Although I’d found a spot near the corner, no more than forty paces from Rip’s front door, I managed to get soaked to my skin. Inside, the place was even more crowded than I expected, but it didn’t take me fifteen seconds to spot Melendez at the corner of the bar, not far from where we’d met the last time. The broad smile that had graced her lovely face that last time was gone. Even after making eye contact, her demeanor remained much the same as it had been the first time I saw her in the vestibule of the 60th Precinct house. She wore her scowling Don’t fuck with me! face. I didn’t have to look more than five feet to her left to see why. Detective John Murphy, her partner, was there, staring at me like a plate of cold leftovers.
And then, in the tangle of damp bodies to Murphy’s right, I caught a glimpse of something else, something familiar. It wasn’t so much a face as a part of a profile in silhouette. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it registered. For a reason still unknown to me, I found myself looking back-not at Melendez, but at Murphy. He had followed my gaze and the silhouette had registered with him as well. He turned his eyes my way and in them there seemed to be a mix of confusion and worry. Something was wrong. I peeked over to Carmella. She had been watching the exchange of glances. Now she, too, seemed worried and took a step toward me.
Murphy’s eyes got big with panic and he shouted something at Melendez. His mouth worked in super-slow motion, his gaunt face contorted by the movement of his lips; it was impossible to make out his scream above the music. Some wiseass had played “Dominick the Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey)” and gotten the bartender to turn it up. The crowd started clapping and singing along with Lou Monte:
A pair of shoes for Louie
And a dress for Josephine
The labels on the inside says
They’re made in Brook-a-lyn
With the mention of Brooklyn, everyone cheered. Murphy began pushing his way to his partner.
That’s when the shooting started. I caught the first flash out of the corner of my eye, felt the burn on my right cheek, heard the explosion. When the shots come from over your right shoulder, handgun fire is fucking loud. It doesn’t sound like firecrackers or a car backfiring in the street. Murphy got hit flush in the neck, spraying blood and panic everywhere as he collapsed. Carmella was going for her piece when the second shot whizzed by me. The frightened girl next to Melendez ran right into the path of the bullet. She fell into the crowd. A third shot. This one hit Melendez, spinning her sideways against the bar, and she crumpled.
I tried to run to her, but the crush of bodies was too great. I reached under my jacket for my.38. As I did so, I saw an automatic, maybe a 9mm, sticking out of the mass of bodies from the spot where the silhouette had been. I didn’t wait around for the muzzle flash. I dropped. Now the shots came in a hurry, one blast almost catching up to the next catching up to the next, and one body, then another, fell on top of me. The lights went out, glass showering down. I crawled through a moving web of legs to where I thought Carmella would be. I called her name and felt a hand, sticky and wet, grab my forearm.
“Moe, it fucking hurts. Oh, Christ, Moe!”
I felt for her mouth and clamped my hand over it. “Can you crawl?”
Her head shook no against my hand.
“Can you climb on my back?”
This time her head shook yes. I laid flat on my stomach. She rolled on top of me and as I raised up to crawl, only one of her arms curled around me. I headed directly to the kitchen. Almost everyone was running in the other direction, toward the front door. Although there seemed to be a momentary cease-fire, the screaming and the chaos went on unabated. I wanted to check Carmella’s wound, but I was afraid to stop just yet. I pushed through the kitchen door with my head and shoulder. The galley was deserted, as near as I could tell.
“I’m gonna lay you down and then fireman-carry you. It’ll hurt like a bastard, but try not to scream, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“Where are you hit?”
“Right shoulder.”
“Okay, here we go. One, two. .”
I rolled her gently off my back onto the tile floor. Then I gathered her up and placed her over my shoulder. As I placed my hands under her armpits, her body writhed in pain. I’d been shot at but never shot, so I could only guess at her agony.
Shit, just thinking about the sound of my snapping knee ligaments made me nauseous. Making my way through the lightless kitchen, it occurred to me that the.38 had been in my hand this whole time. My knuckles were scraped and raw from crawling and from having been trampled on.
I kicked open the back door and waited. Nothing. I ran down the alleyway. Rip’s was close to the corner, so it was a short run back to my car. I laid Carmella on the front seat next to me and pulled away before the cops arrived. This had setup written all over it and I wasn’t in a cop-trusting mood at the moment. As I pulled away, I pressed a wad of glove box napkins against her wound to stanch the flow of blood.
“How’s Murphy? How’s Murphy? How’s. .” she kept repeating, her breathing growing shallower and faster. Her skin was almost colorless and clammy to the touch.
He’s fucking dead! “I don’t know. I sorta lost sight of him. Just keep quiet and calm.”
I pulled over by a public phone, removed the soaked napkins, and looked at the wound. It seemed small, but I knew that meant nothing. It’s what the bullet does after it enters that matters. I pushed her forward and saw the back of her blouse was also completely covered in
“Listen, Carmella, do you trust me?”
“I do.”
“I’m gonna get you some help, but I can’t take you to a hospital.”
“I understand.” She took rapid little gulps of air.
“Okay, good, I’m gonna make a call and then I’ll be right back. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
“I know you won’t. You always save me.”
Good thing she believed it. I sure as hell didn’t. For all I knew, I had just condemned her to death.
My brother-in-law, Ronnie, had been a trauma room surgeon at Kings County Hospital before he and my little sister moved to New Mexico a few years back. If there’s one thing you learn to deal with at Kings County it’s gunshot wounds. These days, he teaches at the university medical school and works at the trauma center. Suddenly I was feeling very grateful Miriam and Ronnie had decided to use the timing of our grand opening party to vacation in the city and show their kids where mommy and daddy had grown up.
“She’s sleeping now. The shot was a through and through. The wound is pretty clean, but I have no way of knowing exactly how much damage was done. I know it looks like she lost a lot of blood, but the slug didn’t hit a major artery. In any case, you should get her to a hospital as soon as you can,” Ronnie said, slipping the latex gloves off his hands.
“I don’t know how soon that will be.”
“Why not?”
“Because the cops will be all over it.”
“So. .”
“Like I told you on the phone, someone killed her partner tonight and tried to kill her, and I can’t trust the cops right now.”
“But-”
“Look, Ronnie, I have my fucking reasons and I don’t have time to explain.”
“Well, you can’t leave her in the fucking basement of a wine store, Moe!”
“Don’t you think I know that? But her life’s in danger. What if I bring her to a hospital on Long Island or Westches-”