Bert and Ernie, and a brick wall…
“ What are you two doing down here?” Tinkerton quickly turned and demanded to know. “I told you to get back to the clinic.”
“Well, uh,” I heard a man's voice and pulled my eyes away from the scalpel long enough to look. It was those two klutzy ambulance attendants, George and Ernie. They stood in the open door of the elevator dressed in their white uniforms. They looked at each other for support as if neither was sure what to do next or had the guts to do it.
“Is Mister Greene around?” George finally asked.
“Get of out of here!” Tinkerton ordered.
“No, don't!” I screamed. “You guys gotta help me. He's nuts; he's gonna kill me.”
There I was, strapped naked to an embalming table, with Tinkerton hovering over me with a bloody scalpel in his hand, and these two clowns couldn't make up their minds. “Come on, guys,” I begged them. “Look at him. You can't leave me down here. He's going to kill me.”
They took a few tentative steps into the room, still not sure, but it was a start. “We don't want no trouble over this, Mister Tinkerton.” Ernie tried his best to placate the lawyer. “But we need to talk to Mr. Greene.”
“No, no trouble.” George repeated as they stepped farther into the room and drew closer to me. Ernie nudged his partner. “Jeez, look at that guy, George. He's bleeding. This ain't right.”
“Out! Get out of here, now, both of you,” Tinkerton bellowed as he crossed around to the other side of the table, positioning himself between them and me.
“What are you doing to him, Mister Tinkerton?” Ernie pointed at the scalpel.
“He's fucking torturing me, you dork!” I screamed at them, my voice trembling. “What do you think he's doing? Now get me out of here.”
The two attendants exchanged quick, knowing glances, as if they were confirming something they had already decided. “If you don't mind, Mister Tinkerton, we're gonna take this guy to the hospital,” George said.
“Yep,” Ernie agreed, puffing out his chest. “That's what we're going to do, so we'd appreciate you stepping aside.”
“Yeah,” George added. “You got some problem with that, Mister Tinkerton, we can sort it out later. But we ain't leaving without that guy, not this time we ain't.”
Tinkerton glowered at them. “This is none of your business. Get out of here,” he said as he swung the blade back and forth and took a few menacing steps toward them.
Neither of the attendants had expected Tinkerton to come at them like that. The lawyer pointed the scalpel at Ernie and backed him against the next embalming table.
“Hey!” Ernie shouted as he stumbled. He raised his hands in defense, but the blade caught him across the palm of his left hand and sliced it open, sending blood flying. Ernie screamed in terror and grabbed his hand. He stared at it, wide-eyed and watched as blood ran down his arm and dripped on the tile floor. George tried to help. He pushed Tinkerton away, but he was off balance himself as Tinkerton lashed out with the scalpel again. In truth, I'm not sure the big lawyer even saw George standing there, but the scalpel didn't care about intent. With his long arms and tall, powerful frame, the backhanded stroke caught George across the throat.
“No!” I screamed, too late. George's eyes went as wide as ping-pong balls. He raised his hands to his neck and tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet gurgle as a raw, six-inch gash opened at the base of his throat and blood pumped down the front of his white uniform. He staggered, wobbling back and forth, and toppled backward onto the floor. Tinkerton stared down at him as he too suddenly realized what he had done.
Ernie cradled his bleeding hand to his chest and looked down at his pal. He was as big and more muscular than Tinkerton, but he was scared to death. Before the lawyer could turn on him with the scalpel a second time, Ernie swung his right fist around and caught Tinkerton with a looping right hook. The blow struck the lawyer flush on his temple and he went down hard. As he fell, Tinkerton's head struck the rounded corner of the embalming table with a hollow ”Clang.” He knocked the table back a good six inches, then slumped to the floor. His eyes rolled up in his head and he was out cold.
Ernie stood shaking, staring down at George and at Tinkerton lying next to each other. “Jee-zuz,” Ernie muttered as he turned white, blood still flowing down his right hand and arm. “Jee-zuz Christ!” Tinkerton wasn't moving but George wasn't moving either. He was lying very still in a widening pool of blood. “George…” Ernie called out to his partner, before he turned away and threw up on the floor.
“Ernie, get a grip, man. Help me up.” I struggled against the leather straps. “Come on, unbuckle these things for me,” I called to him, but he was in shock. He backed away, shaking and stumbling, cradling his bleeding hand as he headed back to the elevator.
“Ernie, please,” I called to him again. “You can't leave me down here.”
