by Robert Greer
But things hadn't turned out that way for him, and for the past thirty-six years he'd simply been a killer for hire.
Slightly built, edgy, and a man of few words except when he was among friends, Pinkie liked to refer to himself as a “settlement agent,” as if he were somehow in the insurance or brokerage business. But people in the know understood his play on words very well—and so, unfortunately, did a handful of enemies.
Pinkie's time as top dog of his profession had come after Mario Satoni's days at the helm of the Rocky Mountain region's mob-based activities in the early 1960s and a few short years after Mario had left the mountaintop when his wife, Angie, had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. For years, however, despite the thirty-year difference in their ages, the two men had been friends. More importantly, they both had longtime links to CJ Floyd. Mario's connection to CJ stemmed from the fact that jazz-lover that he was, he'd been fast friends with CJ's late Uncle Ike, the man who had raised CJ, taught him the bail-bonding business, and introduced him to jazz. Ike had also once saved Mario's life as they'd left a Five Points jazz club back in 1948 by clobbering a would-be assassin with what Mario still liked to boast was the meanest clench-fisted, two-armed uppercut he'd ever seen. Ike's actions that night had given him and his only family, CJ, a lifetime protective pass in Mario's world. Pinkie's link to CJ was the fact that he and CJ had shared the same Southeast Asian war.
Pinkie had arrived at Mario's North Denver home twenty minutes earlier, and for most of that time they'd been sitting in Mario's den, the room where the eighty-four-year-old former don now spent most of his time watching his beloved LA Dodgers, discussing the phone calls they'd each recently gotten from CJ. After a lengthy explanation, CJ had asked them both to look out for Damion. Mario's response had been an eager okay. Pinkie's response had been more reluctant, but since he owed Mario in much the same way that Mario had owed Ike, he had no choice but to agree to look out for Damion as well.
Mario's house, dimly lit whether day or night, had the ever-present smell of garlic and vinegar, and after a visit, no matter the length of the stay, the odor always seemed to linger in Pinkie's nostrils for days. Leaning back in a wine-colored simulated-leather La-Z-Boy recliner, a twin to the one in which Mario was seated a few feet away, Pinkie tried his best to ignore the smell and to get comfortable.
Smiling at the skinny hit man's inability to relax, Mario said, “I've told you before, Pinkie. These babies are meant for men of substance and girth, not for stringbeans like you.” Silver-haired, with barely a wrinkle in his face, the frail looking octogenarian rose, walked over to Pinkie's chair, dropped to one knee, and, with Pinkie looking down on the top of his head, began manipulating the seatback adjustment. “See, you just gotta get …”
The sound of someone pounding on his front door stopped Mario in midsentence. When the pounding intensified, he rose and headed across the room to retrieve the 457 he kept in the top drawer of an antique breakfront. He had the drawer half open when Pinkie pulled a 9-mm Glock out of the pocket of the jacket he'd earlier draped across the arm of his La-Z-Boy. “Stay put,” Pinkie said softly, bringing an index finger to his lips and waving Mario off. Rising from his chair and heading down the hallway toward the front door, Pinkie called out, “Who is it?” with his weapon aimed chest high at the door.
“Damion,” came the barely audible response.
Pinkie glanced back at Mario. “It's Damion.”
“Well, let him in, for God's sake, and put away that damn piece!”
With his gun still drawn and at the ready, Pinkie peeked through the door's peephole, realized that it actually was Damion standing outside, and swung the door open.
Glassy-eyed, wobbly, and with the sleeves of his blood-soaked Wind-breaker still tied loosely around his left arm, Damion stumbled in.
“Shit!” Pinkie jammed the Glock into a pants pocket, catching Damion in full collapse in his arms.
“What in God's name?” yelled Mario, rushing across the room.
“Got myself cut,” Damion wheezed, somehow managing to look embarrassed.
“Get him into the den,” Mario ordered.
Struggling to keep someone who outweighed him by sixty pounds upright, Pinkie helped Damion down the short stub of hallway into the den.
“Sit him in my chair,” said Mario, as Damion, barely able to keep his feet, plopped down in the chair.
Rushing for a wall phone in the kitchen, Mario called back, “Fill him full of water and try to stop the bleeding. I'll get Doc Bottone here pronto.”
