Dr. Knox (6 page)

I carried the duffels down the hall; Callie followed with the garbage bags. We stopped in the kitchen, stripped off our masks and gloves, and bagged them. My shirt was damp with sweat, and my eyes were gritty from working in bad light. I squirted disinfecting gel into her palms and my own.

Jersey was on the sofa, looking at his phone. Tex was in a folding chair, drinking beer, eating pistachios, and flicking the shells halfway across the living room, at a big glass ashtray on a card table. The ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts, and the shells bounced onto the floor. Sutter leaned by the curtained front window and looked half asleep, though he wasn't. Tex looked up and pointed at the girl and laughed.

“Hey, Karl, check out Callie—she's Nurse Jackie.”

Karl shook his head and rose from the sofa. “About time, doc. Guess we made you earn all that scratch. How's Billy boy doing?” The girl clenched her fists.

I stretched my arms and shook out my hands. “I couldn't debride the burn—it's too large and too deep, and, the shape he's in, he wouldn't survive it. But I cleaned it up as much as I could, put a drain in, dressed it, gave him fluids, and something for the pain. It was all I could do, and it'll make him more comfortable. But it won't change the course of things.”

Karl squinted. “So you're sayin' what? Is he gonna be okay when we gotta boogie, or not?”

I looked at Callie, who was looking at her shoes. She'd heard it already, but was braced for the reprise. “He should've been in a hospital five days ago,” I said. “Now it's too late. The infection is systemic, his kidneys have shut down, and his lungs are failing. Billy's in septic shock. He's dying.”

Callie pointed at Karl. “You hear, Karl—
five days
! He needed help five days back but you said no. You fucked that up, fucked up the guards too—this is all on you!” The girl hiccupped and wiped an arm across her nose.

Karl shook his head. “That sucks, Cal. Billy's a good guy, a good box man.”

“Now you care,” she said. “Fuck you.”

Karl flicked a dismissive hand at her. “How long's he got?”

I shrugged. “Twelve hours, maybe less. Once the kidneys quit…”

Karl pursed his lips and looked at Tex. “It's a problem if he goes twelve hours.”

Tex flung another shell at the ashtray. “It's a problem if he goes more than eight—we got a plane coming.”

“I don't know what to tell you. It's not a precise thing.”

Tex snorted. “We can make it precise,” he muttered.

“What the fuck's that mean, asshole?” Callie said. “And why's it matter to you, anyway? Y'all go on your way. I'll stay with Billy till…I'll stay with him.”

He shook his head. “That's not gonna work. This place is good for another day, maybe, but then what? People are looking for us, remember? Where are you goin' alone?”

“That's my business.”

Some more glances with Tex, and then Karl nodded slowly. “If that's really what you want. But your cut—”

“My cut is
mine,
Karl—I worked for that. And Billy's cut too—I'm the closest he's got to kin.”

Tex reddened and stood. “The fuck you—”

Karl put a hand up. “You're being a bitch, Callie, you know that?”

“Then it's good we're goin' separate ways.”

“A world-class bitch…But out of respect for Billy, sure, fine—your cut's yours. And Billy's too.” He looked at Tex some more, and Tex sat.

Sutter cleared his throat and looked at Karl. “You guys want new friends, go to Facebook—'cause we're really not interested. And we're especially not interested in hearing about names, cuts, travel plans, or anything about your family feud, okay?”

Karl smiled his sly smile and laughed. “Don't get so wound up—we trust you. I thought everybody out here was supposed to be all chill.”

Sutter sighed and shook his head. “Whatever, dude,” he said. Then he pushed himself off the wall, crossed the room, and headed down the hall.

“Where you goin'?” Tex said.

Sutter kept walking. “To piss, maybe take a dump. You want to watch?”

Tex started to rise again, but Karl stopped him with a minute shake of his head. Sutter called back to me as he stepped into the hallway bathroom. “Then we're rolling, doc, so get your shit together.”

