Bone Crack: A Medical Suspense Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 6)

by Bette Golden Lamb

  “Mulzini!” Gina and Mulzini said in unison.

  Chapter 52

  Alexander Yurev was slumped in his car, in a daze. He watched the sun rise, tried to envision what his future was going to be like.

  What a fool I’ve been! Twenty hard years doing what I was told to do, thinking all along my Sonya was being faithful, raising our children, waiting for my return.

  Idiot! Not my Sonya, Misha’s Sonya. Misha, that disobedient, sex-crazed idiot!

  Alex was painfully aware of what a loyal and naive grunt he’d been for the brotherhood. His life had dribbled away while he did penance for fucking up the Antonev assignment.

  And now, Misha had stolen his woman and children while he wasted away in America.

  He hadn’t slept during the night, cramped up in the car. All he could think about was Misha and how he would return to Russia and kill him.

  But first, he would destroy this Vlad Folo, this Antonev/Pushkin kid who had gotten away from him time after time. And there would be no doubt when he cut off Folo’s finger as proof that he had completed his assignment. Folo was as responsible for his destroyed life as was Misha. Together, they had held him prisoner.

  After talking to Misha, he’d forced himself to stay with the car and keep watch for Folo. The bastard would not get away this time.

  He ordered a pizza and drinks to be delivered to his car and when the streets were deserted, he relieved himself in the bushes like a street dog.

  Yes, that’s what he had become: an abandoned, killing animal.

  * * *

  Vlad watched the doctor as he left the apartment. Yes, this man, this doctor with the slumped shoulders, had given up all hope.

  He knew Tallent would pay all of Vlad’s money demands, not only now, but through the coming years—whatever it took to save his miserable ass.

  Vlad didn’t like the doctor, never had. He had to hold back a constant urge to kill the coward, put him out of his misery. But Vlad needed money more than the satisfaction of taking the doctor’s life. If he was to start over again, with a new identity and a new home, he would need Tallent’s money.

  And so he would kill the nurse for him.

  He had studied the Mazzio nurse, watched her with her man in the hospital cafeteria, and watched her outside her apartment building. The woman had a fire in her belly, she would fight hard for her life.

  He’d had women like her before. But they all gave in, sooner or later.

  Breaking someone’s spirit wasn’t all that difficult. All he had to do was convince them that he definitely would kill them. Easy. No problem.

  Vlad smiled, content with himself. Yes, he was a good killer.

  He went out to Rosia’s car, but didn’t get in immediately. Something was off—something he couldn’t quite identify. He looked around, along the sidewalks, up and down the street; inspected the windows of the tall, high-rent apartment buildings all around him.

  The signs were there again. A chill crawled up and down his back. Who? How? From where?

  Jumpy.

  He checked his watch.

  It was late morning. He drove to a little neighborhood cafe he knew. He would eat, take a nap in the car, and be ready.

  * * *

  Alex walked into the little café where Vlad was eating, tried not to attract the man’s attention. He slowly, quietly found a seat two booths away, toward the rear of the cafe, and to Vlad’s back.

  He edged onto the vinyl-covered seat and waited for the shapely waitress, in a bright yellow uniform, to come to him after taking Vlad’s order.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes, that would be good. I would also like some bacon and eggs with rye toast.”

  “Like I told the man at the other table ... ten minutes more and you would have missed breakfast.” The waitress smiled at him, showing the whitest teeth he’d ever seen. “Coming right up.”

  When he looked up, Vlad had turned around and was looking directly at him. Alex nodded, got up, and went to the men’s restroom.

  Inside, he stared at his image and could see he was a mess. Not as terrible as he felt, but his plain blue tie was askew and his shirt was grubby. It didn’t matter much. His rain coat did a good job of covering most of his wrinkled clothing.

  He bent over and washed his face with cold water, then pulled a comb from his pocket and ran it through his hair. After fixing his tie and brushing off his raincoat, he didn’t look quite as grubby as before.