No time for water, Pinkie thought, aware that blood loss was Damion's immediate problem. He'd been a combat infantryman during Vietnam, not a medic, but he'd managed his share of battlefield casualties. Taking in Damion's shrunken pupils, he asked, “You got anything left in your tank, Blood?” Before Damion could respond, he undid the barely adequate tourniquet and tossed it aside. He stripped off his own shirt, ripped off the left sleeve at the seam, and knotted it around Damion's arm.
“Think I'm pretty close to empty right now.” Damion tried unsuccessfully to mount a smile.
“We'll get you back up and running here pretty quick. Mario's callin’ for help.”
“Better move fast.” Damion's chin slumped onto his chest as Pinkie examined the three-quarter-inch-deep, ten-inch long, crescent-shaped gouge running down his left biceps.
Realizing that the source of the bleeding was a small vessel just below Damion's shoulder blade, Pinkie shouted, “Mario, you got any tweezers?”
“I'll have to look. I'm still on the phone, tryin’ to get Bottone to get his ass in gear. Since it ain't like he's comin’ to tend to his usual clientele, he's bein’ a little stubborn. Think I got a pair of tweezers in a medicine cabinet in the john. I'll go look.”
“Bring ’em fast if you do,” yelled Pinkie.
Moments later, Mario stood at Pinkie's side with a pair of tweezers in his right hand. “Doc's on his way,” he said, handing the tweezers to Pinkie and looking at Damion, whose head had rolled over onto his right shoulder. “I think he passed out,” Mario said, dropping to one knee and running two fingers along the inside of Damion's right wrist to check his pulse. “Pretty weak,” Mario commented. As he watched Pinkie dab the gash in Damion's arm dry with his own shirttail before jamming the tweezers deep into Damion's deltoid muscle, Mario began to sweat. After fishing around briefly with the tweezers, Pinkie shouted, “Got it.” Seconds later, with the tweezers squeezed together tightly on the bleeding vessel, the bleeding stopped. “How long before Doc gets here?” asked Pinkie through gritted teeth as he suddenly found himself thinking about the humid jungles and twisted waterways of a long-forgotten place called Vietnam.
“He said to give him ten minutes,” Mario said, gently lifting Damion's head to check his breathing. When he whispered, “Hang in there, Blood,” there was no response.
There wasn't any light on in the room for good reason, because light—streetlights, light from the headlights of a car, even the subdued light of a low-wattage bulb—made Leotis Hawkins's head scream with pain. After stumbling home in a daze on the heels of his head-bashing encounter with Damion Madrid, he'd drawn the sagging window blinds in the bedroom of his one-bedroom apartment in Denver's Curtis Park neighborhood, settled into bed with three pillows behind his head for support, and, with his head feeling as if it wanted to split, cursed himself for letting Madrid get the better of him.
He wasn't as dizzy as when he'd first come home, but he understood that he had a serious concussion. If he tried to drink water, his head hurt. If he moved too quickly, his head hurt. If he breathed too deeply, it throbbed. Touching his right temple gently and hoping not to trigger a bolus of pain, he whispered, “If you're not dead already, Madrid, I'll kill you yet, you wetback fucker.”
He was afraid of going to sleep. He'd heard stories about people with concussions going to sleep and never waking up. But he wasn't about to go see a doctor. Doctors, in his experience, talked too much, and th
ey asked far too many questions. Those questions all too often led to visits from cops, and if Madrid had bled to death in some back alley with a bowie knife on him that had Hawkins's fingerprints on it, cops would mean trouble.
Although his thoughts remained clouded, some very important ones remained crystal clear. Like the fact that Rodney Sands and Jackie Woodson had better keep their mouths shut about what they knew about his drug enterprise—and, if Madrid turned up dead, what they knew about his Welton Street meeting with Madrid. He'd also have to make sure Leon Bird didn't suddenly get the spirit and decide to spill his guts about the relationship they'd developed. All in all, it wouldn't really be that difficult to handle his problems, he told himself. That was, if he made it through the night without falling asleep and drifting permanently into dreamland.