I knelt and zipped up the duffels. Karl watched me and smiled some more. “You want a beer before you go, or something stronger?”

“No, thanks.” I handed Callie a small envelope. “It's for pain, if he needs it. Give him one; if that doesn't do it, give him another.” Callie took them, nodded, sniffled.

Karl chuckled. “If he's so far gone, why bother? I mean, why go through all the crap you did tonight, if you knew it wouldn't do any good?”

Tex snorted. “Probably afraid we wouldn't pay.”

“You already paid,” I said.

Karl's face tightened. “No shit, doc—why bother?” he asked. I looked at him and said nothing, and the already thick air thickened some more.

“You deaf now?” Tex said. “You didn't hear what the man asked?”

I looked at Tex. “I heard. I'm just not sure how to answer.”

“Use small words,” Callie said under her breath, but Tex caught it.

“Like you're some fuckin' genius.”

Karl made a long-suffering sigh and looked at me. “Seriously, why do that stuff for him if he's just gonna die?”

“The short answer is that it's my job, to do what I can: not to hurt him; to save him if I'm able, or try my best to; to do something about his pain, if that's all that's left. Those are the rules.”

Tex snorted. “What fuckin' rules?”

“When you're a doctor, douche bag,” Karl said. “Like how they have to keep their mouths shut about their patients.”

“So, what, he's like a priest?”

Karl sighed and looked at his watch. “What's with your pal—he fall asleep in there?”

As he spoke, the bathroom door opened and Sutter emerged, wiping his hands on his jeans. “You want to stay out of there for a while,” he said. “Burritos for lunch.” He looked at me. “You ready to hit it?” I nodded, picked up my bags, and moved to the door.

Tex stood up again. “Well, thanks for not much,” Karl said, and moved toward the door too. “No fault of yours, I guess. You sure you don't want a beer before you book?” He looked at his cell as he spoke, and tapped out something on the screen.

“We're good,” Sutter said, smiling, and then there was a pinging sound from the direction of his pocket. He smiled wider and reached back and tossed an iPhone to the floor. A text message glowed on the screen, and for a moment we all stared at it:
Comin out now. Lock n load.

“I took it off your boy outside,” Sutter said. “The wannabe sniper on the roof, with the AR and the crappy suppressor. He can't answer now, by the way.”

Sutter had a Sig Sauer in each hand, pointed at Tex and at Karl, whose expressions blurred from confusion to shock to rage.

“One at a time,” Sutter said. “Guns on the floor, two fingers only. You first, Karl.”

Karl shook his head and gathered breath and forced a smile. “I gotta say: respect, man—
mad
respect. No shit. How—”

“The ashtray. A lot of butts, all the same brand, same bite mark on the filter. A heavy smoker filled that thing up, and the smell's still fresh in the air. But neither of you have touched a smoke since we've been here. So where's Smoky? Plus, your boy was all fidgety up there. Noisy. We can talk more when you're on the floor, Karl. Two fingers. Now.”

Karl took the gun from his belt, knelt, and put it on the carpet. Sutter kicked it away as Karl stretched out on his belly, and then Tex lunged. And collapsed into a gasping, cursing heap, curled around his groin. Sutter plucked the gun from Tex's belt.

“You telegraph bad, pal,” he said. “You should work on that.”

“Screw—” Tex began, but ended with a scream when Sutter stomped on his ankle.

I turned to Callie. She was breathing hard and her face was lit with pleasure. “Did you know there was someone on the roof?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Who, Dub? I didn't know where the hell Dub went to. I figured Karl sent him out for somethin', or maybe he was in the garage. I wasn't mindin' that asshole; I was tryin' to take care of Billy. Besides, you never asked for no head count.”

