Cook, Robin - Cure by Cook Robin

Author:Cook, Robin [Cook, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101189269
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

When Louie disconnected the phone line from talking to Carlo, he didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. From experience he knew that hits could go well or they could go bad. He was relieved to a degree that it was over but upset that Arthur had been wounded. Four against two seemed to have been more than adequate odds.

Without hanging up the handset, Louie pulled his address book out of his desk’s center drawer and got the number for Dr. Louis Trevino. Doc, as he was known, had been the doctor for the Vaccarro family for many years. He’d been recruited from St. Mary’s Hospital, where he’d done an internship and had handled most of the Vaccarro crime family’s needs over the years, including a number of clandestine gunshot wounds.

The phone rang many times before a tired voice answered.

“Doc, it’s Louie. We got a problem with Arthur.”

“What is it?”

“A gunshot wound to the right upper arm, through and through.”

“The bone involved?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s a blessing. How about the major vessels?”

“Negative again, or so it seems so far.”

“Where is he?”

“I told them to go straight to Saint Mary’s. I’d guesstimate they’ll be there in, say, a half-hour.”

“I’ll meet them in the ER,” Trevino said, and hung up.

“Thanks, Doc,” Louie said, even though he knew it was too late.

With the call to Doc out of the way, Louie sat at his desk and prepared for the next call. He knew what message he wanted to convey but wasn’t sure of the words. As he pondered, he glanced out the window of his study off the living room of his grand waterside house in Whitestone, New York. With no leaves on the trees, he had a partial view across a neighbor’s yard of the graceful Whitestone Bridge with its illuminated cables. Looking at the bridge reminded him of his much better view of the Throgs Neck Bridge from the living room, which faced in the opposite direction down his sweeping lawn to his dock. Thinking of his dock reminded him that it was soon going to be time to get his boat out of winter storage.

Pulling his mind back to the issue at hand, calling Hideki Shimoda to deflect any suspicion of Vaccarro involvement in Susumu’s and Yoshiaki’s disappearance as Paulie had cleverly suggested, Louie wanted to get it right. The key ingredient, he was aware, was that he had to act truly pissed off.

Galvanizing his courage, Louie made the call. To his surprise, the phone was picked up with a simple “Hai” after a single ring, as if Hideki had been sleeping with his hand on the receiver.

“All right, Hideki, what’s the fucking story, and I don’t want any bullshit,” Louie roared. “I just got a call from my guys, who are still hanging around fucking Union Square waiting for your fucking guys to arrive. What’s the fucking story?”

Louie rarely used profanity, but he had pulled out all the stops, thinking Hideki would expect it. The response was less than he hoped for.

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