Bone of Contention: A Medical Thriller With Heart (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 4)

by Bette Golden Lamb

  Bone of Contention

  Books in the Gina Mazzio RN Medical Series

  Bone Dry

  Sin & Bone

  Bone Pit

  Bone of Contention

  Bone Dust

  Novels by Bette Golden Lamb & J. J. Lamb

  Sisters in Silence

  Heir Today...

  The Killing Vote

  Books by Bette Golden Lamb

  The Organ Harvesters

  Books by J.J. Lamb - Zachariah Tobias Rolfe P.I. Series

  A Nickel Jackpot

  The Chinese Straight

  Losers Take All

  No Pat Hands

  Bone of Contention

  By

  Bette Golden Lamb

  &

  J. J. Lamb

  TWO BLACK SHEEP PRODUCTIONS

  NOVATO CALIFORNIA

  Bone of Contention

  Copyright © 2014 by Bette Golden Lamb & James J. Lamb

  www.twoblacksheep.us

  All rights reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors' imaginations, or, if real, used fictionally.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the expressed permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-09851986-5-7

  ISBN-10: 0-998511986-5-6

  Cover Design: Sue Trowbridge

  Interbridge.com

  Dedication

  To Clifford Lamb (Mr. Pianoman) ‒ a good person, a gifted musician, and a wonderful son.

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thank you, as always, to members of our wonderful critique group for their cogent comments and scrupulous editing ‒ Margaret (Peggy) Lucke, Shelley Singer, Judith Yamamoto, and Nicola Trwst, plus our gratitude for the valuable input of Jenny Weber, RN; Jan Herr, MD; Rita Lakin (the title); and Kelly Cazzaniga, for coming to our rescue in the final moments of the third trimester.

  Chapter 1

  “Gimme a draft, will ya?”

  Dominick Colletti slid onto a high stool in the small Bronx bar. He watched the bartender lift a clean mug, fill it, swipe away the excess foam with a spatula, and set it on the mahogany counter. When Dominick reached for it, the barkeep held onto the handle.

  “Lay some cash on me, man.”

  “What the fuck …used to park my ass here every day … and now you don’t trust me?”

  “Don’t matter. The boss don’t like ex-cons … specially wife beaters. Can’t say I do either. Pay up or get your ass moving.”

  Dominick glared at him, reached into his jeans, pulled out a crumpled twenty, and tossed it on the counter.

  Remember you when you were a skinny-assed slime ball … used to sit next to me in home room. Big shot now, huh … filling beer mugs.

  Dominick wanted to show the guy a thing or two, but he took in the broad shoulders and pumped-up delts and let it be.

  The place was starting to fill up. Dominick recognized two of the men who came through the door and headed for a booth in the back. As they sat down, the waitress automatically set a couple of Genesee lagers on the table.

  “Hey, Bobby, Cal!” Dominick laughed and grabbed his beer and worked his way through the standing drinkers toward the two men. “How’s it hangin’?”

  Bobby looked up at him. “I ain’t got nothin’ to say to you, loser.”

  “What’s with the ‘tude, man?”

  Cal was silent, wouldn’t look him in the eye. Dominick stood there watching Bobby take a long pull from his bottle. “You want it straight, Colletti?” Bobby said.

  “Yeah ... I’m waitin’.”

  “Just how the hell a dumb fuck like you managed to grab onto a great gal like Gina Mazzio … well, that don’t figure. No way.”

  “Come on, Bobby, you know, it’s a family thing. Mazzios and Collettis come from the same dumb village in the old country … practically made the deal the day we were born. Besides,” Dominick gave him a you-know-what snicker, “there ain’t too many studs around like me.”

  “Yeah, some fuckin’ stud. More like a prick. Beat up on your woman and damn-near kill her? You sure as hell are a piece of work.”

  “The bitch had it coming.”

  Bobby shot up from the seat. “Get your ass outta my sight and don’t come back, Colletti, or I’ll show you the kind of man you really are.”

  Cal popped up, stood by Bobby’s side, said, “You got any sense, man, you’ll turn tail and keep running. Vinnie Mazzio’s looking for you.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “I wouldn’t want to mess with that ex-marine. He never was a pushover, and I think he has a few moves now you might not see coming.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You messed up his sister real bad,” Cal said, sitting back down. “That kind of thing is gonna need settling. Ya hear?”

  The room was silent; the crowd parted as Dominick walked back to his stool. He pointed to the bills and change on the bar and said to the barkeep, “Hit me.”

  “You ain’t getting nothin' else, Colletti. Get your ass out of here … no one wants to look at your ugly mug.”

  “Yeah?” Dominick slid to his feet, scooped up his money, and headed out. When he got to the door, he said back over his shoulder, “Well fuck you, too, you piece of shit.”

  He’d had it. Parole or no parole, he wasn’t going to stay in New York and take all the shit everyone was tossing at him. It was time to find his ex-wife and finish what he’d started ... only this time he was going to do it so he didn’t end up in the slammer.

