The big guy roared and grabbed a carafe of coffee and swung it at her. He caught her on the side of the head and the carafe shattered. She went down like a sack of potatoes. Then he turned back to the young woman in the booth and grabbed for her again. She began to fight against him, but when he grabbed her arm, she cried out again and slumped in the booth. “GET UP, BITCH!”
“Oh, shit!” I said, as much to myself as anyone else. I reached across the table and tapped Fletcher on the arm. He turned back to me and I reached into my coat pocket. I pulled out my cell phone and pushed it across the table. It was a Motorola MicroTAC which I got last year to replace my original DynaTAC ‘brick.’ “You stay here and call the cops.” Then I stood up and slipped off my suit coat; I had pulled off my tie in the car on the drive over. Fletcher was watching the big guy, so I snapped my fingers to get his attention. “Stay here and call the cops.” Then I turned and went towards the big asshole at the front of the diner.
“Time to go, buddy. Get lost,” I said. “The cops are on the way.”
Behind him, I could see Nick scrambling on the floor to get to his feet. I couldn’t focus on that, though, because the big guy roared at me and swung his right at me in a wild roundhouse swing. Now that I was closer to him, I could smell a delightful aroma of four days of body odor, overlaid with enough beer to cause a contact buzz. Great! The roundhouse right missed me by a mile, and as I stepped closer, he threw a left at me. I focused on his timing, and he came back with another right.
It was my turn. I let the right swing past and then stepped behind his swing. My right hand grabbed his wrist and my left grabbed his elbow. Then I twisted and pushed him forward as hard as I could. Never counter power with power. Instead let the attacker’s power work against him. He went face forward and I put my weight into the move, and slammed his face down into one of the booth tables. There was a satisfying crunch and he almost bounced off the table. This time I pulled him back up and twisted his arm so that he went backwards. I kept twisting and kicked his legs out from under him. I put my weight into it again, and he went down on his back all the way to the floor, with his head bouncing twice on the tile. He was out like a light.
I doubt it took fifteen seconds, including the swings he took at me, and I wasn’t even breathing all that hard. My first reaction was how angry Marilyn would be with me, but I smiled at the thought and shook it off. She’d get over it.
I found Nick on the floor next to his waitress, who was sitting upright, although she was bleeding from a cut on the side of the head. I knelt down next to them both, just as a couple of men came through the swinging doors from the kitchen. They were dressed in white tee shirts and had aprons on, so they must have been cooks or dishwashers. They stared in disbelief, and I yelled at them to call the cops. They scurried into the back again. I looked over my shoulder and saw Fletcher talking to somebody on the phone, so maybe he got through already. A second call couldn’t hurt.
The girl was showing signs of coming around, so Nick and I lifted her up and set her on one of the seats at the counter. Her eyes fluttered open, and she mumbled, “Wha… what…”
“Hi. What’s your name?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She focused on me. “Amy. What happened?”
“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.