by JJ Lamb
“We didn’t break in. Lolly had her employee card; we just walked in.”
“Just a technicality. You were where you didn’t belong.”
“I suppose,” Gina said
“That, as I’ve said before, could cause you real problems.”
“All of this started with those accounting books. Maria and her mother are dead, and not only that, I heard from the hospital grapevine that Mort Tallent’s ex-wife was also murdered. That’s three deaths circling around the doctor’s head.” Gina grabbed onto his arm. “You don’t think there’s a connection do you? I mean, really?”
“I don’t know, babe.”
“Well, it’s got my eyebrow twitching. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”
Harry pulled her into his arms. “Can’t you just let it go ... for us? We’re getting married soon—Vinnie and Helen are getting married. Can’t we just be light-hearted for a change?”
“I want to. I really do. But people are dead and my friend, Lolly, is gone because something to do with Tallent is dangerous and scary. It has to start with those books—I’ve got to get into them.”
“You’re not getting anywhere near his computer,” Harry said. “I can tell you that.”
“You’re probably right. Maybe what we need is a hacker, someone who can get the job done.”
Harry nodded.
“Do you know anyone like that?”
“You mean someone who’s willing to risk going to jail because you ask for a favor.”
“I guess so.”
Harry looked long and hard at her. “Let it go, doll.”
“I want to.” She scratched her head for several seconds. “I promise I’ll try.”
Harry held her at arms’ length. “But it’s not going to happen, is it?”
She tried to smile but couldn’t.”
“Let me think about it. I might, I just might know someone.”
Harry put his head on her shoulder. “Gina, on and off, during the last four years you have jumped from one nightmare to another. The thought of someone hurting you again—” he pulled her to him, “—it’s more than I can stand.”
* * *
The man sat in the rented BMW waiting. He’d watched Vlad Folo slip through the front door of the building—he looked at his watch—twenty minutes ago.
He was a patient man. He would sit there for as long as it took.
After another thirty minutes, Vlad came out and went to his black Cadillac, and slipped into the driver’s seat.
The man noticed Vlad was dressed in a black running jacket and pants outfit. His body movements were that of a well-trained athlete. Even in the dim light of the street lamp, the man could see Vlad Folo moved like a panther on the hunt.
* * *
Mort Tallent sat in his high-rise condo and looked at the lights spread across the city. If he squinted, it became a mass of stars staring back at him. It reminded him of when he was a child. He would make everything a blur, because it always made life so much more beautiful—like a wonderful impressionist painting.
That’s the way the world should be—never have to look, to study the details of anything. Once you do, it all turns ugly.
It reminded him of his dead ex-wife. Until he really got to know her, she was so beautiful. Like when they first met. She was young and as idealistic as he was. Surfing together, they were going to make the world a better place.
How dumb we were.
Surfing in the ocean, he felt connected—at one with everything that was or would ever be.
Lazy me. Didn’t want to have to worry about money and survival. Just wanted to surf.
If he’d been brave he would have walked away from his parents and their insistence that he become a doctor. Just take Annie and run. He could have told them to take their money and shove it.
Instead, Annie got to go to school, he got to go to school, and neither got what they really wanted.
She’d been so, so perfect ... until she wasn’t.
Even now, the thought of her being dead would catch him off guard and overwhelm him.
I made it happen.
He closed his eyes and began to cry. Soon he was sobbing so hard he didn’t hear the doorbell at first. Then there was someone pounding at his door.
Mort jumped up, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Just a minute.” Dabbing
at his eyes, he hurried to the door. “All right. Cut it out!”
He looked through the peep hole and there stood Vlad Folo, impatience written all over his face. Before he could release the deadbolt, Folo shouted at the door,
“Well, are you going to let me in or do I have to pick the lock, then come in there, and punch you in the face?”
Tallent pulled open the door and stepped aside. Folo brushed past him, went straight to the sofa, and made himself comfortable.
“That’s better!” Folo said.
“How many times have I told you to never come to my place—either here or the office?”
“Damn, Doc, don’t think I ever made a count. Besides, what makes you think I give a shit what you say?” He reached for one of the candies in a cut-crystal dish on the coffee table.. He carefully unwrapped the clear paper from a butterscotch sucker.
Tallent sat down in a chair opposite him, his stomach a roaring volcano. “What do you want?”
Vlad laughed. “What do I want? No, Mort, it’s all about what you want.” He sucked loudly on the candy. “Isn’t that what we’re all about?”
“Why are you here?”
“Lolly Stenz is now your ex-employee.”
“You killed her?”
“No. You didn’t want me to kill her, you cheap skate.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you were too cheap to pay my fifty-thousand fee. That’s what I mean.”
Tallent was on the edge of his seat. “How did you get her to leave?”
“I simply advised her to go. She saw the reality of what her staying might lead to, so she left.” He reached over for another sucker. This time a red one. “Right now, I believe she’s taking an airplane ride back to wherever she came from.”
“Did you hurt her?” Tallent jumped up.
