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“We don't know about hitting a man like that though,” one of the two men says.

“But I lost everything in that fire. You name it. My parrot who I loved and lost her with all my personal belongings too. Someone call the police while I keep guard over this guy.”

“All right,” the man says. “Someone should probably phone them.”

“You do it. From that booth over there.”

“I'm not getting in like that, since how do I know you're the truth?”

“It's the truth, the truth.”

“That's what you say, though the man you dumped might be in the right.”

“Would I ask you to get the police for me if he was?”

“You might be just saying that to later get up and run away once one of us goes to call. At least with two of us here you might not try.”

“You,” I say to the other man. “Don't listen to him. Please call.”

“What this gentleman says about your maybe being wrong could be right. I'm staying. Send someone else.”

“Someone, please, call the police,” I say to the small crowd, snow falling on us, starting to stick. “This man's a crook, was trying to extort money from me or was definitely in on it some way. I'm the owner of Mitchell's Bar and Grill—Shaney Fleet, the police in this precinct know me—the Fifteenth. Ask them, phone them now.”

The woman the man crashed into is gone. Her umbrella flew into the street and a bus smashed into it and now cars are running over it. Other people left the crowd when I spoke and a few new ones joined, asking everyone else but me what I was speaking about and why's the man on the ground and was that screaming before coming from here, though no one offers to call the police nor gives any sign he's going to.

“Then let's carry him to the phonebooth so I can call the police,'' I say to the two men. “That way you can stay with us and he's getting pneumonia down there.”

“And if his skull or arm's broken or spine and he gets five times worse because we carried him and maybe dies, he'll sue for hospital bills and damages or his survivors will and who'll lose? You and we will if you have anything to, I know I do, so let's leave him here.”

I lift the man off the ground.

“I said to leave him!”

“And I say to get the hell out of my way if you're not going to help,” and get the man in a fireman's carry and carry him to the booth a half-block away. The two men walk alongside and several other people follow us. The man's still unconscious it seems. His arms hang. He's breathing. Blood's running out of his head down my front. I kick away some snow, set him down, sit him up, pull him inside the booth till his back's braced against a wall, button him up to his neck, lay my coat over his legs and boots, with my handkerchief dab the gash in his head and wipe the snow off his nose and hair, as his hat seems to have gotten lost somewhere from the time I first saw and then caught him. I pat his pockets and thighs and chest thinking maybe he has a gun. There is none but is a folded-up switchblade. I put it in my pocket.

“What'd you just take there?” one of the two men says.

“A knife.” I show it. “Think I want to get stabbed by him? Here, if you think I'm a thief,” and I throw it into the street.

“That better?”

“What, for some kid on junk to find and stick in one of us?” He gets the knife and holds it.

I dial the police. The officer says “Does he need an ambulance?” and I say “He just seems knocked out like any number of drunks at my bar and his bleeding's about stopped, but I haven't that much sympathy for him so do what you want,” and she says “A car and an ambulance if the hospital has one right away will be right there.”

I hang up and say to the two men “To explain things, so you won't go crazy attacking me thinking I want to steal, what I'm going to do now is try and find evidence on this man to see if he's linked to the people who set fire to my apartment and are trying to kill my business place,” and the more talking one says “Why can't you wait that for the cops?”

“Because they and the hospitals have a reputation of losing evidence out of bungling, I read, or when they just don't want something to get known, and I know damn well they also won't tell me what they find if I ask. Understand I'm not saying the police are in on it against me intentionally or in any way. But you can't believe what I've gone through with them so far with my bar, so for all sorts of reasons like my health I have to start relying on myself, all right?” and the man says “Okay, go ahead, but everything you do and say we're telling the cops, if we can remember it,” and a young man behind them says “I'll jot it down,” and takes out a pen and pad and writes.

I search the man's coat and pants pockets. Wallet he has I open but it has nothing but money and my note and a photo of an old man and woman in it and I put it back in his pants. Tissuepack, paperback, keys attached to a nailclipper and religious medal and that's all. The man's eyes open a few times and I say “How are you? You'll be all right,” and he says “What're you doing, get out of my stuff,” and shuts his eyes. I feel for his pulse but don't get any mostly because I don't know how to get a pulse if it's not just squeezing the wrist for a beat. Then the police car comes and when they take a look at the man, one says “You should've thought of this when you called us—he seems like he's dying and needs an ambulance,” and I say “One's supposed to be on the way,” and he says “Where is it then?” and puts in a call for one.

The police search me, find the billy, tell the two men and the young one with the pad and pen to stay. They wrap a blanket around the man I hit, massage his hands and keep the crowd back and a couple of people from trying to make phonecalls from the booth when they didn't see the man on the floor, and soon at the same time two ambulances come from opposite ends of the avenue and the drivers argue for a while over who's entitled to take the man while the two doctors from the different hospitals work on him. Finally one policeman says to a driver “You, for no good reason, just you,” and that ambulance team puts the man on a stretcher and takes him away.

More police come and they divide me and the three men into two groups and while they're asking me questions I overhear the more talkative of the two older men say “All I know is I saw that guy hit him, the barowner he says he is, few times real hard in the face and I think once with that club you took off him, but on that I'm not so sure. I didn't see him provoked—he just went wild, ran after him shouting, knocked over a lady and attacked.”

I say to the policeman interviewing me “What that fellow just said's not true,” and I show them the note I got and say “The one I sent the man through the phonebooth shelf is in his wallet, but that's gone with him and probably lost by now,” and the talkative man yells “Yeah, but you opened his wallet before because you said you didn't trust the police force, so how does anyone know what notes you might've stuck in there?”