Finally, Ernie snapped out of it. He turned back and saw me. From his expression of shock and horror, perhaps that was the first time he realized I was there. He blinked, but he did come back to the embalming table and unbuckled the strap on my right arm. “My God,” he stammered. “He killed George. Just like that, he killed him. Why?”
I pulled my right arm free. “I don't know, but you and I are getting the hell out of here,” I said as I fumbled with the other buckles and freed my left arm and my legs. I rolled off the table onto the cold tile floor, legs unsteady, still stark naked.
Ernie stood watching me, pale and wooden. “You're bleeding to death. Come here,” I told him. He stepped gingerly over Tinkerton and the growing pool of blood around George as I reached into the equipment cabinet, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around his bleeding hand. “That ought to hold you until we can get you to the hospital, Ernie. Now stay right here while I get my clothes on.”
I grabbed a second towel and pressed it against my abdomen, but the scalpel cut didn't look all that serious. I turned my back on Ernie long enough to grab my clothes. As I pulled on my pants, Ernie stumbled past me, moaning and mumbling, “Hospital, got to go to the hospital,” then he headed for the freight elevator.
“Ernie, no! Wait there, man,” I called to him, but he stepped inside and the doors closed behind him. I hopped after him, pulling on my shoes and shirt, zipping up my pants, and grabbing my other stuff all at the same time, but it was too late. Ernie was gone.
I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He must have come in the ambulance, and I wasn't about to let him drive off and leave me behind. If Dannmeyer did get rid of my Bronco, that ambulance was the last stagecoach out of Dodge and I wasn't going to miss it. When I reached the first floor landing, Ernie was nowhere to be found, so I turned, ran for the rear service exit, and out the door to the loading dock. It was dark outside. The sky was lit with a thousand stars but there was only a thin, quarter moon to see by. The ambulance was still there though, engine running, headlights on, and the dome light burning bright inside the cab. After all those hours on that cold, stainless-steel table, the sticky early-summer night air made me feel like I'd been dipped in a vat of caramel, but I was happy to be outside, upright and alive.
I ran to the ambulance. Ernie was sitting behind the wheel with a vacant, dazed expression, trying unsuccessfully to close the driver's side door. “Ernie, stop!” I called out, but he wasn't listening. I ran around to the passenger side of the truck and jumped inside just as Ernie finally managed to slam the door shut and drop it into gear. The dashboard of the ambulance was cluttered with lights, two radios, a writing pad, and four banks of dials and switches. I looked over at Ernie and saw he was in no condition to walk and chew gum at the same time, much less drive anything as complicated as that big ambulance.
“Ernie, this isn't a good idea. How about letting me drive?” I pleaded with him. I reached for the key to turn the ignition off, but he shoved my hand away and hit the gas. “Ernie, come on,” I tried again as the ambulance speeded up and careened wildly around the parking lot. Ernie was a big man and his good hand had a white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel that he wasn't about to give it up. That was when I looked out through the front windshield and saw Dannmeyer's police cruiser pull into the driveway of the funeral home. In the harsh glare of the ambulance's headlights, I saw the sheriff behind the steering wheel. The dome light was still on inside the ambulance's cab and I could tell from his angry expression that he could see me too.
Dannmeyer immediately swung his car sideways and blocked the funeral home's only driveway exit. As dazed and dim-witted as Ernie was, he knew enough not to hit the cop car. He spun the steering wheel and took the ambulance in a long, wobbly loop around the outer edge of the parking lot. Dannmeyer get out of his car with an excited grin on his face. He pulled that ugly, black, nine-millimeter Glock from his holster, pulled back the slide, and took a casual off-hand shooting position at the side of his car. He pointed it at us and tracked the ambulance around the lot. When Ernie swung around again, Dannmeyer walked quickly to his right toward the funeral home for a better shot, deftly cutting off the arc, forcing Ernie to swing away again. Having marked our erratic orbit, Dannmeyer chose his ground next to the building and waited patiently for us to come back around one last time.
The ambulance's bright headlight beams cut across the front of the funeral home and caught the sheriff in their glare. He dropped into a professional, bent-kneed, two-handed crouch with the Glock extended out in front of him, but the bright headlights suddenly blinded him. He raised his off hand to screen his eyes from the glare, trying desperately to aim at the front of the ambulance as it bore down on him.