Sutter laughed and looked at Karl. “Your buddy's trussed up in the bathtub—still breathing too. I'm happy to treat you boys the same, despite what giant dicks you are, so long as you don't fuck around anymore. So I'm gonna take your weapons and put some zip ties on you, and then we'll be on our way. Callie can cut you loose when we're gone.” Sutter looked at me.

“You want to grab the zip ties, doc? They're in the glove compartment.”

“We can't leave her,” I said.

“What?” Sutter said.

“We can't leave the girl here. They're going to kill her.”

Callie inhaled sharply, and Sutter sighed. “You don't—” he started, but I pointed at Karl.

“You heard his bullshit. You know what they had planned for us. You know I'm right.”

“What?”
Callie said. “They're gonna
what
?”

“And?” Sutter asked. “I don't see how this is our problem.”

“So we're supposed to leave her?”

Sutter shook his head. “This is
exactly
what I'm talking about. This shit is
not
our shit, and yet somehow you make it our shit.”

“We're supposed to leave her—her and Billy both? Because, one way or another, he'll be dead too when they leave.”

“You said he'd be dead in a few hours anyway.”

“It's still not right.”

Karl snickered, and it was too much for Callie. “You think it's funny, motherfucker?” she shouted. “You gonna shoot me and Billy and take our fuckin' money, and you think that's so fuckin' funny?”

He looked up at her and grinned. “It's nothing personal, Cal. Not
that
personal, anyways.”

Then she kicked him twice, fast, in the face. Karl yelped and wrapped his arms over his head, and Sutter looked resigned and disgusted. He tucked one of his guns into his armpit and caught Callie and lifted her, one-handed, still kicking, by her belt loops. He dropped her in front of me. “Maybe you could manage your girlfriend,” he said, and turned to Karl. “And you, asshole—you and I are gonna renegotiate fees.”

Billy died quietly, two hours later. Sutter frayed the plastic on Karl's zip tie before we left, enough so he could work himself loose with some effort. Callie wanted to kick him some more, but I pulled her away. Still, Karl was less than grateful when we walked out, and I could feel his glare on the back of my neck even as we drove west on the 10.

It was still warm, and we kept the top down; the wind carried off the smells of infection and death. No one spoke, but Callie sobbed and shook the whole way back. She hadn't decided what her next move would be, but thought Union Station was a place to start, and we dropped her near a hotel on Chavez that was walking distance to the trains. Callie climbed out, slung her backpack, nodded at Sutter, squeezed my hand, and disappeared.

Sutter turned onto Alameda going south, and still we didn't speak. We stayed silent into Little Tokyo, and when we passed First Street, I couldn't take it anymore.

“It's not my fault those guys were morons,” I said.

“It's not,” he said after a while. His eyes never left the road.

“I didn't make them try to ambush us.”

“Nope.”

“And I had nothing to do with their plans to kill Callie and her boyfriend.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Then why—”

“You made her our problem.”

“What would've happened to her was…wrong.”

“Like that's rare? The world is full of all kinds of wrong—take five paces in any direction, you can't help but trip over it. Read a newspaper and you choke on it. You want to fix that shit, fine, but it's a full-time job, brother, the pay is lousy, and nobody's gonna thank you. No one's ever happy to find a missionary at the door.”

“No one except people who need help.”

“Somehow they're never the ones with the guns. Believe me, I get it—that itch to make things right. I had it myself, and I scratched it till it bled. It's why I signed on with Uncle in the first place, and why I signed off after seeing my work—work guys shed blood for—get turned to shit by dickheads looking to make a buck, or who couldn't keep their Predators in their pants. But I'm over it now. Now I fill the hours with simpler things: having some fun, making some bread, taking care of family, trying to get through the day without killing anybody, shit like that. You, brother, muddy up those waters.”

“Tonight we did the right thing.”

“It's great we're so awesome,” Sutter said, sighing. “But I'm trying for simple, doc, and being your friend is sometimes the opposite of that.” I nodded and said nothing, but watched the streets turn darker and more empty as we neared my home.