“Did you see me?”

“I didn't see you not do it.”

“And your friend?”

“He's not my friend. I don't know him and he's got a mouth for himself.”

“I didn't see you take or insert in the wallet anything like paper,” the other man says. “But my vision isn't the sharpest except for bigger things, such as your beating up for no justification it seems the man they took away.”

“What are you guys? You with the man I hit? You were there from the start, so maybe you are.”

“Excuse me,” the young man says to the police. “But I have it in my notes where, and I quote, ‘suspect removes unconscious man's wallet—seemingly unconscious—peers inside, puts it back in man's same pants pocket left side,' but there's nothing about removing anything from the wallet.”

“Did you
see
him taking anything out though?” a policeman says. “Or putting anything in?”

“I'm not sure. I was doing a little looking but mostly writing.”

“Let's see that.” The young man tears some sheets out of the pad and the policeman reads from them. “‘Victim, up till now seemingly unconscious against glass panel of booth, says “Stop searching me” to assailant but assailant does
not
.'”

“I was looking for the exact names and maybe his contacts of the people who've been hounding me, but maybe this pen-and-pad kid's in with them too. Before I thought they were all just passerbys—passersby—whatever the hell they are, it is, walking past. But now, well—”

“That's all I am,” the young man says. “I live with my mom and aunts. I'm a journalism major on my way home from school uptown and if it's all right now I'd like to leave to study and eat.”

A policeman says “We got their names and pad notes and it's a shitty day besides, so why don't we let the witnesses go?” and the other policemen agree and the three men leave.

I give the police the names of several detectives at their precinct and say “Ask them about me and the man I hit who I described to them earlier from my fire. Also why not check those two men and even the kid and see if they work for Stovin's Carting Company or just who they do work for and if it's in any way connected to garbage collection or goon-type crime and if the kid really is a student and what school. He didn't seem like a liar, but how do we know?”

“This isn ‘ t a police state,” a policeman says. “And if this incident ever goes to trial, your lawyer can handle all the who-works-for-who and so forth.”

“It's going to trial all right, but by me dragging into court that phony the ambulance took away.”

“Good. But now I'm sorry but we got to bring you in for assault and intent with a dangerous weapon,” and I say “My billy? Come on, your microscope guys will find it stayed in my pocket as protection with no blood or head marks on it except for maybe some drunk's arm a year back if any blood got on it then and can last that long. But I want to tell you something before you take me in.”

“If he dies you'll feel horrible—get in.”

I get in back of the car and say to him in front “It's true. I never killed anybody, even when I could've when I was in the service, but wouldn't even do it overseas. Few times I fought I shot over the enemy's heads.”

“So they could live to kill your buddies. Oh, guys like you I don't understand and would've shot in the back in the army if I knew what you were doing. But that man you punched you might've been mistaken, you know. He could've just opened your envelope because he was making a call and his fingers out of nothing to do wandered under the shelf and fiddled around with the envelope you say was there but which we never found a speck of except for the tape you could've put there yourself, till he caught on what it might be.”

“Then why'd he put my note from it into his wallet?”

“We don't know he did yet. But if he did, then maybe as a joke.”

“I don't get it. To give to someone else?”

“That too. Maybe he wanted to play it on someone else. But what I was suggesting was maybe he kept the note to show someone how much a joke had been played on him in the booth.”

“With my spit all over it he'd put it in his wallet?”

“The spit would've been dried by then.”

“But he rubbed it off on the sidewalk.”

“That's what you claim.”

“Back and forth he rubbed, back and forth.”

“Someone else but you saw? Not those three duds.”

“Then how do you also explain I recognized him as the note-leaving guy at my bar from the fire?”

“Your word against his again.”

“Hell with it. Long as I know he's involved, that's enough for me.”

“Good for you,” and he calls in that we're coming, other man gets out to wipe the snow off the windshield and we drive to the stationhouse.

I'm booked, they ask if I have a lawyer. I say “I never had much use for anyone who takes so much money for what with a little hard brainwork I can do myself, not that I ever even much trusted them either,” and they say they'll have one appointed to me then as that's the law.

“The law,” I say, “the law. Well just see if I don't refuse your appointee,” and ask and they say okay for me to call my bar. I get Hector, one of the two men I asked to stay and say “Anyone there but you?”

“Boo, but you told us not to.”

“I know, but anyone else try and come in or call?”

“No and it's getting late and we got to be moving. Even for money it's not worth staying here anymore—my wife will kill me.”

“One last favor. I'm in the police station for something I did and am giving my keys to the police to close my place. Stay there till they come. Don't let anyone but them in and ask for their badges.”

“I don't ask cops for badges. Question them and you anger and get trouble from them. They got uniforms on, they're cops. You, I don't ask what happened less you tell.”

“Thanks, but listen. Take all the money out of the cash register and from the cigar box below and tip glass next to the juicer and put it all in one of the brown paper bags there by the coffeemaker.”

“Wait a minute. Where's the coffeemaker?”

“By the juicer. Double the bags, in fact, as the change will weigh a ton. Leave the nickels if you want and keep the rest on you alone, Hector, not Boo. He's okay, I'm not saying he's not and I know he's your friend. But he's a little dim, right? and wait till I call you again at home. What's your number?”

“I don't even see where's the juicer and I'm looking.”

“Right by the register. But your phone number.”

He gives it.

“Listen, Hector, I'm putting my faith in you two but you especially. And I'm not saying you're dishonest by any means, because would I be asking you to do this for me if I was? But I know how much money there is between the register and cigar box. Tip glass probably another few bucks.”