl is fine. We're here to protect her. What happened to you last night at the Cloisters?"
"What happened to me? Are you crazy? You people wanted to blow me away."
"That's ridiculous, Philips. We knew it wasn't you in the courtyard. We thought they'd already caught you."
"Who's they?" asked the bewildered Philips.
"Philips! I can't talk about these things over the phone."
"Just tell me what the fuck's going on!"
The people in the coffee shop were still motionless. They were New Yorkers and accustomed to all sorts of strange happenings, but not in their local coffee shop.
Sansone was cool and detached. "Sorry, Philips. You have to come here, and you have to come now. Being out on your own you are simply complicating our problem. And you already know there are a number of innocent lives at stake."
"Two hours," yelled Philips. "I'm two hours away from the city."
"All right, two hours, but not a second longer."
There was a final click and the line was dead.
Philips panicked. In one second his indecision was swept away. He threw down a five-dollar bill and ran out on the street toward the Eighth Avenue subway.
He was going to the Medical Center. He didn't know what he was going to do once he got there but he was going to the hospital. He had two hours and he had to have some answers. There was a chance Sansone was telling the truth. Maybe they did think that he'd been taken by some unknown force. But Philips wasn't sure and the uncertainty terrified him. His intuition told him that Denise was now in jeopardy.
The uptown train had standing-room only, even though the rush hour peak was over, but the ride was good for Philips. It tempered his panic and allowed him time to use his essential intelligence. By the time he got off he knew how he was going to get inside the medical center and what he was going to do when he did.
Martin followed the crowd off the train to the street, and headed for his first destination: a liquor store. The clerk took one look at Martin's disheveled appearance, bounded from behind his register and tried to hustle Philips out. He relented when Martin held up his money.
It took him just thirty seconds to pick out and pay for a pint of whiskey. Turning off Broadway onto a side street, Martin found a small alley filled with trash barrels. There he removed the top to the whiskey, took a good slug and gargled. He swallowed a small amount but spat most out onto the ground. Using the whiskey like cologne he anointed his face and neck, then slid the half-empty bottle back into his coat pocket. Stumbling past most of the trash barrels, Philips picked one toward the back. It was filled with sand probably used for the sidewalk in the winter. He dug a shallow hole and buried his wallet, putting the rest of his cash into the same pocket as the whiskey.
His next stop was a small but busy grocery store. People gave him a wide berth as he entered. It was quite crowded and Philips had to push past some customers to find an area with a clear line of sight to the checkout registers.
"Ahhh," screamed Philips as he choked and stumbled to the floor taking a display of canned beans on special with him. He writhed as if in pain as the beans rolled in every direction. When a shopper bent down to ask if he was allright, Martin rasped, "Pain. My heart!"
The ambulance arrived in moments. Martin had an oxygen mask strapped to his face and a rhythm EKG connected to his chest during the short drive to Hobson University Medical Center. His essentially normal EKG had already been preliminarily analyzed by radio and it had been determined that no cardiac drugs were needed.
As the attendants pushed him into the ER Martin glimpsed several policemen standing on the platform, but they didn't give him so much as a glance. He was carried down to one of the main ER rooms and transferred to a bed. One of the nurses searched his pockets for identification while the resident took another EKG. Since the tracing was normal, the cardiac team began to disperse, leaving the intern to take over.
"How's the pain, partner?" he asked, bending over Philips.
"I need some Maalox," Martin growled. "Sometimes when I drink cheap stuff I need Maalox."
"Sounds good to me," said the doctor.
Philips was given Maalox by a hardened thirty-five-year-old nurse who did everything but slap him for the pitiful shape he was in. She took a short history and Martin gave his name as Harvey Hopkins. It'd been his roommate in college. The nurse then said they'd give him a chance to relax for a few minutes to see if his chest pain came back. She pulled the curtain around his bed.
Philips waited for several minutes, then he climbed off the end of the bed. On an ER cart against the wall he found a prep razor and a small bar of soap used to clean wounds. He also got several towels, and a surgical cap and mask. So armed he peeked out of the curtains.