Dead Watch

mugged.”
    “Mugged?”

    The doc told him later that he asked the question twenty-five times over the next hour, both in the ambulance and in the OR. Then he woke up in an intensive care unit, still in his street clothes, minus his shoes, and looked at a young Indian doc and asked, “What happened?”
    “You got mugged.”
    “Mugged? Where? My house?”
    Now the doctor smiled: “Ah. You’re awake. Yes. As I understand it, you got mugged at your house. You have a concussion, of course, but not too bad, I don’t believe, and a whole bunch of bruises. Good bump on your head, and a cut. It’s going to hurt in a while. Your skull is in one piece—we took a picture—but we had to cut some hair away from the head wound. After it stops hurting, it’s going to itch like fire. You have five stitches there. A couple of your neighbors are outside, by the way. Would you like to see them? They witnessed the event, I believe.”
    “Yeah. Sure. Mugged? I can’t believe I was mugged.”

    A woman came in and said, “Mr. Winter?”
    “Yes.”
    “Mr. Winter, do you have health insurance?”
    “Sure.”
    She seemed to step back. “Really?”
    “Why wouldn’t I have?”
    “Well, that’s nice.” She seemed skeptical. “Rami, the doctor, said you had good shoes and I should check. Would you have the card?”
    She went away, clutching the card; seemed amazed at the turn of events.

    A moment later, Harley Cunningham, his across-the-alley neighbor, pushed through the door, trailed by his wife, Maeve. Cunningham sold home bars and pool tables for a living. He did a double take, said, “Man. They beat the hell out of you, Jake.”
    “What happened?”
    “My back window was open, I heard you come tapping up the alley, I looked out, and I saw these assholes get out of a truck and I could tell they were coming after you. They had these clubs—they might have been pool cues—but I had my shotgun in the bedroom closet and I yelled and Maeve yelled and they were beating the shit out of you and I ran and got the shotgun and let off a couple of shots up in the air and they run off.”
    “Who were they?”
    “Fuck if I know,” Cunningham said.
    Maeve gave her husband an elbow and said, “Watch the language, he’s all beat up.”
    “He’s not gonna hurt any worse because I said ‘fuck,’ ” Cunningham said.
    “Didn’t hit you in the face,” Maeve said to Jake. She patted him on the arm. “That’s a blessing.”
    “The doc said I was mugged,” Jake said. Now that he was awake, he was beginning to feel the ache in his back, arms, legs, and one hip. “Just a couple of guys . . . ?”
    Cunningham shrugged. “They were layin’ for you, man. That truck was parked there, and they jumped out when they saw you comin’. You been playin’ around with somebody’s wife?”
    Maeve: “Harley, my God.”
    “You see the car?” Jake asked.
    “Yeah. It was an SUV. I think, like, a Toyota maybe. Dark in color. I told the cops. They’re gonna come see you. I think one guy was black and one guy was white. Salt ’n’ pepper.”
    “Harley, that’s bigoted,” Maeve said.
    “That’s what they call them, black and white guys together,” Cunningham said.
    “Maybe in nineteen fifty-five,” Maeve said.
    Cunningham to Jake: “I liked firing that twelve-gauge, man. It made a wicked flash in the night. Scared the hell out of ’em.”
    “You say they were laying for me?”
    “Oh, yeah. That truck was there for a while, I noticed it earlier on. Didn’t know anybody was inside. When I heard you in the alley, I was going to yell something down about those jackhammers on your sidewalk, and I saw them coming after you. I’ll tell you something else—that wasn’t no cheap SUV. It was brand-new, from the looks of it. They weren’t looking for a quick fifty bucks.”
    “Did you tell the cops that?”
    “Sure. But they didn’t pay too much attention to me. They were too busy typing stuff in their computers.”

    The Cunninghams left after a while—they’d picked up Jake’s briefcase and cane, and left them with him—and the cops did come. Jake had nothing to tell them, partly because he couldn’t believe that anything he was doing would get him beaten up, and partly because talking to the cops wouldn’t help track down the guys who’d jumped him. They had nothing to go on, except that the men were driving a dark SUV, maybe a Toyota.
    “Ten percent of the trucks on the street meet that description,”