Comeback Read Online Free Page B

paramedics spilled out purposefully, taking charge with professional heartiness and treating Vicky and Greg like children. The policeman told Vicky he would be following them to the hospital and would take a proper statement once her ear and Greg’s head were fixed, but she didn’t seem to take it in.
    Two more police cars arrived fast with flashing lights and wailing sirens, disgorging enough blue-clad figures to arrest half the neighborhood, and Fred and I found ourselves with our hands on the car roof being frisked while explaining insistently that we were not in fact the muggers but instead the British consul, friends and witnesses.
    The kindly original cop looked back fleetingly and said something I couldn’t hear in the bustle, but at least it seemed to blunt the sharpest of suspicions. Fred loudly reiterated his identity as British consul, a statement he was this time asked in a bullish fashion to substantiate. He was allowed to fetch out an oversized credit card, which announced—with photograph—his diplomatic status, thereby inducing a reluctant change of attitude.
    Greg was on his feet. I took a step towards him and was stopped by a midnight blue arm.
    “Ask him for his car keys,” I said. “If his car stays out here all night it will be stolen.”
    Grudgingly the midnight blue presence yelled over his shoulder, and presently the information percolated back that Greg had dropped the keys by the car when he was attacked. Midnight-blue went to look, found the keys and, after consultation, gave them to Fred.
    The uniforms seemed to be doing things at great speed, which no doubt came from much practice and was a regular pace for such an occasion. Vicky and Greg were helped into the ambulance, which at once departed, followed immediately by the first policeman. Other policemen fanned out into the surrounding area to search for the muggers should they still be around and hiding. Fat chance, I thought.
    One of the new bunch wrote down my name under Fred’s and paused over the address I gave him: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Whitehall, London, England.
    “Diplomatic immunity, like him?” He jerked his head in Fred’s direction.
    “I’ll help if I can,” I said.
    He sucked his teeth a bit and asked what I’d observed.
    I told him, in fair detail.
    Had I seen this mugger at close quarters?
    Well yes, I said, since he’d hit me.
    Description?
    “Dark-skinned.”
    “Black?”
    I found the same difficulty as Vicky over the skin color.
    “Not West Indian or African,” I said. “Maybe Central American. Maybe Hispanic. He didn’t speak. I can’t tell you any better.”
    “Clothes?”
    “Black.” I thought back, remembering how I tried to throw him, refeeling the cloth that I’d clutched. “I’d say black jeans, black cotton sweatshirt, black sneakers. When he ran off he wasn’t easy to see.”
    I made my guesses at his age, height, weight and so on but I couldn’t remember his face well enough to be sure I’d recognize him in other clothes, in daylight.
    Midnight-blue shut his notebook and produced two cards with his name on them, one for Fred, the other for me. He would be grateful, he indicated, if we would present ourselves at his police station the following morning at ten A.M., and he gave us the impression that had it not been for the sheltering umbrella of the Foreign Office, the request would have been an order.
    The scattered searchers returned without a mugger but with, surprisingly, Vicky’s torn-out earring, which they’d found on the ground. Bagged and labeled, it was solemnly retained in police custody. There was no sign, it seemed, of a capacious white bejeweled handbag or Greg’s wallet or his shoulder-slung holdall.
    As fast as they’d arrived, the midnight-blues departed, leaving a sudden deafening silence in which Fred and I stood and looked at each other a touch dazedly, deciding what to do next.
    The few curious local inhabitants faded back through their doors, their