"Amy, how do you feel?" It looked like a relatively minor cut just above her right jawbone, but it was freely bleeding, as head wounds have a tendency to do.
"My head hurts." She reached up to touch it and yelled, "Oww! What happened?" Then she looked at her hand, now with blood on her fingers. "I'm bleeding!"
I looked at Nick. "Mister Papandreas, you got a first aid kit?"
He moved behind the cash register and grabbed a white box with a red cross on it. Then one of the cooks came back and said, "The cops are coming. What the hell happened?" Nick started telling him and Amy what had happened.
I stayed focused on Amy. "Okay, darling, this is going to hurt a touch, so don't move." Then I reached out with my right hand and gently plucked a couple of shards of glass from the cut on her face. She was a bit of a mess, covered in blood and coffee, and I was debating whether to let the blood flow freely or put pressure on a head wound. All I knew about first aid was the stuff they teach you in the Boy Scouts and boot camp.
I didn't have to make the decision. We all heard a siren and I looked up to see some flashing lights approaching. The first vehicle to show was an ambulance. Two guys came running in with what looked like oversized tackle boxes, and Nick started telling them what happened.
I stood up and motioned for the cook to come over. I leaned over the counter to him. "Think you can make a couple of pots of coffee? I think it's going to be a long night."
He glanced past me to see a Westminster Police car pull up, also with lights flashing. "I think you're right.", he said.
"And get me the makings of some hot tea while you're at it, please?", I asked. He nodded and went back into the kitchen.
I looked around and found Fletcher still yapping on the phone. I went over to him and said, "You can hang up now. The cavalry is here."
He covered the mouthpiece and said, "Oh, that was my first call. I'm talking to the night editor now."
"What?! You're calling the paper!?", Jesus H. Christ! This was turning into a real three ring circus!
Fletcher Donaldson just smiled at me with a really wicked shit-eating grin, and then he started talking into the phone again. Short of smacking the bastard and taking my phone away, it was out of my control. I rolled my eyes and went back over to the counter.
The cook came out with a cup of hot water and set it and a tea bag down on the counter in front of me. "This thing is going to be a real clusterfuck.", he said to me lowly.
"My friend, you have no idea!", I replied.
By this time the policeman was inside the diner, and he was using a radio to call for backup and a second ambulance. The EMTs had put some gauze and tape on Amy, who seemed mostly shaken up, and were now working on the fat jackass who had started all this. He looked like he had a broken nose and jaw, so they were immobilizing his neck and preparing to put a breathing tube down his throat. That woke the bastard up, so he tried to fight off the EMTs, which got the cop into it as well. I stayed out of it. It took a second cop and another pair of EMTs to get this asshole strapped onto a gurney and restrained, and they never did get a tube down his airway!
By then we had a third police car show up, along with the second ambulance. The third car was a sergeant, and he started talking to Nick. I found it amusing that every cop who came in called Nick by his name. If this had happened any other moment of the day, there'd have been half the police force in northern Carroll County there, drinking coffee and eating a donut. We just got lucky.
The jackass got hustled out, strapped to the gurney, and one of the cops peeled out after the ambulance, because the asshole was still cursing and fighting. The EMTs started working on Amy again, but they decided she needed to go to the hospital, too, for a few stitches and X-rays. The sergeant started asking who all of us were, and I said, "My name's Carl Buckman. Listen, that young lady over there..." I pointed her out to him, it was the young woman the asshole was trying to grab. "I think she's hurt, too. That guy was trying to haul her out of here, but every time he grabbed her, she was crying."
The sergeant raised an eyebrow at this, and nodded to one of the EMTs and a spare policeman, and they went over to her. She was still crying, and when they helped her off with her coat, I got a better look at her. She had a black eye under the sunglasses, and was a good six months pregnant. There was a real suspicious bump on her right forearm, too. The EMT took one look at her and said, "Miss, you're going to the hospital, too. I think your arm's busted. Did that guy do this to you?" She didn't answer, but just kept crying.
The sergeant looked back at me. "Nice catch. Now, who are you and what are you doing here?"
"Like I said before, Sergeant, my name is Carl Buckman. I'm with the guy over there, and we just came in for some pie and coffee."
"And you're the guy who took him out?"
I nodded. "That would be me."
"Stick around."
He headed towards Fletcher, and I decided to follow. Fletcher was still yammering on the phone to his editor, probably working on his Pulitzer Prize speech. The sergeant asked, "Who are you and who are you talking to?"
"Fletcher Donaldson, Baltimore Sun. Who are you, officer?"
"A reporter!? How the hell did you get in here already?"
"I was already here. I'm with him.", Fletcher said, pointing at me.
"Yeah, well call's over. Hang it up."
"But I'm talking to my editor."
The sergeant was nowhere near as impressed with Fletcher's ongoing use of his First Amendment rights as Fletcher was. "Hang it up, or I'll hang it up for you.", he growled.
"Got to go.", Fletcher said into the phone, and then he flipped it closed.
"Thank you. I'll hold onto that.", I said, and took it away from him and stuffed it in my pocket.
By now a plainclothes cop had arrived, and the cook had brought out a couple of pots of coffee and a plate full of doughnuts. None of us were going anywhere until this got sorted out. Amy and the young girl at the center of all of this were hustled off to Carroll Hospital in the same ambulance. The rest of us started making statements.
Donaldson was writing things down as fast as the cops! I just ignored him as best I could. This was undoubtedly the end of my political career. A fight in a diner, and with a reporter present. The only way this could possibly have been worse was with video.
Guess what? It got worse! We had video!
Nick had a couple of video cameras in the diner, and one of them was aimed right at the front of the diner, where the cash register was, along with the first few booths. The sergeant and the plainclothes guy found it and started watching, and then called me over. Fletcher tagged along like an eager puppy. There was no sound, so they asked me to provide a running dialog.
"You handled yourself pretty good there. You want to explain that?", asked the plainclothes cop.
"Sure. What's your name?"
"I'm Lieutenant Hughes. So, what gives?"
"Real simple, Lieutenant. I have a couple of black belts, aikido and tae kwan do. And I used to be in the service. I was a paratrooper. This guy, whoever he was, didn't worry me. Who was he, anyway?"
The lieutenant looked mystified at that; it was the sergeant who answered. "That is a wonderful fellow named Haywood Collins. She's his wife. They have a dump apartment north of town, and we go out there about once a month on a domestic. He likes to use her for a punching bag, and she won't leave him, and we can't make her."