  * * *

  Vlad didn’t like the looks of the man who came into the café right after him. And when he heard him give his breakfast order to the waitress, he thought he heard an accent, a Russian accent. But the man was soft-spoken and too far away for Vlad to be certain.

  He watched the man get up and go to the restroom. There was something about him, something other than his near-bum appearance. Vlad was tempted to leave, then tried to calm himself—he’d been far too jumpy the last few days, and for no real reason that he could identify. Besides, he was here and he was hungry. If this man was a danger, Vlad was more than ready to handle it.

  When the man returned, Vlad could see that he’d kind of pulled himself together. He wondered if he was perhaps some kind of traveling salesman. Then he noticed that the man walked with a slight limp. Vlad relaxed. The brotherhood wouldn’t send someone to take him out who wasn’t in the best shape possible.

  He smiled at the young waitress when she brought his breakfast of pancakes and sausage. He dug into the food and forgot about the man a couple of booths behind him.

  Chapter 53

  Tallent stood in front of the bulletin board in the Nurses’ Station. He studied the surgery lineup, couldn’t believe that Gina Mazzio was scheduled to scrub in with him for the policeman’s cardio cath.

  He took off for the locker room—needed some space to think. The place was empty—everybody was out on the unit floor, where he should be.

  He collapsed on the narrow wooden bench between two rows of ceiling-to-floor metal lockers. He rested his elbows on his knees, cupped his chin in both hands. His mind did cartwheels as he took in deep breaths.

  Pull yourself together.

  He had to focus on the procedure he would be doing in a few minutes. He needed to get his ass in gear and start thinking about Stefano Mulzini and his ablation. Instead, his thoughts bounced between Mazzio, Vlad, and Annie.

  Stop it!

  He reached in one pocket, then in another for the oversized shoe coverings and his cap. He had to get to the scrub room, get ready for the procedure.

  His mind flashed to Stinson Beach, where he and Annie practically lived—until his parents revoked his trust fund.

  There was no more money. Do it their way—or else!

  Another mind jump and he remembered that the first official day of the Mavericks surfing competition would be coming up soon. He could picture the famous rock-studded surf spot twenty miles south of Francisco. He’d been good back then, really good. He and his surfboard rode the waves together, like a superhero—Batman and his Bat mobile.

  He smiled, remembering the fifty-foot wave that tossed him into the sea, and his near-suffocation when another wave hit and held him under. He’d barely escaped. But he never told Annie about it. Nothing was ever going to stop him from surfing.

  Nothing other than a revoked trust fund.

  He still resented the power his parents had held over him. They’d put him in a box with no openings. His father got him reinstated to the Stanford School of Medicine, rented a small house in Palo Alto for him and Annie, and set up no-cash-back credit card accounts to cover living expenses. But no cash.

  He still found an hour here and there to surf, but having to be extra careful not to break his board took a lot of the pleasure out of it.

  Fool!

  * * *

  Bob Cantor finished his procedure and left the Cath Lab, shucking his gloves and loosening his gown. He was dripping with sweat.

  His patient was okay following a tricky
cardiac angioplasty that had gone much longer than anticipated because the man had required two stents instead of one to open up clogged arteries,

  But now his patient was in recovery and doing fine. As soon as Cantor was convinced he was stable, he would send him on over to CCU as an in-patient, where he would spend the night under close observation. If all continued to go well, Cantor would discharge him, probably tomorrow.

  With a couple of hours on his hands until his next case, Cantor decided to drop in to see his in-house patients.

  I must be getting old. I’m really beat.

  Not only that, both he and Jon Brichett had been working overtime to take on many of Tallent’s patient referrals. His books were closed—no more new patients.

  It was a relief in many ways. It had become obvious that Tallent had no love for practicing medicine. What he did love was raking in money.

  Cantor wondered if Tallent would really just take some time off or end up leaving their practice all together. Trying to talk to the man privately had become useless. He’d dodged meeting after meeting with him and Burchett.

  He and Tallent had been friends at one time—maybe not close, buddy-buddy great friends, but they were always respectful of each other. Until recently. Now they barely spoke, even when riding in the same elevator.