“Ernie, no!” I lunged across the seat and grabbed for the steering wheel again, but it was too late. Dannmeyer began shooting. I shot a forty-five automatic in the Army, but I had never had the pleasure of having a big-caliber handgun fired at me before. I ducked below the dash as three nine-millimeter slugs punched holes through the center of the windshield, ripping through the upholstery precisely where my chest had been only moments before and filling the front seat with shards of flying glass. With the ambulance's headlight beams in his eyes, Dannmeyer must have aimed where he thought I was, or where he thought I should be. Whatever, he missed, and that was when I knew that the good sheriff wasn't trying to stop the ambulance, he was trying to kill me.
As the distance closed and the ambulance bore down on him, Dannmeyer finally realized he was the one with the problem and turned his attention to the driver. “Ernie, get down!” I screamed, but it was too late. Three more nine-millimeter slugs shattered the windshield on the driver's side. At least two caught Ernie in the upper chest and punched him backward, bouncing him off the front seat. His body flexed stiff as a board. As it did, his leg straightened and pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor.
Dannmeyer didn't expect that. The ambulance's engine roared and the ex-Marine discovered he wasn't quite as quick as he once was. I caught a glimpse of him over the top of the hood as he squinted into the bright headlights and unloaded his last three rounds into the ambulance's front grill. Typical jarhead. He'd watched too many John Wayne movies and thought his gun and three ounces of lead could stop two tons of onrushing steel. They were too little and way too late.
The ambulance must have been going thirty miles an hour when it slammed into Dannmeyer with its front bumper and grill, crushing him like a bug against the side of the funeral home and caving in the wall. The rear end jumped off the ground and the side doors popped open. The ambulance hung there in mid-air as the bricks began to fall. The top half of the wall wobbled and then it collapsed onto the ambulance's hood, bringing part of the roof with it, burying the sheriff and the front half of the ambulance under a pile of brick and mortar. The last brick bounced off on the hood and other than the sputter and hiss of the radiator, there was nothing left but silence. The engine was dead. So was Dannmeyer. So was poor Ernie. There was no more shouting and no more gunshots, only a cloud of dust and the groan of twisted metal as the ambulance settled down and died.
The crash had pinned Ernie upright in the front seat behind the steering wheel and I found myself lying on the floor, wedged between the dashboard and the seat, covered with broken glass. Every inch of me ached. As my head cleared, I smelled raw gasoline and I knew I had to get out of the cab quickly. Straining, I pushed and crawled my way along the floor of the cab and out the side door until I fell out on the ground.
I rose to my feet and stumbled away, but my ribs and my lower back were screaming in pain. I hoped nothing was broken, but I didn't care. My mind focused on getting the hell out of there and back to Boston. These people were crazy. I had no further interest in Columbus or whole State of Ohio for that matter. I didn't care about Greene, Dannmeyer, or Tinkerton. All I wanted was to forget today, forget yesterday, and forget everything that happened after Gino Parini climbed into the front seat of my Bronco.
I turned my head and looked back at the funeral home. A fifteen-foot section of the sidewall had collapsed on top of the ambulance, bringing part of the roof down with it. I could even see into one of the chapels. It had been laid out for a funeral in the morning, complete with chairs, flowers, and a casket at the far end. Some wake. If it all wasn't so damned real, I'd have fallen down laughing.
Good thing I didn't. It was the smell of gasoline that brought me back to reality. The ambulance's gas tank must have ruptured and a dull, orange glow spread beneath the ambulance. In seconds, the flames raced along the length of the vehicle. That was when I forgot the pain and began to run.
There was a Mercedes parked at the rear of the lot. Probably Tinkerton's. I ran around it trying all the doors, but they were locked. On the other side of the lot, Dannmeyer's police cruiser was still sitting across the entrance, its headlights on and engine running. The driver's side door was hanging open, just as the sheriff left it, and it didn't require a whole lot of thought to realize it was my only way out. I jumped inside and slammed the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man in a bloody white smock stumble out through the rear service door and fall on the loading dock. He got to his knees and wobbled back and forth. It was Tinkerton. Like Rasputin, somehow that big bastard was alive and still coming after me.
I wasn't about to wait. I dropped the sheriff's car into drive and pushed the pedal to the floor. The big cruiser did a donut in the funeral home's front lawn, kicking up grass and dirt until I got it pointed in the general direction of the highway. Behind me, the dark night erupted in a ball of bright orange flames as the ambulance's gas tank exploded. I spun the steering wheel to the right. The car bounced over the curb, through a ditch, and shot out onto the highway.
Forget today? Forget yesterday? Forget the whole thing? Not very damned likely, not anymore.