As he adjusted his head on the pillows and tried his best to get comfortable, he had the sudden feeling that he was floating, but the throbbing pain behind his eyes wouldn't allow him to enjoy the fantasy for long. It was going to be a long night, and if Madrid was still alive, he hoped it would be just as long for him.
Sixty-five-year-old Denver society-pages doctor Carlo Bottone was anything but what Damion had expected after Mario had assured him as he drifted in and out of consciousness that medical help was on the way. Far from being some Hollywood B-movie version of a mob doctor, or an alcoholic who'd lost his license after nearly killing someone he'd treated while drunk, Bottone was steady-handed, clear-eyed, skilled, and reassuring, and he smelled to Damion more like someone who'd just bathed in expensive French bath oils than the silver screen's version of a sawbones down-and-outer whose pores reeked of cigar smoke and cheap liquor.
As he placed the finishing touches on a perfectly aligned row of sutures, tucking the last subcutaneous stitch in with the skill of what he'd been for the past thirty years—a high-profile Denver plastic surgeon—Bottone glanced briefly and silently up at Mario, who hadn't moved since he'd delivered the prominent Denver doctor to Damion's side twenty-five minutes earlier.
Thanks to an IV that had carried a liter and a half of lactated Ringer's solution into his sagging vascular system and a twelve-ounce glass of orange juice, Damion now sat stabilized, albeit still a bit lightheaded, in Mario's La-Z-Boy. Pinkie sat across the room flipping through a battered copy of Sports Illustrated that featured the LA Dodgers on the cover.
“There,” said Bottone, leaning over from the ottoman he'd sat on while performing an arterial tie-off and looking pleased. Dusting off his hands, he extracted a roll of sterile gauze from the oversized doctor's valise at his feet. “Let me dress that puppy for you, and we're done.” As he rolled the gauze skillfully around Damion's arm, Damion had the urge to ask how he'd managed to clamp the bleeder, tie it off in nothing flat, and turn what had been a bloody mess into a neatly sutured wound. More importantly, he wanted to know why the good doctor was walking around with a dispensary's worth of hospital supplies tucked inside the oversized turn-of-the-twentieth-century-style black valise at his feet. But he didn't. He knew Bottone was there at the behest of Mario and that some questions would simply have to remain unanswered.
“You could really benefit from a unit of blood, young fellow,” Bottone said, checking the dressing one last time. “But I'm afraid from what Mario tells me that you'll just have to do without that for right now. So here's my advice. Early to bed and late to rise. A good night's sleep, half-a-day's rest tomorrow, and a steak-and-egg breakfast when you finally get up should do you just fine.” Smiling and nodding, he checked the line on Damion's IV. “You should be all dripped out in another ten minutes.” He glanced briefly at Pinkie. The look the two men gave one another told Damion that they'd met under similar circumstances before. Thumping the Ringer's bag with his middle finger, Bottone eyed the sling he'd made from one of Mario's oversized bath towels. “After that, Pinkie can drive you home.” “Nope,” said Mario. “He's stayin’ here tonight.” “No, I'm not, Mario. We've been through that,” Damion protested. “I'm going to Niki's. If anything, ah … bad surfaces out of this problem I created, I don't want your name or Pinkie's linked to it. I may have killed a man, remember?” He looked at Pinkie, whom he somehow expected to understand his predicament, for a response, but Pinkie remained silent.
“I doubt you killed anyone, Damion,” said Bottone. “Although from what you said happened, I expect your assailant probably has one hell of a headache. I wouldn't fret over it. Remember, the man tried to kill you.”
Surprised by Bottone's response, which he would've expected from Pinkie or maybe even Mario but never a physician, Damion said, “I need to know that Hawkins is alive.”
Bottone flashed Pinkie a look that said, This is your territory; want to take over? Shaking his head, Pinkie said, “I'll check on your Jabba the Hutt with the knife tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's a news bulletin for you, Blood.” The way Pinkie said his nickname, as if the word was suddenly lethal, caused Damion's eyes to widen. “You don't go lookin’ to tuck somebody in beddy-bye who's tried to kill you. Don't you ever forget that.”
Damion looked even more surprised as he watched Mario and Doc Bottone nod in agreement.
Realizing that Damion was a raw green recruit in the world he'd stepped into and hoping to take the edge off the conversation, Bottone asked, “So when's medical school start?”