  Cantor was on the way to the locker room to change into fresh scrubs when Gina Mazzio grabbed his arm.

  “Bob, I need your help.”

  Gina’s face was flushed and she was breathing like a race horse after a run. She was barely able to talk.

  “Hey,” he said, “what’s the matter?”

  “My friend Mulzini is having a cath shortly.”

  “Okay. What’s the problem?”

  “He signed up with Mort Tallent. Your waiting list was too long and Mulzini is a full-blown Type A. He wouldn’t listen to anybody about a possible delay one once his mind was made up to do the procedure.”

  “So?” Cantor said, puzzled.

  “There’s something wrong with Mort. I don’t trust him anymore.”

  Somehow, Gina had pushed the wrong button—whether it was because he was unhappy with Tallent himself, or because he was just plain tired.

  “What is it with you, Gina? Aren’t we running our practice to suit you? I mean, we brought Lolly Stentz into our practice because you recommended her. Didn’t you vouch that she was top-notch?”

  “Yes, I did. She’s a great nurse.”

  “Okay, so where is she? And if she’s so great, why did she up and walk out on us without word of warning? Our offices were left high and dry, critically short-staffed.” He tossed his gown into a nearby laundry container.

  “It was an emergency. She had to leave.”

  “I’ve known you a long time, Gina. Your word usually carries a lot of weight with me, but I’m beginning to wonder about your judgment lately. And now, you’re making unwarranted accusations about Mort’s competence. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Her arm dropped away from his and he watched her face morph from surprise to anger.

  “I really don’t give a damn what you think of me, Bob. But I do know you care about your patients. All I’m asking is for you to please stick around until Mulzini is in recovery. Please!”

  He watched her, head held high, flip around and head for the Cath Lab scrub area.

  Chapter 54

  Mulzini was moving, floating. Instead of trying to listen to the voices around him, he surrendered to the lulling motion. He knew he was giggling because it reminded him of being a kid in a flimsy cardboard box, flying down a hill. There was still an echo of joyous laughter in his head from long, long ago.

  He opened his eyes and stared into the overhead lights whizzing by.

  He was out of the cardboard box now and thinking about his telescope, tucked away at home in the storage closet. It was there with all kinds of other things that had been put aside as not being important. He remembered carrying the telescope outside and setting it up on the sidewalk so he could study every quadrant of the night sky—always ending up indulging in his main fascination, the moon.

  Whenever he would share that memory with Marcia, she would laugh and call him a “Moonie,” even though she knew that any mention of that defunct cult always got his hackles up. He had a hunch she did it to get a rise out of him—which it always did.

  Funny lady.

  He heard someone say, “Mr. Mulzini, we’re positioning you under the equipment now.”

  “’S Mulzini ... jus’ Mulzini

  “Hey, Just Mulzini. It’s me. I’m here too.”

  “’Zat you, Mazzzzz...i...o?”

  “Yeah. Think I’d lose an opportunity to finally have you in my power?”

  He started to drift off. “Poor, Mazzio ... my trouble-shooter ... trouble-maker ... trouble ... trouble ... toil ‘n trouble...”

  * * *

  Gina watched Mort Tallent in the other room, scrubbing for the procedure. She usually liked the glass partition that allowed her to see outside the Cath Lab, it kept her from feeling claustrophobic. Today, even with Tallent’s face mostly covered with a mask, she could still see his piercing eyes shooting pure malice at her.

  Tallent knows Mulzini’s my friend. Would he dare to take his anger at me out on him?

  What an idiot she was. Why hadn’t she been more open with Mulzini—insisted he change doctors?

  And why hadn’t Bob Cantor listened? Why was he so angry at her? Most of all, why wasn’t he here to save her friend?

  All Gina could think of was helplessly watching Mulzini die on that table because of her and Lolly. And they hadn’t then even found anything.

