Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (40 page)

I had planned to run another couple
of blocks down Dunlavy to where it crossed the much busier Alabama
Street. There was a traffic light at that intersection and a large
twenty-four-hour grocery store. But I foolishly tried to flag down
a car going past on Dunlavy. It carried two teenage girls who had
snuck out for an early morning joy ride, and, of course, they
weren't going to stop for some guy in a panic claiming to have been
shot. But I learned later that they did stop for Catherine, much to
her regret. I looked back to see her standing on the corner with
what appeared to be a pistol in her hand, hanging down at her side
while she watched my flight. I relaxed with the realization I could
probably make it to the grocery store. I just wondered if the
bullet in my back would prove fatal.

"Can you call an ambulance?" I
asked a startled clerk in the store who had just sat down to a meal
of Church's Fried Chicken. Eager to leave an evidentiary trail in
case I expired there in the store, I added: "I've been shot by
Catherine Mehaffey."

The guy just looked at me
dumbfounded at first, and I had to give him the fire department's
phone number in those days before the advent of the 911 emergency
dial. From my years covering police and fire, the department's
telephone number was engrained on my brain. After he made that
call, I gave him Strong's number and asked him to call that one,
too.

"Hey man," I told a sleepy Strong
when he answered after six or seven rings, "that bitch shot
me."

"Bullshit," he replied, snapping
quickly alert.

"Not bullshit! I'm at that
Weingarten's grocery at Alabama and Dunlavy waiting on an
ambulance. Next stop is probably Ben Taub. What the fuck happened
to you?"

"I waited outside for a long time.
Finally I figured you two had made up again. Are you
OK?"

Given the history of my
relationship with Catherine, I couldn't blame him for leaving. I
had lost track of how long I had been in her house and figured it
must have been longer than it seemed. Things probably would have
been worse if he had been there, anyway, and started blasting with
a shotgun after I burst through the door.

"I don't know how I am," I said. "I
know I took something in the back and side of my head. You need to
get over to Taub and find me. Call Cindy for me, too, if you can,
and George."

Ben Taub was Houston's primary
emergency hospital and boasted one of the nation's top trauma
rooms. I figured Cindy needed to know what had happened in case I
died. And I thought my old roommate George should know since he
also was my boss. As soon as I hung up, I noticed a fire truck had
pulled into the parking lot, and I scowled at the guy eating
chicken. He just shrugged his shoulders, so I walked out and told
the fire fighters I'd been shot and actually needed an ambulance.
It arrived about the time a Houston police patrol car pulled in, as
well as a night time news photographer from the CBS-network
affiliate, Channel 11.

"Who shot you?" asked the TV
newshound as I lay inside the ambulance with the paramedics
checking me out.

"The lawyer Catherine Mehaffey," I
said. "That's M-E-H-A-F-F-E-Y. She's a lawyer."

The patrol officer shooed him away and asked
me where it happened.

"It was at her place at 1723
Kipling, right up Dunlavy a couple of blocks. She's got a gun and
could still be trouble."

They wrote down my name, then left to go find
her. Just as I smiled while envisioning the scene of a potential
SWAT standoff, I looked up to see one of the paramedics with a
catheter line in his hand.

"C'mon," I whined. "I don't need
that yet, do I? Fuck."

"It's procedure."

"Fuck that bitch," I grumbled while
he threaded the line into my penis. "This feels worse than the
gunshots."

Both paramedics started laughing,
so I asked, "How does the gunshot wound look?"

"We'll take good care of you, and
they'll look at the hospital," said one of them. "Are you in any
pain?"

"Just in my cock, motherfucker," I
said, and they laughed again. "Fuck her to hell for
this."

Of course, I had no way of knowing
what was happening back at Catherine's duplex. But I later would
learn that she had asked the teenage girls for help. They at first
considered Catherine a possible rape victim who had successfully
vanquished me as her attacker. They would later testify they saw
her drop two pistols in the grass beside the sidewalk before
accompanying them back to her apartment where she broke
down.

"I'm ruined," Catherine was telling
them about the same time I was talking to Strong. "I have to call
the police, and I'm asking you to please not tell them about those
guns."

We had a big reunion at Ben Taub—Strong,
George, Cindy, and me—while the doctor tried to keep things
somber.

"I don't know why you aren't dead,"
he said, shaking his head and unfurling an X-ray that showed a slug
sitting right up against my heart. "It must be trapped in some
muscle tissue there. Were you bent over or something when she shot
you?"

"I was opening a dead bolt lock. I
guess I would have been hunched over."

"Man," he said, "if you are a poker
player you had better give it up because you have used a lifetime's
supply of luck tonight. She really nailed you. A fraction of an
inch one way and you're paralyzed, another fraction forward and you
are D.O.A."

I looked at Cindy and said, "Don't
start spending that life insurance money yet."

She frowned as the doctor continued his
prognosis.

"We cannot go in there tonight and
get that bullet. It's just too close to the heart. We'll have to
leave it in. Hopefully it won't move. You may need a note to go
through metal detectors and get on airplanes. But you are going to
have some terrific pain the next few days. I will get you started
on Demerol and an antibiotic. You need to stick around here a
couple of hours, and, if you aren't running a fever, I don't see
why you can't leave."

"So, can you get that catheter out,
now?" I asked.

He nodded with a grin and pointed to a nurse
who ended that misery.

"Fucking bitch," I mumbled. The
nurse turned to stare, and I apologized, "Not you. I'm sorry. I was
thinking of somebody else."

By then they also had stitched up the gash in
my head. All I could do was sit there and wait to be released. For
the first time in my relationship with Catherine I was truly
angry.

