35

Rule #97: When you get tired of having things happen to you, start making things happen yourself.

 

Five minutes later, when I did try to stand, I made it okay, but my knees were still wobbling. The last time they’d felt that way, I thought, was when the same two guys had pointed a gun at me. My knees didn’t feel any weaker or wobblier now than they had then, I didn’t think. Overall, I decided, though, that between having a gun pointed at me and having one shot in my direction, the latter was worse.

Langston was on his feet too, bent over, arms straight, hands on his knees, trying to get his breath. We were surrounded by cops. All of them talking at once, their radios chirping and crackling. One of them was giving directions to somebody. Ms. Masterson had come back to where we three were. The Curl and Eyebrows were being taken down the hill by four cops who were not being entirely solicitous in the way they pushed the two along. I glanced back at Langston. He straightened as I watched, then I saw him flinch. He rubbed his hand on his butt, pulled it away, and looked at it. He looked up at me, then showed me his palm. There was a dark blotch on it. I thought it was dirt.

“What the hell?” he said. He seemed perplexed. He twisted around to stare at his butt, and when he did, he swiveled in my direction. I could see a dark stain over one of his pants pockets. He touched it, more gingerly this time, and pulled his hand up to look at it again, as if he wanted to be sure.

“I got shot,” he said. “In the ass. Can you believe it?”

Corinne was standing beside me now, gently yanking a twig from her hair. The front of her jeans was damp and dark from her knees all the way up to her waist. It looked like she’d tried to slide into third on a muddy baseball diamond.

I looked at Langston. “Are you going to live?”

“Do you think it could have hit any vital organs?” Langston asked back.

“In your ass?” Corinne asked.

Langston was trying to walk in small circles now, hopping and flinching with each step.

“There’s some pretty important stuff in that immediate vicinity,” he said.

Then one of the cops noticed Langston’s limp and said, “Whoa, there.” He took Langston by the shoulder. “We’re going to need you to stand still here for just a minute.”

“What’s taking so long?” Ms. Masterson said.

“Park’s jammed,” another cop said. “Some big Chinese festival going on.”

“Better be on the lookout for some opium dealing,” I said. “Any time those people get together . . .”

“He’s just been shot at,” Ms. Masterson said to the cop when he cocked his head at me. “He’s a little wired right now. It’s the adrenaline talking.”

“No,” Langston said. “He talks like that all the time.”

“He has some deep-seated issues with Asians,” Corinne said.

“All three of them,” Ms. Masterson told the cop, “are a little odd. But basically harmless.”

The cop shrugged. “We’re trying to get the ambulance through on a service road, and they’re lost. Should be here in a second.”

It took a little longer than that. The EMTs, when they got there, lowered the gurney so Langston could slide onto it. He did, favoring his left side. When one of the EMTs told him to lie flat on his back, he said “Are you serious?” He lay on his right side. We told him we’d follow him to the hospital. He said he hoped he would still be alive by then. The EMT said that in his professional opinion that was a pretty good possibility.

 

Corinne and I sat in the waiting room at the ER. We’d ridden over with Ms. Masterson about half an hour after we’d watched Langston loaded into the ambulance. We’d stood around at the park for a while first. Now we were sitting around in the ER. It was less fun than it sounded. We were both still wet. We looked like we’d spent the afternoon crawling through the woods. Ms. Masterson had stayed with us the whole time and had asked us both about a dozen times if we were sure we were okay. My cheek was a little puffy where Corinne had clipped it when I dived beside her. Other than that, we told her, we were both okay. She asked me why I hadn’t followed her orders and stayed where we were. I considered some clever responses. But I was still too wired to come up with anything good.

“Maybe I just got tired of waiting for something to happen to me—to us—” I jerked my head in Corinne’s direction. “Maybe it was time for something to happen to them instead,” I said.

She gave me a long look but said nothing other than to excuse herself and go off to do whatever FBI agents had to do after they’ve drawn their weapons. I assume it involved at least as much excitement as we were having. Finally, Langston came through the swinging doors and into the waiting room. He walked slowly and stiffly. A nurse was walking beside him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in a wheelchair?” I asked.

“Sitting down is not a priority for me,” Langston said. “I’ve just had a bullet taken out of my ass.”

“You did not,” the nurse said. She was blond and had large breasts. I tried to read her nametag, just because I like to try to remember people’s names. I did not get past her breasts, though. They really were large. “The bullet grazed his cheek,” she said. “Barely.”