  Now, she and Harry knew that everyone of those fifty-thousand dollar payments were to someone named Vlad. Each payment corresponded to when Tallent’s wife was murdered, when Maria Benke and her mother were murdered. The twenty-five thousand was the same time Lolly ran away. And the final fifty? Gina was certain it had her name on it.

  Not going to happen! Tallent and this Vlad guy are going down.

  When she finished the shift, she was going straight to Inspector Pepper Yee—a Mulzini cohort. There hadn’t been a lot of trust between Yee and Gina, but the cop would do her job. If they were suspicious of Tallent in the past, it shouldn’t take much to arouse their attention again.

  If only Mulzini hadn’t been sick—he would have believed her right away. He would have at least tried to help.

  Gina finished with last minute details in setting up the instruments and equipment that Tallent would need. She decided that after the ablation, Tallent would kill Mulzini, if that’s what he planned. Or it could happen like it did with Kat Parker—the result of his carelessness.

  The team leader, Gwen, was the circulating nurse today. Right now she was checking Mulzini’s vitals and administering more meds.

  “How are you feeling,” Gwen ask Mulzini.

  “I keep drifting off into nowhere land. This is the best rest I’ve had in a long time.”

  “That’s good. Just keep in mind, we’re going to keep bugging you. This is a hospital ... we can’t let you get too much rest.”

  Gina’s stomach was a cauldron and her knees almost failed her when Tallent walked into the procedure area.

  She handed him a sterile towel to dry his hands, then helped him into his gown and gloves. He seemed to lose his way for a moment, adjusted, nodded at Gina, looked at the equipment on the table, then stood there staring off into space.

  The nurses and technicians were all waiting for the procedure to begin, but Tallent kept his gloved hands folded across his chest.

  “Doctor?” Gina prompted.

  He slowly turned, looked directly into her eyes. She could see he really wasn’t in this room ... he was someplace else that she couldn’t even imagine.

  Everyone seemed caught in a time-lapse, looking at one another, each probably wondering what to do next.

  Then she saw Bob Cantor through the glass partition in the scrub area, mak
ing preparations to step in. When he came in, he stepped up close to Tallent and said, “I’ll get this one, Mort.”

  * * *

  Tallent could swear he heard the sound of the ocean as he slowly returned to the locker room.

  No, he wasn’t imagining it. The crashing waves kept roaring in his head.

  In the hospital garage, he got into his Mercedes, and sat very still for a long, long time.

  Chapter 55

  Gina was both exhausted and exhilarated when Mulzini’s procedure was finished—everything had gone smoothly. He was in great shape, headed for post-op.

  Working with Cantor had been wonderful. They were a great team.

  “So I’m a jerk, right?” Cantor said as he started out the door of the Cath Lab.

  “Can’t argue with that.” Gina was gathering the instruments, getting them ready to be cleaned. She was determined to remain calm even though she was still annoyed by the way he’d treated her. It didn’t work.

  “Why all the hostility? I thought you and I got along pretty good. You always seem to trust my judgment ... until this morning.”

  “That’s not fair, Gina. I came, didn’t I?”

  “I guess that’s something.”

  “You need to understand, things are unsettled around here. I don’t know whether you know it or not, but Mort’s taking a leave of absence from his practice. Frankly, I don’t think he’ll return to medicine.”

  “After this morning, I think we can agree that’s a good thing.”

  “Maybe so, but Jon and I are having to take up the slack. We’re not only overworked, we’re kind of pissed at the guy.”

  “You’re better off without him, Bob. This morning doesn’t even cover it all.”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t get into medicine to work myself to death.”

  “Why does anyone get into medicine?” Gina said. “It’s because we want to help people.”

  “That’s an idealistic fantasy that most of us start out with. We all look for that rosy future, but it doesn’t take long before reality smacks us in the eye. If we could only just treat patients.” He let out a big sigh. “There’s so damn much paperwork—insurance forms, Medicare forms, federal forms, state forms; it goes on and on and on. The partnership eases that burden somewhat, but the worst thing for me personally is watching people die because they can’t afford expensive, over-priced meds.” He turned away. “I’m tired of it all.”