"That fucker is going to jail,
now," I said. "That fucking bitch."

Strong started giggling and shaking
his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "But I have to tell you, when you
are sitting there with that bandage on your head and your eyes
popped out, you look just like Wile E. Coyote after the dynamite
goes off."

"Thanks," I said, then I started to
chuckle a bit, too, euphoric, I guess, that I apparently would
survive, and this moment of confrontation had ended. I also felt
some pride in my escape, having employed a wooden chair to defeat a
woman with a pistol. But I also felt fear, wondering what was
happening at her apartment and thinking she might have fled with a
plan of her own to wipe out anyone associated with me. I told Cindy
to make sure her door was locked and said I would stop by later in
the day for Shannon's birthday.

"I'll probably need a sick day
today," I told George, with a little grin.

George and Cindy left, but Strong
hung around. We had decided to get a hotel room for the night
rather than go back to his house, exaggerating Catherine's ability
to stage another attack. Just as we were celebrating what appeared
to be a victory over her, however, a hospital aide handed me a
telephone with detective John Donovan on the line ready to spoil
the fun.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Shot in the back and the head, but
it looks like I'll live. What's up?"

I had known Donovan for years,
considered him an ace investigator, and was pleased he had landed
the case. He couldn't resist a little jibe.

"Taylor, I have to tell you, I'm
over at Mehaffey's, and this place looks like something out of a
Roadrunner cartoon. I can see where you ran by looking at the
bullet holes in the walls."

"Yeah, John, ha, I, uh…"

"But I do need to ask you a
question. Which gun was yours?"

I was stunned. I had never even held a gun in
my entire life, much less that night. I did not even know two guns
were in play. Suddenly, I realized Catherine had an escape plan of
her own.

"I didn't have a gun," I
said.

"She says you did."

I flashed on a
scene from the first
Halloween
movie that had been popular recently and recalled
the image of that psycho killer Michael Myers rising up in the
background to attack again while everyone was celebrating his
death.

"It's a lie, John. I had no gun. I
don't know what she is talking about. Does this mean there's no
arrest?"

"Oh, no, we're arresting her,
taking her in right now. You're shot in the back, and she'll have
to show it was self-defense. But I had to call as soon as possible
and get your reaction. I also wanted to let you know this probably
isn't the end."

FIFTY-SEVEN

March 1980

"Hey, I know you, don't I? You're
the guy who…"

I didn't let him finish. I was
sitting alone one night a few weeks after the shooting at the bar
in Houston's Hofbrau Steak House, sipping on a scotch and water.
This guy in a suit sat down and stared at me before he started
speaking. I took him immediately for a local lawyer somehow
familiar with Catherine's latest escapade of trying to murder me
two months earlier. I wondered if he were friend or foe, but I
didn't really care. In those three months between my shooting and
her trial, a great deal had changed in my emotional attitude and my
life in general. I was a tough guy taking on all comers. So I
nodded.

"That's what I thought," he said,
ordering a beer, and then telling the bartender to fetch me another
scotch on his tab. He turned and said with a grin, "I don't know
anything about you. But I once knew her. And whatever you say she
did, I believe it."

Hmmm, I thought, maybe I should
take your order for one of those 'Mehaffey Survivor' T-shirts Mark
and I might start producing.

Instead of verbalizing that
thought, however, I just winked and thanked him for the drink,
acting much like a soldier sharing a war story with no need for the
details. Besides, I thought he could just as easily be an
investigator for Catherine's impending trial, trying to get some
sort of wedge against me through an innocent barroom conversation.
I drank up and left, looking over my shoulder all the way to my
car, which at this time had become a brand new, dark blue 1980 Ford
Bronco purchased with my share of proceeds from the sale of my
house.

My sex life had perked up as well and
diversified. I learned that a man wounded by a notorious femme
fatale ranks only behind one in a uniform for appeal. Although I
was a little surprised at the response, I figured I should milk
that advantage as long as I could. A couple of days after the
shooting, for example, I got a call at the office from Barbara. No
longer fearful about the fate of her dogs, she wanted to get
reacquainted and apologized for brushing me off just because
Catherine had visited her before our date. She told me she had once
had a similar, but less violent, experience with a rejected
boyfriend and knew how I must feel.

After Cindy and I closed on sale of
the house, we closed on another reconciliation that resulted in a
regular gig as her secret lover when Uncle Al was working nights.
About that time she also had officially become my second ex-wife,
and I began to realize how seriously conflicted she must have been.
But I enjoyed being the other man with her for a change, and the
thought of cuckolding Uncle Al just added more spice to the meal. I
had an easier time visiting our daughters, too, because I didn't
have to leave after they went to bed.

And then, there was the woman I met
in a bar who just walked up and said, "Let's see if it's worth
killing for."

"It's not," I replied. "It was a
lot more complicated than that. But you strike me as someone who
would demand evidence anyway, so I'm not going to try and convince
you otherwise."

Once I had them aligned on a
convenient, rotating schedule, I had a greater appreciation for
what life must have been like for Warren Beatty. I tried to
understand the attraction and decided I must have been reflecting a
greater air of confidence—the kind that comes from squaring off
against a gun with a wooden chair and living to testify in court. I
certainly felt stronger then and acted the part. Some might have
thought such a close call with death would have shown me the light
of religion, but I just hadn't had the time to think about
it.

The night after the shooting,
ramped up on Demerol, I started a new hobby, too, when Strong took
me to a bar to play British steel tip darts. It seemed like I had a
natural talent for the sport. I did well enough to immediately join
a league team and start playing tournaments for money around town.
One night at a bar called Sherlock's Pub, we had prevailed in a
tournament, and I couldn't resist taunting the losers.