  Chapter 2

  What started out as a fifteen-minute sprint had morphed into an intense workout for Gina and Harry. Like idiots, they’d dared each other into running up three steep hills that always gave them trouble even on their best days. Going up or going down made no difference to Gina – it left her breathless, with a body that was screaming: Stop!

  Harry didn’t look too good either.

  She could barely lift her tired, cramping legs back up the stairs to their apartment. There was a time when this kind of workout would have left her only pleasantly tired, but right now she was really done in. All she wanted to do was fling herself across the sofa and flake out for the rest of the day.

  Inside, Harry yanked off his sweat-soaked shorts and drenched tee shirt, hell-bent on racing her for the shower; in another minute he would be gone and she was too beat to even think about challenging him. She wiggled her toes in her sweaty Nikes and bent down to untie the laces.

  The intercom to the front door buzzed through the apartment, over and over and over.

  Someone’s sitting on the damn thing.

  “Who the hell can that be?” she shouted.

  Harry turned around at the bathroom door and gave her one of his wicked grins. “Beats me, but I can’t answer the door wearing nothing but a smile.” He mooned her and disappeared into the shower.

  “All right already,” Gina muttered, untangling her shoelaces and pulling off her socks. “It’s Saturday morning … even the birds are still sleeping.”

  She padded barefoot out to the intercom, but before she could get there, the insistent buzzing started again.

  “Okay, okay, okay!” She pressed the speaker button. “For God’s sake, take your finger off that thing and tell me who you are.”

  “Flow
ers for Mazzio, Ms. Gina Mazzio.”

  The voice sounded weird, but familiar.

  “Yeah, from whom?”

  “From me, you dummy.”

  Her mind went blank for an instant, then she screamed, “Vinnie! Is that really you?”

  “Who else would be abusing your doorbell this early in the morning?" her brother said.

  "It’s practically the crack of dawn, you idiot.” She slammed her hand against the release button to buzz him in, then flung open the apartment door and zoomed down, all her pains and aches forgotten.

  Vinnie was taking the steps two at a time; Gina met him halfway. “Come here you miserable brat.” She flung herself into his arms and they hugged for a long moment. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “Now look what you’ve done,” he said, ignoring her question. “You've crushed my flowers.”

  “What flowers?”

  “The ones I meant to bring.”

  “Come on up, funny man. We have tons to catch up on. I haven’t heard from you for over a week. I was starting to get antsy.”

  They strolled into the apartment arm-in-arm. Harry must have raced through his shower; he was waiting in the living room, tight wet curls framing his face, and only a towel tied around his middle. He was dripping wet, and so was the floor.

  “Harry, Vinnie; Vinnie, Harry,” Gina announced.

  Harry thrust a hand out. “Hey man, it’s great to finally meet you. Gina never stops talking about you.”

  ”Hell, I have e-mails filled with Harry this, and Harry that. But if you really know Gina, you know she never stops talking.”

  “How about I make us some coffee,” Gina said, “before you say one more word and end up with a knuckle sandwich.” She moved toward the kitchen.

  “No, no, stay and visit with your brother,” Harry said. “I’ll make the coffee.” He cinched up his towel to keep it from slipping away. But instead of the kitchen, he headed for the bedroom. “Give me a sec to throw on some clothes. Be right there.”

  “Thought you told me you were re-upping for another tour,” Gina said after Harry was gone. She sat down and patted the sofa next to her.

  “Afghanistan’s downsizing, so…”

  “Something wrong, kid?”

  ”They offered me a way out, so I took it.”

  “A way out? That doesn’t sound like the military.” Gina looked closer at her brother. Her eye started to worry-twitch. There were dark circles under his eyes and his unhealthy pallor made her uneasy, plus he looked ten pounds lighter. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Happy I won’t be waking up in the middle of the night obsessing about you.”

  Harry was back, rattling dishes in the kitchen, and soon the smell of fresh coffee wafted through the apartment.

  “It was a medical discharge, sis.”

  Gina was confused; her heart hammered in her chest. “Why? Were you wounded?” She grabbed his hand. “Tell me what happened?”

  Her brother’s eyes grew large. One minute he was there with her, the next he had disappeared into some hidden valley deep inside.

  “Just tell me,” she said softly.

  “I couldn’t sleep anymore and I started to have hallucinations.”

  Harry set a cup of coffee on the table in front of Vinnie. “If you want me to leave, I’ll understand.”

  Vinnie reached out and gulped down half the cup. “No, no. It doesn’t matter … it is what it is.”

  Harry sat and Gina clutched her brother’s hand, held it to her chest.

  “You know, I had a bad feeling about re-upping.” Vinnie said.

  She was suddenly angry at Vinnie. Angry because she was worried, angry because she felt helpless, angry because her brother was in really deep, dark waters and could be swept away forever.

  “For God’s sake … then why did you go back again?” Gina couldn’t stop herself from practically screaming at him. She was scared and she couldn’t stand to see her brother in such pain. “What were you thinking?”

  “Gina!” Harry said softly.