“And thank you for the compliment you gave to me on my ass back there,” Langston said.

She flushed. I glanced at Corinne. She looked back at me. Very softly, she said, “Does that sound like flirt talk to you?”

“Possibly.”

A cop came down the hall. I recognized him from the park.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

“Fine,” Langston said, “for someone who’s just survived a gunshot.”

“Looked at the doctor’s report,” he said. “‘Gunshot’ might be exaggerating a bit. Doctor said he wiped the wound with some hydrogen peroxide and put a little dressing on it.”

“Was a gun shot at me?” Langston asked.

The cop nodded.

“Bullet connect with me?”

“Can’t argue with that,” the cop said.

“Then I’ve survived a gunshot.”

“He’s a little theatrical,” the nurse said.

“I might be weak from blood loss,” Langston said.

“We had a guy in here the other night who gashed his finger opening a can of tomato sauce,” the nurse said. “He bled more than you did.”

“So can I go home to recuperate and try to rebuild what’s left of my life?” Langston asked.

The cop smiled. “Are you kidding?” he said. “You said it yourself. You’re the victim of a gunshot wound. Do you have any idea how much paperwork we’re going to be doing on you?” He pulled a clipboard from under his arm, thick with a sheaf of paper clipped on it. “We might as well get started.” Then he looked at Corinne and me.

“The hospital cafeteria has some of the best blueberry croissants in town,” he said. “You’ll have time for them, trust me. Why don’t you go get something to eat while we interview the wounded warrior here?”

 

“Do you think these are the best blueberry croissants in town?” Corinne asked me after she’d torn off another piece to contemplate it a moment before popping it into her mouth. I swallowed the last of my own.

“Not sure,” I said. “I do not have the broad spectrum of experience necessary to make that call.”

“Do you think it might be worthwhile for us to explore that subject further?”

“If the other blueberry croissants in town taste anything at all like this,” I said, “I think that’d be an excellent idea.”

Mr. Cataldi came through the entrance to the cafeteria and looked around. We weren’t hard to find. On a Saturday evening, there were some people in scrubs sitting around drinking coffee and a couple of families eating. Otherwise, the cafeteria was empty. He sat down after filling a cup of coffee at the counter. He asked about Langston. Then he told us that Eyebrows and the Curl were in custody. They’d asked for a lawyer, he said.

“They say anything else?” I asked.

“They claim they were just trying to scare you.”

“Langston’s ass says otherwise,” I said.

“They say that was an accident,” he said. “The one with the gun says he wasn’t aiming at you. Their story is they were shooting to try to get you to stop. They think the bullet might have hit something and ricocheted into your friend.”

I thought about the tiger-shaped rock. Or bear-shaped rock. That sound I’d heard. It could have been a bullet ricocheting off a rock. It didn’t sound like the way bullets ricochet on TV. As with the blueberry croissant situation in St. Louis, I had to admit it wasn’t an area on which I had a lot of authority.

“Did they say why they were trying to scare us?” I asked.

“They said they would prefer to, ah, delay further inquiries until the arrival of counsel.”

“They really said that?” Corinne asked.

“I’m paraphrasing.”

“What are they going to be charged with?” I asked him.

“I don’t know yet,” Mr. Cataldi said. “Technically, they’re under the jurisdiction of the city of St. Louis. It’ll be up to the prosecuting attorney. My guess is attempted murder.”

“Really?” Corinne asked, surprised.

“Cops in St. Louis take a dim view of thugs shooting at people in Forest Park,” Mr. Cataldi said. “It’s bad for the city’s image.”

“Not all that great an experience for those being shot at, either,” I said.

“How’re you both doing?” Mr. Cataldi asked.

“Blueberry croissants are helping,” Corinne said. She picked up the last piece, the end of the flaky, crusty crescent, and appraised it before eating it.

He looked at me. “Ever been shot at?”

“Eric Fletcher got me in the arm with a BB gun when I was thirteen,” I said.

“Was it as serious a wound as your friend’s?” he asked.

“Little more.”

Mr. Cataldi nodded. He took a sip of his coffee.

“One more thing,” Mr. Cataldi said. “According to their driver’s licenses, neither of them are U.S. citizens. They both list Montreal as their residences.”

“O Canada,” I said.