“In a couple of weeks.”
“You'll be good to go by then,” said Bottone, who'd long ago run the race Damion was about to start. “Use the sling and take the Levaquin I gave you for the next seven days, every last pill. No telling where the blade of the knife that opened your arm up might have been, and there's no need to help an infection along. So take the pills.” Dusting off his hands, Bottone assembled every instrument he'd used along with every piece of unused gauze, suture material, and a small bottle of Betadine into a pile before methodically placing them into several small plastic Ziploc hazardous-material bags and slipping them back into his old doctor's valise. When he realized Damion was staring, he said, “It belonged to my father. Not many calls for these contraptions anymore.” Looking at Mario, he smiled, snapped the valise shut, and said, “Looks like I'm all done here.”
“You're a savior.” Mario hugged Bottone affectionately.
Bottone continued smiling as he returned the hug. Looking at Pinkie, he said, “Andrus, stay well.”
“Will do,” said Pinkie as Bottone, valise in hand, headed for the front door. Halfway to the door, Bottone looked back at Damion. “Good luck in med school. That first year's a rough one.”
“So everybody tells me.”
“You won't have any problem,” Bottone said, swinging the front door open and giving Damion a wink. “You've got the mental tenacity it takes. I've seen you play ball.”
Half an hour later, as Pinkie pulled his gleaming silver-and-black three-quarter-ton pickup to a stop in front of Niki Estaban's house, Damion found himself still wondering about the doctor who'd very likely saved his life. Deciding to ask Pinkie later about Bottone's background, Damion cleared his throat, adjusted the sling holding his left arm, and said in response to Pinkie's assertion that Shandell's murder looked to be the work of a professional, “You sure it's not a problem for you to nose around and see whether Blackbird's murder might've been the work of a pro?”
Pinkie, who'd never liked being asked the same question twice, frowned. “I said it wouldn't be a problem, Damion. I'll check out Garrett Asalon's place up in Louisville and see if he or that bodyguard he keeps around had their fingers in any kinda point-shavin’ scam. In the meantime, why don't you go along with Doc Bottone's orders? Get yourself a good long couple of days’ rest and worry about what it's gonna take to get you through that first year of medical school.”
“And what about Leotis Hawkins? If he's not dead already, what the hell do I do about him?” Damion realized the instant the words left his mouth that he'd asked a question he shouldn't have. The look on Pinkie's face verified as much.
Pinkie took a deep
breath, hoping to take the edge off what he was about to say. “You stepped your foot into a world you really don't belong in tonight, Damion. So here's a nugget to take to bed with you. Unlike Doc Bottone, you're fortunate. You ain't got no blood coursin’ through your veins that binds you to a way of life forever, no matter what.” Realizing that Damion looked a bit confused, he added, “Let me spell it out a little bit better for you. What did you think of Doc Bottone?”
“He knows his stuff.”
“No question. But he's got one foot in a world he can't never leave. A world you don't want no part of. So here's the juice. I'll nose around and see if I can't help figure out who killed your best friend. But once we know the answer, you need to put the likes of Leotis Hawkins and Garrett Asalon behind you.”
Realizing that the man who'd probably saved his life that evening was for some reason tied to the mob forever, Damion asked in the meekest of voices, “So what's Bottone's inside connection?”
Pinkie smiled. “You know that sweet angel Mario prays to every night before he hits the sack?”
“Yeah, sure, Angie; we all know that,” said Damion, referring to Mario Satoni's late wife and the woman the once-powerful Denver don still talked to on a daily basis, without the least hint of embarrassment.
“Well, Doc Bottone, plastic surgeon to most of Denver's blue-bloods, is Angie's kid brother. Blood's thicker than water,” Pinkie said, watching a look of astonishment spread across Damion's face. “When you get called, you get called no matter what. Always remember that. Keep both feet in one world, Damion. Trust me, it's a whole lot healthier.” Glancing toward Niki's house and the light streaming from a front bay window, Pinkie leaned across Damion to open the front door. “Now, how about it, Blood? Why don't you go get yourself some rest?” “Okay, but give me a few minutes to get my story together.” Smiling, Pinkie, who'd been forced to knit more than a few stories together over the years, said, “Take all the time you need.”