Which story is better?
One got off in front of me, threw himself down on the ground, and then rose screaming that I had pushed him. A fight ensued. They were all trying to attack me. As the big guy got ready to throw a punch, the other two smaller guys got ready, too, in a half-hearted way. I had been boxing at the time–so I just kept stepping to the left and counter-punching each time the big guy threw a jab. As long as he didn’t land a punch and stagger me, these other two wouldn’t do anything. They were weasels.
Ultimately the big guy – who must have been on coke or something – got frustrated and ran off screaming to harass somebody else.
We left, getting to the corner of Haight and Ashbury under the light, when I heard him coming up screaming behind me. I turned around. He threw a hook, and I blocked it. But it felt like an awfully strong blow. When I stood back I realized with a chill that he had a bloody knife in his hand. And then he just ran away.
I walked down the street high on adrenaline ,going, “Oh, my god!” My girlfriend was terrified. I took a look. I wasn’t sure I had been stabbed. I just saw this ugly welt across my side and thought, “You know, maybe he missed me.”
But when I reached around further, my hands came up with blood. It really is a nightmare. You don’t know what’s happening, but you keep walking and getting weaker.
I walked into a record store, asked for help, then sat down on the ashtray and fell on the floor, and couldn’t breath, and ended up crawling like a rat, trying to hide myself behind the counter. It was ugly.
The medics got there, said my blood pressure was OK and gave me a little oxygen, and I perked up. What had saved me was the twisting. In boxing if someone’s throwing a hook, you’ll turn and drop your elbow. That motion drew the blade. It went in about three inches, between my organs and the outer wall, and made a nasty gash. But I wasn’t severely wounded, just having a normal faint reaction and feeling terrible.
In the emergency room it seemed ironic that there I was, a police and a crime statistician-analyst–a victim of violent crime. Once the emergency crew knew it wasn’t critical, we all had a giddy chuckle.
That’s when I realized you’re either all the way in the police force or you’re not. And I was sort of halfway. That’s really not a position you can stay in.
Jimmy Murphy, the guy who hit the door, jammed her into a closet with the fucking ram in her stomach. The towel wrapped around the ram. Now she’s got no clothes on. The cup is in mid air. There’s two guys coming off the bed with guns.
Jimmy couldn’t get his gun out; he had this 300 pound ram in his hands. He was screaming, “Gun, gun, gun, gun, gun!”
People are screaming and yelling. She’s fucking crying because she’s just lost her whole life here, right. One guy was coming up off the bed with a 44 magnum revolver. I pulled the triggers on the double barrel shotgun, and i had it on safety. I ended up hitting him over the head with the fucking shotgun.
When we do the search, that brings us down.
After it’s all over and everybody’s locked up and you end up in a bar. It’s narcotics, so everybody’s hard drinkers. And sitting around drinking, all of a sudden you remember what you saw. That was the funniest and the scariest at the same time, just hysterical.