by Mike Knowles
Miles heard the creak as I came around the corner and lifted his gun over his shoulder.
When he saw it was me, he said, “Jesus, that took you a long time.”
“Tell me that when you try and walk out of here,” I said.
“The door was locked. I tried the handle and she shot me. Right through the door. Hit me in the goddamn chest.”
I looked up at the door and saw the bullet hole five feet from the floorboards. It was the only one that high. The rest of the shots were lower in the door. The other six shots had come from Miles shooting up from the floor. The fact that he was talking meant the bullet wasn’t in his lungs. I guessed the heavy wood of the door slowed the bullet down enough to make it only a flesh wound. I pulled off Miles’ shoe and slipped off his sock.
“Put this over it,” I said as I slid his shoe back on.
I moved against the wall and said, “Alison?”
I got no answer.
“Alison?”
I eased a hand onto the knob and used just enough force to twist it. It didn’t move. I could see from the holes that the door was solid wood. Neither of us had a chance of kicking it down. Slowly, I eased my head towards the bullet hole made by the first shot. I glanced into the room and then pulled my head away before I got the same treatment as Miles. A second look told me that I didn’t have to worry. There was a body on the floor.
I put the revolver to the knob and put a bullet through the brass. After that, the door opened. On her back, three feet from the door, was the beautiful woman I had seen walk into Samuel Hall. She was in a man’s button-down and her underwear. The gun, probably the one used in the robbery, was on the ground next to her. There were two holes in the shirt surrounded by two large poppy-shaped stains. Two of the bullets Miles had fired at the door had caught her in the chest. I guessed she had been looking through the bullet hole like I had been when Miles began shooting.
In front of the bed was an antique chest. On top of the chest was a violin case.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Ox had lied. It took him an hour and a half to find me a doctor in Buffalo. He wasn’t licensed to practise anywhere outside of Colombia, but that didn’t seem to matter much given the circumstances. The man was a cab driver who lived, and worked, in the city. He had us meet him at his apartment where his nephew was waiting to help us inside. His niece moved the blood-soaked Volkswagen somewhere less conspicuous.
Luis was in his fifties and a drunk, judging from the hour and smell of his breath. I doubted he remembered anything he had learned in medical school, but there was no denying that the man knew gunshot wounds.
He went to work on Miles right away and directed his nephew on what to do with me. It was like watching someone play two games of chess at the same time. It took two hours to stabilize Miles and then the taxicab MD looked over his nephew’s work on me.
“You need a hospital.”
I shook my head. It was about the only movement I could manage.
“The infection is bad, and your heart is no sounding good.”
“No hospital.”
“If you make tomorrow, maybe you make the next day.”
I made it to the next day. Miles was out of bed and eating when I came to. The niece was our nurse, but it didn’t take long for me to see that she had designs on getting promoted to the role of Miles’ girlfriend. I didn’t have the strength to get off my back. I could only lie on the thin mattress Luis had placed on the floor and watch as the bag of black-market antibiotics hanging on a coat hanger attached to a battered hat stand slowly dripped life back into my arm.
I could sit up after two days. I could walk on the third. Miles had made contact with Pyrros and told him everything that had gone down. As expected, Ilir was a bitter pill to swallow, but the violin did what Carl had hoped it would. Pyrros understood the cost of doing business and he told us he bore no grudge. Neither of us believed him, but we believed he would pay for the violin and that was enough. There was another Bills game at the end of the week. Ox would cross the border for the game and cross back with two passengers and one item we weren’t planning on paying duty for. Enough lives and enough blood had already been paid for one old musical instrument.
Copyright © Mike Knowles, 2014
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Knowles, Mike, author
The Buffalo job / Mike Knowles.
(A Wilson mystery)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77090-510-8 (epub)
Also issued as: 978-1-77090-509-2 (pdf), 978-1-77041-171-5 (pbk.)
I. Title. II. Series: Knowles, Mike. Wilson mystery.
PS8621.N67B83 2014 C813'.6 C2014-900539-3 C2014-900540-7
Cover design: David Gee
Cover image: © Mohamad Itani/Millennium Images
Text design: Ingrid Paulson
Interior image: blood spatter © itchySan/iStockphoto
The publication of The Buffalo Job has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.