“Nah, don’t bother. He’s been dead for a couple hours,” she said, pointing toward the lividity at the bottom of his back. “And I’ve been telling you for three years now, don’t call me Ginny!”
“Eh come on, one Ginny a month that’s all I ask,” he said, grinning white teeth through his chewing gum. Anton heaved two of the resus kits off the ground, and made for the back of the ambulance idling behind them, its exhaust bright white, tailing in the circling breeze. “I’ll let ‘em know to start the cops,” he said.
They had been on scene for about forty-five seconds.
Virginia absent-mindedly studied the body.
The body was lying on its back, right cheek and shoulders resting on the filthy cement. The puffy right hand still clutched at the chest and the outstretched left gripped a paper bag with a tell-tale translucent spot where the fast food wrappers still permeated. A lemon-yellow shirt bulged at the buttons and peeped out between a well cut pinstriped tan and gray jacket. She heard the heavy side door of the truck slam shut, and Anton reappeared around the hood, smiling and waving at a horn blast from a brown UPS van that seemed taken by surprise by the ambulance facing the wrong way, half parked on the curb thirty feet from the corner.
“This guy's wearing probably eight thousand dollars’ worth of suit, shoes and haircut,” Virginia said.
“Yeah I noticed that. Check it out, Hermes shoes.”
“Every day, I swear it just gets more and more weird."
“Oh you mean like as opposed to a normal person's day at work?" Anton replied.
"Hey I'm a normal person! I just do a weird job."
"Yeah well, I'm sure this guy's normal too, just dead. And rich."
Virginia’s lips curled in a wry smile. “So, what’s he doing dying here on a freezing corner in the trash with a bag of cheeseburgers?”
“Getting dinner, I guess.”
She smiled. “Last supper more like.”
“Ha. Ha. It’s too early. And too freaking cold. You want to wait here while I step up to the corner for two large cups? It’s my turn, and we’re stuck here for a while no doubt.”
They both knew that at police morning shift change, the chances of a prompt response for a not so recently deceased medical case found in the street was fairly low on the list of priorities, but a vigil had to be maintained.
“Only if it’s accompanied with a cream cheese bagel in honor of our friend here’s dietary choices. I think he’d appreciate that.”
“It’s the least we can do,” Anton said. “If you need me I’m on the radio and I have my cell.”
“Okay, make sure you switch them on!”
“Hmm. See you in a minute Ginny, with coffee to brighten you up a little”
Discarding her gloves into a medical waste bin inside the ambulance, Virginia balled her fists in her armpits against the cold and stood over the body. Something about the whole picture was incongruous in her mind. The premise seemed perfectly plausible, guy lives too much of the good life, clogs his arteries and drops dead of the massive coronary he didn’t know he was harboring. She’d seen it a thousand times, but this one just seemed a little odd. She was trying to pin down the unformed thought when the cell phone in the guy’s pocket started to ring. It was the quack, quack, quack of the Duck ringtone on an I-phone and Virginia winced at the inappropriateness as she bent down and fished the phone from the slick silk lining of the guy’s breast pocket, and touched the green phone symbol above the words, Private Number.
The woman’s voice was concerned, but not frantic. “Where are you?”
In three words Virginia picked the caller's accent as uptown, her age around forty, and her build probably slight.
“Ah ma’am, my name’s Virginia Beaumont. I’m a paramedic with the New York Fire Department.”
“Where’s Rick?”
Virginia grimaced. “Who?”
“Arthur Perry. The man who’s cell I just rang.”
“Oh.” Virginia sighed, heavily. “Do me a favor and stand by one moment ma’am.”
Virginia nestled the phone into her ear and shoulder, as she crouched beside the body and patted the man’s other breast pocket and then withdrew the light brown billfold. Inside were three credit cards, two black and one silver, a thick wad of crisp bills and a Minnesota driver’s license, with an address in an exclusive suburb of Minnetrista. The name read, Arthur Perry. The picture seemed to match the lifeless face Virginia peered at over the top of the card she’d thumbed half out of the open wallet.
“Are you there?" Virginia asked, wondering why she’d felt the need to answer the man’s cell phone in the first place.
"Yes, what is it?"
“I’m sorry to tell you this ma’am, but Arthur’s dead.”
Silence on the phone.
Virginia strained to hear over the din of the city. Even at 6:30 a.m. the blasting of horns was already at a feverish pitch, while the residents hit the streets fighting for a position in the morning crosstown jam.
“Dear God!” The woman’s voice muttered.
“Ma’am?”
In a whisper, the woman asked, “You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Quite sure, ma’am. It looks like it may have been some sort of medical problem but we can’t say for sure.” Virginia paused a beat. “We’re in Brooklyn. Are you far from here? Is there someone we can call for you?”
The stranger sighed, deeply. “Thank God, it’s finally over.”
Chapter Thirteen
Virginia had an attractive face, with a high jaw-line and full lips, which were set in an easy to get along with and engaging smile. Her short, curly blonde hair was tied back in neat double French braids that ended just above her shoulders. She had deep-set, intelligent light blue eyes and a well-defined nose with a small piercing through her left nostril, giving her a decidedly defiant appearance.
She was above average in height, maybe five-ten or eleven. Her crisp dark navy paramedic uniform emphasized her slender figure as she walked with the determined stride of an athlete. Nearly fifteen years as a paramedic — five of those on the helicopter doing primary retrievals — had left her a lithe physique, toned, and with plenty of strength in her wiry muscles.
The job just keeps getting stranger…
She returned the last of the medical equipment to the Ambulance — a Lifepac 12 Monitor and Defibrillator — and returned to the deceased man.
Virginia glanced at the man’s wallet. She took a photo of his Minnesotan driver’s license, in case she didn’t get the time to write his medical records until later in the shift. She searched the rest of the wallet, looking for any clue about the man’s life — where he’d been recently or any contact details of family. Finding nothing, she closed the wallet, leaving every one of the hundred-dollar bills in their place.
She was staring at the screen of the phone in her right hand, holding the dead guy’s wallet in her left hand still flipped open when Anton popped around the corner, paper bag in his teeth, a large yellow cup of lidded hot java in each hand. Virginia didn’t move. Anton placed the coffees on the hood of the truck and deftly dropped the bag from his teeth into his waiting hand at waist height. At six feet eight inches tall, it was a pretty smooth move. To his dismay there was no reaction from his partner.
“Did you break my personal golden rule and answer the dead guy’s phone?”
“Yep.”
“The wife?”
“Yep.”
“How’d it go?”
“It was… well, a little weird.”