Do No Harm

The pistol had tumbled from Clyde's grip on the car's impact with the scaffolding, and it lay on the dash against the windshield, gleaming in the diffuse sunlight. David's and Clyde's eyes seemed to fall on the weapon simultaneously, and Clyde lunged for it with a meaty hand as David anticipated he would. David's hand had been sifting through the debris as if of its own volition, searching for a plank or some suitable weapon. It closed on the handle of the sledgehammer.

David drew himself to his feet, pain seizing his left side in a fiery grip, as Clyde fumbled the pistol across the dash. Clyde finally grasped the pistol firmly. As he brought it up, aiming at David through the once-shattered glass of the windshield, David drew the sledgehammer back like a baseball bat, and hammered it sideways at the nose of the hood, directly between the two square headlights.

The air bag inflated with a boom, knocking Clyde's arms back up in his face and pinning him to his seat. David went weak with pain, the sledgehammer dropping from his grasp. The crack of a gunshot echoed within the enclosure of the scaffolding, and the air bag went limp. Clyde clawed and shoved his way through the material and out the door, landing on all fours. The gun skidded from his hand.

A streak of bright yellow on Clyde's forearm. The information shifted and fell into place. The freshly spray-painted phone booth by the abandoned lot. Clyde had been watching David. He'd placed the fake distress page from the booth right around the corner from the Pearson Home, then followed David back to the hospital.

Clyde's head rotated to face David slowly, mechanically. His eyes moved past David, finding Peter, then returned to David. Standing, Clyde wiped the blood from his brow, his eyes widening with the intensity of his rage. His face was twisted, flushed a deep red. Wrathful. He let out a cry, an unintelligible expression of fury. His hands curling into fists, he advanced on David, who remained rooted to the spot.

Someone knocked David to the ground from behind with a sudden, forceful blow. Pain screeched up his side and his mouth filled with sawdust. He rolled over, looking up at the dark figure of a man towering protectively over him, his workman's overalls unbuttoned and hanging down, the dark, twisted form of a swastika tattooed across his chest. Zeke Crowley.

Clyde's expression changed to one of nervous alarm. He backpedaled a few steps, stooping to pick up the Beretta, and sprinted off up the street, turning into the alley from which his car had sprung.

Zeke looked down at David. "Motherfucker," he said dolefully. "Motherfucker."

It took David a moment to realize that Zeke was gazing at David's side. For the first time, David looked down and saw the length of splintered 2-by-4 protruding about ten inches from his side. The shard was no more than two inches at its thickest. Blood had colored David's shirt black around the puncture site. David's eyes moved drearily back up to Zeke's. "Could you please call me an ambulance?" he said calmly. "And, if you wouldn't mind, check on Dr. Alexander there behind you."

Peter's gruff voice. "I'm fine." Peter's bespectacled face staring down at David. "I wish we could say the same for you."

A group of spectators had gathered along the wrecked scaffolding, clustering around Clyde's abandoned car. A reporter was already snapping photographs-how did the press arrive quicker than the police? David gripped the shard protruding from his side so no one would be tempted to pull it out. Straining, he tried to feel behind him to see if the point had penetrated the other side. When he spoke, his voice was even weaker. "Call Detective Yale at the West LA Police Station. And keep the crowd away from the car. That's evidence."

Zeke faced the crowd, his throat cording with muscle as he yelled. "Someone call the hospital. Tell them a doctor got hurt. Tell them it's the Jew doctor."

"I'm afraid," David said, just before passing out, "that won't sharply narrow it down."

Chapter 67

DAVID monitored his own pulse, two fingers laid across his wrist, as the ambulance screeched to a halt outside the ER. Though the screen near his head flashed his exact heart rate-98-he found something calming in feeling for himself.

"Ready, Doctor?" one of the EMTs asked, and then the back doors swung open and the gurney slid out with David on it, the legs snapping down into place.

The glass doors opened as they approached, impervious, heavenly gates. The length of wood protruding from David's side seemed oddly humorous to him, like a shot-through-the-head-with-an-arrow hat. As they rattled through the lobby, Jill recognized him and leapt up from her chair, spilling a cup of coffee across the triage desk.

"Dr. Spier? Are you all right?" She turned and shouted up Hallway One, "Clear Procedure Two!"