Come Out Tonight Read Online Free Page A

cases, I might add.
    Meanwhile, I was asking Ricardo to obtain Sherry Pollack’s contact numbers, telling him to call Vandenberg if necessary and to get back to me ASAP.    I sat down on a bench and waited.   More people streamed past, some hobbling, some in wheel chairs, plenty of conclaves of white coats heavy in conversation.   Finally, my cell rang.
    “I’ve got one home number and one office number listed under Phillip Pollack, MD of Riverside , California .” Ricardo reported.   “Plus two cells, one for Phillip and one Rhonda. I’ve emailed them to you.”
    “Thanks, Ricardo,” I said and hung up.   I got up from the bench.   St. Vincent’s is this humongous complex between the Hudson River and Broadway, with crisscrossing walkways between the buildings and beds of neglected begonias and pansies struggling to survive inside cement borders.
    I punched in the home number as I followed one path with a view of the Hudson .   As it rang, I watched the Circle Line steam along the shore, a couple of dozen tourists hanging off the side.
    A heavily accented “hello” sounded on the line, the “h” more of a “j”.   I asked to speak to either Dr. or Mrs. Pollack.   A stream of Spanglish followed, from which I gathered that neither one of them was in.   To a question which might have been “would you like to leave a message” but could have been anything, really, I said, “No, thanks.”
    So then I called their office number but all I got was a phone message.   “If you’d like to make an appointment, change an appointment, press one; if you have an emergency or are a doctor, press two; wish to leave a message, press three….”   I hung up and called Phillip’s cell, getting a recording in a deep male voice.   Finally, I called the last number I had, and a woman’s voice answered.   I figured it was Rhonda.
    “Hello?” she said.   “Who is this?”  
    In the background, I heard that same deep male voice say, “Rhonda, how many times do I have to tell you not to answer it if you don’t recognize the caller?”
    “It’s about your daughter,” I managed to yell, hoping she’d hear it before she clicked off.
    A moment passed, during which I heard the noise of city traffic: car horns, whistles, sirens – LA, I guessed - before the voice resumed.   “Who is this?” the woman asked.
    “I’m Detective Donna Sirken of the New York City Police Department, Ma’am,” I said.   “Am I speaking to Rhonda Pollack?”
    “Is there something wrong?” the woman asked, a little quaver in her voice. She never answered my question as to who she was, but I didn’t press it.   It was Rhonda’s cell phone, after all.
    “Who is it, Rhonda?” the male voice asked in the background.   That clinched it.
    “I’m afraid your daughter Sherry was the victim of an attack,” I told her.   “She’s in the hospital.”
    “Who is it, Rhonda?” the same voice repeated, louder.
    “But we just…,” she said, before the phone was, from the sound of it, ripped out of her hand, and the male voice got on.
      “Who is this?” he growled, a man obviously used to getting his way.
    I repeated my name and department.   In the background, I heard Rhonda softly whimpering.   I pictured her husband waving her away.
    “And what is this about?” he demanded against the far off sound of a jack hammer.
    I repeated what I had told his wife.
    “Is my daughter alive?” he asked, nothing if not to the point.  
    “Yes, but in a coma.   Sherry was lucky enough to have been found by her boy friend and rushed to St. Vincent ’s hospital.”
    In the distance I could hear his wife wailing, “How could this have happened?”  
    “Do they know who did this…this awful thing?” Dr. Pollack asked.
    “But will she wake up?” Rhonda wanted to know in the background.
    “Shhh,” he told her.
    “No, but it’s early yet,” I replied.
    “No fingerprints?”
    “No, I’m afraid not, Dr. Pollack.   But