In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [3]
“Sorry, sorry.” He put up his hands, backing away as they rolled Vincent on the gurney to the O.R. Somehow, looking at the guy, he had a feeling this had been his last chance. No way was Ed Vincent gonna walk out of there. He was never gonna be able to tell him who shot him as he climbed from his Cessna outside the hangar at LaGuardia Airport. Nor would he be able to tell him why. It was up to Camelia to find out.
4
Dr. Art Jacobs, the eminent cardiologist, hurried into the emergency room, summoned from a Broadway opening-night party by the chief resident, who had worked with him and knew him to be a good friend of the patient.
In an impeccably cut tuxedo, Art Jacobs was as out of place in the seething emergency room, with its bloody, mutilated bodies and hordes of wailing, terrified relatives, as an orchid in a cow pasture. Fifty-six years old, tall, balding, and dapper, he wore what was left of his silver hair long over his collar to remind himself that he was not totally hairless yet.
He looked down at his friend as the resident in charge filled him in on the seriousness of Vincent’s condition.
He adjusted his glasses, thinking how terrible it was to see a big man like Ed Vincent, rugged, larger than life, brought down to this pale specter on an emergency room gurney. “Has he been alert at all since he got here?”
“For a couple of seconds. Said he had to get out of here,” the resident told him with a wry grin.
“Can’t say I blame him. Who’s operating?”
“We got lucky. Frank Orenbach was on the premises.”
Jacobs nodded. He knew Orenbach, knew he was a good and capable surgeon.
“I’ll assist,” he said, walking toward the scrub room. “It’s all I can do for you, Ed,” he said. “Besides pray,” he added grimly.
Art Jacobs had known Ed for fifteen years and considered himself a good friend. Ed sent Art’s wife flowers on her birthday. They dined together once a month at the old-fashioned little Italian place in Greenwich Village that Ed liked. He had met Ed’s girlfriends as well as many of his numerous business acquaintances. But he had never once been invited to Ed’s home atop the Vincent Towers on Fifth Avenue.
Ed was funny that way, and Art accepted it. The man guarded his privacy like the Holy Grail, and in these days of public muckraking and exposés by the tabloid media, he did not blame him. And, as far as he knew, no one—not even a woman—had ever visited Ed’s personal nirvana, the beach house. While other rich men socialized in summer mansions in the Hamptons, Ed Vincent took himself off for long weekends of solitude, fishing from his old forty-foot Europa, or painting his deck, or just hanging out with the gulls and the seals. He liked it that way, and Art admired him for his freedom and independence.
He only wished he could do more to help him now.
5
Detective Camelia was getting exactly nowhere. There were no witnesses to the shooting. Only the mechanic who was to take care of the Cessna had heard the shots and come running from the hangar. He said he thought he saw a pickup pulling away but was so panicked he could not even recall the color or make, let alone the number.
“What d’ya want me to tell ya,” he yelled. “Ed Vincent’s lying on the floor, bleeding all over the place, and I’m supposed to be writing down license numbers? I was on the phone to medical emergency, you asshole.”
Camelia raised his eyebrows, and the mechanic remembered who he was talking to and growled an apology. “Y’know how it is.” He gave a little shrug. “I’m upset. I worked for the guy. I liked him. It’s tough shit that this has happened to him.”
“You’re right. And you did the right thing,” Camelia said to calm him down, hoping he might recall something later. Often witnesses remembered more than they thought initially. Something might just pop into his mind. That it was a white Chevy or a Dodge Ram, for instance. And that the guy driving it was Caucasian, or black, or Hispanic. Anything was possible. He could only hope.
The hangar and the area outside, where the cement was liberally stained with Ed Vincent’s blood,