Sutter dropped me in the alley, by the clinic's back door, and drove off. The alley was quiet, and smelled of garbage, piss, and soot. My Honda was parked in the shadows. It was dusty, old, and in need of new tires, and I felt much the same. I put my baggage down and was rattling my keys when the car came around the corner.

It was a Land Rover, black with silver trim, neither dusty nor old, and its very large tires had an oily sheen in the sodium light. They squealed when the car swayed around the corner, and again when it rocked to a halt six inches from my knees.

I recognized them from Scotty's description, as soon as they got out of the Rover.
Big and bigger. Ugly and uglier. Scary.

The guy with blond cornrows was bigger, around six four, around 240 pounds. He wore black cowboy boots, black jeans, and a red tee shirt sprayed onto a chemically enhanced torso. His face was bony and pumpkin-colored under the lights, and when he smiled his teeth looked too large. His eyes were eager and darting, the pupils huge. Speeding. Maybe he thought the anabolic steroids didn't make him aggressive enough.

The other guy was definitely uglier. The tattoo on his chin was as Scotty had described—a black heart with a dagger through it—but Scotty hadn't mentioned the ink on his cheeks and neck—stars, elaborate crosses, Cyrillic letters—or the shaved head, or the expression of animal meanness on his meaty face and in his black eyes. He was about five ten and maybe two hundred pounds, and he wore gray pinstriped pants that were too long, and a pink shirt unbuttoned almost to his waist. His torso was like a steamer trunk, and there was thick hair on his chest, and more Russian ink. Wired wrong, I thought. Crazy.

“You the doctor?” Cornrows said. There was the trace of an accent in his voice, and he sounded like he was struggling not to laugh. I didn't answer, but thought about the scalpels in my bags, and that I'd never get to them in time. “You're him, right?” He looked at something in his hand. “Dr. Knox. And this is your clinic?”

My pulse spiked, and I tasted the tang of adrenaline on my tongue. I looked at my car, and the Dumpster alongside it. Nothing there.

“Who are you looking for?” I said, and took a step back.

“C'mon, you're him, right—the doctor?” Cornrows said, and smiled wider. Tats looked up and down the alley, and saw nothing that troubled him. He came toward me. Cornrows chuckled and said something in Russian; Tats stopped, though not happily.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Is somebody sick?”

Cornrows got a kick out of that, and the harder he laughed, the darker his face became. “Yeah—you. You're coming down with something serious any minute, so better to take care of yourself now.”

I took another step back. I looked around the back door and along the building's back wall. Not a pipe or scrap of wood. I'd never seen the alley so fucking clean. I fingered my key ring, and slipped the longest and sharpest key between my middle two fingers and made a fist.

“What do you want?” I asked again.

“You know what we want, doc—we want same as you. We want to know where is she.”

“Where who is?”

Tats spit, then muttered what sounded like a curse. Cornrows' sigh was weary and disappointed. He said something to Tats, who went to the Rover and pulled an aluminum bat from the rear seat. He came toward me.

I took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly. I looked at Tats' neck, at his trachea and suprasternal notch. I tightened my grip on the keys.

Cornrows shook his head. “She something to you, doc, you're gonna take a beating for her?”

“I don't know who
she
is. And, by the way, you're making no sense. If I'm supposed to be looking for her—whoever she is—then why do you think I know where she is?”

That stopped Cornrows for a moment, but Tats seemed not to hear, or to care. He took another step toward me and slapped the bat head in his palm. “You going to bullshit around, or you going to say why you want her?” His voice was like rocks in a bucket.

I shrugged. “She came in here.”

“And she is what to you, huh? Your
bliad
?”

Cornrows smirked. “Means ‘whore,' doc. He wants to know if Elena's your whore. Which would be a problem, right? Only one boss at a time.”

Elena. I smiled.

