Red Baker by Robert Ward

Author:Robert Ward [Ward, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION / Urban Life, FICTION / Crime
ISBN: 9781440533891
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

At the Johns Hopkins emergency ward I waited for Dog to get his ribs X-rayed and taped up. It turned out Frankie had managed to split two of them pretty good, and even though he was in considerable pain, the Dog talked about getting even with a vengeance, but with the same wild-eyed moon lunacy that I’d felt coming off of him earlier. I mean, he fairly shined with craziness.

“I tell you what we do, Red. After I get these old ribs taped, we head back down there and wait for Vinnie and Frankie to come out, and then we fucking waste them, man. I’ve eaten that fat Wop’s shit for the last time. You know what I mean?”

I stood there looking at the doctor’s face as he tried to hold Dog still long enough to get the tape around him.

Every once in a while he’d look over at me and raise one eyebrow. Finally he took out a needle and gave Dog a shot.

“What’s that for, Doc?” Dog said. “You a friend of Vinnie’s? Maybe slipping in the old hypo on me, huh?”

The doctor assured him it was just a little painkiller to help him relax, but suddenly Dog grabbed the doc by the lapels and began to pull him down toward the table.

“Maybe I don’t want to fucking relax, asshole, you ever think of that?”

A nurse named Miss Pritchard, a beautiful brown-haired girl with big green eyes, looked at me as though she were going to scream and ran to get an attendant, but the doctor reached out and grabbed her by her thin tanned wrist.

“I’m on your side, Mr. Donahue,” the doctor said calmly. “Now lie still and rest. Nobody can bother you while I’m here. The medicine I gave you is already starting to act. Do you feel better? You do, don’t you?”

Dog looked up at the doc, his mouth hanging open and a strange puzzlement in his eyes. He began to laugh a little, and spittle drooped from the corner of his mouth.

“Feeling better. Like a warm hand coming over me, Doc. Got that old soup running through me, right?”

“That’s right, Mr. Donahue,” the doctor said, letting go of Nurse Pritchard’s arm.

“You with me Red?” the Dog said.

There was a child’s panic in his eyes.

“Red, you here, Red? You still with me?”

I grabbed his arm, and he looked up at me through the cloud behind his eyes.

“I’m with you, Dog.”

“Yeah. You my buddy, Red. You and me kick their asses …”

“You know it.”

He shut his eyes then and drifted off, and the doctor and I let him go. Looking at him there, silent and breathing easy, I envied him that peace.

• • •

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