  She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, I won’t do that again.”

  Vinnie nodded, but he hadn’t really reacted to anything. Words spilled from his mouth. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.” He reached out turned the cup handle first one way, then the other. “I knew I had no business signing on again.”

  “When I finished my first tour, I came home and there was no work for me. Nothing! God, I was so desperate. It seemed like me and a bunch of other ex-military types were fighting over the same job, along side of everyone else. There wasn’t anything. I even tried hooking into a job at McDonald’s. And you know, it wasn’t some kid I was competing with … it was some guy or gal with little kids to feed. It was depressing. So I went back in. At least I’d have a paycheck, and I didn’t much like being in the old neighborhood again anyway.”

  “Oh, Vinnie.” A horrible sadness gripped Gina.

  “Bad luck seemed to ride my tail from the day I hit Afghanistan. Our patrols turned into the same bloody exercise every day. Horrible things kept happening, like IEDs blowing up one vehicle after another. That's when I couldn’t sleep anymore – all of it, all the bloody bodies would appear and reappear in my nightmares. Everything was being torn apart. It never ended.”

  “Man, that’s hard to take,” Harry said.

  “It got so I spent most of my time thinking about taking my gun and swallowing a bullet. Get it over with once and for all.”

  “No, Vinnie. No!” Gina couldn’t stop the tremors that rode her hands.

  “And then I blew up.”

  “Blew up?”

  “The three of us were out patrolling in our Humvee – you know, shooting the breeze while we bumped along a normal pothole-filled road. Afghanistan is pretty damn barren to start with, and we were in this area that was even more desolate. It was like being on the moon ... like we’d left the planet. And it was so quiet out there. No one else in sight, no one shooting guns or missiles at us.”

  “What happened?” Gina was on the edge of her seat.

  “I remember taking a really deep breath and thinking that maybe things were going to be okay. The three of us were cracking up, laughing at the stupid stuff you talk about with buddies.”

  “And?”

  “We’d just had some chow and one of the guys told a dumb butt joke. The nineteen-year-old driver was laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath when his head blew up, splattered like an overripe melon all over me. No warning. Covered in my buddy’s brains.”

  Gina’s chest was shutting down. She could barely breathe.

  “Man, I went nuts ... ballistic. I started shooting at everything, in every direction. I totally flipped out.”

  “Tell you what,” Harry said, “you sit back and relax while Gina and I fix us some breakfast. Okay?”

  “Sounds good.”

  * * *

  Gina was reluctant to give Vinnie more coffee as they sat around the table talking. But she could see he wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. Vinnie kept folding, unfolding his paper napkin as though focusing on it would crystallize his thoughts, make sense of whatever was bothering him.

  He’d only eaten some of his eggs and ignored the strips of bacon Gina had piled on his plate. The more she watched her brother, the more she could see how wound up he was, how unlike the baby brother she’d grown up with. The man she thought she knew.

  “I’m sorry to lay all this on you,” Vinnie said. “But hanging around the house with Mom and Dad hovering over me was making me crazier than I was when I got home. I had to get away.”

  “They can really get to you, even on the best of days.” Gina stood and started to refill their coffee cups, then without saying anything, set the pot back on the coffeemaker. Vinnie didn't seem to notice “That was one of the reasons I left New York, too. Not the major reason, but one of them.”

  “Have you been getting any kind of help with this?” Harry said to Vinnie.

  “
Not really. I don’t need those shrinks. Besides, I tried it. Like you’re suggesting, I thought it would help. That’s what everyone said.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got tired of their thinking and rethinking every word I said. I knew I would be all right if I could just sleep again. If only I could shut it all down. I mean, I jump at every sound – whether it’s a car backfiring or some kid yelling in the street.” He started tearing his paper napkin into little squares, then gave that up and turned the squares into shredded nothings.

  “It’ll get better, Vinnie,” Harry said, “but you need—”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?" Gina said. “I would have helped you find something. Harry and I could have been here for you.”

  “Listen, man,” Harry said, “what do you want to do? What kind of work are you looking for?”

  “I don’t care what it is. I just want to feel useful … not like some loser.”

  When Gina looked into his eyes, she saw the naked fear she’d seen in dying patients. Tears gushed down his cheeks, and a moment later his head fell to her shoulder. He whispered, “My head’s bursting, sis. I can’t take it anymore.”

  Harry laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. “Don’t you worry about anything, man. We’ve got your back now.”

  Chapter 3

  Dominick was really beat. Every muscle in his body was screaming at him after spending several days on a bus to get to San Francisco. He headed straight for the Tenderloin, a rundown neighborhood he’d heard about back East. He began to feel a lot better when he walked down the street.

  Frisco, New York. It don’t matter … always a place to tuck your ass in a big city.

  He’d squirreled away some cash during his three years in jail, and that hadn’t been easy. But he’d done it. Called it his kill-stash. When he got out, he padded it by hitting up his ma for a big chunk of dough. Told her it was for getting a fresh start, but clammed up tight about how he was going away, leaving the state.