Tats didn't know what to make of this, so he smiled too. It was not a pretty thing. His teeth were gray and oddly shaped, and many were missing. “You are doctor,” he said. “You also woman? In my country, most doctors are woman.”

“And most of the assholes are men,” I said. This he understood. His face darkened and he brought the bat back. “I hear you're offering money,” I said, and Tats paused again.

Cornrows smiled, like he'd run into an old friend. “Yeah? Well, you heard it right, doc. You got info, we got cash.”

“How much?”

“Depends on what you got. Could be decent, though. Maybe couple of grand.”

“That's not enough.”

“Could be more—depends.”

“Could be ten?”

Cornrows smiled wider. “Shit, doc, for ten you bring her gift-wrapped to my boss.”

“Tell me who he is and where to find him, and I'll see what I can do.”

He chuckled. “So ten's not really your number, yeah? You continue fucking with me.”

I fought to control my breathing, and shrugged. “It's just how I am.”

“You got balls, doc,” Cornrows said, “for another couple seconds anyway.” Then he nodded at Tats, who came on again.

I pointed up and behind him. “You guys realize you're on camera, right?”

They both turned and looked at the security camera, mounted high up on the wall and looking down on the back door. Cornrows said something in Russian, and Tats nodded and jumped onto the hood of the Rover, and then to its roof. He was quicker and more agile than I would've guessed. He swung the bat one-handed, and there was a loud metallic chime, and the camera and its metal housing came off the building. They bounced off the Dumpster with a hollow clang. Tats leapt from the Rover's roof and landed in a crouch by the front fender.

“Thanks, doc,” Cornrows said, smiling. “You save us a pain in the ass.” Tats smiled too, and came toward me again.

“Yeah, you saved me some trouble too,” a voice called from behind them. “Now I can shoot you douche bags and not worry about it showing up on YouTube.” Cornrows and Tats whirled as Sutter stepped into the cone of the sodium lights, and they froze when they saw his gun.

He held the Sig in a two-handed grip in front of him, and he sighted down the barrel as it swung in an easy arc between the Russians. Tats said something in Russian, in which
mudak
and
pizda
figured prominently. Sutter laughed and said something Russian in response. Cornrows and Tats were surprised and unhappy.

“You want to clear the line of fire, doc?” Sutter said, and jerked his head.

My thighs were like lead, and my chest was tight. “I want to talk to them.”

“You can do that after I shoot 'em. Just in the knees for starters.”

Tats shuffled toward me and adjusted his grip on the bat. There was a flat crack, and Sutter buried a round between his feet. Tats froze. “I like you there,
da
?” Sutter said. “And roll that bat over to me.”

Tats made a disgusted grunt and flung the bat into the darkness, where it clanged, banged, and rolled to a stop.

“Who's your boss?” I asked Cornrows.

He shook his head and smiled grimly. “You have your nigger shoot us now? Is that where we're going?”

Sutter chuckled from across the alley.

“What does your boss want with her?” I said.

“Fuck your cunt,” Cornrows said. “We're leaving. You want to shoot, shoot. Just remember, he's not the only guy in town with guns.” Tats glared at Sutter; then he and Cornrows climbed into the Rover and disappeared in a squeal of tires.

“I saw that movie,” Sutter called after them. “Fucking Ivans—never anything original.” He tucked the Sig behind him and crossed the alley. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air. “I made them when I dropped you off. They were waiting down the block. Then I saw them pull into the alley. They didn't seem like regulars, so…”

“Thanks.”

“They were looking for your girl?”

“Elena—they called her Elena.”

Sutter nodded. “I hate to say
I told you so,
but I'm pretty sure I said that marching around with her photo wasn't the smartest move. How many people you talk to today? Anybody could've dimed you.”

I knelt, and lifted a white rectangular scrap from the asphalt. “It wasn't just anybody,” I said. “They had my card.”

Sutter laughed ruefully. “See what I mean, brother? The opposite of simple.”