“Sit down, Dr. Mort.” He unwrapped the second candy and popped it into his mouth. “Of course I hurt her. Do you think she would have left any other way?”
Tallent slowly sat down again. “What do you want?”
“Well, first I want you to pay me the twenty-five thousand you owe me for Ms. Lolly. Then I want to know what you want done with the other one.”
“The other one? You mean Gina Mazzio?”
Chapter 26
The minute Gina stepped onto the unit, Gwen, the team leader, was waiting for her. “Don’t freak out, but I’m going to need you to scrub in for a Cardio Cath this morning.”
“Oh, no, not yet, Gwen. I’ve hardly had any training for it. It’ll be a mess.”
“Believe me, it’s not something that was planned.” Gwen looked at her with sympathy. “But with two out sick, you’re up.” Gwen squeezed her arm. “Hey, you’re gonna be fine.”
“Who’s the doctor doing it?”
“Mort Tallent.” The team leader turned away as soon as she dropped the name on her. “Look, I know he’s a pain,” she said over her shoulder, “but we have to make it work. Keep your thoughts on the patient instead of him.”
“I’ll try.”
“By the way, a friend of yours has signed up for a cath procedure. He named you as a go-to-person if there are any problems. You and his wife.”
“Who is it?
Gwen opened her iPad and tapped on the screen. “Stefano Mulzini.”
“Did you say Stefano?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Gwen said, checking her screen again.
“Well, thanks, Gwen.” Gina s laughed for the first time since she arrived at work. “You’ll never know how much that tidbit of information means to me.”
* * *
Mort Tallent
hadn’t slept most of the night thinking about Vlad Folo and his unwelcome visit to his condo.
The man’s a killer and he’s getting more and more uncontrollable.
And why not. He has me by the balls. I’ll never get him off my back now.
At that moment, he couldn’t comprehend the madness that had caused him to contract Vlad to kill his ex-wife. Still, just thinking about Annie had him clenching his fists, fighting against anger that might flash or break loose at any moment. Worse, he knew he would feel like this for hours.
Of all the days that he didn’t want to work at Ridgewood, this certainly topped the list. He had a violent headache and he was tired and worn down. If he could have been in his own Cath Lab, worked out of the penthouse, he would have been on safe territory.
Pull yourself together, Tallent.
He was scheduled for a cardiac cath, with a probable stent placement; all he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep.
Tallent took the elevator to the Ridgewood CCU wing and was further irritated that construction workers were still at it in the hallway that joined the wing to the main hospital. He didn’t like being in that dusty section. It kicked up his allergies.
When he walked into the actual unit, he went straight into the locker room and started to undress, hanging everything neatly in his locker. There were a couple of other doctors in the area, also getting into scrubs, but they did nothing more than exchange nods with Tallent.
Once he was ready, he checked his watch and saw he had enough time for a cup of coffee. He went into the staff lounge, headed straight for the coffee machine, and poured black coffee into a mug.
He eyed the staffing schedule and immediately saw Gina Mazzio next to his name. She would be his scrub nurse for the procedure.
* * *
Gina was setting up for the cardiac cath, trying not to think about the confrontation with Mort Tallent that was bound to happen.
What could she say when he asked why she was roaming through his offices after hours?
She tried to push it out of her mind as she continued with her set-up, went through her check list for the sterile field:
Sheaths, diagnostic caths, guide caths, guide wires.
Tallent’s notes indicated this patient probably had severe narrowing of her arteries. She checked out the stents he might need, along with the angioplasty balloons.
She was feeling very insecure—she’d never scrubbed in for the procedure without a preceptor to guide her through the process. But the worse part, Tallent was known to give nurses a really bad time. He’d have more than enough opportunity, and reason, to really lay into her.
She waited, ready in her OR garb, sterile gloves on, fingers of both hands interlaced at chest level. She could see Tallent through the glass in the scrub area. He’d glanced at her a couple of times and his face above the mask appeared stern and hard.
Standing there, she had blocked out Gwen, who was working with the patient before the procedure began, but now she tuned into them again.
They were past the preliminary part, reiterating what meds the patient took and any known allergies. Gwen was at the point of giving the patient meds to help her relax and again going over what she could expect.
Their voices drifted away and she turned back to Tallent, who was almost finished with his scrub and ready to come into the OR. The circulating nurse lifted the covering sheet from the table setup, exposing all the instruments in the sterile field.
This could be the last day I work at Ridgewood.
Tallent stepped into the room and Gina handed him a sterile towel to dry his wet hands. When he was gowned and gloved, he stood in front of the table, staring at the set up.
Ignoring Gina, he spoke to the patient, “We’re going to start now. You just close your eyes and before you know it, we’ll be all through.”
The patient mumbled something. Tallent said to Gwen, “Good job.”
Chapter 27
“I couldn’t believe it, “Gina said to Harry. “Mort Tallent never said a word about Lolly or me wandering through his office. Not one word.”
“How did he treat you?” Harry took a huge bite of his taco; sauce dripped from the bottom, covering a good portion of his plate with thick, red salsa.
