Thanksgiving had just passed, Christmas lights glittered everywhere. Beneath its snowy veil, the city was enchanted. A Salvation Army band played “Silent Night.” Bells jingled on passing horse-drawn carriages.
“I’ve never been anywhere like this,” Amy said. Her enormous green eyes gazed into Dianne’s with the rapture of being twelve, on such a wonderful adventure.
“I’m so glad you came with me,” Dianne said.
“I wish Julia were here,” Amy said.
Bowled over with affection for the girl, and missing her own daughter, Dianne didn’t see the cab at first.
Spinning on the ice, the taxi clipped the bumper of a black Mercedes limousine. A snowplow and a sand truck drove by in the opposite direction, and the Yellow Cab caromed off the plow’s blade, crushing its front end, shattering the windshield. Dianne lunged for Amy.
The violent ballet happened in slow motion. Pirouetting once, twice, the cab spun on the icy street. Dianne grabbed the child. Her low black boot fought for traction. Glass tinkled on the pavement. Onlookers screamed. Arms around Amy, Dianne tried to run. In the seconds it took to register what was happening, that she wasn’t going to get out of the way fast enough, she wrapped her body around the child and tried to shield her from the impact.
The taxi struck the crowd. People flew up in the air together, tumbled apart, and landed with separate thuds. Skidding across the pavement, skin scraping and bones breaking, they slumped in shapeless heaps. For one long moment the city was silent. Traffic stopped. No one moved. The snow was bright with red blood. Down the block, horns began to blare. A far-off siren sounded. People closed in to help.
“They’re dead!” someone cried.
“So much blood …”
“Don’t move anyone, you might injure them worse.”
“That little girl, did she move? Is she alive?”
Five people lay crumpled like broken toys, surrounded by people not knowing what to do. Two off-duty New York cops out for the evening with their wives saw the commotion from their car and stopped to help. One of them ran to the wrecked taxi. Leaning through the shattered window, he yanked at the door handle before stopping himself.
The driver was killed, his neck sliced through by a sheet of door metal. Even in death, the man reeked of whiskey. Shaking his head, the cop went to the injured pedestrians.
“Driver’s dead,” he said, crouching beside his friend, working on the girl.
“What about her?” he asked, pulling open Amy’s coat to check her heartbeat.
With the child their first priority, the two policemen had their backs to Dianne. She lay facedown in the snow. Blood spread from her blond hair, her arm twisted beneath her at an impossible angle. Moving quickly, a stranger bent down beside her. He leaned over her head, touching the side of her neck as if in search of a pulse. No one saw him palm the single diamond earring he could reach, or pull the pearls from her throat.
By the time he grabbed her bag, a woman in the crowd noticed. The thief had the strap in his hand, easing it out from under the fallen woman’s arm.
“Hey,” the observer yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”
The thief yanked harder. He held the bag, tearing at the clasp. It opened, contents spilling into the snow. A comb, ballet tickets, a crystal perfume flacon, some papers, and a small green wallet. Snatching the wallet, the man dashed across the street, disappearing into the dark park.
One victim, an old man, was dead. A wife lay motionless while her husband tried to crawl closer to her. Bending over the child, one policeman barely looked up. The other moved to the woman – had to be the girl’s mother – noticing the blood pumping from her head. Taking off his jacket, he pressed it to the open wound. Police cars arrived along with an ambulance, and the technicians turned the blond woman over. She was lovely, her face as pale as ice. The policeman saw a lot of death, and the chill that shivered down his back told him the mother was in bad shape.
The crowd stood back, everyone talking at once. “The taxi … out of control … skidded on the ice … five people hit … mother tried to save the little girl … scumbag stole her wallet.”
“Crackhead got her ID?” the ambulance driver asked. “No. Shit, no. You mean no one knows their names? We got no one to call?”
“That’s right,” one of the cops said. He knew the ambulance driver wasn’t necessarily being altruistic, imagining someone waiting for these two somewhere with no way to get in touch with him. Unidentified victims were a paperwork nightmare.
“Goddamn,” his friend said, watching the EMTs load them into the ambulance. The lady was so pretty, delicate and petite. Bystanders were saying she had curled her body around the child to protect her from the runaway cab. Ten to one she was from out of town, staying at the Plaza for a special holiday treat, nailed by some celebrating cabbie on his way back to the garage with a bellyful of cheer.
Throwing the useless handbag into the ambulance, they watched the vehicle scream down West Fifty-ninth Street, heading for St. Bernadette’s Hospital.
Speeding crosstown, the ambulance driver ran every light carefully, easing through intersections. Storms brought out the worst in New Yorkers. They panicked at the first sign of snow. The driver stayed steady, focused on avoiding the slow traffic and numerous fender benders. Aware of his critical passengers, he called ahead to alert the emergency staff.
Oxygen masks covered the victims’ faces. The attending EMT pulled away the woman’s cape, searching for a heartbeat. Checking her blood pressure, he felt shocked when her eyes opened. She lay still, her lips blue. The intensity in each small movement was frightening to behold as she opened her mouth to speak one word: “Amy,” she said.
“The little girl?” the technician asked.
“Amy …” the woman repeated, panic apparent in her eyes and in the effort it took her to whisper.
“Your daughter?” the EMT asked. “She’s right here beside you, she’s just fine. You’re both going to be just fine. Lie back now, there you go. Just –” he said, watching her unimaginable distress behind the oxygen mask before she slid back into unconsciousness.
The kid’s arm’s a mess, he thought, silently chastising himself for the blatant lie.
The trauma unit was ready. Intercepting the ambulance beneath the wide portico, they slid the woman and girl onto gurneys. IV lines were hooked up. Blood and plasma were ready, just waiting for blood samples to be typed. Nurses and doctors in green surrounded the victims, assessing the worst of their injuries. Woman and child were wheeled into separate cubicles.
While the doctors worked, an EMT brought the black satin handbag to the desk. The head nurse checked it for ID, but the police report was right: The wallet was missing. She found two tickets for the ballet, two Amtrak ticket stubs originating in Old Saybrook, and two business cards, one for a lumberyard in Niantic, the other for a fishing boat called Aphrodite.
“Find anything?” a young nurse asked, coming from the injured woman’s cubicle. “It would be awfully good to call someone.”
“What’s her condition?” the head nurse asked, glancing up.
“Critical,” the younger woman said, discarding her gloves. She was thirty-eight, about the same age as the woman she’d just been working on. She had children herself, including a ten-year-old daughter, just a little younger than the girl, and nothing made her count her blessings and fear the universe like a badly injured woman and child. “Both of them. Extensive blood loss, bruising, concussion and contusions for the woman, fractured humerus and severed artery for the girl. They’re prepping her for surgery.”
“There’s nothing much here,” the head nurse replied. “Cards for a lumberyard and a fishing boat …”
The head nurse squinted, taking a closer look. She saw