“Standoffish, condescending. Definitely looking for any little glitch he could pin on me. You know, read me the riot act about some nonexistent thing that almost killed the patient.”
“You’re good.” Harry wiped off the sauce, which had now dribbled onto his wrist. He took her hand. “And, you’re one lucky woman.”
“I guess the question is, why didn’t he speak up? I know there’s something screwy going on with Tallent, bookkeeper or no bookkeeper. We need to get to the bottom of it.”
“Where did that we come from?” Harry looked at his watch. She knew it was getting close to the end of their lunch break. He finished up the remains of his taco. “I told you I didn’t want any part of this whole business right from the beginning.”
“Have you found a hacker for us yet?”
“Man, did you even hear one thing I said? Besides, we just talked about it. Give me a chance. One of us has to think about consequences. That’s one big, dangerous step hacking into someone’s computer files. I’m not exactly into the federal prison thing. They toss you in there and throw away the key, even for white-collar crimes.” He chuckled. “Besides, it would mess up our wedding plans.”
“Oh, hell, people hack into stuff all the time.” Gina used her fork to push salad from one part of the plate to another.”
“Not like you to skip lunch.” Harry pointed to her dish full of food.
“I’m still kind of keyed up.”
Harry moved his chair closer to her, nuzzled her neck, kissed her cheek. “I’ll bet you were great in that OR. Believe me, if you weren’t, you would have heard.”
“Get a room,” her brother Vinnie said, pulling up a chair and setting his tray on the table. “Harry, you have to learn to keep your hands to yourself.”
Harry gave Vinnie a wide smile. “Not on your life.”
“I swear, Vin, don’t you ever eat anything other than hamburgers and French fries?” Gina reached across the table and stole one of the fries and dipped it into the spread of catsup that covered a quarter of the plate.
“Hey, when I love something, I never give up on it.” Vinnie pointed a fry at her. “Otherwise, I’d have gotten rid of you long ago.”
“Ha, ha.” She snatched the fry from his finger tips and stuck it in her mouth. “Where’s Helen?”
“Taking a later lunch. Too busy to hang out with her fiancée.”
Gina looked up and caught a man with piercing eyes staring at her. Actually, she’d noticed him on and off throughout lunch, but hadn’t thought anything about it. He was in no hurry to turn away when he saw her looking back at him.
Harry stood. “Short, but sweet. I have a lot of really sick ones in ICU. Better get going.” He leaned over and kissed Gina goodbye. “See you later, beautiful.”
She watched Harry walk away, agilely slipping between the crowded tables. Just watching him made her chest swell with happiness.
How did I ever get so lucky to find this Lucke guy?
Then her eyes found the man again. He was still watching her.
* * *
Mort Tallent was relieved at the end of the cardio cath procedure. When he’d placed the stent in the artery, he couldn’t stop his hand from shaking. It was fortunate everything turned out okay.
All I need is to poke an arterial vessel and shoot off a clot to the brain or the lungs.
Having Gina scrub in with him had made him nervous and unsure. It was as though she were scrutinizing his every move—which he’d expect every good scrub nurse to do. But this was different.
He’d started out wanting to put her on the defensive from the moment he knew she would be assisting him. But in the end, he was the one who felt insecure about how to proceed with questioning her about the break
-in with Lolly.
Back in his office he’d refused to go out for lunch. Instead, he heated a can of tomato soup in their kitchen, took it to his office, and closed the door. Both Bob and Jon had indicated earlier that they wanted to talk to him about something. At the moment, he didn’t want to talk to anyone ... about anything.
He sat behind his desk and stared at the bowl of hot soup—soon the tiny plumes of steam slowed and disappeared. He made himself take a spoonful.
Now, it was almost room temperature.
He leaned back into his chair, tried to take deep breaths to relax, but suddenly he was sobbing; his chest heaved and he gasped for air. Without thinking, he opened the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a picture of Annie.
He stared at her beautiful face. She’d had a smile that melted his heart.
He hadn’t looked at this picture for a long time and thought he should get rid of it. He’d thought that before, but every time he started to toss it, he stopped and tucked it back in the desk drawer.
Why did she have to fall out of love with me when I loved her so much?
And why did he always ask himself the same question when he already knew the answer?
When money became more important than her, or anything else, he’d lost her. And he knew what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was as though the money would justify his giving up the things he’d lived for before he became a physician.
Fucking fool!
His whole relationship with a killer started with Annie. He’d allowed Vlad to push him over the edge, arrange for her killing—and it hadn’t stopped there. He’d also arranged for his bookkeeper Maria, and in the end, her mother, to die. All at the hands of Vlad.
It was Maria’s own fault. Yes, she’d brought it on herself. All she had to do was her job. It wasn’t up to her to question his practice, to question why he padded and created Medicare costs that didn’t exist. That he’d gone ahead charging for procedures that were cancelled.
Did she have a right to question the extent of his charges? They were his, not hers.
No! All she needed to do was keep the accounts straight. That was her job and if she’d done that, and only that, there would have been no need for Vlad to step in.
